Earnings Call Transcript - TWI Q2 2020

Operator, Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Titan International, Inc. Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now a pleasure to turn the floor over to Todd Shoot, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer for Titan. Mr. Shoot, the floor is yours.

Todd Shoot, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer

Thank you, Mariana. Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to our second quarter 2020 earnings call. On the call with me today, I have Titan's Chairman, Morry Taylor; our President and CEO, Paul Reitz; and David Martin, Senior Vice President and CFO. I will begin with the reminder that the results we are about to review were presented in the earnings release issued this morning, along with our Form 10-Q, which was also filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning. As a reminder, during the call, we will be discussing certain forward-looking information, including the company's plans and projections for the future that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially from forward-looking information. Additional information concerning factors that either individually or in the aggregate could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements can be found in the Safe Harbor statement included in today's earnings release attached to the company's Form 8-K filed earlier today as well as our latest Form 10-K and forms 10-Q, all of which have been filed with the SEC. In addition, today's remarks may refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which are intended to supplement, but not be a substitute for, the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The earnings release, which accompanies today's call contains financial and other quantitative information as discussed today as well as a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures. Today's earnings release is available on the company's website within the Investor Relations section under News & Events. Please note, today's call is being recorded. A copy of today's call transcript will be made available on our website. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul.

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

Thank you, Todd. I hope all of you and your families are staying safe and healthy. I want to start by expressing my congratulations to our global One Titan team for their tremendous efforts and successes during the second quarter. I'm going to start today by going through some business updates from Q2, and then I'll have our Chairman, Morry Taylor, share his thoughts from the Board's perspective. And then we'll follow-up and wrap things up with David going through the financial results. It may have seemed like an eternity ago, sitting here today, but Titan started dealing heavily with the COVID-19 around five months ago, with our plants in Italy and China, and what then may have looked like a 200-yard dash has now clearly turned into a global marathon. From the start of COVID, we've been heavily focused on the safety of our people, while proudly serving our customers and to this day, we continue to do a good job in both of these crucial areas. Similar to many companies in the industrial space, as we entered this quarter, we expected to encounter challenges unlike anything we've experienced before, and we most certainly did. Our sales levels and order flow patterns were heavily impacted by COVID this quarter as we experienced a revenue decrease of 27%, but we were able to navigate successfully through this top-line volatility to achieve adjusted EBITDA over $13 million. This exceeded levels sequentially from the first quarter of 2020 and year-over-year from the second quarter of 2019. Most importantly, our second quarter free cash flow exceeded expectations, coming in around $7 million, and we also increased our cash levels by nearly $20 million from last quarter. Our gross profit was only down $8 million, which resulted in gross profit margins increasing to 10.4% from 9.8% last year. We also applied diligent efforts towards controlling corporate costs and were able to reduce SG&A by over $7 million this quarter compared to last year. Again, altogether, this means on a $100 million drop in sales, we were able to not only keep EBITDA in the ballpark of 2019 but actually grew it a bit to $13.3 million from $12.8 million last year. Across all of our business units, we did a really good job in tackling this difficult situation head on and taking swift, decisive actions to accomplish what we did this period operationally and also with the balance sheet. We're still clearly in the midst of a difficult COVID-impacted environment. As we all know, this virus has no boundaries, no time limits. Therefore, it's difficult to predict expectations for the second half of this year. Our customers are providing limited visibility to future orders as they simply do not know exactly what's coming down the pipeline. As we scan the limited horizon that we have of our businesses, we are seeing nice improvements coming out of Brazil to start Q3 as compared to the activity from the first half of the year. Looking at the European ag market in the early part of the second quarter, we really saw customers in parts of Europe, especially Turkey, for example, that had forecasted huge declines in orders. And then throughout Q2, we saw these order decks improve. Therefore, relatively speaking, we feel that Europe is performing better than expected and has become fairly stabilized as we entered the second half, but it's still at levels lower than prior year. In the US, low horsepower continues to be the headline and lead the charge in North America. This is a good business for us. We certainly do benefit from that. But large ag, which is a major sweet spot for our wheel division continues to be hampered by soft commodity prices that have trended lower as of late. The continuing challenges from farm economics combined with the uncertainty from the pandemic is weighing on commodity prices. It continues to make forecasting in North America ag difficult. One thing we still do believe in, as I think most others do, is that pent-up demand in large ag remains sidelined for the time being. But there will become a point where that pent-up demand does get released into the marketplace. One point I want to add specific to Titan, though, as large ag fleets continue to age out, this is a very good situation for our LSW solutions that can provide significant upgrade performance of a 10-year-old tractor. So overall for Ag, we expect our normal seasonality to impact us in the second half, due to plant maintenance, normal scheduled plant maintenance, and then also the holidays that occur in the second half of the year, along with the continued uncertainty from the OEMs. So again, the second half of the year is difficult at this time to predict across most of the ag space. Looking at the earthmoving/construction segment, where our volumes were down 37%. We saw weakness nearly everywhere this quarter, except for roadbuilding and our European foundry cast product business. As much as we would like to get more volume into our undercarriage plants, which is primarily earthmoving and construction-driven for us, we just don't believe there's volume out there to chase at this time, and we've been holding our line on pricing. Therefore, we have and we will remain keenly focused on managing costs in this segment, along with headcount, while demand remains depressed in the earthmoving and construction segment at this time. To wrap things up, our job at Titan and again, in many companies in the industrial space, is to keep your company positioned to navigate a volatile COVID-induced environment. In our end markets, the rest of 2020 is clearly difficult to predict with the impact and duration of the pandemic remaining highly uncertain, as well as the potential government actions that would impact the market. I think we do all believe there are government actions that will come into place that will support the market, but again, that still remains highly uncertain. So as we sit here today, we continue to see an unusually high level of drop-in orders. We must remain nimble and flexible to respond to meet these customer needs as we have been doing. Along with managing the operational aspects of the business to handle this volatility, we will remain committed to managing our balance sheet to not only get through the crisis, but position ourselves for future growth. We are doing that successfully through a determined focus on working capital, controlling costs, and generating cash from non-core and underperforming assets. Looking beyond 2020, we believe that the positive changes made within our company this year and in prior years will have a lasting impact and we also strongly believe in the long-term fundamentals of our end markets, as demand will return in due course. I just want to close by stating again my appreciation to the One Titan team and our thousands of employees around the world who are working hard to manufacture our products. I'd now like to turn the call over to Morry for his comments.

Morry Taylor, Chairman

Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everyone. If you are wondering why this old man is on the call, well, this has been a very unique quarter for Titan. Titan has a lot of assets that have values much greater than what they show on the book. Titan acquired some stock in a company called Wheels India when we acquired Titan Europe. I tried to get agreement to sell Titan's ownership back then, but we needed approval from Wheels India's largest shareholder who would not give it to us. I was trying to sell it for around $10 million, and they wanted to only make it so that we would have only gotten $7 million. So we never sold it. This past quarter, Titan International sold its final interest in Wheels India and received the final payment. The total Titan received over the past approximately nine months comes to around $50 million. Titan's Board and myself wish to congratulate our CEO, Paul Reitz, on a great job. It sounds simple, but it took a lot of time over the last few years of going to India to get this done. Titan has other non-core assets that we'll sell at a fair price and the largest asset, of course, as Paul just mentioned, is our tractor wheel business at ITM. We believe over the next 18 months, Titan will have the opportunity to either sell or to spin off ITM. We have spent time in the last two years building ITM's business up, especially into the aftermarket. And now everything, of course, with the situation concerning COVID-19 worldwide has knocked everything down. But we believe what's going to happen is that the infrastructure, both in Europe and in the US, will begin moving right after the election, no matter who wins. We expect this business to grow, both in the sales of the OEs and our aftermarket business. We believe that we'll increase its revenue up to around $500 million. Before this period and the shutdown, it was bouncing right around the $400-plus million. We believe that will bring to Titan a total value of $300 million to $400 million. So we're in really pretty good shape, and Titan has the world's greatest capacity in farm wheels and tires. And we also, as Paul just mentioned, we believe in the future, and our future is very bright. We also believe that our CEO and President, Paul, and his team are the right ones to lead us in the coming years. Real leadership comes in tough times and Titan has had its share of outside forces, but we think that's going to change this next year, big time. I want to thank all of you for your patience, and I'll turn it back to you, Paul.

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

Morry, really appreciate your comments for everyone this morning. With that, now we'll turn the call over to David for the financial review.

David Martin, Senior Vice President and CFO

Thanks, Paul, and good morning, everyone. I want to start by echoing Paul's and Morry's comments regarding our Titan team and the exceptional leadership that was shown across the organization during these unprecedented times. Strong and swift actions were taken to protect our employees, and adjustments were made to production levels to meet unpredictable demand. Just finally, the team managed to even improve liquidity during the quarter in spite of all the forces that were going against us. The second half of the year will continue to be a significant challenge for us. And in fact, it could be more challenging in some ways. Notwithstanding this, we are in a strong position now to manage. That said, let's get into the numbers. Net sales for the second quarter were down 27%, totaling $104 million less than the second quarter last year and $55 million less than the first quarter of this year, reflecting the impacts of COVID-19 and sluggish markets across the world, most notably construction. We estimate the direct impact of COVID-19 effects on net sales was $31 million in the second quarter, meaning the impact from closures and disrupted markets in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. On a constant currency basis, revenues would have been down roughly 22% from the second quarter last year or $85 million. The negative currency impact was nearly $20 million or 5%, with much of the impact coming in Latin America and Europe. Again, this quarter, the largest impact on sales was in the earthmoving and construction segment, where sales declined by $72 million from last year. The drivers of the decline in EMC were across the board and the biggest impacts came from undercarriage. The remaining declines were primarily in the US, UK, and Australia. Our agricultural net sales were down $17 million or 10%, with $11 million coming from the negative currency impacts, which is a testament to the resiliency of the ag market. The consumer segment experienced a decline of $15 million in the quarter, reflecting continued sluggishness in the utility truck tire sector in Latin America, along with North American sales related partially to deemphasized product lines on top of the impacts from the pandemic. Our North American wheel sales were down 27%, mostly due to volume from our OE customers. Our North American tire sales were down 19%, again mostly from OEM volume. Our aftermarket tire sales were only down 8% relative to the prior year. Year-to-date, we are very close to 2019 levels after a strong Q1 start. Our Latin America sales were down 37% from the second quarter last year, with half of it coming from lower currency translation effects and the other half coming on volume. Australian sales were down almost $10 million, with the decline all coming in EMC as mining replacement activity remains slower. But as we discussed, we've also deemphasized tire distribution and tire servicing since the first quarter of last year, including the sale and closure of some unprofitable branches. Ag sales in Australia are actually up modestly in the second quarter as the overall market conditions are improving. Similar to Q1, Russia was in line with last year's sales despite currency headwinds of approximately 13%. Overall market conditions remain challenging there with significantly depressed economic conditions in the region. However, ag dealers did increase volume year-over-year somewhat. Our overall sales volume on a consolidated basis was down, lower by 24% from last year. Price and mix in the second quarter was positive for us at 2.4%. Our reported gross profit for the second quarter was $30 million versus $38 million last year. In the second quarter of 2020, we recorded a $1 million asset impairment charge related to the inventory in our North American wheel operations, which came on the closure of our Saltville, Virginia production facility. Our reported gross profit margin for the second quarter was 10.4% versus 9.8% last year. This compares favorably to the reported gross margin in the first quarter of 8%. Without the impairment charge, the gross profit margin would have been 10.8%, which is a strong result, considering the significant decline in sales. Tailwinds on our raw materials were among the factors which led to the increase in margins and while our operating teams also managed the workforce, production schedules, and strongly controlled factory overhead costs in response to the pandemic and the need to adjust to market demand that we faced. Now I'll touch on some segment numbers for the quarter. Our agricultural segment net sales were down $17 million or 10% on a year-over-year basis. Lower currency translation affected sales by roughly 7% this quarter. Volume was down 8.4%, while we had pick-ups in pricing and mix of 4.9%, similar to Q1, which was somewhat reflective of aftermarket sales holding up with some selective price increases. Ag sales in North America were down 5% as OE customers kept production levels down. Our OE wheel sales in North America were down in the second quarter, as I stated earlier, entirely in lower volume, as pricing and mix was slightly favorable this quarter. Russian sales in the ag segment were up 13%, while European ag sales were down 18%. Our Latin American ag sales were down more than 32% from last year, with 75% of that decline coming in currency. Our agriculture segment gross profit for the second quarter was $15.6 million, up from $14.2 million last year. Gross margins in the second quarter for ag were 10.6%, which was an improvement from the margin produced in Q2 last year of 8.7% and 8.1% for the first quarter. Improvements in plant efficiencies with strong management actions, along with lower raw material costs, enabled this improvement. It's important to note that the North American wheel operations delivered stronger results for the second quarter as we continue to improve our operations after significant headwinds that existed in '19 surrounding raw material and inventory management, which led to operational leadership changes we made last year. Our earthmoving, construction segment experienced a decrease in sales of 39% or $72 million. On a constant currency basis, net sales would have decreased 36% versus one year ago. The direct impact from COVID-19 on sales was $26 million in the quarter. Volume was down by 37.5% in the EMC segment, while price and mix was slightly favorable at 1.5%. ITM's undercarriage business was the largest portion of the decrease in the quarter as construction OEMs accelerated their sharp decline as a result of the compounding effect of COVID-19 on already anemic demand. We saw the biggest impacts in Europe and China again this quarter. Keep in mind, the construction industry only started to see contraction towards the middle part of last year. And really, it was in the second half of the year, so Q2 2019 sales still reflected a reasonably healthy construction market. Our European wheel business also saw a decline of 55% in the quarter due to the construction market essentially shutting down in the UK due to the pandemic. Australia and EMC sales dropped 65% as we closed some branches during 2019 and continue to pivot from mining tire distribution. Our volumes in North America were down 34% this year, primarily on weaker construction markets again on the OE side. The decline mostly came on the tire side of the business this quarter. So gross profit in the earthmoving/construction segment in the quarter was $11.6 million, which represented an $8 million decline year-over-year. This includes a $1 million asset impairment charge. Without the charge, the gross profit would have been $12.6 million. The gross margin in the EMC segment without the impairment charge was 11.2% versus 10.7%. Obviously, the largest driver of the decline in gross profit was due to lower volume and the impact on fixed cost absorption. But considering the dramatic decline in sales, the business performed well, with improvements in efficiency and improved pricing occurring in a number of our facilities as a countermeasure to depressed sales. Additionally, raw material costs are down relative to the prior year. Finally, with the consumer segment, the second quarter net sales were down 36% from the second quarter last year. Negative impact from currency translation was 6.9%, and volume decreased by 25.7%, while mix and pricing were negative at 3.8%. The most significant impact on volume related to lower demand in the Latin America utility truck segment, which was very low during the first two months of the quarter from the impact of COVID-19. Sales in North America were also down significantly as we have deemphasized certain product lines, such as specialty products and our ATV tires. This segment's gross profit for the second quarter was $2.6 million, similar to the first quarter result but was down $1.7 million from one year ago. Gross margins were 10%, which was a decline from 10.5% last year. Again, margins held up as we took actions to manage our plant costs, which carried into this segment. Now selling and general and administrative and R&D expenses for the second quarter were $30.6 million, which is well below the first quarter of 2020 and down 20% from last year. The decline came as a result of concerted efforts across the business to control our costs. The largest areas of decline came on lower employee-related costs, including travel, as we cut across the organization. We also continue to reduce our sales and marketing costs, and we've experienced much lower IT support costs versus one year ago. We made demonstrable progress that I've been discussing over the last few quarters. Because of the pandemic, we accelerated our efforts, which is what shows up this quarter. The second quarter operating costs also included $400,000 of restructuring costs, primarily from actions taken at the corporate level to reduce our costs more permanently and to consolidate certain functions, most notably in information technology and finance. We are now on pace to see full year SG&A and R&D costs at approximately $130 million to $135 million, which is lower than the target I outlined last quarter. We experienced recovery in the foreign currencies in the second quarter, and as a result, there was a foreign exchange gain of almost $9 million. As a reminder, there was a foreign exchange loss in the first quarter of $17.2 million. In the second quarter of 2019, there was a foreign exchange loss of $1.2 million, so bringing a big difference year-over-year of $10 million to the positive. In the second quarter, we completed the sale of our remaining shares in Wheels India, and we recorded a $2 million loss in other expense. The net proceeds from the transactions year-to-date from Wheels India shares were $31.2 million. Since we started selling our shares in late 2019, we generated $50.3 million in net proceeds. Approximately $18 million in net proceeds were received after the second quarter ended in early July. We used the net proceeds to pay down debt in the U.S. We recorded tax expense in the quarter of $2 million on a pretax loss of $2.7 million during the quarter. Normally, we have tax expense in the region of $2.5 to $3 million per quarter to reflect normalized cash taxes we pay in foreign jurisdictions. So this isn't out of line, but there were some noise in the system this quarter with some reserve adjustments offset by capital gains taxes on the sale of the Wheels India shares. Now moving over to Q2 cash flow. As we prominently noted at the beginning, our balance sheet improved this quarter on a number of fronts, and I will describe the actions that have been taken relative to liquidity in the remainder of my comments this morning. I'll start with the fact that cash ended the quarter at $80 million, up $20 million from the first quarter. There's really no impact from currency changes on cash during the second quarter. We generated approximately $1 million in operating cash flow, and we generated a $5 million positive cash flow for the year so far versus a negative $10 million in the first half last year. This is despite significant negative impact from lower earnings for the first half as we continue to drive more efficiencies in working capital and selling non-core assets. The impact of non-core assets and related transactions of nearly $8 million in the quarter, so we generated free cash flow in the second quarter of $7 million. Again, this does not include the proceeds from the sale of shares in Wheels India in June, which were ultimately received in early July. Our receivables decreased by almost $20 million in the second quarter from March, as we experienced a $55 million decline in net sales from the first quarter to the second quarter. Our DSOs did tick up a little bit this quarter at 61 days. We did experience pockets of extended payments from certain customers as a result of the pandemic. But we don't currently have any significant concerns relative to the credit risk of customers, and we watch these exposures very carefully every day. Our ending inventory at the end of June declined by $11.5 million from the end of March, and it declined by $39 million since December. Our accounts payable balances dropped significantly this quarter as our supplier payments came due on higher volume from the first quarter. I continue to have confidence in our ability to generate cash from improvements in working capital of approximately $25 million for fiscal 2020, which will come from continued improvements in inventory management across the business. I'll state it again as it is important, but we have strong focus within our operating teams to manage inventory very closely. We collectively know there's a balance between managing long-term visibility with customer demand. When recovery happens, we will need to ensure that we can meet customer expectations continually. We've done that throughout the second quarter despite decreasing our inventory. This has been the legacy of Titan's performance and our mission to serve customers well. And so it will remain so. Capital expenditures for the first half of 2020 were $8 million versus almost $17 million last year in the first half. We've taken necessary steps to manage our capital spending programs and to invest where it's important to manage production, safety, environmental, and so forth. We continue to invest in product development to bring innovative products to the market, be competitive, and maintain our market leadership. We will continue to balance our priorities in the near term. While I anticipate that our capital spending for 2020 will be close to $20 million, it will be well below what our original targets were in the prior year as well. Our overall net debt level for the second quarter did increase as we took measures to increase liquidity in our European operations. I'll talk more about that in a moment. As of June 30, $28 million was outstanding on our domestic ABL line, down from $30 million from the end of March. With the completion of the final tranche of the sale of shares in Wheels India in July, coupled with excess domestic cash flow during the month, we paid down another $22 million in the month of July, and the balance today is only $6 million. Short-term debt at the end of July was $41 million, which is down over $20 million since year end and down $5 million from March. This decline is primarily due to repayments on normal maturities of loan arrangements in certain foreign operations, primarily Russia and Europe. A portion of this decline also relates to extending loans in Latin America for one year in response to liquidity initiatives in late March. On our first quarter call, we described our actions to work with our banking partners in Europe to give us additional credit capability there. In May and June, we completed arrangements to draw down on select long-term credit facilities of approximately $20 million, with favorable market terms for Titan. The maturities on these credit arrangements are approximately two years with options to prepay after one year. The annual interest rates range from 1% to 4%, while the majority is under 2%, again favorable for Titan in the midst of the pandemic. This is among the many steps that we are taking to ensure that we have a stable and flexible structure to manage in these volatile times. With significant reductions in borrowings from our domestic ABL credit facility over the last several quarters, we now have more flexibility to manage our U.S. and corporate operations when recovery occurs. Remember, just 10 short months ago, we had outstanding borrowings on this facility of $59 million. Our intent for this facility going forward will be to keep borrowings very low, if not zero, and to manage our working capital as markets return to some semblance of normalcy. This has been a very important target for us, and we are now close to that achievement. The sale of the Wheels India shares was a big part of our non-core asset sale initiative over the last several quarters. While we still have a few discrete items that remain outstanding, I anticipate completing transactions over the second half of the year that could deliver up to $20 million more in proceeds. As evidenced in the results and our current improved financial position, we have navigated well in very challenging circumstances. Unfortunately, this crazy world we're living in is going to continue, requiring all of us to continue to devise plans to adjust and be in a position to respond to whatever we face. We remain steadfast and are resolved to do so. There is still much work to be done to position Titan for the long-term future, and we remain committed to that. That said, I'll turn it back over to the operator for any questions you have this morning.

Operator, Operator

Our first question comes from Joseph Mondillo with Sidoti & Co. Your line is open.

Joseph Mondillo, Analyst

Hi. Good morning, everyone. So I wanted to sort of just talk a little bit about or ask you about some of the brief comments that you made on your outlook for the back half of the year. I understand visibility is limited. And of course, with the pandemic, no one can really sort of certainly guess what's going to happen with that. You sort of made a couple brief comments that you anticipate the back half of the year to be light. I know seasonality usually plays to that. I thought potentially, given that you had such a significant amount of plant closures and just with overall economies shut down for a period of time in the second quarter, I thought potentially second quarter could be a bar that you could still meet in the third or fourth quarter. Could you just address your comments for the back half of the year relative to your typical seasonality? Are you expecting typical seasonality in the third quarter and fourth quarter? Thanks.

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

Yes. No, Joe, it's a good question. It's one that we spend a lot of time here as well trying to forecast what's coming down the road, and it's an ongoing challenge. So there are two ways to look at it, and I'll let David add his comments on the financial side. I mean, obviously, there's the financial side of trying to predict what your results are going to be. I will comment from the operational perspective. We have to remain nimble and flexible in our business, like nothing we've seen before. Our order deck and the flow of the order deck is changing rapidly. So if we had prepared a forecast at the beginning of the second quarter, it would have looked much different than what the actual results were. As we sit here today, we only know what we know now, and we know that we're going to get impacted by our own plant shutdowns and our customers' plant shutdowns, and that's the normal seasonality that we keep referencing, along with a higher level of vacation holidays that take place in the U.S. this time of the year before school starts, and then obviously, in Europe, where they take heavier time off in late July and August. That's the normal part of our business where we see those swings in the back half of the year. From there, we just continue to, again, remain flexible. We're constantly in communication with all of our business leaders multiple times a week, trying to compare notes and trying to find some sort of baseline that we can use to put into a financial forecast. Honestly, it's difficult. We just don't know right now. Our focus is on the operational side. What I will say, in the back half of the second quarter, is that we have consistently exceeded our forecast because of the drop in orders that have come in. Can I guarantee that this trend will continue every single month, the rest of 2020? I just don't know. But I do believe that there is a pattern we've seen, where there are more orders that come in, in certain markets. This isn't across the board. It's a very general comment, but it's very specific how I would have to answer it across every single product line and across different geographies, but we are seeing certain products in certain geographies. We have seen a trend that incoming orders that are more - I’m using the term drop-in - a loose term, but let's call it just later than normal orders have been coming in on a consistent pattern in the back half of the second quarter. We certainly are hopeful that will continue for the rest of the year. Our job is operationally; we've got to remain flexible, and our teams are doing that. We will continue to do that. We will keep headcount where they need to be while keeping our trained skilled force available that when the market turns, because it's not an if, it's when the market will turn. We have also got to be prepared for that. Anything you want to add on that, David?

David Martin, Senior Vice President and CFO

I can't say a whole lot more than that other than the visibility that we get from our customers in terms of long-term projections or even beyond what the initial orders that they give us, we're not seeing beyond the quarter, to be honest with you. So Q4 is a real wild card from my perspective. Understanding how Q4 is going to be, but normal seasonality would suggest that you can be pretty busy through a portion of the quarter, then your holiday period interferes with that and you take your production levels down. That's just how it has been. But without that visibility and our ability to forecast with any precision, it is very challenging. Yes, we do see normal patterns and seasonality. We're not seeing anything different because of the pandemic. Nothing's changing with regard to our customers' buying behaviors at this point. It's not changing because of pent-up demand or anything like that. It’s important that we maintain our flexibility, like Paul said. And giving any reliable forecast at this point is very challenging, and it changes every week for us.

Joseph Mondillo, Analyst

I totally appreciate that and very much appreciate the color. I know you guys don't have a lot of visibility, so I definitely appreciate that. How about on the cost side of things? Where are we regarding raw materials and the inventory that you have? I know, I think the first half of the year saw a pretty big year-over-year benefit there. So how does that look for the back half of the year? Just give us a sense of how that should maybe be a positive or negative issue for the back half.

David Martin, Senior Vice President and CFO

I'll start with the backdrop of the raw material markets. The raw material prices remain relatively low comparatively. This has been a benefit in the first half of the year, and we anticipate that it will remain stable for the back half. Obviously, those prices can change rapidly when demand comes back, but right now, it's stable compared to how it was in Q2, but relatively low compared to year-over-year. It's all over the map between synthetic rubber, natural rubber, steel, and all those things. Overall, I’d call it a pretty good territory to manage. As far as our overall cost structure, we have taken a lot of the costs out of our facilities to reflect the current demand. We have received some support in some of our foreign markets regarding support for payroll. We expect that to continue maybe a little bit into Q3, uncertain as to whether they extend those kinds of opportunities for companies like ours. I wouldn't say it's been a strong, big benefit to us, and it offsets our costs, if you will. We have had increased costs related to our factories and our sanitization efforts and also just trying to manage our shifts and so forth. It's not come without a cost. These support programs do help us to offset that. We expect it to continue in the short term, but I don't anticipate it to be a long-term benefit. Regarding SG&A, we've taken our costs down, as you saw in this quarter. I think we're relatively in good territory, and I don't anticipate further decreases from here because we've taken the actions we feel we need.

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

Yes. The support we get is primarily in our European operations, where we operate in Italy, and we're getting the benefits in the UK. In North America, we don't get any support. Again, some of these questions are hard to answer without getting specific location by location. But to David’s point, the costs of COVID are not being covered by the government. That helps offset and keep some people on the payroll like you've seen in the U.S. with the PPP, which we don't qualify for. It keeps people on the payroll and going through the pandemic. If the programs are there, we will take advantage of them. If they're not, then we will reduce our cost structure accordingly. The European programs have just been better at doing that for companies like Titan. In the U.S., companies like Titan get nothing. We're too big to matter and we're too small to be big enough to matter. So we're caught in no man's land.

Joseph Mondillo, Analyst

Alright. And just to clarify on the raw materials side, just the year-over-year - are you saying the year-over-year benefit in 2Q will be similar to the year-over-year benefit in the second half? Or are you saying the benefit just on an absolute basis in 2Q will be similar, with prices being sort of similar in the back half?

David Martin, Senior Vice President and CFO

I'm saying on an absolute basis, we'll see similar benefits to what we saw in Q2. We did start to see some declines, particularly in steel in the second half, so year-over-year comparisons are relatively the same.

Joseph Mondillo, Analyst

Alright. And I guess just also lastly, just to follow up, and I'll hand it off to someone else. Regarding structural changes, consolidation, footprint consolidation, just more heavy lifting type structural changes, where are we there? Is that still an ongoing process? Help us understand where you are with the structure of the company overall.

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

Yes. I think the structural changes are ongoing. From my perspective, we certainly have had very good discussions at the Board level. I believe that the management team has the full support of the Board to structure the company accordingly for where we need to be positioned for the future. Those are good ongoing healthy discussions between management and the Board, and I feel good about where those discussions are leading for the future. We'll continue with our ongoing efforts to position the company the right way for the long term, and we'll provide updates as we're going through that process.

Joseph Mondillo, Analyst

And can you say that there's definite opportunity? Or is it still going through the analysis, and wait and see kind of situation?

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

Well, I think there's definitely opportunity. If you look at some of our utilization levels, they're not where we need them to be for the long term. There are different ways you can restructure. It's not always black and white. We're discussing those options with the Board and taking actions to see which may play out in certain directions. I believe discussions have been very healthy, and we all see eye to eye, realizing that there are structural changes that need to take place. Those involve various options, and we're going down those paths, and I think long-term they will turn out successful for the company.

Joseph Mondillo, Analyst

Alright. Well, thanks for taking my questions and good luck for the rest of the year.

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

Thanks, Joe.

David Martin, Senior Vice President and CFO

Thanks, Joe.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from Lawrence de Maria with William Blair. Your line is open.

Lawrence de Maria, Analyst

Hi. Good morning, everybody. Nice to hear Morry's voice for a change. It sounds like you're doing well, Morry. One of the things in your recent announcement, you mentioned briefly about LSW. Have you - it sounds like you've got the price down to be competitive with duals and it's on to AR now. Is this potentially the tipping point for LSW, or is it just one more step function towards greater adoption?

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

Well, LSW is not about price. It’s about the value it brings to the end user. We positioned it that way from the beginning. It's a product where farmers, when they look at the value proposition - and they do, as we all know, farmers are very good at running their business. They've seen from the very beginning that there is tremendous value in LSW. It has nothing to do with price. Really, what you're seeing from the OEMs and with the recent announcement regarding the 8-Series at Deere, which was a very strong announcement for the company, but also for Deere. We've been going to the end market and being very successful connecting to the end users with LSW. I don't look at this announcement coming years down the road as all of a sudden it's a tipping point for LSW. LSW has continued to grow by double digits year-over-year. It attracts strong value to the end customer, and we position it accordingly in the market. This announcement does not reflect that. Our position with LSW is we've got to benefit the end user, and that's what we've been very successful at. The announcement does say we will continue on a very strong path forward, and that value from LSW will continue to be realized in the market for both Titan and the ultimate end user of the LSW solutions.

Lawrence de Maria, Analyst

Okay. Obviously, historically, you guys have had nice incremental margins when volumes drop, obviously. How do you think about given the cost you've taken out and some temporary and some more permanent changes? What do you think about incremental margins next year, hopefully above historical levels? What kind of magnitude? I'm trying to understand the temporary cuts versus more permanent costs and how that plays in.

David Martin, Senior Vice President and CFO

It's a very challenging question to answer, Larry, in terms of - I don't know how quickly the recovery happens. You have to be agile at every point in time you see recovery. I would say that within our overall production facilities, a lot of the costs you took out are more on the temporary side, as you're just taking out labor. There are some overhead opportunities that we have done on the more permanent side of things. We're going to be very cautious as we go back up in managing those costs. I feel pretty strongly that our incremental margins are going to be really solid next year when we start to see some sales impact. I think similarly to how it's been in the past, if you go back to 2018 and look at the incremental margins we got that year with growth in sales that we saw, it could be better. It will depend on which part of the business sees the most recovery in that timeframe.

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

Yes. I think there are a couple of things we know for certain: Next year, as volumes improve, you will get better cost absorption. You'll get that natural benefit to your incremental margin just with your existing capacity levels being what they are today. The other part I would add is that for every dollar that's coming out in 2020 and 2021, there's not $1 or $1.10 going back in. There will be some factor less, $0.80, $0.90 on the dollar, but at this point, we don't know. I'm confident that our business and the restructuring and changes we have made will yield benefits. A number of things this quarter came from actions taken in prior years. I believe next year we will see big benefits from what we're going through now. It’s not just the changes in the last few months, but the changes in past years. Our team is making better decisions today because of what we did in the past. I'm very confident we will continue to make even better decisions by what we learned through COVID.

Lawrence de Maria, Analyst

Okay. That's sort of where I was sort of leading. And then specifically in the quarter, was there an effect of temporary furloughs that were a big benefit, and was incentive comp a headwind, tailwind, or neutral?

David Martin, Senior Vice President and CFO

No, I would say no. There was nothing significant when you consider everything else that was going on with our cost structure.

Lawrence de Maria, Analyst

Okay. Got it. And last question, and I'll pass it on. Where do we see the tire reclamation business? Is that in maybe some of the R&D factories down south? Is that where we're thinking about the last $20 million come from? Or is that something related to tire reclamation, different?

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

In tire reclamation, we've gone through a lot with the fire that took place a few years ago. There's been a tremendous amount of effort just on handling the insurance claim. It's unfortunate that with the type of operation like that, insurance companies are not easy to deal with. David and his team have done a good job of nearly finalizing that claim. We have settled the property aspect. Where that goes in the future is we're in discussions with other partners on how we can grow that business. I don't see this as a core business that Titan should invest in. I think there's a lot of potential with recycled components getting into the marketplace. But given our balance sheet, we're going to invest in our core businesses, and we'll grow and be successful in the future with them. I don't see TTRC as a business needing CapEx investment, but we need to run it as is. We're doing a good job with that. We're taking care of our partners with oil companies since we're on their property. From a business standpoint, we're protecting our balance sheet to invest in core businesses.

David Martin, Senior Vice President and CFO

The only thing I'd add, Larry, is if you talk about the $20 million that I mentioned earlier, we're only referring to the VI claim as part of that. The long-term solutions for TTRC aren't included in that.

Lawrence de Maria, Analyst

Got you. Okay, thanks. Good luck, guys.

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

Thanks, Larry.

Operator, Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Reitz for any closing remarks.

Paul Reitz, President and CEO

I appreciate everybody's participation in today's call and wish you all to stay safe and healthy. Take care.

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Please note that the webcast replay of this presentation will be available soon within the Investor Relations section on our website under News & Events. Thank you for attending today's presentation. The conference call has now concluded.