Matthews International Corporation
Q1 2010 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 22 Jan 2010

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome, and thanks for standing by. Welcome to the first period financial results conference call. At the request of your host, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we'll conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. (Operator Instructions) And as reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Matthews International CFO, Mr. Steve Nicola. Please go ahead, Mr. Nicola.

[Steve Nicola:]

Thank you, George. Good morning. I'm Steve Nicola. On the call with me today is Joe Bartolacci, President and CEO of Matthews. Today's conference call has been set up for one hour. And we are conducting the call to comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission Regulation FD. This call will be available for replay at around noon today. To access the replay, dial 1-320-365-3844, and enter the access code 140903. The replay will be available until 11

[Joe Bartolacci:]

Thank you, Steve. During the first quarter of 2010, we began to see some stability in our operating revenues in many of our businesses. Our memorialization businesses saw lower volumes due to death rates in the areas where we have significant market share. But despite these lower volumes, we saw the benefits of our cost structure initiatives that we announced last year. And our operating profit for this segment was in line with our expectations. Similarly, our brand solutions business saw modest improvement in operating profits on slower sales volumes. Our European business has performed well and benefited from a good performance from Saueressig, which took significant steps during last year to adjust costs to a lower run rate. Our marking products and our merchandising solutions businesses continued to struggle with lower volume, but each had begun to see improvement in the growth rate at their customers. In all, we're not satisfied with our performance, and therefore remain vigilant in our efforts to align our costs with our current revenue run rate. We expect the balance of 2010 to continue to be challenging from a revenue standpoint. And we remain cautious in light of our poor visibility in several of our businesses. Nonetheless, we are comfortable with our guidance of earnings per share, which we expect to be at least equal to our adjusted earnings for 20009. Our 2010 guidance anticipates $5.1 million of additional expense and relative stability in our revenue stream. We look forward to seeing the benefits of some of our cost structure initiatives once our run rates return. With that, I'd like to open up to questions.

[Steve Nicola:]

At this time, we would like to open the call to questions. For those of you who will be asking questions, we request that you limit them to one question and a follow-up question until all those who wish to participate in the Q&A session have had an opportunity to do so.

[Operator:]

(Operator Instructions) Our first question is on the line of Mr. Bob Labick. Please go ahead, Mr. Labick.

[Fred Buonocore:]

Yes. Good morning, Joe and Steve. This is actually Fred Buonocore calling in for Bob. How are you today?

[Steve Nicola:]

Hello, Fred.

[Joe Bartolacci:]

Good morning, Fred.

[Fred Buonocore:]

Yes. First question just related to the bronze memorialization margins, clearly down over prior year levels than -- lower than what we had been looking for. And I'm just wondering, have you elaborated a little bit? You talked about an unfavorable mix shift in the press release and in your prepared remarks. Is this a transient shifter -- this low 20% operating margin level what we should we expect through the year?

[Steve Nicola:]

A couple of things you need to think about when you think about our first quarter margins, first is that our first quarter for bronze is generally seasonally the slower of the quarters for that division. Secondly, we do have, this year, the extra pension costs that we didn't have a year ago. So on a comparable basis, those margins are lower for both of those reasons. And the third, you mentioned already, which was the shift in product mix.

[Fred Buonocore:]

Is this a level to think about going forward through the year?

[Steve Nicola:]

Well I think the margins as seasonally -- the revenues generally get better again in the second and third quarters. You should expect a little better margin in both of those quarters because of the additional volume. But we'll still potentially be dealing with the product mix issue and we also know that we will be -- we will have the extra pension expense.

[Fred Buonocore:]

Of course, got it. Thanks for that clarification. And then just secondly, can you give us some color on your outlook for raw materials as it relates to steel and copper? Are you hedging or buying forward? How are those prices looking for what you have in inventory right now?

[Joe Bartolacci:]

Due to the nature of the commodities and how we purchase, we have not hedged and it's difficult for us to hedge for reasons I think we discussed in the past. But we do, do our best to buy out when we can for some extended period of time with respect to bronze back in -- up to a couple of months and with respect to steel. Those are contracts, although the pricing on those contracts tend to move with the market more currently than maybe some of arrangements that we have when we bought bronze ahead. Steel is still relatively low. But as you know, copper has been higher lately. And for that reason, we will be dealing with the higher bronze costs as the fiscal year progresses.

[Fred Buonocore:]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Joe Bartolacci:]

You're welcome.

[Operator:]

Our next question is from the line of Mr. Liam Burke. Please go ahead, Mr. Burke.

[Liam Burke:]

Thank you. Good morning, Joe. Good morning, Steve.

[Steve Nicola:]

Good morning, Liam.

[Liam Burke:]

Steve, could you talk a little bit about the acquisition of the granite on the first quarter and how it fits in to the memorialization -- or the bronze memorialization business for the rest of the year?

[Steve Nicola:]

Sure. The acquisition that you're referring to is United Memorial Products. We purchased that in mid-December. It's about a $10 million to $11 million-dollar business, principally granite, although they do sell some caskets and some bronze in their headquarters on the West Coast and generally a supplier to the West Coast region in the United States. Not much to report here in the first quarter because we only -- because we only owned them for several weeks. It was acquired mid-December. But it provides us an additional product line in addition -- obviously, in addition to the bronze memorials that we sell.

[Liam Burke:]

Are you good about -- obviously, it's the distribution side of the business that you like. But is it -- is it going to be restricted to West Coast? Or how do you see the upright business, the granite business growing? Are you going to limit to a single geography or--?

[Joe Bartolacci:]

Liam, we have -- in fact, we have a number of phone calls from some of major customers who are very pleased in their acquisition, so. We're going to get our arms around the first acquisition here as it relates to the West Coast. And then take a look both at organic opportunities across the United States as well as our other smaller acquisitions continue to fulfill a broader strategy of providing upright memorials throughout the US.

[Liam Burke:]

Great. Thank you.

[Joe Bartolacci:]

You're welcome.

[Operator:]

Our next question is from the line of Mr. Clint Fendley. Please go ahead, Mr. Fendley.

[Clint Fendley:]

Thank you. Good morning, Joe and Steve.

[Steve Nicola:]

Hi, Clint.

[Joe Bartolacci:]

Good morning, Clint.

[Clint Fendley:]

I just wondered if you could comment on the mix shift that we saw in the quarter and how you see that progressing from here as it relates to your casket segment.

[Steve Nicola:]

On the casket side, what we -- what we're seeing, frankly, if you knew a little bit about the casket product mix is they range on features, and metals, and different wood, and things of that nature, and obviously, would have different price points within that. We are taking steps, although I think it's a slow transition, to try shift our marketing strategies to find mid point products in between the higher-priced and the lower-priced trying to encourage people up as well as trying to find incentives to bring our funeral directors in that situation upstream. It is in both of our interest, frankly, both the funeral director and the casket manufacturer's interest to sell a higher, greater product. So I think that this is probably a slow long term trend down, but it will continue to come back up as we start to move our merchandising another way.

[Clint Fendley:]

I think most in the industry had seen maybe a bit of an acceleration in the trend towards cremation back earlier in 2009. I mean what do you think we are in that? Has it stabilized? Has it begun to maybe return to more of a normal shift? If you could comment on that please.

[Joe Bartolacci:]

I could tell you what we've seen at least. We think our markets where we serve the most have been relatively stable in line with expectation with what we had long term expectations of cremation. What we saw more so has been up in the Northeast where we have a large majority of our -- our market share, especially on the casket side of the business, a little lower death rate, frankly, 122-city CDC analysis if you take a look at that. In some cases where we have good market share, we're down 4% just on death rate. Now obviously, that's not a long term trend or it's not a population shift going anywhere else so we expect that to come back. But those two factors, the consistent trend in cremation and the lower volume rate as a result of slower death rate in that area has helped impact our volumes on the casket side.

[Clint Fendley:]

Thanks, guys.

[Joe Bartolacci:]

You're welcome.

[Operator:]

Our next call is from the line of Mr. Jamie Clement. Please go ahead.

[Jamie Clement:]

Joe, Steve, good morning.

[Steve Nicola:]

Good morning, Jamie.

[Jamie Clement:]

Hey, Joe, can you give us a little bit more color on how you see the primary graphics market go over the next couple of quarters? Have you seen some signs that some of your historical clients are going to be getting out there in the market a little bit more?

[Joe Bartolacci:]

We have, Jamie. In fact, some of our larger brand accounts have started to at least talk about new packaging, new offerings. And without naming names for a lot of reasons, their need to repackage and remarket on the shelf is important right now, whether it'll be just to provide more value or provide a newer look, whatever it may be. We've landed some new business. And we expect that over the course of time, Jamie, that'll start to help us. It'll probably start to see some of that benefit, probably I would say, more in the third quarter and the fourth rather than in the second as these things ramp up very, very, very slowly. But our customer bases, we're starting to see on the primary side -- for example, we've been mentioning the packaging for cigarettes in Europe. One of the reasons we did well in Saueressig this quarter aside from our cost structure initiatives has been a nice order for picture packs on cigarette packaging for Poland. And that was a pretty good benefit for us. So we are expecting that to continue. It's just a lot slower than we had earlier expected.

[Jamie Clement:]

It just sounds though in some that you expect the graphics business overall to get better as the year progresses and that you actually think you have some evidence that that seems to be the case, right?

[Joe Bartolacci:]

Yes. We have not lost customer base. We've lost volume within the customers. But we had in fact regained a couple of customers, so. We think that longer term throughout this year will be a little bit better for all of us and -- both in Europe and in the United States. We'll cross our fingers and hope at this point.

[Jamie Clement:]

Okay. Great. Thanks a lot for your time.

[Joe Bartolacci:]

All right.

[Operator:]

Our next question is from the line of Jason Rogers. (Operator Instructions). Mr. Rogers.

[Jason Rogers:]

Good morning.

[Joe Bartolacci:]

Good morning.

[Steve Nicola:]

Good morning, Jason.

[Jason Rogers:]

Looking at the memorialization side, I was wondering about this whole movement towards green products, biodegradable caskets, and so forth that is having an impact or if you're seeing that to potentially be an issue going forward, even looking beyond the economic downturn?

[Joe Bartolacci:]

Jason, we have a wonderful product line that's biodegradable. It's called our wood line. In fact, we have been promoting that -- we have a separate line of biodegradable wood caskets as you might expect, no nails, no glues. We use that in a number of our -- of situations. We have not seen a major trend toward -- right now, we hear a lot of noise around it. But if it were to come, we're prepared.

[Jason Rogers:]

Okay. And then looking at uses for cash with the reauthorization today, I'm wondering if you're planning on getting a little more aggressive with share repurchases and just your general thoughts currently on acquisitions?

[Joe Bartolacci:]

We are constantly, in the market, looking for acquisitions. We took about a year off. I mean last year we didn't do a whole line in terms of anything of consequence. We just acquired something here in December with United Memorial. We have a few more things that we're working on, nothing I would say that are big move -- needle-type acquisitions, but parts of the puzzle that we'll continue to add. To the extent those don't look favorable to us, we will be in the marketplace buying back our shares.

[Steve Nicola:]

And Jason, just to add to that, the reauthorizations by the Board shouldn't -- isn't a signal that we intend to get more aggressive. It's simply that our current -- our existing authorization had about run out. And the Board as well as management continue to believe that active share repurchase program is an integral part of the company's long term strategy.

[Jason Rogers:]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator:]

(Operator Instructions).

[Steve Nicola:]

Okay. George, well if there are no more questions at this time. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the participants and the listeners to the call. And we look forward to our first quarter -- or I'm sorry, our second quarter earnings release and conference call in April. Have a great day.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, this conference will be available for replay after today through Thursday, February 4th at midnight. You may access the AT&T teleconference replay system at any time by dialing 320-365-3844, and entering the access code of 140903. Those numbers again are 320-365-3844, with the access code of 140903. That concludes our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using the AT&T executive teleconference center. You may now disconnect.