Meggitt PLC

LSE:MGGT

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q4

[Tony Wood]

Well, good morning and welcome to the 2021 Full-Year Results Presentation for Meggitt PLC. And with me today is Louisa Burdett, our CFO. I'll begin as usual by providing an overview of the year before Louisa talks through the numbers in more detail. I'll then take you through how we continue to invest for the future across the group and provide an update on our sustainability framework before closing with our view of the recovery and the outlook. But first, please note the following cautionary statement.

2021 was another significant and eventful year for the group. Alongside managing the group through the recovery, in August, we announced the proposed all cash £8.00 per share offer from Parker-Hannifin, which was subsequently approved by shareholders in September. Work continues on securing the necessary regulatory approvals, and we continue to expect the deal to close in the third quarter of 2022.

Turning now to our financial results, group organic revenue was 5% than the prior year with growth of 8% in the second half. In civil aerospace, we saw a good improvement alongside the recovery in air traffic. And in the civil aftermarket, organic revenue was up 51% in the second half, closing the year up 7% with encouraging order intake in the final quarter and a book-to-bill of 1.11 times.

Underlying operating profit was 7% lower at £177 million, representing a margin of 11.9%, up 60 basis points versus the prior year, with a significant uplift in margin in the second half. We delivered another good cash performance with a free cash inflow of £46 million. And our liquidity and balance sheet remained strong with headroom of over £570 million and a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.9 times at year-end.

Turning then to our strategy and our four core priorities. Starting with our strategic portfolio, where we made strong progress on the development of differentiated technology across both civil aerospace and energy businesses, working on a number of exciting projects alongside our customers and partners. Working with our customers, we secured a number of contract wins across all our core end markets and added 11 SMARTSupport contracts, taking the aggregate value of our long-term aftermarket partnerships to over £220 million.

And in competitiveness, we were pleased to commission on new Ansty Park facility, with direct shipments now taking place from the site, as well as making investments and operational improvements across a number of our global sites, more of which I'll cover later.

And on culture, our priority continue to be to look after our people, as well as keeping a strong focus on our high-performance culture program and diversity and inclusion initiatives reflected in continuing strong levels of employee engagement.

So in summary, we've continued to execute our core strategy and remain focused on our priorities to position ourselves for the future. And with that, I'll hand over to Louisa to talk through the numbers in more detail.

[Louisa S. Burdett]

Thank you, Tony. And good morning, everyone. As usual, I will start with the income statement focusing on the underlying numbers on an organic basis. While the group's full-year performance reflects the challenges posed by a second year of COVID-19 as well as supply chain disruption, pleasingly, we have seen signs of the civil aerospace recovery, particularly in the second half, with sequential improvement in both order intake and revenue.

Orders were 9% higher than the prior year. And our book-to-bill was 1.01 times, which is an improvement from the first half. This includes strong growth in civil aerospace orders of 117% in the second half versus the same period last year. And a rise of 42%. Group for revenue was 5% lower, with flat revenue in civil aerospace, growth of 6% in energy, which was more than offset by softer defense. Underlying operating profit at £177 million was 7% lower than the prior year and includes the net impact of lower defense, supply chain costs and FX headwinds. Our underlying EPS was £0.154 per share.

So, turning to the next slide, which looks at revenue by end markets, in the top right, we've included a table to show the quarterly as well as half year growth rates compared with the prior year. This is to give you a flavor of the trends we're now seeing and notably the return to growth in civil.

So, working down the left hand chart and focusing on the organic numbers, civil OE revenue was down 10%. That was down 28% in the first half and up 17% in the second half. Civil aftermarket revenue was up 7% for the full year, down 24% and up 51% in half one and half two, respectively. And overall, civil aerospace revenue was flat in the period.

Defense represents 42% of our 2021 group revenue and this was down 11%. Within this, Defence OE and Defence AM were down 7% and 17%, respectively, which reflects a combination of two main factors. First, we had inventory destocking and lower order patterns by the DLA and second COVID related disruption in the US. In energy, revenue was up 6%, a good performance with the pipeline remaining strong as we entered 2022. On a portfolio basis, OE and Aftermarket made up 54% and 46%, respectively of our full year revenue.

On this next slide, I have set out the sequential half-year growth rates across civil aerospace for both orders and revenue going back to 2019. As you can see, we have continued sequential growth for both orders and revenue in both OE and the aftermarket since the second half of last year, with particularly strong growth in civil aftermarket, which was up 63% and 38% in the second half versus the first half for orders and revenue, respectively. This provides confidence as we enter 2022.

Turning to the next slide on our divisional performance, where I will focus on a few key points shown in the gray boxes on the right. So starting with Airframes where revenue was 3% lower, within this, civil was up 2% which included 20% growth in the aftermarket, driven by our brakes business, which was more than offset by defense, which was 5% lower. Operating margins increased by 110 basis points.

The operating loss in Engine Systems is largely attributable to lower defense revenue in engine composites caused lower defense revenue in Engine Composites caused by three factors: one, a large one-off order in the prior year; two, a temporary supplier issue in the first quarter of this year, which was resolved; and three, lower productivity caused by COVID-related disruption in the US.

We continue to make good progress in the civil part of engine composites, where revenue was flat. We've transferred more production to our site in Mexico, as well as introducing further process improvements and increasing yields significantly. Revenue was flat in energy and equipment, with a good performance in energy and other markets, both up 9% offset by softer defense. Margins were 120 basis points higher.

And then, finally, services and support, where organic revenue was 11% lower, civil revenue was 3% lower and included a good recovery in the second half, with growth of 31% versus the comparative period. Defense revenue was down 32%, reflecting the impact of the lower DLA volumes. Operating margins were 120 basis points lower in the period.

So, moving on to the next slide and to cash, where we were very pleased to have delivered another year of positive free cash flow. Our higher working capital reflects the investment in inventory in response to the civil recovery, as well as supporting our supply chain, where we expect the environment to remain challenging during at least the first half of this year. Lower capital expenditure of £70 million largely reflects the re-phasing of a proportion of our investment in brakes capacity into 2022.

Proceeds from disposals relate to sale-and-leaseback transactions as part of our broader footprint strategy and pension deficit payments of £42 million are in line with the revised payment schedule we have previously disclosed. And finally, cash tax of £38 million was lower than expected due to the lower levels of profit in the US. This does include the £18 million CFC payment to HMRC. Free cash flow of £46 million had a favorable impact on our net debt before the impact of FX and leases.

And then finally, moving to our balance sheet, the left-hand chart shows that we have managed to keep net debt broadly flat with positive free cash flow of £46 million offset by the net impact from disposals, leases and FX of £53 million. And on the right-hand chart, our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 1.9 times at the end of December, which is well within the limit of 3.5 times and getting back towards pre-pandemic levels. In the top right-hand corner, we had significant headroom of £573 million at the end of the year against committed facilities of £1.2 billion.

I will now hand you back to Tony.

[Tony Wood]

Thank you, Louisa. Now, I'd like to talk about how we continue to invest across the group to position ourselves for the recovery and the longer term. Key to maintaining growth in the future is that we continue to invest in innovative and differentiated technologies. In 2021, we spent close to 80% of our innovation spend on sustainable technologies for aerospace and clean energy markets, which are critical to supporting our customers with their own targets to reduce emissions.

I'm delighted that our work, particularly in areas such as optical sensing, thermal management systems, as well as electrical systems for next generation flight, has enabled us to book some significant customer orders with a number of projects in the pipeline.

As you know, one of our major projects is the development of our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at Ansty Park in the UK, which we commissioned in 2021. As a reminder, the site is home for our Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing Center of Excellence, our thermal and braking systems product groups, and our European Services and Support hub, together with our global headquarters. This project represents Meggitt's largest infrastructure investment in our history, and it consolidates five of our UK sites into one, covering around 500,000 square feet, with over 70% dedicated to manufacturing. The project, which began in 2019, involved the transfer of over 1,700 pieces of equipment and the transition of around 1,000 employees, and will help deliver a number of operational efficiency and sustainability benefits in the years ahead.

We've also made investments to improve operational capability across other global sites, at our Rockmart facility in Georgia, USA, for instance, our Fuel Systems manufacturing site. We've invested significantly, increasing the use of automation and enhancing our lean production and testing capabilities, as well as upgrading systems to improve the working environment. And at our Engine Composites site in Saltillo, Mexico, we've continued to invest in process improvements and manufacturing efficiency, increasing yield significantly on composite components. These represent just two of the investments we're making at our sites complementing the work we're doing to harmonize our processes and improve our operational effectiveness through our high performance system.

So, turning to my next slide, you may remember last year we introduced our ESG framework, which is arranged under three core pillars of people, planet and technology. Under the people, we continued the rollout of high performance culture training with nearly 70% of our employees now trained. We also continue to invest in talent through our graduate and apprentice schemes and participate in the 10,000 Black Interns program in the UK.

Our work on diversity and inclusion has resulted in our eight employee resource groups attracting a membership of over 1,000 employees, and during the year we held our annual diversity and inclusion week with 18 sites holding events. I'm really pleased to see the work we continue to do on culture has resulted in strong levels of employee engagement, which increased by 2% in 2021 and is now 4% above the global high performing benchmark.

In planet, which represents our commitment to contributing to a cleaner future, we join the United Nations Race to Zero campaign, which is committed to reducing absolute value chain emissions to net zero by 2050. And we're also adopting the Science Based Targets initiative, allowing us to accurately measure our progress on emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. Our goal to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2025 has also made good progress with all of our UK, Swiss and Danish sites now sourcing 100% of their electricity from renewable sources.

So, moving on to talk about how we're seeing the recovery. While we've been encouraged by the continued increase in civil aerospace activity in 2021, as you can see from the chart on the left-hand side of this slide, the extent and shape of the recovery has been uneven and has varied between regions reflecting different rates of infection and how countries have responded to outbreaks. And you can also see how volatility in larger regions such as China significantly influences global levels of air traffic activity.

Looking at the chart on the right, you can see how rates of infection and intermittent closure of international borders have been varying degrees of utilization between different platform categories with domestic, business jets, and cargo continuing to outperform the recovery in international. Although we expect the recovery to continue to follow an upward trajectory, it's likely to remain non-linear, at least in the first part of 2022.

Turning to the next slide, which shows our civil aftermarket performance across brakes and our non-brakes product groups, and the positive sequential pattern that we've seen throughout the year. We've said for some time now that we expected brakes to come back first given the higher aftermarket intensity and more frequent replacement rates. And with growth of 21% for the year, this product group was the biggest contributor to overall civil aftermarket growth of 6%. As you can see from the charts for both order intake and revenue, we've seen progressive growth throughout the year, particularly in the fourth quarter. And with a strong start to the year in January, this gives us good momentum into 2022.

So, moving on to my penultimate slide before concluding with the summary and outlook, there remains a significant pent-up demand to travel. And as the world continues to open up, the medium-term outlook for civil aerospace remains positive with recovery to 2019 levels of activity still expected to take place around 2023 to 2024. And with strong demand for new, more efficient aircraft evidenced by healthy OEM backlogs and increases in new build rates, the attractive long-term fundamentals for the sector remain firmly in place. With increased content on the latest platforms and the breadth of our civil aerospace business, we remain well-placed to benefit from the continued recovery.

So in summary, after what's been another highly eventful year for the group, I'd like to thank our global teams for their continued resilience and dedication in delivering for our customers and in continuing to execute our successful strategy. We've started to see encouraging signs of the recovery, particularly in the second half of last year with aftermarket growth helping to drive a strong improvement in margin.

As a result of our continued focus in this area, we delivered another good year for cash and our balance sheet remains strong. We continue to deliver our strategy, investing in our people, our technology, and our sites, and we've also secured a number of new customer contract wins positioning us well as the recovery in civil aerospace comes through.

So finally, as the group is in an offer period under the UK Takeover Code, we are not providing financial guidance for 2022.

Thank you for listening. Our next scheduled announcement will be the quarter one results in April of this year.