Flowserve Corporation
Q1 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 4 May 2021

[Operator:]

Good day, and welcome to the Q1, 2021 Flowserve Corporation Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to your host, Mr. Jay Roueche, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead, sir.

[Jay Roueche:]

Thank you, Angela, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you participating in our conference call today to discuss Flowserve's first quarter 2021 financial results. On the call with me this morning are Scott Rowe, Flowserve's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Amy Schwetz, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared comments, we will open the call for questions. And as a reminder, this event is being webcast, and an audio replay will be available.

[Scott Rowe:]

Thanks, Jay, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call. We are pleased with our strong start to 2021. Flowserve's adjusted EPS of $0.28 increased over 47%, compared to last year's first quarter. And our bookings for the first three months in 2021 were up by over 16% compared to the average of last year's final three quarters. We are especially encouraged with this performance given that our first quarter results are traditionally lower. Given what we saw in the first quarter, we believe that we are off to a strong start in 2021. In the last two earnings calls, we indicated that we believe our end markets are well-positioned for a post-pandemic recovery. And our first quarter results support this belief. Although the various regions and countries we serve are on different trajectories, in terms of vaccinations, infection rates, return to mobility and overall economic recovery, we are confident that the world is making steady progress, as economies emerge from this global pandemic. As a result, we have started to see these green shoots of activity, translate into sequential bookings growth. Assuming vaccines continue to roll out globally, and COVID issue subside without new setbacks, we are confident in our ability to deliver substantial year-over-year bookings growth in 2021. With an improving environment, combined with our Flowserve 2.0 growth initiatives, we were encouraged to book $945 million in the first quarter, which represented over 15% growth sequentially, and was driven primarily by increased MRO and aftermarket activity. As we moved through the quarter, our bookings by month tracked the overall pandemic progress. January was slow, February improved, but was impacted by severe cold weather in the Gulf Coast. And March activity steadily increased. In total, our bookings growth this quarter exceeded our original expectations. The market inflection seems to have begun a quarter or two earlier than we had anticipated.

[Amy Schwetz:]

Thanks, Scott, and good morning, everyone. For the first quarter, we delivered solid results including an adjusted EPS of $0.28, which represents an increase of nearly 50% versus prior year. On a reported basis, EPS of $0.11 included $0.08 of realignment, $0.04 of costs related to early retirement of debt, and $0.05 of below the line FX currency impact. As a reminder, with our focus on improving the quality of our earnings, we are now including 2021 transformation costs in our adjusted earnings, in contrast to prior years when this expense was adjusted out. First quarter revenue of $857 million was down 4.1% versus the prior year, primarily driven by the 10% sales decline in original equipment, including FPD's 15% original equipment decrease. We were pleased to see modest aftermarket sales growth as revenue of $450 million increased 2% with both FPD and FTD contributing. Shifting to margins, our first quarter performance was largely driven by the significant cost actions we took in the middle of 2020, as well as ongoing transformation-driven operational improvements, and a 400 basis point mix shift towards higher margin aftermarket revenue, partially offset by increased under absorption.

[Scott Rowe:]

Thank you, Amy. I want to wrap up today with some comments around two key strategic priorities. Our ongoing Flowserve 2.0 transformation, and Flowserve will support energy transition. Let me first provide an update on our Flowserve 2.0 transformation progress. In 2020, the pandemic-driven downturn dictated that we focus heavily on cost reduction. We shifted our efforts and accelerated the cost reduction aspects of the transformation last year. Additionally, we continued to progress our strategy to improve our overall enterprise wide IT systems. These improvements and the overall rationalization are improving our visibility, streamlining our operations, and improving our overall productivity. All of these enhancements support the new Flowserve 2.0 operating model. As our new operating model takes hold throughout the enterprise, we expect to continue to deliver margin and productivity improvements throughout the business. As we look to fully embed the transformation into our operations by the end of 2021, I am confident that our Flowserve 2.0 process improvements will continue to provide benefit to Flowserve and our customers for years to come. All of the fundamentals are now in place to fully leverage the expected market recovery. During 2021, our transformation priorities are focused primarily on growth, including an improved customer experience, accelerated product innovation and further market penetration. With our strengthened operating model, we are also better-positioned to pursue value-added partnerships, and we are more confident in our ability to integrate potential acquisitions. An important aspect of Flowserve's strategy in the coming years will be driven by the expected growth investment related to energy transition. The energy transition theme is real. And we expect investments to rapidly increase in the near-term to support this global call to action. We believe Flowserve is well-positioned with our current portfolio to benefit from increased spending from our customers, to achieve their carbon reduction targets and energy efficiency goals. Energy transition has been at play for much of the last two decades, however, 2020 served as a pivotal year, and began first with COVID, then an acceleration of investments in alternative sources of energy, and further driven by social, political and regulatory changes. These multi factor dynamics are accelerating the transition, resulting in increased urgency across the industrial sector, and especially within the energy sector. Our approach to energy transition includes, first

[Operator:]

Our first question comes from the line of Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. And Deane, your line is open.

[Deane Dray:]

Yeah, sorry about that. Technical difficulties. Hey, congratulations on the quarter here. And it really looks to us at one of the inflections is this, that orders are coming backs, inflecting positively sooner. I know you've been talking about in mid to late 2021. And, if you could just point to the factors here, how much of this is just CEO confidence, vaccine, a little bit less COVID uncertainty? Is oil pricing better? Is that a factor here? And how much of a rebound are you assuming in these orders for the balance of the year? If we could start there, please?

[Scott Rowe:]

Sure. Thanks, Deane, and glad you could join us today. $945 million was a really good number for the first quarter, and is certainly a little higher than what we had expected. We really thought kind of a Q2, Q3 is when we start to see the recovery, and we didn't expect it to be a 15% sequential pop there. But look, we're pleased with it. And I'd say it's just a number of factors that are all contributing here. One is, really is the sentiment and the mentality of COVID. And so as North America subsides, and Europe begins to make progress with vaccines and COVID case reductions, our customer base across all of the industries are now more confident in their ability to spend money. And then you see then other factor there, it's just the utilization of the different assets that we support. And so whether it's refining, petrochemical, chemical plants, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, any of those are all higher than what they were a year ago. And so we're seeing good growth on MRO, we're seeing good growth on aftermarket. And then we're just seeing far more customer confidence than before. Now, there's still concerns, India's not in a good place right now. There are other parts of the world, Latin America that are still struggling through that. But I think that the path to getting out of this is starting to become far more sure than it was in the past. And so, we feel good about $945 million in Q1, we're excited about that number. And then as we project forward for the rest of 2021, we've got good visibility to a similar bookings number in Q2. And so, I wouldn't say, we do think we grow from this, but I don't think we're going to be growing dramatically throughout the year. But we like this level of kind of mid to low 900s that feels pretty good right now with our customer discussions and kind of what we're seeing. And then where we start to grow is when the larger projects begin to move forward, which we expect in later 2021 and early '22, then we start to move back into that $1 billion plus range of bookings on a quarterly basis.

[Deane Dray:]

Alright, that's really helpful. And then my second question relates to this pivot to the energy transition that's happening. It looks like you guys are pretty well-positioned. And I'd be interested knowing what the mix is today? What percent of your revenues today are what you would characterize as, there's more energy transition leverage or whether it's gasification biodiesel solar, there's a long list? But what's the mix today? And are you ready to talk about a three to five year goal as to where you would see the mix out in that timeframe?

[Scott Rowe:]

Sure, Deane. We're really excited about what's happening in this space. I would say, it is evolving incredibly fast. And so things are changing. And, a year ago, we saw this as a headwind, and now we see it as a tremendous opportunity. And so as customers are evolving, and trying to work through their own energy emissions targets and carbon reduction goals, and trying to achieve net zero, they're developing plans incredibly quickly. But today, it's a relatively small percentage. And we haven't come out and stated that publicly, I think we will in the coming quarters, as we shape up our strategy. And then we'll also put out a target in terms of what we think can happen. But, we did share a spending number back in February at one of the Investor conferences, when we talked about a $60 trillion number that was needed by 2030. And if you just put a small percentage of that at flow control, you get to some really big numbers. So 1.5% of flow control on $60 trillion is a $90 billion potential market for flow control. And so we really are sharpening our pencil. We're trying to figure out, exactly what that means for us and where we can play. And, it's a dynamic environment right now. And so you've got different operators pursuing different paths. But we feel really good that flow control will be a big part of whatever they do. And we believe that our offering across pumps, valves in seals, really does fit a sweet spot in terms of what they're looking for, right. So we can help on energy reduction with pumps are one of the largest consumers of energies in any large installation, valves play a significant part of their flow control and their optimization. And then the seals are really around emissions and controlling leaks, and on the gas side, any fugitive emission leaks there. So we feel like we're in a good place, again, relatively small today, but growing quickly. And as this market firms up and restart, continue to make progress on our strategy, we'll share our long-term goals and set some targets here.

[Deane Dray:]

Great. Thank you for all the color.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Andy Kaplowitz with Citi. Please go ahead.

[Andy Kaplowitz:]

Good morning. Nice quarter.

[Amy Schwetz:]

Good morning, Andy.

[Scott Rowe:]

Hey, Andy.

[Andy Kaplowitz:]

Scott, we know many of your customers have deferred replacement over the last one and a half years. How much of that has to do with the uptrend and bookings? And do you see any larger projects is likely to come back for the rest of the year? I know you mentioned, $945 million that's kind of similar run rate you're in expecting Q2, which makes sense. But if you continue with your March run rate, is it possible that you could sustainably start to book that $1 billion number, again, that you've done in the past? Did you really need larger projects to come back to see that amount of bookings?

[Scott Rowe:]

Sure. Let's just talk about the MRO and the aftermarket side. And so what we're seeing in these installations is that there was certainly some pent-up demand on maintenance and replacement. And just, as education for everybody, our MRO number that we talked about would include some of our new equipment. So these are replacement valves, replacement pumps, and we categorize those in OE, but we call it MRO. And so what's happening there is we're getting a lot of replacement work that we believe that's pent-up. And then also, as we think about utilization rates, all of our customers, almost across the spectrum are running their assets at a higher level. So again, we've got a lot of confidence that kind of a 900 number and above is going to sustain throughout the year. I'm not ready to commit to $1 billion yet, Andy, but I do think as projects starts to move in the back half of the year, then we can start to move up and creep into that territory. But, right now we feel good about a similar number here in Q2, and kind of this mid-900s does feel really good for the balance of the year.

[Andy Kaplowitz:]

That's helpful, Scott. And then, can you help us think about debt and margin expectation now for the rest of '21? I know you've talked about SG&A for a while here, it's continued to be relatively stable. So, as you start to grow again, can you keep this sort of flattish SG&A? I think you're going still to 20% to 30% detrimental for '21. But how are you thinking about price versus cost and its impact on margin? And do you see a decent chance of segment margin expansion actually for both segments, like you had in the first quarter?

[Scott Rowe:]

Yeah, I'll let Amy hit kind of the SG&A and margin side and then I can talk about price cost and what we are seeing there.

[Amy Schwetz:]

Yeah. So Andy, as I indicated in my remarks, we do see an opportunity to grow earnings sequentially over the course of the year. And that's really a couple of things. If we look at the second quarter, we still think that there's going to be some under absorption that we're dealing with at sort of sub optimal volume levels. But if we make our way through the year, and we see the benefit of volume coming through, and particularly the mix of that volume coming through with some of our shorter cycle business, we see the opportunity to expand margins over the course of 2021. We're going to continue to control SG&A as tightly as we can. There is a lot of cost reduction that was built into the savings that you saw in 2020, and came through in 2021. Well over half of the benefit that we saw year-over-year was actually in headcount savings year-over-year. Now, there'll be some costs that creep back in as travel returns to normal, but frankly, we're viewing that as a nice problem to have. So we really see the ability to control SG&A quite well, over the course of 2021 as well. There's been a lot made you know in terms of input costs. And generally, we are seeing some of that creep in, but overall, our supply chain group has done a great job mitigating that over the course of a year. And from a supply chain perspective, we really see the concern being more around logistics, particularly given where some of the COVID hotspots are currently, then our inability to offset some of the cost increases that we're seeing.

[Scott Rowe:]

Andy, I would add a little bit more on the inflation side. We're clearly in an inflationary environment with commodity prices. In fact, we saw a massive surge in Q1. Our view right now is that this is certainly peaked, and that it's relatively short-term with some speculation. And so we actually see this kind of come down and settle here in the back-half of the year. But as Amy said, I just want to call out, in Flowserve 2.0 the supply chain workstream was one of our largest efforts. We've been working on this for three years, and we continue to see some really good progress on supply chain. And so, even in Q1, it was a very slight net positive for us, I wouldn't call it a huge win, but we were able to offset a lot of the things that were happening. And we feel really good about continuing to make progress, as we rationalize suppliers, as we move more to proactive spend, as we start to do some of the things that good companies do on the supply chain. So, I feel good about that. And then as Amy said, the logistics and transportation is the one that is concerning, that was a negative for us in Q1. And we really don't see that subsiding here in Q2, or Q3. And then, if I hit the price side, 2020 was a difficult environment on pricing for us. And this is, across the flow service to our customers. And I really expect that the worst is behind us now. I think most of our customers or most of our competitors are seeing the increased activity. And so, I think pricing on our side starts to firm up. I don't expect to see that get worse. But you still have some of that pricing coming through the system. So we saw that a little bit imbalance here in Q1, we'll continue to see some headwinds in Q2. But as we book new work, we're starting to move our pricing up and we'll feel like we'll be in a much better position here at the end of the year.

[Andy Kaplowitz:]

Appreciate the color.

[Operator:]

Your next question is from the line of Nathan Jones with Stifel. Please go ahead.

[Nathan Jones:]

Good morning, everyone.

[Scott Rowe:]

Good morning, Nathan.

[Nathan Jones:]

A couple of follow-ups actually here. On the increased under absorption comment, you did say that revenue declined slowed a little bit. So I'm little surprised that you're seeing increased under absorption in the first quarter. So if you could talk about that. And then does that imply that you need to take more costs out here? Or is it now carry those costs for the recovery? And then what does that imply for incremental margins once we returned to growth?

[Scott Rowe:]

Sure. I can address that. What you see is with the lower revenue number in Q1, there's certainly some under absorption. And so our sales were down roughly 10%, and really that's more on the manufacturing side and the fixed assets that are supporting that. We did the aggressive cost out actions last year in Q2 and worked this way into Q3. And at this point, Amy said this, but we don't feel like we need to take any more aggressive nature on driving costs out. With that said, though, as some of our backlog comes down in our long cycle facilities, the revenue will continue to come down there into Q2 and Q3. And we will move our direct labor and the workforce at the sites down, as that backlog does come down. But really, I think you're given the bookings number, and given the discussion that we've already had this morning, we're kind of leaning in on making sure that we have the capacity and the ability to support our customers, as things move up. And, 15% growth sequentially is a big number. And so right now, I'm more concerned about our ability to keep lead times low and support our customers, than I am about taking additional costs out of the system. Now, I will say overall, right, we still have opportunity on roofline. We've talked about that in prior earnings calls, and we'll continue to systematically make progress on our overall manufacturing footprint. But, we're going to do that deliberately and systematically over the coming years.

[Nathan Jones:]

And then any comment on -- if you're carrying this unabsorbed overhead what that implies on incrementals, as we get back to growth next year? I mean, I would think that would mean that should be pretty good.

[Amy Schwetz:]

Yeah, I think a couple of things, Nathan. I think really the under absorption that that we're seeing is really, at this point on the OE side. And as we see that backlog continuing to build, even over the course of 2021, we're anticipating that the margins will expand, particularly by the time we get to the fourth quarter of the year. And obviously, this is all very dependent on mix, as we move our way through the year. But, as we talked about the first quarter in particular, just one thing to point out is that that from an adjusted perspective, really, the change in mix largely offset that impact of under absorption. So, as we build that backlog, we should have a nice opportunity to expand those margins.

[Scott Rowe:]

Yeah, I'm really happy to talk about incrementals rather than decremental. But, what you saw last year was improved decremental from historical downturns. And everything we're doing with Flowserve 2.0 is focused on having better incrementals as we come up. And so, we're trying to create this operating model that works through the cycle. And I'm confident that we can have really good incrementals as we start to book some good work here.

[Nathan Jones:]

Thanks. I have one specifically on pricing, and specifically on project bids. You're seeing very rapid inflation, have seen very rapid inflation. How do you protect those bids and the margins on those bids from the time you submit that bid to maybe the time it's accepted? Are they inbuilt contract mechanisms that adjust for the input costs there that protect you from some of these bids from that inflation? And then how do you manage the costs when you get a project bid? Where you're seeing this steep inflation, but it might be12, 18-months from book to ship?

[Scott Rowe:]

Yeah. So, Nathan, really on the projects, that really is a lot of our engineer to order work. And so, we will work up those costs when we put the quota, or put the quota into our customer. And to your point that concern that is from time of quotes to time of award, how much changes there. And I think there's certainly some, but I'm not overly concerned with that. We typically will get hard quotes. And if anything, our teams do a really nice job as we start to get more certainty towards winning that work, then we're able to drive costs down rather than come up. And so, I'm not overly concerned with that. And then just the other thing I'd add as part of Flowserve 2.0 and partnering with our supply chain, we've got really good pricing contracts now that are long-term. And so, we've got some pretty good ability to project what the costing looks like. We can incorporate that into our cost plus modeling on the big projects. And, historically, we don't see a big deviation from what we do at the as bid to what we deliver on the third-party buyouts. So, while it could be a concern, I think it's more concerning for some others that have a much larger project business, and a longer cycle there. I'm not overly concerned about that for Flowserve.

[Nathan Jones:]

That's really helpful. Thanks. I'll pass it along.

[Operator:]

Your next question is from the line of Joe Giordano with Cowen. Please go ahead.

[Joe Giordano:]

Hey, good afternoon, everyone.

[Scott Rowe:]

Hey, Joe.

[Joe Giordano:]

Hey, Scott, I appreciate the stuff you said about energy transition today. So I have two questions on that. One, I guess, how do you balance internally some finite pool of human and financial capital towards new applications like this, and servicing your existing applications and your legacy base, which are still going to be massive for like the foreseeable future?

[Scott Rowe:]

Sure. What we say in our kind of tagline is we're going to support our customers today and through the energy transition. So, we really do think that we can do both. Again, this is an incredibly quickly evolving marketplace. And what I would say is our marketing technology, and our R&D teams are really starting to put a lot more effort around where our products fit, and how do we do this. And so the theme within our marketing and technology today is diversify, decarbonize and digitize. And all of the efforts that we're doing really fit in one of those three buckets. And so we're very, very focused on that. And then when you think about operations and installations, right, we've got long-term service contracts, we call it lifecycle agreements with a lot of these big installations. And with these lifecycle agreements our metrics around productivity, around uptime, and around other things that benefit our customers, but also can benefit Flowserve. So as we think about energy transition, one of the big things here is how do we help our customers drive energy efficiency in their operation. And we believe we're uniquely positioned to do that, because we've got this the highest energy consumers and the pumps. And then we've also got the ability to control flow with our control valves and our electric actuators. And so, we think that energy efficiency is a really nice add into our lifecycle agreements. And so those are a lot of the discussions that we're having now is to really come and partner with some select customers to say, hey, we'd like to help you with your energy efficiency goals, we're willing to put this in our life cycle agreement contracts, we're willing to take a performance-based approach to this. And if we deliver savings, we want to share in the upside. And so we're working on that now around energy efficiency, and it aligns exactly with what we're doing with our QRC network and our lifecycle advantage. And then, we also believe at a point in time, we can also pull in the carbon emissions as well, right. And so that would be kind of the next step is saying, okay, look, we're aligned on productivity, we're aligned on uptime, we're now aligned on energy efficiency, can we also get aligned on carbon emissions reduction. And if we do that, as part of our long-term contracts, we believe we can help our customers accelerate their transition. And then, we think that benefits Flowserve and our shareholders as well.

[Joe Giordano:]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then kind of on a related basis, and I'll preface this by saying it does feel different this time. But, when you think about new applications, like, if I go back 10-years ago, people were going crazy about rare earths and uranium and stuff like that, and then no one cared for a long time. So like, how do you kind of think through that? And like, what are we doing for the next 10-years? And where do we really want to dedicate capital?

[Scott Rowe:]

No, I, too, have lived through several of these. And, I think energy transition is real this time. And, I think, when you look at just the political and the social pressure around the world, I don't see this changing. And so we're not exactly sure what path it takes and how big hydrogen is a player and how green it is versus how blue. So, I think all of that will firm up over time. But I really believe that, certainly the energy industry and the industrial, folks are really focused on driving energy efficiency and bringing down their energy consumption. And, as a result, also driving down their carbon emissions. And so I think those two are absolutely going to progress. I think the transition to green hydrogen and some of the other things will take time, and we'll see how that plays out. But I think there's meaningful opportunity for Flowserve regardless, because all of these things have flow control and flow control solution aspects to them. And so, we think this is a big opportunity for us. We've been doing flow control solutions for 200-years in many different industries, and we think we can participate in that and participate in energy transition in a very meaningful way.

[Joe Giordano:]

Thanks, guys.

[Operator:]

Your next question is from the line of Turner Hinrichs with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Turner Hinrichs:]

Hey, guys, congrats on a solid quarter.

[Scott Rowe:]

Thank you.

[Turner Hinrichs:]

So on MRC's call last week, they noted inventories are pretty low and referred to modest inventory build for the remainder of the year. Are you all seeing any restocking going on currently? And how are you thinking about restocking going forward?

[Scott Rowe:]

Sure. So MRC is a big customer of ours. And I'll just say, I was very surprised that their inventory level fell in Q1. And so, I'm pretty confident that we will not see that go down any further. And, I would say, we're not seeing any aggressive inventory builds. We're seeing some pretty steady order rates there. But when you look through our -- what is the role of a distributor, right, it's providing inventory and services at a point of location. And, quite frankly, they're much of a logistics company than anything else. And if our lead times are the same as their lead times, then their business model becomes irrelevant. So I actually think that they're at about as low as they can go, I think they start to come up from this point forward. We haven't really seen that at this point. But I really believe in Q2 and Q3, we start to see them to build stocks. I’d just say the other thing in North America and predominantly in the Gulf Coast is the winter storm did deplete their inventory levels. And so, I think that's part of the build as they -- part of the reduction is that they got a spike in demand, because of that the freeze in servicing some of their customer base. But I really can't see them going lower than they are today. And so I think this is actually a tailwind for us. And as we transition into Q2 and beyond, and at some point, they'll start putting some pretty significant stocking orders on Flowserve and other OEMs.

[Turner Hinrichs:]

Great. Thanks. On geographic mix, I mean, I see Europe and Asia are both up double digits, while, North America is still down. Could you describe how you're thinking about just the geographic mix going forward as things normalize? And what the trajectory of different geographic regions could look like and sort of impacts that might affect that?

[Scott Rowe:]

Sure. So our MRO and aftermarket business will be largely on COVID abatement and vaccine incoming out. And so as these parts of the world returned to mobility and economic growth, then we'll see our business start to come up. And so, I feel good about on the MRO and aftermarket side, I feel good about North America, I feel good about Europe, I feel good about parts of Asia. And so I think we see good growth there. Where there's concerns would be India and Latin America and South America where, I don't think we're going to see that side of the business come back in the next couple quarters. And then on the project side, primarily Asia Pacific in the Middle East for the larger projects, and those are the greenfield projects, or even expansions through existing aspects or existing facilities. And then, I think North America has got a pretty healthy project list that's going to start to take place here in the back half of the year. And so, I think any concerns on the geography would really be around India and the situation there. And then I think South America is going to be problematic for a few more quarters, until they get through the worst to COVID.

[Turner Hinrichs:]

Great. Thank you. I appreciate the color.

[Operator:]

Your next question is from the line of with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Hi, thanks for fitting me in. So, in FCD, OE bookings were 225, at least the highest level since the fourth quarter of 2019. Do you believe bookings can remain at this level? And if so, could sales actually be up year-over-year for this part of the business?

[Scott Rowe:]

Sure. Yeah. So again, I think, our comments were largely around overall Flowserve, but I think they apply to FCD, as well. And so we think we can carry this level of bookings throughout the year. So, a lot of that was MRO-based, and so just replacement valves. And we had good geographic mix, even within FCD. So we feel pretty good about the outlook of FCD bookings. And to your point, if we can continue at this rate, we'd really like to see revenue increase year-over-year, and it's certainly within the realm of possibility. And we're starting to get close to having good visibility to revenue growth.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Great. And then just my last question, in response to Texas, you talked a little about that in the beginning of the call, but did you see a margin benefit from QRC in the parts business that could be non-recurring there? Thanks.

[Amy Schwetz:]

So in general, I would that, our aftermarket business generates nice margins and we generally don't look at those times as an opportunity to increase margins. We view it more as an opportunity to enhance our relationships with our customers, and show that we can deliver real value to them based on our location and our intimacy with their sites. So, I don't necessarily see a margin expansion from the event other than then a slight mix shift, perhaps from OE to week aftermarket that we would generally see, but not necessarily in the pricing that we had for those services.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

[Operator:]

And I'm showing no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day. You may all disconnect.