Columbus McKinnon Corporation (CMCO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Columbus McKinnon First Quarter 2027 Earnings Teleconference and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference call over to Kristy Moser, VP, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome everyone to our call. On today's call, we will be covering our first quarter fiscal 2027 financial and operational results. On the call with me today are David Wilson, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and John Linker, our Chief Financial Officer. Welcome, John. In a moment, John and David will walk you through our financial and operating performance for the quarter. The earnings release and presentation to supplement today's call are available for download on our investor relations website at investors.cmco.com. Before we begin our remarks, please let me remind you that we have our Safe Harbor Statement on slide two. During the course of this call, management may make forward-looking statements in regards to our current plans, beliefs, and expectations. These statements are not guarantees for future performance and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties and other factors that can cause actual results and events to differ materially from the results and events contemplated by these forward-looking statements. I'd like to remind you that management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures on the company's investor relations website and in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please see our earnings release and our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for more information. Also on today's call, we will make references to pro forma metrics, which adjust for both the Kito Crosby acquisition and the divestiture of the legacy Columbus McKinnon U.S. power chain hoist and chain operations, as if each transaction had been completed prior to the beginning of the prior year period, to improve the comparability of results across time spans. Today's prepared remarks will be followed by a question and answer session. We respectfully ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. With that, I'll turn the call over to David.

Thank you, Kristy, and good morning, everyone. We are off to a strong start in fiscal 2027. Q1 was our first full quarter operating as a combined company following the Kito Crosby acquisition, and the team delivered a solid performance across orders, sales, profitability, and cash flow. Pro forma sales grew 10%, with broad-based growth across all platforms. We continue to advance our strategic priorities, operational excellence, commercial effectiveness, and customer experience, and these initiatives are improving our competitiveness and strengthening our foundation for sustainable growth. Volumes are building in the Americas and Asia Pacific, while EMEA remains softer in the near term, consistent with what we're seeing in PMI and industrial production data. Our market exposure is diversified, and we're seeing particular strength in targeted verticals including defense, infrastructure, energy, e-commerce, data center, shipbuilding, electrification, and pharma, as well as the broader automation and general industrial markets in North America. We are also seeing increased activity in oil and gas, some of which is related to the conflict in the Middle East. Automotive demand has been spotty, and general industrial demand in pockets of EMEA remains soft, as previously shared. Our scaled platform, enhanced customer value proposition, and business initiatives are driving market share gains in targeted segments. This growth is also supported by ongoing commercial initiatives and early revenue synergy wins. We continue to see elevated input costs given the macroeconomic and supply chain environment. Even so, our supply chain has remained resilient, and we've been effective in implementing pricing actions to offset unavoidable inflationary pressure. Over the long term, we've demonstrated consistent pricing discipline, and we remain confident in our ability to secure price where required. Adjusted EBITDA of $111 million increased 242% with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 21%. When normalizing for the impacts of the acquisition and divestiture in the prior year period, adjusted EBITDA margins expanded approximately 300 basis points. Adjusted EPS grew $0.11 to $0.61 from the prior year period on an as-reported basis. And we delivered positive Q1 free cash flow for the first time in six years versus what has been a typical seasonal cash outflow, enabling us to reduce debt in the quarter, our top capital allocation priority. These results exceeded our expectations driven by strong execution, favorable demand dynamics, and some cost benefits specific to the quarter. I want to thank our more than 7,000 global team members for their dedication and disciplined execution throughout the quarter. Given our strong start to the year, today we are raising our sales, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS outlooks for fiscal 2027. We will talk you through those details shortly. Overall, we're pleased with the quarter and with how the team has remained nimble in the face of unique business conditions. We also remain encouraged by the opportunities in this market and focused on delivering to our near-term commitments while positioning the company for long-term success. Underlying demand signals, particularly in the U.S., support the durability of our momentum. Strong order growth and a healthy backlog position us well. However, our outlook continues to reflect a level of uncertainty given the environment in EMEA. On the integration front, we are making meaningful progress, bringing our teams together and aligning people, processes, and systems. Although we are still early in the journey, the combined organization is operating effectively as one team, and we are moving quickly to capture synergies. We have executed initiatives that should position us to outperform our synergy target for the year, and these early wins reinforce our conviction for achieving, and potentially exceeding, our $70 million net annual run rate cost synergy target over time. First-year cost synergies will be weighted towards SG&A, driven by organizational realignment, the removal of redundancies, the elimination of duplicate third-party spend, and contract harmonization. As previously shared, we also see significant potential for future cost of goods sold synergies. We are advancing plans to capture revenue synergies, and early wins give us confidence that this will be additive to organic growth. Fully realizing the opportunity will take time as we align resources and integrate technology and sales processes, but we continue to believe revenue synergies will be a meaningful tailwind over time. We are demonstrating our ability to execute effectively, and our value creation opportunities remain largely within our control. We are advancing our integration plans and building momentum to deliver sustained organic growth, capture synergies, generate cash, and reduce debt, unlocking substantial long-term value for all stakeholders. Now I'm pleased to introduce you to our new Chief Financial Officer, John Linker, who joined the company earlier this month. John is a proven leader with extensive financial leadership experience, expertise in global industrial manufacturing environments, and a consistent track record of delivering impactful results with a focus on profitable growth, operational performance, and successful integrations. Since joining a few weeks ago, John quickly immersed himself in our business and began contributing meaningfully. We're excited to have John on board as we continue executing our value creation strategy on behalf of our shareholders, customers, and employees. With that, I'll turn the call over to John to walk us through our first quarter results.

Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. Before we get into our results, I'd like to take a moment to share some initial observations. I'm thrilled to join the company as Chief Financial Officer, and I'm pleased to be participating in my first earnings call at Columbus McKinnon. Over the last several weeks, I've had the opportunity to meet with our leaders and board, engage with employees across the organization, spend time in our manufacturing facilities, and gain a deeper understanding of our strategy and culture. What has impressed me the most is the strength of our platform, our talented and engaged people, and an unrelenting focus on our customers that is visible throughout the organization. While I'm still very early in my tenure, my initial observations reinforced my confidence in the company's existing strategy, disciplined operating approach, and long-term value creation potential. The fundamentals of the business are strong, and I believe we are well positioned to execute on our priorities and deliver sustainable growth, margin expansion, and free cash flow generation. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged, with a near-term focus on debt reduction and deleveraging. I look forward to engaging with many of you in the investment community in the coming months and building strong relationships over time. Returning to the quarter, we delivered strong Q1 results reflecting disciplined execution. Results reflect the first full quarter following the close of the Kito Crosby acquisition on February 3rd and the divestiture of our U.S. power chain hoist and chain operations on March 4th. As I talk about our results and outlook today, I will touch on the impact of the acquisition as well as the performance of our legacy business. Please note that as we further integrate and realize synergies, we'll be focused on maximizing the performance of the consolidated business, and as a result, comparability of the legacy companies will become less relevant. Orders of $568.1 million increased $309.6 million, or 120% from the prior year, largely driven by the benefit of the Kito Crosby acquisition. Normalizing for the acquisition and divestiture, pro forma orders growth was approximately 9% and was broad-based across platforms, with particular strength in the Americas as well as in APAC. EMEA orders declined year-over-year due to geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty, as well as a tough comp from strong orders in EMEA's rail business in the prior year. On the legacy CMCO side, U.S. orders grew in the low-teens, driven by strength in automation and short cycle lifting products. Backlog grew 4% sequentially due to strong orders with a book-to-bill of 1.1 in the first quarter. We delivered net sales of $531.5 million, which increased $295.5 million, or 125% from the prior year, driven by the acquisition of Kito Crosby, volume, pricing, and favorable currency translation, partially offset by the divestiture. Growth was broad-based, with high single-digit percentage growth in the legacy Kito Crosby portfolio, and low-teens growth in the legacy CMCO portfolio. Normalizing for both the acquisition and divestiture, pro forma sales growth was 10%. Sales growth was strongest in the Americas with growth in both volume and pricing. EMEA grew sales as we executed on our backlog and took advantage of temporarily opened shipping lanes in the Middle East at the end of the quarter. On a pro forma basis, project-related sales increased 12% and short cycle sales increased 9%, with benefits from both pricing and volume growth from a favorable demand environment. Channel inventory levels are healthy, returning to near normal levels, but remain slightly below historical averages. On the pricing side, the strongest realization was in the Americas through the price increases implemented in fiscal 2026 to offset inflation and tariffs. We've recently taken additional pricing actions across the combined business in multiple regions to offset inflation, and we expect the benefits of pricing to ramp up in the second half of the year. Gross profit of $146.3 million increased $69 million or 89% versus the prior year on a GAAP basis reflecting the Kito Crosby acquisition, pricing and volume, as well as benefits to material costs specific to the quarter, partially offset by the $55.2 million non-cash inventory step-up expense, the impact of the divestiture, and inflation in COGS. On a GAAP basis, our gross margin was 27.5%, and on an adjusted basis, our gross margin was 38.1%. Adjusted gross margin, which removes the impact of the inventory step-up and acquisition integration costs, improved 380 basis points year-over-year. Our SG&A expenses increased $64.5 million to $128.6 million on a GAAP basis due to the addition of Kito Crosby, higher integration costs, and increased incentive compensation expense, partially offset by cost-saving synergies. Adjusted SG&A, which excludes acquisition integration costs and other one-time expenses, increased by $57.1 million to $111.9 million. As a percentage of sales, adjusted SG&A declined 220 basis points to 21.1%, driven by scale benefits from the acquisition and cost synergy realization. Adjusted EBITDA of $111.5 million increased $78.9 million, or 242%, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.0%. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 720 basis points year-over-year. Net loss in the quarter was $88.4 million, or $2.05 per share on a GAAP basis. The loss was primarily due to the non-cash inventory step-up amortization, interest expense, and integration costs. Adjusted net income was $30.5 million, or $0.61 a share, up $0.11 from the prior year primarily driven by operating profit increases already discussed, partially offset by higher interest expense and a higher share count due to the inclusion of common shares issuable upon conversion of the preferred shares. Free cash flow excluding deal costs in the quarter was $32.4 million, up $49.7 million from the prior year, reflecting higher operating profit partially offset by higher cash interest. Normalizing for the non-cash inventory step-up adjustment, working capital was a use of cash in the quarter, as is typical for us in Q1. However, the use of cash was approximately $20 million better than the first quarter last year. We paid down $18.4 million in debt in the quarter and reduced our credit agreement net leverage ratio by 0.2x to 4.9x. Debt reduction continues to be our priority for capital allocation. Our total liquidity remains strong at $567.1 million, consisting of $98.4 million of cash and cash equivalents and $468.7 million of availability on our revolving credit facility. Given our strong Q1 results and increasing confidence in the year, we are raising our outlook for fiscal 2027. Our revised guidance also reflects unfavorable foreign exchange movements impacting both sales and adjusted EBITDA, as well as continued near-term demand headwinds in EMEA. Our increased outlook for fiscal 2027 is net sales of $2.09 billion to $2.15 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $405 million to $420 million, and adjusted EPS of $1.90 to $2.10 per share. There have been no changes to our outlook assumptions around interest expense, amortization, depreciation, our normalized effective tax rate, and adjusted diluted share count. While we don't guide on a quarterly basis, I will call out a few points regarding the shape of the year. First, we do not expect the cost benefits recognized in Q1 to continue through the rest of the year. Additionally, based on our backlog and the phasing of our project orders, we expect Q2 to be the low point for the year in sales and adjusted EBITDA. Following Q2, we expect margins to sequentially improve through the second half of the year as we realize the benefits of synergies, operational efficiencies, and pricing. I am encouraged by our recent results and progress on our integration, and I believe in our ability to deliver both customer and shareholder value as a scaled provider of intelligent motion solutions. Our strategy will unlock multiple avenues of growth, improve the quality of our services, improve our margin profile, and generate significant free cash flow to fund debt reduction. Operator, we're now ready to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is from Matt Summerville from D.A. Davidson.

A couple questions. First, I'm realizing maybe a little bit of sensitivity here, but is there any way to frame up how we should be thinking about these sort of non-recurring or one-time benefits you had in the quarter, either the impact to gross margin, the impact to EBITDA? I would assume none of what you enjoyed in the quarter was contemplated in your guidance. So maybe ultimately the question could be, how much of the guide raised was really driven by those factors and bearing that in mind, it'd be great to get some help as to how gross margins cadence relative to that low-pointing Q2 building through the rest of the year, and then I have a follow-up.

Thanks, Matt. Good morning. This is John speaking. Sure, I'll put some color around the material cost benefits first. And so there were some net benefits that we saw in the quarter. Some of that was indeed [ IEPA ] refunds that came in very late in the quarter, so that was not contemplated or known at the time of our last call. But there's also some other moving pieces in the material cost line this quarter. There were some other puts and takes and reserves. All that did net to a benefit in the quarter. We're not going to disclose the portion of the benefit related to the tariff refunds as we feel that's commercially sensitive. But what I will say is this, David said in his prepared remarks that the business on a pro forma basis expanded margins about 300 basis points year-over-year, so normalizing for the acquisition and divestiture. And so if you exclude out sort of this benefit we got in Q1, the core business still expanded EBITDA margins by about 100 basis points in the quarter. So we're calling it about 200 basis points of the 300 was related to this one-time or the benefits specific to the quarter. And as noted, we don't expect any more benefit from that in the rest of the year. In terms of, there were some other pieces of your question there in terms of the cadence of the year. Do you want to comment on the comments?

Good morning, Matt. So, you know, additionally, as we think about the guide and the raise, items driving the guidance raise include the fact that demand has been more encouraging than we originally anticipated when we gave the guidance. We saw really strong short cycle demand through the end of the quarter. We also had the benefit in Q1 of the temporary opening of the Strait of Hormuz, which really helped us to move more product into the Middle East and stepped up our results in the quarter. Obviously, we want to translate that into our full year view. We are benefiting from improved execution and really for the first time since the closing of the acquisition got to see the benefits of synergy realization coming through in the P&L. That increased visibility gave us increased confidence in the way that we thought about our guide going forward. Real cost benefits that were specific to the quarter weren't anticipated when we originally provided the guidance. And as we think about Q2 through Q4 and the progression with gross margins, just simply given the backlog and the phasing of the backlog as we think about composition and the period going forward, Q2 will be the low point for the year, and we anticipate that margins will benefit as we go through the balance of the year from synergy improvements, synergy realization, both on the cost of goods line as well as in SG&A. And again, this year it will be largely an SG&A benefit for the business, then the benefits of pricing actions that we've put in place. And so a combination of those items and improved operational execution should result in a ramp as we go throughout the balance of the year in gross margins with that low point being Q2. Does that answer the question, Matt?

Yes, yes. Yes, that's helpful. Just as a follow-up, maybe just talk a little bit more on how short cycle orders may be cadenced throughout the quarter, what you're seeing in July now that it's essentially in the books, and then how much price benefit we should expect you guys to see this year. Thank you.

Thanks, Matt. Yes, so as far as the progression of short cycle orders, we did see an uptick in short cycle demand as we progressed throughout the quarter. And so demand on the short cycle side of the business was increasing as we went throughout the quarter. We did have some price increases that went into effect towards the end of the quarter, and we think there was some buying ahead of those price increases, which is a very normal phenomenon, nothing that's outside of the normal range when you have a price increase, but that did drive incremental demand in the latter part of the quarter. On a quarter-to-date basis, we are seeing demand in short cycle business up in the low single digits on a quarter-to-date basis so far this quarter. And then as it relates to pricing and we think about pricing as we go forward through the balance of the year, we would anticipate that, you know, we'll be lapping some price benefits that we were getting last year because we weren't, you know, we're seeing the late stage benefits of those year-over-year increases. But now that we're lapping those, those increases on a year-over-year basis go away and then, you know, new increases are coming into effect. I would say that we would anticipate that they will progress as we move throughout the year. But, you know, putting a frame around that right now is not something that we're prepared to do. And I would anticipate for the year we'll still see something on the 1% to 2% price increase total.

Understood. Thanks, David.

Thank you. And our next question is from John Tanwanteng from CJS Securities.

Hi, this is Will in for John. Can you quantify or add some more color on the synergy realization you saw in the quarter and if your targets and speed of realization are increasing?

Yes, so we made good progress on a number of fronts, organizational alignment, bringing the teams together, getting really focused on a common set of organizational values and mission and vision, driving cultural alignment. We also had good work that was done in the early stages of contract harmonization and third-party cost savings. We're gaining traction on key initiatives that are maybe a little longer in terms of implementation timeframe, but will have meaningful impacts over time. And as I said, really for the first time we were able to see, as we're closing our first full quarter together, we're able to really see those benefits get measured in the P&L. And it's one thing to action a synergy, and it's another thing to really see the financial benefits flowing through. And so we're really encouraged by what we're seeing and how things are flowing through. As I said in my prepared remarks, we anticipate we'll be able to potentially outpace our plans, but we're not increasing our guidance at this point tied to synergy realization. Our current guidance would reflect what we would be prepared to offer in terms of what we'll see from those improved benefits. But certainly, our view of this is increasing in confidence as we think about our multi-year plans and what we'll deliver over time.

I'll just add that in terms of what we saw in the quarter and then as the year progresses, most of these synergies so far are benefiting SG&A. And so you can see that in some of the numbers I referenced in my remarks in terms of the year-over-year percent of sales and so we're seeing some nice benefit on SG&A and then we expect the sort of the COGS-related synergies to pick up steam as the execution continues and benefit later in the year and future years.

That is very helpful. Thank you. And then just one more. You had some push outs last quarter in the precision conveyance business. Did that revenue come in Q1 and what's the expectation going forward?