© 2024 Alpha Spread Limited. All Rights Reserved.
www.alphaspread.com is not operated by a broker, a dealer, or a registered investment adviser. Under no circumstances does any information posted on www.alphaspread.com represent a recommendation to buy or sell a security. The information on this site, and in its related newsletters, is not intended to be, nor does it constitute, investment advice or recommendations. The information on this site is in no way guaranteed for completeness, accuracy or in any other way. In no event shall Alpha Spread Limited be liable to any member, guest or third party for any damages of any kind arising out of the use of any content or other material published or available on www.alphaspread.com, or relating to the use of, or inability to use, www.alphaspread.com or any content, including, without limitation, any investment losses, lost profits, lost opportunity, special, incidental, indirect, consequential or punitive damages. Past performance is a poor indicator of future performance.
You don't have any saved screeners yet
Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Hello, good morning. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to today's IMI plc's Interim Management Statement Call. [Operator Instructions] I would also like to inform you this conference is being recorded today, 8th of November, 2018. I now hand you over to your speaker, Mr. Mark Selway.
Thanks, Robbie, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks very much for taking time out of your busy schedules to be on this morning's call. I have with me Dan Shook; Roy Twite; Massimo; and also Phil Clifton. I hope you've had a chance to read through the IMS statement today. I don't propose that I'll read it out verbatim, but I will be happy to cover off some highlights and then take your questions.Overall, our key messages are that we're continuing to make good progress across the group and, most importantly, our results continue to be in line with the current market expectations for the full year.Trading momentum has continued to be positive for the group, and we delivered 3% growth in the third quarter, giving 5% growth for the 9-month period to the end of September. And most importantly, those businesses where we have seen some cost increases, we've largely recovered those through selling price increases in the period.Moving now to the divisions. In Critical, the market backdrop remains largely unchanged. The most notable achievement is order input where, as we predicted, we've substantially reversed the 12% decline, which we experienced in the first half. Significant new Petrochemical projects or bookings rise, 40% in the third quarter, and that leaves us with an order book at GBP 520 million, just 3% below the same period last year.Happy to say that Value Engineering again made an important contribution and delivered GBP 139 million of new orders in the 9 months to September. And you'll recall that's the same total as Critical achieved in the whole of 2017. Margins in the order book remain slightly better than last year. And as Roy previously outlined, we expect to deliver a modest order input decline in the full year, which, as always, will provide a reasonable indicator for revenues in 2019.Organic revenues were 3% higher in the quarter, 10% growth in our aftermarket, and that offset modest decline in New Construction. And then in the round, we're expecting second half organic revenues, profits and margins to improve when compared to the same period last year.Turning now to Precision. Revenues continue to make good progress, delivering 5% organic growth in the quarter. And that result follows a strong Q3 comparator last year where we delivered a 9% improvement, which is why we previously guided towards a lower growth rate in the second half of this year.I'm happy to say that sales across CV and Energy, Life Sciences and Rail all continued with their strong growth trend in the quarter. Industrial Automation revenues were flat when compared to the third quarter of last year, which was a particularly strong comparator.I'm also pleased to say that Bimba is making good progress, and overall, as a division, we still expect second half organic revenues and profits to improve when compared to last year.In Hydronic, good progress has been made by Phil and the team in getting this business firmly back on track. With that early progress as a backdrop, we're absolutely delighted that Phil is to remain permanently as the division's Managing Director.The next most important news is that we remain absolutely confident that we will achieve high-teen margins in the second half of 2018. And achieving that has involved exiting some lower-margin business, and that contributed to Q3 organic revenues being 2% lower than last year. Now, we continue to favor margin over revenue, particularly in this early refocused phase, which is why in the second half, we're expecting profits to be improved from marginally lower revenues when you compare to 2017.So in conclusion, I'm pleased to confirm continued progress since our last update, and that gives us every confidence that we will meet market expectations for the full year. And further on, we'll have a clearer view of 2019 when we complete our budgets. There remains a number of conflicting economic indicators, and we'll need to consider those when we build our plans. I think with that, we'll be delighted to take your questions. Back to you, Robbie.
[Operator Instructions] Okay. Your first question comes from the line of Mark Davies Jones.
Mark, it's Mark Davies Jones, Stifel. If I can just dig in to the precision trends a little, particularly the Industrial Automation piece. Is there any regional color you can give to that? Obviously, things slowed. I gather they picked up a little bit again post the end of Q3, but is that principally an Asian and European issue? Has Bimba remained sort of at the same sort of level in the U.S. through the period? Any color you can give on the moving parts of that would be great.
Yes, sure, Mark. When we take a look at the Industrial Automation, as I said, there's a very strong comparator in Q3 of last year. You're right. In October, in fact, we saw about 5% to 6% growth coming out of Industrial Automation globally. There were some variances regionally. U.S. was down. Europe was stronger, and we continue to see some good progress in Asia, particularly out of China. But look, it is a moving piece. We think tariffs had an impact in terms of the U.S. certainly in the third quarter. I had the entire board of the group in the U.S. last month, and we were fortunate we met with a number of our distributors, and it is interesting that distributors are expecting to see a strong final quarter to the year. The conflicting information is that the National Fluid Power Association in the U.S. is expecting to see a softer final quarter. So a little difficult to be absolute in it, but certainly, the U.S. was slower in the third quarter. It was softer in October, but Europe was substantially up.
Great. And with that increased volatility, has there been any impact on the profitability of Precision? Obviously, it makes it more difficult to manage in some respects.
No, not really. I think the big issue is mix because we continue to see a very strong North American Class A truck production. It's softened a wee bit in Europe, but certainly, the U.S. has been strong right through the year, and we saw about 9% growth coming out of CV and that was offsetting a flat Industrial Automation. And the mix of those 2 in terms of margins does have an impact overall, but we're still expecting Massimo's profits, revenues and margins to be particularly strong for second half of the year.
We will now take your next question.
It's Alex Virgo, Bank of America. I wondered if you could talk 2 things, just a little bit to the utilization rates in factories. I think you were targeting 70% or so this time last year when you talked about the second half of 2018. I wondered [indiscernible] an update on where that is. And then secondly, just on margins and the backlog in Critical. I would imagine that such a strong order intake in the quarter on OE, probably takes a little bit of the shine off the margins in the backlog, but clearly, sets it up well for volumes for next year. So perhaps you could tell us a little bit about how that margin's [indiscernible].
Yes, good things, Alex. Utilization rates, yes, Precision is the one that's got the most impact in terms of utilization. We were slightly above 70% in the third quarter. We insourced some machining work that was capacity-restrained in terms of the external market. Look, we expect about 70% in the full year will be where we're at. That includes the insourcing. It also includes some movement of business from Europe into Asia where Massimo's got a localization program that's progressing very, very well. I think in terms of Critical, we've still got low utilization. But the market outlook, and particularly in terms of new quotations in LNG and oil and gas are very strong. So I think that will improve as we go forward and Phil's continuous about it, about 70% across his business. I think in terms of your question on the margin backlog in Critical, you're absolutely right. We saw GBP 39 million of Petrochemical orders in the third quarter. That was a big component part of the 40% growth that you saw in the period. Obviously, the original equipment is lower margin, so the way that breaks down in terms of the order -- the order book today, we've got about minus 1 on New Construction, plus 1 on parts, so Roy and the team have done well in making sure we recover whatever increases we see, and mix gives us a 1% benefit as well. So net-net, we've got about a 1% improvement over this point last year, Alex.
We will now take your next question.
Andy from Jefferies. Just 3 questions for me, please. When we look at Critical, I appreciate that third quarter last year for original equipment was reasonably soft, so we had to have a reasonably weak comp. Aftermarket, plus 19%, I guess maybe a slight surprise. I was late onto the call so apologies if you already talked about that. But can you just give us a bit of color for plus 19% on aftermarket because that looks kind of really quite good? Second question, again, a very brief one on Critical. You talk about upstream Oil & Gas being strong. I wouldn't necessarily kind of put you down as an upstream Oil & Gas play, maybe in Middle East, so if you can just maybe give us a bit more color on that, that would be great. And then finally, just wondering what you guys are thinking or how you're thinking working capital and how that kind of can play into the kind of remainder of the year and maybe into kind of February, March next year as we get towards Brexit. Kind of what your thoughts are there? That would be helpful.
Andy, listen, I'll take the last question first in terms of working capital. Tough old position for Massimo to be in at the moment. I mean, we saw broadly flat Industrial Automation in the third quarter. We saw 5% to 6% growth in October, so managing that and the CV pipeline is difficult. We do have good plans as we always would as we run down into the final quarter. Difficulty is, is do you turn it on or do you turn it off at this point. So I'm expecting inventories, particularly in Precision, to be a bit higher than we would ideally like. But look, that's in anticipation of a stronger first quarter of next year. I think in working capital overall, the company's doing pretty well in terms of managing its debtors, albeit, I think, critical of finding it pretty tough in the market to get paid. But you won't see an extensive increase in debtor days across their business. And I think net debt, broadly, GBP 380 million, GBP 390 million for the year-end is what you could probably expect from the business. Roy, if you can, could you take the aftermarket question in Critical and also the upstream Oil & Gas?
Yes, yes. Thanks, Mark. Yes, Andy, so upstream Oil & Gas, over the last couple of years, we brought out a new valve. It's a choke valve which goes on the wellhead. It's been very successful in the Middle East and it lasts a lot longer than all of the competitors' valves. So it's a really neat design, and that's actually grown our orders so that this year-to-date, we're doing GBP 25 million in New Construction in upstream Oil & Gas. So that's been a nice story. Yes, it's not massive but it's improving, and we see further runway as we go forward as well. In the aftermarket, Andy, we did get a couple of big larger parts orders, which, again, even on a quarterly basis, it's a bit lumpy. Parts year-to-date are 1% up, which is good because there's no doubt that the maintenance budgets of the big power companies are under massive pressure. We're definitely seeing that. Where we're up year-to-date is on upgrades. So you probably remember me talking a bit about -- at the half year, talking a bit about the fact that we're targeting our competitors' valves in the installed base and we've been upgrading those and, in fact, that's been very strong for us this year. That particular segment is now 30% up. So it takes a long time to do that sort of sell because it's a technical sell, but the good news is we're seeing it come through in the numbers.
We will now take your next question.
It's Jonathan from Deutsche Bank. Just a couple of questions, please. Just firstly on coming back to Critical. Roy, I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about 2019 and what you're seeing in terms of the sort of the key end markets for you such as LNG. And also what you expect for nuclear in 2019 and maybe into 2020, please?
Yes.
Yes, thanks, Jonathan. Yes, I mean, Mark said it. I think I've been guiding for the last 2 or 3 updates, that I expect full year orders in Critical to be flat to slightly down this year. So we're slightly up at the moment after a good third quarter, but I still expect the same outlook for the full year, Jonathan. LNG, you probably saw that Shell are going ahead with Canada LNG, and we're starting to see more and more pressure on companies to put in place LNG compression capacity, and that's obviously good news for us. As we've said before, between FID, so after the investment decision is positive, we're typically a year to 18 months after that when we see orders. So that's why Mark's indicating sort of second half of next year, we would expect LNG to start picking up again for us, all things being equal. So that's a good positive story. On nuclear, China isn't really moving. At the moment, there's still -- they've connected this AP1000 equivalent reactor to the grid but there's still not big orders following on after that at the moment. And the other place where there is opportunity is obviously India, and we are quoting big projects in India, but it's notoriously slow nuclear in India. So that will be over the next few years, hopefully, we'll see that start to roll out, Jonathan. Of course, one thing I should say on Hinkley Point, we did win a good portion of those orders on Hinkley Point as well, so that was a good one for the U.K. So not much change in terms of the outlook since the last update.
Great stuff. My second question is just on pricing. I think when we heard from you last, you started -- you were saying that you started to see some gains in pricing, particularly in the aftermarket. I mean, has that trend continued through Q3? Do you expect that to continue into Q4?
Yes, I wouldn't say we're getting more pricing, Jonathan. But as Mark said, the aftermarket order book, the margin in that is about 1% up. And that's despite a negative mix effect because, obviously, upgrades -- on upgrade valves, we don't make the same margin as we make on parts. So that has been moving positive in the right direction and we've slightly overcompensated for the inflationary effect. So, yes, pricing still solid in the aftermarket.
Great. And then maybe just one final one. Just as we look to 2019, obviously, you've got restructuring benefits that help you in '18. What kind of number in terms of benefits can we expect in '19, please?
Wow. I mean, Jonathan, we haven't even gone through the budgets with the board yet, so I think early days for that, Mark, yes?
Yes, clearly, there is -- we would be disappointed if there wasn't further progress in 2019 in terms of margins, but we've got a lot of work to do until we get there, Jonathan.
We will now take your next question.
It's Ed from Citigroup. Just had a question on the power business. I may have read incorrectly but I didn't see any sort of mention on trends. If you could just comment, please, on what trends you're seeing in that business.
Yes. Thanks, Ed. Do you want me to take it, Mark?
Yes.
Yes, so our power, New Construction business in the third quarter was 10% down, Ed, and it's 11% down year-to-date. So it is still being hit pretty hard. You've probably seen some of our peer group results that have come out today even and obviously, you're seeing what's happening to GE. It's just a very, very tough market. Coal, we expected to be down, but the surprise has been gas has been even worse than we had expected on New Construction.
Yes. Aftermarkets remain pretty strong though.
Yes, I mean, as I said, the aftermarket -- I mean, overall, aftermarket parts are up 1%. And then even within the power sector, third quarter parts were sort of 3% down. So parts is still very resilient.
We will now have your next question.
It's Robert from Morgan Stanley. Just a couple of questions. I guess, one was around the intentions for the Hydronic business going forward. You've obviously had a sort of change in strategy. What are your expectations for the business next year and kind of focus and priorities? Obviously, getting margins up in the near term, but how do you kind of fit that within the context of trying to get overall group growth going on a kind of midterm basis? That's my first question. And then the second one, maybe you could just flesh out a little bit more around some of the timing. I know you sort of mentioned briefly around LNG, but what are the customers are actually saying around timing and projects? And where are you seeing kind of potential for LNG that you've already got installed doing more sort of service and aftermarket work on that?
So, Phil, can you take Hydronic?
Yes. Robert, thanks for your question. Yes, you're absolutely right. This year's all been about focus on margin even where we've been walking away from some unprofitable work and that will continue into next year. I want to continue that margin focus, but we do expect to get back to some profitable growth. So our revenues this year have been hit by walking away deliberately from some low-margin business. So that's what you're seeing this year. Next year, I would hope to be back to some good profitable growth.
Yes. And on LNG, Robert, we've obviously got a list of projects that we track. Yes, I'm just looking at the list now. We've probably got 20 projects on here, and we track exactly -- most of them waiting for FIDs. You would expect some have just gone through FID and some have just awarded the EPC. And as I said, that sort of looks like it should give us a pretty good situation in the second half of next year in terms of orders. And customers generally are saying that they are prepared to invest in FID. And as you see, Shell is a bit under pressure from investors to make sure they spend every penny super-wisely in oil and gas, but they decided to back LNG as one of their growth areas as a typical sort of bellwether for the sector. So I think LNG is a good space, and we continue to broaden our product range within that. In terms of the aftermarket, yes, it's great. We see over the next 5 years that growing as more and more installations come online. Typically, we have a follow-on set of parts with the initial installation. That can last for a couple of years, but then beyond that, you get a nice stream of parts in LNG, and the margins are as good as if not slightly better than the power parts margin. So it's a nice stream of business for us, Robert.
That's great. And maybe just one final one. Just on what the oil and gas guys are saying in terms of CapEx. You obviously mentioned there's going to be more capital constraint now or kind of more cautious in spending. What are they saying to you in terms of priorities of whether -- you mentioned LNG as a place they're willing to spend money. But just for a typical mid- or downstream Oil & Gas customer, what are they saying in terms of their focus for going into '19 around maintenance budgets or new projects? Just be interested to hear what the message is from the companies themselves.
Yes, I mean, folks on LNG, as I said, a bit of a focus on downstream. We see certainly opportunities, continuing opportunities in Petrochem. So you'll remember, our orders were up over 50% last year. We think we're going to get close to holding that this year, so that will be sort of 50% growth over the 2 years. So it's certainly those downstream Petrochem areas that we see opportunity.
We will now take your next question.
So, Glen, the mic's open for you.
It's Glen from JP Morgan. A couple of years ago, Massimo launched a clutch of new products. Are they starting now to contribute to the growth?
Yes, look on the -- let Massimo take the detail for the quarter. Just to reflect on that, a couple of the most important platform products are now in the market, and we're really pleased with the way they're starting to progress. There is about GBP 370 million of existing revenues over the course of the next few years that will be replaced by brand-new products. So the pipeline for Precision is growing, and there's a consistent range of great new products coming through over the course for the next 18 months, Glen. But in terms of the quarter itself and year-to-date, Massimo?
Yes, Glen. Massimo here. We are quite pleased with the contribution of new product introduction to our growth. You know that we are measuring our vitality rate, which is the percentage of sales we are realizing with product that has been recently introduced, more precisely in the last 3 years. And we started this process about 1 year ago where they're around 5%, and we reached now, at the end of the quarter, 12% vitality. So we are quite pleased to be remembered that our new product introduction is a mix between platform products, so important product like the ISOLine we presented in Hannover rather than the new FRL Excelon Plus, but also a lot of custom-made product that we make -- we develop for our industrial automation and CV customers. So we are quite pleased and we are also quite excited looking forward because we have in place a very solid process today, so we believe this is going to be a competitive advantage for Precision Engineering going forward.
Okay. Sticking with Precision, I mean, commercial vehicles have been amazingly strong in the U.S. this year. But again, a couple of years back, you won some new contracts that weren't due to start immediately. Are they due to kick in next year?
Partially, but the largest contribution of new projects recently won will really be impacting 2020.
So, Glen, the Kongsberg program that we won a few years ago is now launched. It's smaller in overall dollar volumes. The big one that Massimo just mentioned is running through the system at the moment in terms of new product development. We'll see about GBP 10 million in total of contract completions this year, and that will be offset next year by stronger new contract starts. So just to give you a mix on it all, that's what it will look like in the full year.
We will now take your next question. It's coming from the line of David Larkam.
It's David Larkam at Numis. A couple for me, please. Firstly on Hydronic, can you talk just about the sort of the gross loss of business, I mean, that you're walking away from? Obviously, we see a net number, but can you give us a sort of a gross to exactly what you're moving away, so we can see whether the business is underlying actually, keeping up with the end markets? And then on Precision, on the automation side, can you talk about exposure to automotive? What are you seeing from them? And how big is that for the automation piece?
Phil?
Yes, so in [ terms ] of the work we've been walking away from, we've closed a service business. We've also closed our Turkish business where we were making losses. And we've also walked away from a number of projects, principally in Europe and also a couple of the emerging markets where we weren't getting the margins that we would have expected. So in overall terms, we've walked away from around GBP 3 million to GBP 4 million of revenue.
That's in the quarter is that? That's in the quarter, yes?
No, no, that's year -- in the year-to-date.
Massimo, in terms of...
Yes. David, with regards to our exposure to automotive, this is mainly related to our North American business. We have an activity that we call Norgren Automotive Solution, which supply arms and automation for the automotive industry. So this year, we are really performing well, but the market expectations for next year are quite negative because of the dynamics of the automotive industry. Having said that, it's a relatively limited revenue for us. So all in all, we expect this impact to be limited.
We will now take your next question. It's coming from the line of Colin Campbell.
It's Colin Campbell at SocGen. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can, Colin.
Great. I just wanted to ask more a bit on Industrial Automation within Precision. Clearly, a slowing there in the short-cycle areas. Do you expect that loss of momentum to continue into Q4 given you've talked of greater volatility? Is there a chance that, that flat growth goes negative, please?
Yes, Colin. I mean, again, you've got to look at the comparator in Q3 of last year. We're up about 9%. So Industrial Automation, we're expecting the final quarter of the year to be a bit stronger than last year. It is a bit volatile, as I mentioned. We saw good growth in October coming out of Europe and some decline in North America. Tariffs have had an impact midterm, so I expect they've had an impact also. But look, net of all of it, coming into Q4, we expect some progress. Whether it's as strong as the 5% to 6% that we saw in October, we'll just have to play that out. But it is a bit more volatile today than it was, and we certainly don't see it going backwards at any time soon, Colin.
We now have your last question. It's coming from the line of Sandeep Gandhi.
This is Sandeep Gandhi from Exane. Just one question from me. I'm just wondering if you could talk a bit about your plans for future capital allocation. I mean, are there any parts of the portfolio you can look to exit? Or any areas you might look to strengthen in? Maybe a bit of color on that.
Thanks, Sandeep. Good question. The net of all of this, we love everything we currently do. New product development continues at pace. As I said, Massimo's got some great new projects coming through. Value Engineering, in Roy's world, factories are now pretty well invested, so I think capital allocation will be pretty much as it has been. We've been spending about GBP 70 million a year and I'm expecting it will be about that same number as we come into 2019. In Phil's world, there will be less new products but much more focused at bigger-picture wins in terms of markets. So I think, again, looking at all 3 businesses, our balance sheet's in great shape. As I said, we probably expect net debt to be in the order of GBP 380 million, GBP 390 million for the year-end. So we've got a situation we can invest in all of the business. We continue to invest in brand-new products. We're working hard to improve the factories across the business and that's the priorities, Sandeep.
Okay. We will now take your next question. It's coming from the line of Ryan Gregory.
It's Ryan from Liberum. Just a quick one on price in Precision. How is that currently looking against raw material and wage inflation? And how do you think that looks going into 2019? Just wondering whether there is some volatility and maybe makes it a bit harder to raise prices?
Look, I think, Ryan, if you take a look at it, Massimo and the team have done a good job. There's always a delay from the time we see the increases to the time we get a recovery. Tough to get them in CV, as you're probably aware. But, I mean, we're very proud that Massimo has been able to turn pricing into a positive against these inflationary costs this year. And we think there's probably a bit of momentum in the first half anyway because it's a lag from recovering those increases as we move into 2019. So I think he's done a decent job. Market's been receptive. Tariffs, we've been able to put surcharges on and recover those. So generally, Massimo, I think we're in good shape.
Yes, absolutely.
Okay. I think with that, that's the very last question, Robbie. So thank you very, very much to everybody for being on today's call. Again, in conclusion, I'm pleased to confirm the continued progress we're making, every confidence that we'll meet market expectations for the full year, and we'll be working diligently to give you further meat on the bones in terms of 2019 as we come into the year-end. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time and attention.
That does conclude our conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.