Thermon Group Holdings, Inc. Q4 FY2021 Earnings Call

Greetings ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Thermon Group Holdings Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please note, that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to our host Kevin Fox, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Diego. Good morning and thank you for joining today's fiscal 2021 fourth quarter conference call. Earlier this morning we issued an earnings press release, which has been filed with the SEC on Form 8-K and is also available on the Investor Relations section of our website. We have also updated our investor presentation, which includes a summary of our ESG achievements in fiscal '21. During the call, we will discuss some items that do not conform to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. We have reconciled those items to the most comparable GAAP measures in the tables at the end of the earnings press release. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for measures of financial performance reported in accordance with GAAP. I'd like to remind you that during this call we may make certain forward-looking statements regarding our company. Please refer to our annual report and most recent quarterly report filed with the SEC for more information regarding our forward-looking statements, including the risks and uncertainties that could impact our future results. Our actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law. With that, we will turn to the opening comments from Bruce Thames, our President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning. We hope everyone listening is staying safe and in good health. We appreciate you joining our conference call and for your interest in Thermon. Kevin Fox, our new CFO, is here to provide additional information on our Q4 and full year financial performance following my remarks. I'd like to take a few moments to reflect on a very challenging year in fiscal 2021. As the year began, the world and the global economy were faced with the worst pandemic in 100 years and by far the worst demand destruction in the history of the oil industry. Despite the challenges, I have been impressed with how this team has responded to every obstacle. They kept the health and safety of our employees and customers as the top priority and were successful in that endeavor. In addition to having no workforce transmissions of the virus, we had zero recordable and lost-time incidents in the fiscal year, which is among the best in the industry. In addition, the team was laser-focused on value preservation, while serving our customers and exemplifying our core values of care, commit, and collaborate. The team was able to restructure the business and reduce SG&A costs by $22 million in the year, of which we believe 80% is structural, while driving continuous improvements to achieve an additional $3.8 million in savings in our manufacturing operations. Finally, the team remained focused on strategically positioning the business for future success. In the year, we drove globalization of our process in environmental heating product lines and a heightened focus on capitalizing on the installed base of high value MRO/UE revenue opportunities. We also launched nine new products, ranging from the Genesis Network, a wireless self-healing mesh network and supervisory software to new trace heating solutions that pushed the envelope of performance in the industry. Last but not least, we revisited our strategy in light of the major global shifts underway to capitalize on three key opportunities; developing markets, in-market diversification, and technology-enabled maintenance. We believe these and the electrification of the industry will drive growth opportunities for this business now and in the years to come. I would like to thank the entire Thermon team around the globe for deftly balancing the immediacy of the pandemic and the industry downturn with long-term value creation while putting safety and customers first. Turning now to the full year results. We finished the year with Q4 revenues in line with expectations to deliver $276 million in FY '21 revenue, a 28% decline from fiscal year '20. While underlying operating performance was solid in the quarter, there were a number of unusual items that impacted both cost of goods sold and SG&A, resulting in EBITDA margins that fell below expectations. Kevin will provide more details on these items later in the call. As a result, adjusted EBITDA of $37 million fell below expectations for the full year, down 43.2% from the prior year. Decisive actions to manage costs helped offset the negative impact of the decline in end markets. Throughout the year, the business continued to generate cash with $22.5 million in cash flow in the fiscal year, paying down $27.5 million in debt during the year. Full year adjusted EPS of $0.34 a share was down 55% from fiscal year '20. Turning now to a discussion of our end markets. We are beginning to see some signs of improvement in our end markets that calls for cautious optimism. While we have not yet returned to pre-COVID levels of activity, we continue to see sequential improvements in maintenance spending that are above and beyond normal seasonality despite the lockdowns that occurred in January as variants caused a resurgence in cases. As we look to the chart on page four of the presentation, you can see that greater than 55% of our end markets are tied to chemical, petrochemical, natural gas, and power. With natural gas as a bridge fuel and the linkage of chemical, petrochemical, and power markets to the emergence of the middle class and developing economies, the growth outlook across these sectors is much more robust than upstream oil, which now represents just 16% of our revenues. With numerous projects in various stages of planning and execution, we are well positioned to capitalize on a shift to biofuels, as evidenced by our recent award for a biodiesel plant on the Gulf Coast. In addition, we see significant opportunities in more diverse end markets with favorable growth potential, such as rail and transit, commercial, and food and beverage in the coming years. A couple of examples include a recent award for environmental heating in a copper mine in Eurasia and an award for cab heating on a sizable transit project here in the US. Moving on to Slide 5 of the presentation. While orders were down 15% in the quarter from the prior year period and 22% on a trailing 12-month basis, the book-to-bill for the period was 1.05 times with backlog growing 8% year-over-year. While orders have not yet shown growth over the prior year period, we are seeing positive signs in our end markets with increased maintenance activity later in the quarter driven by commodity price increases, relaxed restrictions, enabling access to customer facilities, and the need to maintain critical assets. We also believe that winter storm Uri will create opportunities in Texas and along the Gulf Coast as customers in the power and natural gas sectors winterize their assets in advance of the next winter heating season. Based upon these factors, we anticipate order growth in Q1 of fiscal year '22 over the prior year period. I would like to now hand it over to Kevin Fox, our CFO, to provide a more detailed review of the quarter and year financial results.

Thanks, Bruce. Revenue in the fourth quarter was $73.3 million, a decrease of 17% versus the previous year. We had guided a $69 million to $76 million range on our previous call and we came in right in the middle of the range. FX was a minor tailwind, about $1.5 million, with revenues down 19% on a constant currency basis. From a regional perspective, EMEA was the only region with year-over-year growth primarily due to the continued execution on multiple large projects, with all other regions contracting in the period. Pricing continues to be positive, with our quick turn margins up year-over-year. On a trailing 12-month basis, Thermon revenue was down 28%, with FX only half of a point headwind for the full year. EMEA was flat, the USLAM region was down 39% year-over-year with Canada and APAC down 29% and 22%, respectively. As we think about progression through the year, we were down 37% in the first half and down 19% in the second half. While fiscal '21 was a difficult year due to the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and disruptions to the oil and gas markets, we've seen an inflection during recent months. TTM bookings showed a positive year-over-year growth for the first time in March, and global orders in the first six weeks of the new quarter are trending positively across the board. Maintenance spending appears to be increasing as facility access restrictions are easing, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. Margins came in at 37.1% in the quarter with a few specific items to call out. First, we've had to increase our estimated expenses related to an operational execution item in a non-US project, which accounted for $3.3 million of incremental expense in the period. We also incurred $0.5 million of productivity losses due to winter storm Uri as our employees and operations in San Marcos, Texas were impacted by the power outages in February. When adjusting for these items, margins would have been 42.4% versus a Q4 2020 apples-to-apples comparison of 44.7%, a decline of 230 basis points. When we start to analyze the business from that position, we have a few additional observations within the quarter. Manufacturing variances due to the rapid inventory reduction in Q4 and other expenses were approximately a 260 basis point headwind. Accounting for that negative impact gets us to our historical average margins of 45%, but we have yet to account for mix. While the mix of MRO/UE versus greenfield in our legacy business was 67% versus 33%, a notch above the traditional 60-40 split, the greenfield margins were a slight headwind in the quarter due to the timing of some larger projects being executed. MRO/UE margins are slightly above historical averages, but not enough to offset the weaker performance in greenfield. As I mentioned earlier, pricing was up in the quarter and we're closely watching price versus cost as inflation appears to be gaining momentum. Margins in our backlog were 33.6% at the end of March, which is about 190 basis points above the average of the previous five quarters. As a reminder, we had a target of $3.9 million from continuous improvement in the year and we delivered $3.8 million. We expect continuous improvement initiatives to contribute approximately $2 million in fiscal '22. Moving to the next slide and a quick discussion on SG&A. First, we start with the marketing, general and administrative, and engineering expenses from our SEC reported figures and then we back out depreciation as well as any expense or benefit from the non-qualified deferred compensation line. In Q4 '21, SG&A by that definition was $20.6 million, a reduction of $6.2 million from the comparison period. On a run rate basis, we believe SG&A will be around $20 million per quarter as we had a number of non-recurring items that cumulatively impacted our reported Q4 '21 results by $2 million. The largest of which was bad debt reserves of $0.7 million related to a specific customer. Other items were related to various immaterial costs with none being larger than $250,000 individually. On a TTM basis, you can see the cost out execution in fiscal '21 of approximately $22 million, which excludes $8.6 million of total restructuring. We expect temporary cost reductions to come back in the P&L through the year, primarily driven by more travel as economies reopen and an expected increase of short-term incentive compensation. Those increases will be offset by the full year impact of previous restructuring actions. Adjusted EBITDA is on the right side of the page with Q4 '21 coming in at $6.2 million or 8% of sales and the full year result of $36.6 million or 13.2% of sales. Ultimately, it's a disappointing result despite our collective response and effort to manage through the challenges of the last year. However, we continue to believe the business will generate gross margins at or above our historical average and with the changes to cost structure over the last year, we have significantly improved our operating position. That combination will drive adjusted EBITDA growth in the coming quarters even under a scenario where customer spending takes longer to return to pre-pandemic levels. Not on the page, but we wanted to highlight, GAAP EPS was negative $0.02 per share in the quarter with adjusted EPS of $0.03 per share. On a full year basis, fully diluted GAAP EPS was $0.03 per share with fiscal '21 adjusted EPS of $0.36 per share. Reconciliation tables were provided in the press release for reference. Next slide, we had previously commented around opportunities to improve our balance sheet and working capital management and Q4 '21 saw a significant reduction in our inventory on a sequential basis. While the inventory balance is up 6% year-over-year and driving the overall increase in working capital, inventory is down $10 million since Q3. As a reminder, we generally build inventory in advance of the heating season, so we would expect this to increase slightly in the coming quarters before again reducing in the second half of the year. Total debt was down $27.5 million in the year to $148.5 million, driven by the organic cash flow generation inherent in our asset-light business model. We completed $20 million of incremental paydown in Q4. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA finished at 3 times, so although we were able to reduce our debt balance, the adjusted EBITDA decline kept that ratio flat to Q3. We expect the business to continue to delever in fiscal '22 as the recovery takes hold, but we will also have the benefit of some low comp periods early in the new fiscal year. CapEx was $7.8 million, which includes a $4 million budgeted cut that was offset by some investment in our temporary power rental fleet to be prepared for a turnaround demand particularly in Canada during the 2021 calendar year. We continue to monitor potential M&A opportunities but would likely look for a reduction in our leverage ratio before taking any action. Therefore, optional debt paydown remains the top capital allocation priority. We still have $40 million of cash on hand and could potentially see that number decrease in coming quarters. A quick note on taxes; the tax rate in the quarter was impacted by the pre-tax operating loss, which also enabled us to carry back previous losses in the US region. This along with the impact of the GILTI tax rules impacted our full year results for a net tax benefit of $1.4 million. Going forward, we expect the effective tax rate to continue to be around 27% in fiscal '22. Before I hand it over to Bruce to present an update on strategy and '22 guidance, I wanted to provide some perspective on the first few months in the new role. While our end markets continue to be impacted by COVID, we are cautiously optimistic about fiscal '22. Book-to-bill is positive, maintenance spending is starting to return, our new product development process is accelerating, and we have a sustainable cost structure that will drive operating leverage as volume recovers. While there were a lot of moving parts this year and especially in Q4, our balance sheet is strong and we continue to generate cash as a result of our attractive gross margins and asset-light business model. My colleagues across the world are passionate and committed to achieving our goals and challenge the teams to simplify, automate, and focus on what we can control. It's been a difficult year for all, but we adapted quickly to the many changes both externally and internally that we encountered. We enter the year with a renewed energy to execute on the plan for fiscal '22. The leadership team remains focused on driving long-term growth, attractive sustainable markets, improving profitability, and increasing returns on our investors' capital.

Thank you, Kevin. Let's move to the strategy update slide. Since the 2015 downturn in the energy sector, our team has successfully repositioned Thermon to take advantage of the increasing demand for chemicals and petrochemicals. With recent events and the focus on decarbonization, the Board and management have reassessed our strategy to leverage ongoing transitions. We are concentrating on utilizing technology to maximize our existing installed base while exploring new geographies and markets to replicate our model for enhancing installed bases and generating high-value recurring revenue streams. Our commitment to the electrification of the industry is strong, as we believe it will hasten the shift away from steam and decrease the need for onsite natural gas heating in many applications. We see significant growth potential in developing markets, particularly in the Eastern Hemisphere. The rising middle class in India, China, and other Asian countries is increasing demand for our solutions in traditional markets like chemical, petrochemical, and power. Another key area for growth is the diversification of our end markets; we aim to reduce the revenue generated from oil and gas to less than 40% by the end of fiscal 2026. Historically, Thermon has engaged in these diversified markets on an opportunistic basis, but with our portfolio expansion to include process and environmental heating, along with enhanced direct sales and channel strategies, these sectors now present greater overall opportunities. The transition to renewable energy sources such as biofuels, concentrated solar power, and wind power also offers growth prospects. Other sectors with promising growth potential that we have previously engaged with include commercial, rail and transit, and food and beverage. The third focus area is technology-enabled maintenance. We are dedicated to investing in new product development, including connected and smart control solutions, advanced heating technologies, and material science. Despite recent downturns in customer demand, we continue to invest wisely and allocated 2.7% of our revenue to R&D. Last year, one of our nine product launches, the Genesis Network, helps customers enhance safety and reliability while lowering total ownership costs. With IoT capabilities, the Genesis platform opens new revenue opportunities from software and predictive maintenance. All these solutions deepen our relationship with end customers and improve our capacity to generate recurring revenues from the installed base. Now, let's move on to guidance for fiscal '22. We are focused on improving operations to positively influence our overall profitability. We aim to deliver $2 million in cost savings through continuous improvement while maintaining stable SG&A expenses this year. We project that these cost savings, along with price increases, will more than counteract any inflation, leading to meaningful EBITDA margin growth. We are dedicated to investing in our strategic initiatives to drive future growth. With a solid pipeline of new solutions, we remain committed to product development and commercialization, dedicating about 2.7% of revenues to these efforts this fiscal year. Although there is uncertainty in the current environment, we are reinstating our revenue guidance for fiscal '22 to a range of $278 million to $295 million for the full year. In conclusion, I believe this quarter's results do not reflect the underlying strength of our business model and do not alter our expectations for fiscal year '22. When we account for the unusual expenses this quarter, our underlying profitability and cash flow align more closely with our historical performance. We anticipate that the work accomplished in fiscal year '21 will create operating leverage and lead to significant financial improvements in fiscal year '22. We have a dedicated team focused on serving our customers and adding long-term value for our shareholders. By concentrating on our operational and strategic initiatives, Thermon is well-positioned to emerge as a stronger, more profitable business as our customers and end markets recover from the pandemic. I'll now turn it over to Diego for the Q&A portion of our call.

Thank you. And at this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. The first question comes from Scott Graham with Rosenblatt Securities. Please, state your question.

Yes, hi, good morning, Bruce and Kevin.

Good morning, Scott.

So, I was hoping that you guys would be able to unbundle a little bit more the $5.8 million of unusual items here. In particular, the $3.3 million hit on execution, which is obviously a really big number. Can you help us understand why it happened and what you're doing to avoid that from happening going forward, or is that just really an isolated situation but even still, it was large? Just shed some light on the $5.8 million, in particular the $3.3 million.

Yes, this is Bruce. I'll address the $3.3 million. We had a significant time and material contract outside of the US where we needed to perform warranty rework during the winter months under COVID protocols, which led to some exceptional expenses. This situation is unusual and is a one-time isolated project. We do not anticipate this happening again in the future. Kevin, could you also discuss some of the other items in the $5.8 million?

Yes. And Scott, further residual, you've got the impact of the winter storm in there that was $0.5 million, the bad debt reserve for a specific customer. We felt it was appropriate to reserve for that at this point in time. The rest of the items in SG&A were just a lot of little things, whether it's timing or certain resolutions occurring, which was the right time to take those into the P&L. Individually, none of them were greater than $250,000 but just an accumulation of a few things happened here at the end of the quarter. So, we look at those expenses as unusual, time-limited, and I think as we look forward in the business, we certainly expect things to get back to a more normal stabilized performance.

So, yes, so essentially the $5.8 million goes away, I get that. Can you tell us the split between cost of sales and SG&A of the $5.8 million?

Let's see, now $3.3 million, that would have been gross margins. The residual would have been your base cost, but you need to factor in about $700,000 into cost as well. So, probably $4 million versus $1.8 million on COGS versus SG&A, Scott.

One of the significant highlights from the last quarter was your expectations regarding margins for 2022 and 2023. Does your target of an increase of 200 to 300 basis points in EBITDA margin reflect the trailing 12 months through the December quarter, implying an expectation of over 400 basis points improvement in EBITDA margin for 2022?

Yes, Scott. As I said in my script, based on this quarter, I view this as an event, not a trend, and our expectations on fiscal year '22 and margin expansions that we shared last quarter are unchanged.

Right. Bruce, but what I'm saying here is that, that guidance was 200 basis points to 300 basis points. So, are you saying...

Based on where we were as of the trailing 12 in December, our view is unchanged.

Very good. And your view on '23 for EBITDA margin, 22% plus, is that unchanged?

Yes, that's correct. That is unchanged.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, no problem.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Brian Drab with William Blair. Please state your question.

Hi, thanks. I'm just going to begin with MRO. I know you said that you believe that you're starting to see MRO activity picking up. Can you just elaborate on that? I'm just opening up the slides now for the first time, so I don't know if there is some detail, but can you quantify what you've seen in MRO growth and what you're expecting for the year for MRO?

We’ve experienced a positive trend throughout the year. If you recall our Q1, MRO was down 48%, which is quite atypical for us during a downturn. Usually, maintenance spending remains strong, but the pandemic restricted access to facilities, leading to a significant decline in maintenance activities. We believe there is an increasing demand for maintenance due to this pent-up need. Following the 48% drop, the next quarter saw a decline of about 34%, then 24%, and we ended this quarter at around 14%. Despite this being a decrease from the previous year, we noted a shift in March where we saw year-over-year growth in MRO. The main factor that adversely affected our fourth quarter was the lockdowns in Canada, Europe, and now India, which significantly impacted MRO sales early in the quarter. However, from February to March, we noticed those sales gaining momentum. Overall, we are observing a positive trend moving forward.

Okay, thanks, Bruce. And what have you seen in terms of MRO in April and May?

We are seeing that trend continue and maybe even gain speed.

And Brian, the caveat I would have that would just underline maybe previous comments Bruce made around, it's going to depend regionally on where things are at from an opening standpoint. Geographies like the US are obviously going to be a little further ahead, places like Canada a little further behind as you start to look globally; currently, places like India are still struggling. So, it kind of reinforces the thesis that it's not necessarily a change in underlying demand, but it's more as we view it driven by access restrictions. However, certainly the first few weeks in the New Year have shown promising in areas that are opening up.

Okay, great. And then, as long as you're talking about some of the regions, can you break down what you saw in terms of revenue and orders in the major regions in the quarter?

So, revenues in the quarter, Brian, US let's see were down about 28% in the US, down about 23% in Canada, EMEA was actually up quite positively. I mentioned the large projects previously, that's a plus 34%, and APAC down 16%, that should get us to the down 17% in the quarter.

Okay. EMEA, again, sorry, was what, EMEA?

Apologies; 34% positive.

Thank you. I have a couple more questions. Regarding the Texas Freeze in February that you mentioned might increase demand over the long term, could you provide more details on that issue and its impact? Are there any regulations being implemented or that have already been enacted which could also boost demand for your products?

Yes. First of all, there was a significant and widespread impact on the infrastructure, affecting not just power but also natural gas systems. There are several bills currently being considered in the Texas Legislature that could positively influence business opportunities moving forward. While I can't guarantee that these will pass as the session is nearing its end, they have garnered considerable support. In the short term, customers seem to be in a wait-and-see mode as they wait for the legislation to ensure compliance with any new laws. Nevertheless, we have observed some promising business activity in recent months as customers are taking action, and we anticipate this will gain momentum ahead of the upcoming winter season.

Okay, thanks. And then, maybe the last one is for Kevin. But I'm just curious if you could give any comment on this. If we get to the end of fiscal 2022 and revenue comes in the range and we're looking to then fiscal '23 and potential for things to get better. Let's say you get an incremental $50 million in revenue or something in, what would the incremental margins on that type of growth longer term given the new cost structure be like incremental EBITDA margin and revenue and if things start to really improve?

Brian, I won't speak to the, maybe the incremental themselves, but would kind of go back to previous comments and questions around those long-term outlines we've kind of put out there. If we think about the incremental improvements to EBITDA over the next 12 months, we think that's unchanged. And certainly still having a path to that 22% to 25% range on EBITDA margins over the longer term. I think all of that is fully intact and in front of us. When we think about the opportunity to go after some of these incremental strategic initiatives as well, they are adjacent, whether it's investments on the front end of the business, on the channel, new product development, we're putting those plans together as well, but I think they'll certainly be incremental and accretive to the business and we look at that 22% to 25% type of EBITDA range over the long term is fully achievable still. I think this quarter, like Bruce said, is a bump in the road, not the start of a trend.

Yes. Perfect, okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Jon Braatz with Kansas City Capital. Please state your question.

Good morning, Bruce, Kevin.

Good morning, Jon.

Good morning, Jon.

Bruce, could you discuss the shift from steam to electrification, particularly in heat tracing? Is this shift being influenced by cost considerations or ESG factors, and what potential does this hold for the future? Additionally, are you observing any potential for transitioning to electric steam tracing, or are new capital projects solely focused on electrification without incorporating steam? Any insights you could provide on this would be appreciated.

Yes. Jon, it's a great question. The shift from steam to electric has been underway for many years. The last kind of market information that we had kind of gotten is somewhere in the mid-40% of the market was still steam and the balance was electric, so somewhere in that range. What we believe is that the ESG, the push towards decarbonization will accelerate that trend. The advantages of moving to electric are that it's actually more efficient, you have a higher level of control, and then certainly it's cleaner and involves lower maintenance. Those are all the drivers. The setback would be just the initial capital outlay. But this is a trend that's been underway. We believe that just the shifts that we're seeing globally will accelerate that transition.

Okay. Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you. That's all the questions for today. I'll now turn it back to Bruce Thames for closing remarks. Thank you.

All right, thank you, Diego. And thank you all for joining the call today. We appreciate your interest in Thermon, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Thanks. This concludes today's conference. All parties may disconnect. Have a good day.