Ladies and gentlemen, good morning or good afternoon. Welcome to the ABB fourth quarter 2013 results analyst and investor conference call. I am Joya, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. Should you need assistance, please press star and zero to call an operator. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Joe Hogan, CEO of ABB, and Mr. Eric Elzvik, CFO of ABB. Please go ahead, gentlemen.
Hi, it is Joe and Eric, and thanks for joining the call. Good afternoon, everyone. As always, our comments on the call, you can refer to the presentation that is on our website at abb.com. Call your attention to chart 2, and that is our safe harbor statement. I challenge anybody to find a change in that for the last couple of quarters, I guess. Moving on to chart 3. We feel good about the quarter overall from an operational standpoint and also from a strategic standpoint too, and we will talk more about that. Given the uncertainties in the global economy, we feel that we performed as we should have and as we had planned.
We continue to execute well, and we are balancing solid cost discipline that we see across the portfolio with targeted growth in businesses and regions where we have competitive advantages, especially in areas like industrial efficiency, power reliability, and renewable energy. Our balanced portfolio and global footprint contributed to the resilient performance overall, allowing us to find and capture growth opportunities in a mixed market. For example, we won some key orders in marine, and mining, and robotics, and increased emerging market orders by a double-digit mark by 10%. We lifted total revenues on both an organic and an inorganic basis. Our execution on cost remained strong, with very tight discipline on our G&A expenses. Continued success in sourcing and productivity improvements saved us about $260 million in the quarter. The Thomas & Betts integration and synergies were on track.
We are very pleased with this acquisition and the improved balance it gives us in the North American marketplace. Power Products team turned in another very good performance with an operational EBITDA margin of 14.9%. Again, within our guidance of 14.5%-15% for the full year, thanks to solid execution on cost and selective growth initiatives in more profitable end markets. We announced the planned acquisition of Power-One earlier this week to tap what we think will be one of the most dynamic and attractive power markets in the future with solar inverters. And it plays right into the combined strengths of automation and power, as we described earlier this week. Moving on to chart 4 and looking at the quarterly overview. I already mentioned the mixed demand environment that we see out there, which you can see reflected in our top-line numbers.
We generated a solid increase in operating earnings and margins. This is partially due to an easier year-on-year comparison. As you recall, we saw some weakness in the first quarter last year, but also the result of ongoing efforts to target more attractive end markets, to improve our service offerings, and to be more selective on the kinds of projects we take, especially in power. Also, thanks to our continued success in balancing growth and cost, which is the foundation of our strategy, our execution on cost remained strong in the first quarter, with tight discipline on G&A expenses. Continued success in sourcing and productivity improvements, again, saved us $260 million. Eric will break that down for you in a moment. We also achieved these results despite continued demand headwinds. Growth in the U.S. decelerated further in the quarter, and industrial investments in much of Europe remained mixed.
Cash flow was lower than we'd like, but it's largely expected and mainly reflects the timing of project execution. We expect to see a recovery in the coming quarters, as we always do at ABB, given the cyclical nature of our cash. Moving on to chart five. This chart highlights what we think is a key competitive advantage for ABB, namely our very balanced business and geographic scope. For example, we now have some 60% of our business now coming from the automation side, which helps us take up some of the slack that we've seen in the power cycle. Similarly, we've enhanced our presence in North America, and that's contributed to the resilience of our results. The share of orders from a strong emerging markets presence is again returning to near 50%, 48% of total orders in Q1.
This has helped mitigate much of the market turbulence and allow us to tap opportunities for profitable growth. Moving on to chart six. Here's a look at the regional highlights in some of our key industries. Starting with the Americas, orders were lower on an organic basis. That mainly reflects the tougher comps that we had versus Q1 last year in North America, especially in our Power business. As I mentioned earlier, we saw a continued year-on-year deceleration in order growth in the U.S. in Q1. On the other hand, compared to Q4, and that's 2012 on a sequential basis, automation orders in the U.S., and that's excluding Thomas & Betts, are showing some modest growth. We have to wait and see how this develops over the rest of the year, but we think that's a good sign. Europe was also, again, a very mixed bag.
This quarter, we saw strong improvements in Eastern Europe, Poland, Lithuania, HVDC, large order link, and Russia, mine hoists. These offset weaker orders in some of our traditional Western European markets like Germany and Switzerland. However, we also saw good growth in countries like France, in our Power business, in the Netherlands, in all of our divisions except for PA. Again, it's difficult to draw any general conclusions. The only conclusion I'd draw from the European discussion is that we have really good diversification from what we can sell in Europe, and you see that in our portfolio, that we can drive in the kind of economic environment over here that we're seeing, that we have just -1% in orders, relatively flat, I think is a great tribute to the diversity and the work of the team here.
Asia also improved. We saw China return to demand levels of 2011 after a softer 2012 1Q. In the Middle East and Africa, our strong presence in South Africa helped us to offset some of the weaknesses in other parts of the Middle East and Africa. Moving on to chart seven. These are just some key orders. I don't want to walk through each one, but what I hope you see through this is just the diversification in region and also product line that we have in these different orders. You see it across the automation portfolio and also the power portfolio, too. Moving to chart eight. That's just a look at orders and revenue by individual divisions. When you look at DM, revenues reflect the execution of a strong order backlog, especially in robotics and service. Robotics revenues up 5%.
In LP, in low voltage products, really steady organic. We mean almost flat to one up. This is our earliest cycle business. No matter where we are around the world, it's our biggest heads up in the sense of where economic activity's going. We see it relatively flat in that sense. Process Automation, higher mining and marine orders offset weaknesses in other sectors. We get a lot of questions on how we're doing from a marine standpoint in a down marketplace, and our comments are a lot of the marine that we do in PA has to do with oil and gas and offshore, and that's why we've been able to tap into that sector that has some robust investment. On PP, order selectivity in a challenging market overall.
Bernhard and his team are just, given the quotations that are out there today and the diversity of our product line and also our global footprint, we're able to pick the jobs that we like. There's enough robustness in the jobs out there to allow us to do that. On PS, we talked extensively with you in the fourth quarter about our PS reset. You're starting to see some of the benefits of that with the 8.3% for the quarter overall, we'll talk about in a moment. It's also reflected in the orders being down in the sense that we're going to be more selective in the jobs that we take. Overall, you'll see this balance out as we go through the quarters of the year. Moving on to chart nine, which is basically when you look at operational EBITDA and operational EBITDA margin.
You can read through this yourself, too. We have higher revenues in DM, a little less favorable mix. What we mean by that is that you have both medium term and short term products in the portfolio of DM. Right now, we have more of the medium term coming in. That does give us a little bit of a shift in mix and a shift in margin side. LP, margins up organically on improved cost control and better capacity utilization. PA, improved project execution and higher full service margins. Power Products, really favorable business mix and price pressure were mostly offset by cost savings. That team continues to execute well. PS, we just talked about that. With that, I'll turn it over to Eric. He'll walk you through the waterfall.
If you take a look at the EBITDA bridge, we have here a presentation which reflects the factors that impact our operational EBITDA. The format has been slightly changed from the last quarter. You see in the first column, the net savings, the price pressure, combined with the cost savings. That's the way we like to see it. You can see we were successful to get a net effect out of that with more saving than price pressure in this quarter. Looking at volume effects, despite the limited revenue increase, we have a positive effect from the volume, as we have kept expenses under tight control. $150 million improvement comes from there. Looking further to the mix, that is negative, and it's mainly within the divisions. There's a different mix between projects and products, geographies.
It's a big variation in different places, net of that is a slight pressure on the mix. As you can see, other is almost nothing. Before arriving at the $1.36 billion and adding the T&B contribution, bringing us to the EBITDA margin of 15.0%, as you can see. Looking at the EPS slide on chart number 11, you can see that we had, on the net income, a reduction of 3%. If you consider the amortization and the timing differences, mainly from derivatives that we book from an accounting point of view every quarter, we had actually an operational net income before amortization and improvement of the earnings per share of 16% on it. We think that's a good reflection also on how the operational EBIT has improved during the period. Turning to chart number 12, is the update on Thomas & Betts.
Integration is on track. We had a strong start in the year with stable revenues on roughly $590 million with about $100 million operational EBITDA. Margin at 16.6% versus 18.1% a year ago. That's against a strong comparable and also some of the mix impacts all in Thomas & Betts. Overall integration is well on track. We are starting to get the cost synergies and also some early signs of the revenue side. The special items on amortization stays unchanged from before, there's no change in the guidance on that side. Continuing to chart number 13, on the cash flow. You can here see that the divisional cash flow was lower than last year. That's mainly due to timing of project payments, as well as the cash impact from the PS reset. We have a seasonal effect on cash flow.
The first quarter is always weaker, this year was specifically even perhaps more weak than the normal cycle because of those effects. All in all, the net working capital is at 16.4%, we continue to work hard to improve this and foresee that we will have stronger cash flow in the coming quarters.
Moving on to chart 14, the technology innovation chart. We just wanted to show you just some of the products that have been successful for us recently. We announced a 1,000-kilowatt central solar inverter. When we do a deal, as we have with Power-One recently, as we had mentioned, we do it from a standpoint of really understanding the market better than we did three or four years ago. As we go into that acquisition, we understand the technology, the regions, some of the grid codes and different things it's responsible for, and that's why we feel we could accelerate our efforts there, that that acquisition made a lot of sense at this point in time. On the right-hand side, the launching of our first DC grid on a ship, a Norwegian offshore supply vessel.
This is where about 20% of the energy is saved, and a huge amount of cargo space is saved by going with DC. We're looking at translating that into other marine applications that are intermittent like this, that allow for that kind of technology. Our low voltage breaker, which is our Emax breaker, that's listed down below on the left-hand side. This is a product that we showed at the recent Hannover Messe, and it's an interesting product in the sense that it has 61850 code in it, a sense of communications of this, and being able to do different load shedding. It's kind of an obvious invention that really hasn't been done before, is to really combine load shedding with a breaker.
It got a huge amount of attention at the Hannover Messe because it can save energy prices and energy cost significantly in a short period of time. You do that because when the breaker's ready to break, it just says, "Hey, this load is going to overpower me, so why don't we reduce that and balance the load?" It's almost a monitoring system on a sub-segment level. We're pretty excited about this across the board, and some of the payback periods we see for customers are less than six months on this, so it gives us a good sales cycle too. On the right-hand side is a gearless conveyor mill drive. When we talk about some of the success we've had in the mining industry lately, some of it has been with gearless mill drives and also with mine hoist.
These are big pieces of mechanical equipment that ABB has very strong positions in. I think we're not looking at a lot of greenfield mining right now, given what's going on with commodities. What we do see in the mining industry is a strong push toward productivity and really sweating the assets that you have in those mines, and we feel we can play into that cycle pretty well. Moving to the next chart, which is the demand outlook into 2013. We really went by region here. I think as we look at some of the other competitors in our segment that are talking out there, we don't think we're materially different from what we're seeing out there in our market, too. In Americas, we give these arrows a kind of a slight up in power and automation, and we'll see how the market develops.
I think as we see the construction cycle in America begin to tick up, that gives us some hope, particularly on our shorter cycle businesses. On the European side, it is still uncertain. It is a two-speed economy. You saw the strength that we had in the eastern economies, but still pressure in the west. We will have to see how that develops. Middle East and Africa is mixed also, but we still see a pretty good spend from a power standpoint in the Middle East area, and then different resilience in parts of Africa, too. On the Asian side, we had a good quarter in China. We had some, I think, tough comparables in India, particularly on the power side, but automations is hanging in in that sense.
Overall, I think, again, the economies we are seeing right now are not a lot different from what we anticipated in our budgetary process. It is just an uncertain economy that is flat and maybe some momentum in some of the economies. We are prepared to execute in that environment. First quarter is pretty indicative of how we feel that we will be able to address it. The last chart, I think our outlook here just remains relatively unchanged. There is no clear sign in demand trends in the sense as we head into the second quarter of 2013 that would be materially different from what we have seen really in the fourth quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013.
Nevertheless, we feel good about our strategic position and our operation position, and we think that we can compete and perform very well in the economic cycle that we are encountering out there. With that, we will turn it over for any questions that you might have for Eric and me.
I can just add to say that we have added in the package on the web, the presentation package, also the divisional order backlog in the back. There has been questions during the day on that. It is now available on the web.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Ben Uglow from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hey. Afternoon, Joe. Afternoon, Eric. A couple of questions. First of all, can you give us a bit of general color on the order growth in China, both from the power and automation side, but actually, I'm most interested in what you're seeing in the kind of what I call the factory environment. I presume that low voltage is doing okay, but we've had very different messages over the last couple of weeks from Siemens with their automation business in China, who felt things were getting tougher, and Schneider, who felt things were bottoming out. I wondered what your take was on sort of classic factory automation demand in China during the quarter. That was question number 1. Question number 2, can you give us just a bit more of a sense of this mix effect in Thomas & Betts?
The reason being, the EBITDA margin has come down from over 18% to, I think it was at 16.5% on stable revenues.
What is it in Thomas & Betts' portfolio? Is there a product category or a particular driver that's leading to those slightly softer margins?
Hey, Ben, I'll start with the mix effect in T&B.
Okay.
Last year, they had a very good quarter. Remember, they didn't really consolidate until the second quarter of our side. They had a really good quarter in steel structures, and a higher margin, and significantly, versus this quarter. We're not in trouble. We're still in double digits in that business and all. It was just inordinately high last year. That's the biggest mix factor from quarter to quarter. What we see in that business from the electrical standpoint is very good. Again, we're seeing some increase in this construction cycle that is reflected in there also that helps. So that's it. When we mention mix, Ben, that's the biggest mix factor that I can give you that makes sense.
Okay. Does that continue throughout the year, Joe?
No, I don't believe so. We have a good, strong backlog in that business overall for about two or three years. It's just like in our Power Products division, Ben. There's some good margin in there, some bad margin. You kind of execute through it. We feel very confident that it'll perform on the level this year as it did last year in total.
Thank you.
Yep. I'll let Eric handle the China question.
Thank you. On our side, the Low Voltage business is showing some signs of improvement, but not so strong signs of improvement. Also on the Discrete Automation division as a whole, it is a positive development in China. Specifically robotics, it continues a strong trend in China.
Ben, I'm going to probably make a mistake here, but give you a little bit of color, okay?
Please do.
I'd say, when you look at Siemens portfolio, they're pretty strong in medium-voltage drives. They're biased in China, and they don't have a robotics platform, okay?
We're strong in low-voltage drives. We have a robotics platform. It's a really hard comparison when you look at the economic cycles across the two businesses. We're going to get different looks. Robotics continue to be strong in that area. In our low-voltage drives business, they have a little bit of life into it, this quarter versus what we had last year. I think it's a hard apples and apples comparison when Siemens says one thing and us another. It reflects a different part of the Chinese economy. When you're looking at, you said you want to understand the manufacturing base.
Those are two things in DM, robots and low-voltage drives, that I would tell you that would represent that segment of it pretty well.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Okay.
The next question comes from Andreas Willi from JPMorgan. Please go ahead, sir.
Andreas.
Yeah, good afternoon, gentlemen. Two questions, please. The first one on your outlook for the U.S. You, like other companies, are still more positive on the U.S. overall. Your arrows still point up for 2013. ABB, like many other industrial companies, actually had pretty weak Q1 orders or business trends in the U.S. You were down 12% organic, or 16% organic in the U.S. on orders. Maybe if you just give us your insights into what do you think is going on in the U.S. industrial and on the power side, and what is needed to turn that around. You say Q2 will not be very different. Are you banking on a big second half, basically, in the U.S.?
The second question, in terms of pricing on the transformer side or Power Products side, you talked this morning on the press call that kind of order pricing is still -2% to -3%, which is pretty similar than recent trends. With commodities now coming off and with products like transformers carrying a lot of copper or oil and steel, how are you going to communicate with the markets going forward, given kind of the change in focus you may get on net and gross pricing, given the commodity impact? Thank you.
Ben, on your first part on the U.S. economy, remember, we're all kind of feeling this thing right now, trying to figure out what it is. Let's say last year, we had a really good power performance in the first quarter. When you look at power to power, it was down. I don't think inherently there's a big change in the power market in the U.S. between the years. When you look at the CapEx that's projected from a utility standpoint in the United States, it stayed pretty stable from year to year. Andreas, I'm not down on it. I think on the power side, we should see a reasonable year there. I'm not talking about any big upsides in the second half or anything like that, but I would talk about stability there.
On the automation side, we really get a lot of our look through Baldor and T&B. In T&B, we saw stronger orders in the second part of March. We saw a lot of weakness in January and the early parts of February. Andreas, again, I'm going to speculate for you. You can do with what you want to with it. There's a couple of things you have to consider from a macroeconomic standpoint, because one is toward the end of the year last year. I think there's a lot of gymnastics going on with companies in the sense of trying to maximize some R&D credits. Taxes were going to change in the United States. We were anticipating a lot of those things.
I think that, to a certain extent, contributed to some of the weaknesses we saw in some of the figures in January and February. It's a guess, Andreas, okay?
The first quarter last year was a very strong quarter.
Yeah.
You have to keep that in mind also.
Yep. Secondly, I'd say, I think all the mess in the U.S. on the sequester and everything else, it just creates a level of anxiety and concern there that I think it helps to mute a construction cycle that started to gain some momentum in the second half of last year that we were hoping for. I think we're all just kind of in a wait-and-see mode right now. We talk about the U.S., too. We have to include Canada because the significant amount of business we do in Canada, too. Frankly, Canada was weak overall in the first part, but again, we saw in March a pickup in our Canadian business. Right now, I'd say we're just cautious.
If I had to guess anything, Andreas, I'd say, think of kind of trajecting a flat line out, and we're trying to figure out what's the amplitude of this line. Is it going to start to increase as we go through the year or not? We don't know. We're just prepared to deal with it any way that it does go. Okay. Eric, on the PP pricing, do you-
Yeah, I'll take the PP pricing. I think we'd rather have a 2% than the 2%-3% as we quoted earlier today. Somewhere in that region, rather 2% than 3%.
When you ask about how we're going to handle the decrease in copper prices and remember, on the copper side, we're hedging ourselves out on transformers and stuff for on large power transformers for the large group. That'll take a while to kind of work through our backlog. It's not like we're just playing the market from quarter to quarter. On the steel side, I don't know that we've seen any real significant reductions in recycled steel in our contracts. That'll begin to come up in the second quarter of this year when we renew those.
Thank you very much.
Okay, Andreas.
The next question comes from Mark Troman from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.
Hey, Mark. Mark, we have a tough time hearing you. You on speakerphone or something?
Let's try that. Is that better?
Yeah, it's a lot better.
Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Good afternoon, Joe and Eric. Just two questions, please. Firstly, follow up on pricing, because there's always a lot of questions on pricing. Joe, could you just kind of describe what's going on in the overall market on pricing? To follow up on that, I was interested in your comments about being selective, if you like, especially within the Power Products division. Firstly, what's going on in the overall market? Secondly, how can you differentiate away from those market trends, I guess, and be more selective? Give a few examples of that and what's going on. Second question, mining. You put some examples in the pack, like mill drives and things. Obviously, mining is a tough market on the OE side for a lot of the equipment suppliers, and we're seeing greenfield weakness, clearly.
Yeah.
What gives you confidence you can kind of keep going in the mining area? Is it a low penetration or just you're offering good paybacks on the sort of productivity you're offering? I'm just intrigued to hear what your thoughts are on how you can sell well in the mining space.
Yeah. I'll just start, Mark, on the mining side, just to stay there. I don't claim to say that I can see the future in this sense, but we've been pleased with the level of CapEx that we've seen in these kinds of things like mine hoist and gearless mill drives. Remember, they're around ore bodies, so you'll see it specifically around copper, around nickel, things that have been precious. Even though the cost or the price have come down from a commodity standpoint, they're still at historical reasonable highs from a return standpoint. What the mining companies tell us are the ore bodies are not as rich in the specific minerals as what they've had in the past, so they have to pound them harder to get them out, and that's what a gearless mill drive does.
Just takes a bunch of rocks and cracks them up and take it down to the ore body, and then you distill it. Mine hoist just means you're going lower or you're venting your mine. It just says that they're working the mines harder. I think we've seen the whole issue with the write-offs of what went on in the mining industry last year, the changing of a lot of the CEOs and leadership there, and I think the leadership teams that are put in place around the mine companies today. I'm not talking, Mark, at all about coal. Okay? Coal has its own separate cycle. I'm talking about ore. I think the leadership that's in place is really dedicated into sweating assets more, not doing greenfield, being more responsible from an operational standpoint. Am I optimistic we can keep this going?
I'm not telling you I am or not. I'm just reporting on our performance so far and the reason for it and some of the underlying drivers for it, and we certainly hope that it does. On the pricing, the overall market. On Power Products and selectivity, I guess what I can just tell you is one of the things that we have talked to you guys a lot about is the difference of Power Products because of the breadth of our product line and the breadth of the geography that we compete in. We see a lot of the market, and we often see, I think, a lot more of the market than our competitors do because of that footprint and that vision. Through that, we've rationalized our capacity. We're very careful in the sense of from a productivity standpoint on these assets.
We're just careful in the sense of what we let in the door, we get to see more of what we can let in the door in that sense, we tend to try to pick the things that we know that we can make and with a reasonable margin. As long as the markets stay at the levels that they are, it gives us the ability to be more selective in that sense. Eric, you know that.
Yeah.
Any thoughts on this?
That's exactly what we are doing.
Okay, great. Just one follow-up. On the cost out program, Joe, I guess over the years now, it's building up to be a big number. How long can this keep going, this sort of 3%-5% of COGS or $1 billion? Is there still plenty of headroom, or is it all market-driven? How should we think about that?
No, it's not all market-driven. It's a lot of it, as we've talked about before, like we did at the Capital Markets Day last year. We look out two or three years on these projects, particularly with OpEx, what we have to do in order to drive that kind of productivity. This year on the sourcing side, we hit indirect costs a lot harder than we did last year. We have more visibility to it. We're getting more following in that sense. Again, in this strategic period, out to 2015, we have very good visibility to be able to keep driving this, and I'd like to just hold that vision out to 2015, and there's nothing that tells us we're going to fall off a cliff after 2015 either, okay? We still think there's a lot of opportunity in the business. Eric, you-
Yeah, as I also recently said in one of the investor meetings, about half of it is supply chain and about half of it is operational excellence. You have to see that operational excellence also include the cost reductions that come from redesign of products. That's, of course, a continuous activity that's going over time. We are very confident with this 3%-5%. In times of a big economic upswing, it will be more difficult to push the supply side of it. On average, that's what we see.
Brilliant. Thanks very much.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from Daniela Costa from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, madam.
Thank you. One of the questions actually follow up to your comments on raw material, which you commented for power. I was wondering, extending it also to the shorter cycle areas, if some of the movements we have seen, not also on copper, but in things like silver, which over the past were big headwinds, if they actually could be somewhat of tailwinds as we go towards the rest of the year. The second thing on the Japanese yen topic, you talked about last quarter that you really were not seeing much changes in terms of the Japanese players, but could also use some sub-supply from Japan as an advantage. I'm wondering if anything has changed on that or if you have taken advantage of more sub-supply from Japan given where the currency has continued to move. Thank you.
I can take the copper and the raw material and silver, as you mentioned. Yes, there has been some downward pressure on those commodities, but also in the automation business, in motors and in low-voltage products where we use the silver mostly, we also hedge it. This will come over time, and we balance this over time, and we are not speculating on any of those. There will not be any real windfalls out of it. Where there will be some tailwind over a period of time, that could be, depending on how the prices are developing. The forecast, of course, looking out for the rest of the year and into next year is not conclusive where those commodities will go, given where the growth will go mainly in Asia.
I think the China recovery is going to have a lot to do with how the commodity cycle goes. I think that's the main driver, as you all know. On your question about the Japanese yen, nothing really has changed from what we saw, what we reported on before. I haven't seen our competition acting in a different way in the sense of their pricing piece. Companies like Fanuc, from a robotics standpoint, are very disciplined, and I don't think you'd see it in them. I watch it more in the Japanese competitors from a Power Products standpoint, and I haven't seen any indication of that yet. Remember, these dollar to yen ratios are not historically, obviously the yen has been a much higher in that sense, but from an overall historical standpoint, we've seen these kind of yen levels before.
I think it's just taken some of the pressure off the Japanese exports, but I don't think it's a phase change at all.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from Simon Toennessen from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hey, Simon.
Hi, Joe. Hi, Eric. Just two questions. The first one on Power Products. I believe your Power Products margins was positively impacted by a good medium-voltage performance, particularly in the last month of Q1, which I believe your medium-voltage business is generating above 15% margins. Are you seeing sort of similar trends into the second quarter as well? The second question is on your order backlog in general. You're flagging the strong order backlog, particularly in Discrete on the robotics side. Can you talk a bit more about all of the automation businesses and in case of ongoing short cycle momentum staying weaker for longer, how long do you think your order backlog across the automation businesses can sort of protect your organic revenue development?
On the first part of your question on the PP medium-voltage performance margins, I'm not going to tell you if you're right or wrong on our margins, but it's a good guess. I'd say that medium voltage is our shortest cycle business within the Power Products side. It's always really tough to call quarter to quarter where it's going to land. The advice that I would give to the investing community right now is I don't see a significant difference or a change in demand pattern as we go into the second quarter. I don't see a big difference one way or another. When it comes to the order backlog from an automation standpoint, I think Eric's got a lot of experience there. I'll turn it over to him.
As I said earlier on the call, we have added a chart on the division backlog in the back of the pile to be looked at. What you can see there is that the backlog is quite stable, basically on the same level as last year. In local currencies, it's actually up by 2%, with a bit of variation between the different divisions. PP is 2%, PS is -2%, Discrete is -2%. Overall, we have still a positive book to build, we are not so worried with the inflow for the load. Discrete for instance, has a backlog of $4.5 billion at the end of the quarter. It's a substantial part of the business that is in the backlog, even on Discrete Automation.
The quality of this backlog has also been improving in the Power side, which of course, will help us longer term, not in the next quarters, but longer term on the quarters.
Great. Thanks.
The next question comes from Jeffrey Sprague from Vertical Research Partners. Please go ahead.
Hey, Jeff.
Hey, Joe. Good morning or good afternoon. Just a couple follow-up questions. First on PS, the margin execution out of the gate first quarter after the reset was a little bit better than I was expecting. I just wonder what we should expect there as the year unfolds. Is there other stuff in the backlog that maybe presents a little bit of a setback on the journey to improvement or anything else just to be aware of as we think about how that rolls out?
Sure. Jeff, on that, look, we were pleased with that. It really was good project execution. As you indicate in your question, you have to start with a reasonable margin to be able to execute well in that sense. As we go through the year, what we had promised on the reset as we move into the fourth quarter of this year, that we'll be in the 9% range. We're still committed to that. Just 83% was a little higher than what we thought. We're going to encounter some pressure from backlog as we go through the year. I tell you, don't expect an increase on this margin or this being a consistent margin as we move into the next few quarters. We do have some pressure in that sense. Again, it's how we execute.
It's also how some base orders come through in this business, too, that are shorter cycles, that can happen, and we can ship. It is a good indication of our strategy, Jeff, and why we were confident last year in making the changes that we did, and we're still very confident of reaching that 9% by the end of the year.
Great. Just then two quick follow-ups. Just back on the PP pricing. Is the down to both the order price and the revenue price, if there's some distinction, if you could flesh that out? I'm wondering if you could just share with us what your actual China sales performance was in the quarter, up or down, sideways.
For Power Products? Go ahead, Eric.
Let me take the pricing question first. We have a 2% in the order side in the first quarter, maybe a little bit more than 2%, but somewhere around 2%, count on that. On the revenue side, it's somewhere between 4% and 5% in the quarter.
Thank you.
From history.
Power Products, you're asking, Jeff, for Power Products shipments, revenues in the-
I'm just thinking total ABB in China in the quarter. You gave us the order number. Can you give us the revenue number?
4%.
4%.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome. See you, Jeff.
The next question comes from Sebastian Kuenne from Societe Generale. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Two questions, if I may. First, on the service and the gross margin, it was quite strong in the quarter, up almost 200 basis points quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. Were there specific positive mix impact in that quarter, or do you think this is a new sustainable level for the service business? My second question will be about base orders down 5% organically in the quarter. Were there any meaningful change between January, February, and March for this data? Thank you.
We're going to scramble for a second to grab you what you need here, Sebastian.
Okay. On the first one?
Yeah. That's a work stuff. No, we're aware of that.
Yeah. What you say is the gross margin is up, that's also because of mix in service. We have lower content of full service, it's a mix between the divisions. Quite different margin levels also on service. Some are extremely good, and some are still good. When that mix comes out, it comes out slightly better with the gross margin on service.
[inaudible], Go ahead.
Yeah. Just do you think this is a sustainable level, 37% gross margin for the service as you improve the mix?
We are striving to drive up the margins in service like in all other places, we hope that that is close to it. There will always be a slight difference quarter by quarter.
Yeah. There's a lot of mix in services, when you look systemically, we're going to be pulling more and more full service out of that portfolio. I can't tell you we're going to maintain the margin that you saw. You're going to see some mix around it, our trend will be to try to drive it up.
Okay, thank you.
On the base orders, your question on the base order piece, I'd say that it was better in March, than it was in January and February.
Okay, thanks.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from James Moore from Redburn Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, James.
Hi, Joe. Hi, Eric.
James.
I've got three questions. On the PS business, I saw the orders have been weak for the last three quarters. I'm just wondering if that's the market or your selectivity. In other words, are you giving up about a fifth of revenues, making no money? Is that kind of the way it's working for the reset? On the net working capital, I see we've moved up to the 16.5 level and against the 13.5, is this just seasonality, and do you feel you're on track there, and when do you think we can think about 13.5? On the savings, look, I don't want to be overly mathematical, but unless I'm mistaken, if we take 4%, the midpoint of your 3% to 5% COGS, it's more like $1.1 billion, $1.2 billion than it is $1 billion zero.
Should we think about $1.1 billion, $1.2 billion this year or more like $1 billion zero?
I love you, man.
Becoming an accountant.
Well, Eric's rifling through this thing. I'll give you the PS piece. On PS, it's a little bit of both. Remember, PS can live and die on large orders. James, we missed Darwin Two, that offshore platform. Look, we lost that. We priced ourselves out of it. We knew what we were doing, and that was a selectivity thing on our part.
We've had enough offshoring that since. What we saw with base orders on PS has actually got better in March than we had again in January and February. That's the best thing to watch. I'd say this is not a linear kind of approach. You're going to see this fluctuate up and down depending on what we're bidding on. I'd say the biggest changes that we're making have to do with substations and how we quote on substations, and also in grid systems, in some of the grid pieces. That's where we're making most of these kinds of selective decisions on our end right now. I think you'll see it, James, begin to kind of equal out and solidify over the next few quarters as we do that.
Okay.
On the net working capital, I'm going to give that one completely to Eric and see what he says.
Yeah. We were at 13.8 at the end of last year, which was a quite good achievement comparing to the earlier quarter in 2012. The guidance has been to be somewhere between 11 and 14. Given the economic situation, I think it's rather in the upper end of that range at present, and that's where we landed last year. The 16 we have now is a seasonal situation.
It was higher in the first quarter. We are working hard to improve that seasonality, but it will never go away completely. We feel quite confident that we will be able to bring it down towards the end of the year in line with we have done the earlier years.
Okay, thanks.
James, on the savings side, I'd just say, look, we try to drive all we can from an overall standpoint, and we've guided you toward $1 billion. Will it be $1.1 billion or $1.2 billion? It's too early in the game to tell you, but I'd say the weaker the economic activity out there, the more chance that we have to push on the SDM side. I wouldn't necessarily equate that to upside if it happens, because that just means our demand patterns are going to be reflected by that kind of a thing, too. I think if you're trying to plug the spreadsheet right now, I'd stay on $1 billion.
Okay. Just to come back on the PS. Just to think of it a different way. If we look back in a couple of years' time and say, how much of the PS revenue did you kind of exit from the reset, could you give us a rough feeling?
I think when you look at the 2015 plan, we took out $4 billion, we made it up completely in margin. You ended up net the same on a margin standpoint.
It's sort of going according to that plan is kind of what I'm getting at, as you see yourself working, getting into it.
Yeah. Honestly, James, you know it's a guess, right?
Yeah.
We took $4 billion out. We took our best bet on what that might mean, so far, it's playing out that way. We'll just report on it quarter-to-quarter. I think that's the best we can tell you right now.
Great. Thanks, guys.
All right.
The next question comes from Olivier Eprono from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, Olivier.
Hello, good afternoon. A few questions, please. Coming back to the Power System business, the actual organic sales growth has been quite volatile, up double digit, down, up again. Since it's such a backlogged business, can you maybe indicate what sort of organic sales growth profile we should put in for the year? The second question is on the LP business. There's a nice margin improvement this quarter. You mentioned cost control and capacity utilization. Actually, there's very little organic growth this quarter. I was wondering, is there just an extra net price gain or most of the savings accruing to significantly more than usual to that division? How can we better understand the performance breach here in LP? And maybe lastly, I looked at the organic order growth. I mean, the actual order growth for service. It's down this quarter.
It hasn't been down for quite some time. I know you're exiting bad business here as well, but it's not something you started this quarter. Can you give a bit more of a sense of what was driving that down, and how we should think about it for the rest of the year? Thank you.
I guess we'll start the orders growth. We'll just take them backwards, right?
Yeah.
On the order growth for services, it was down, and some of it was mixed because of full service being down year-over-year. We were pleased about, though, it's roughly 19% or 20% of revenue overall. From an order standpoint, now first quarter usually comes in that way, so it's not a big difference. We don't see a material change in our services business that's really driving this across the board. We have to really take it business by business. Full service, as we push that down, you're going to see some of these fluctuations at times. Don't look at that as We don't in any way feel that we have a systemic issue in services, and we continue on our strategy to push services to 20% of revenue during this strategic period.
On the sales growth, we have to back up to the organic sales growth for PS. When you say organic, when we look overall, if we land a few big jobs this year, we could have a significant increase in Power Systems. Right now, we run it in an idea that we're looking at Power Systems orders about flat for the year. We'll have to see. That can really swing based on how large orders are between a half a billion and a billion and a half could come in. Your other question about LP, I think to be honest, we have really favorable comparisons this year. We had a very difficult quarter in the first quarter of last year. We had some operational issues in Italy. We had the China issue on orders.
When you look at that margin gain, I feel a lot of it has to do with, we had business disruption last year, and this year we have more continuity. I wouldn't look at it as a big change in the sense of how we're operating.
There is also some positive price impacts in LP.
Yeah.
Positive price. Maybe.
Not big numbers, but some positive.
That's true. Yeah.
Okay, thank you. Maybe just to follow on PS. I was more thinking about organic sales growth. Are you saying that even the sales figure for the year is quite dependent on some orders you could take during the year?
You're looking at the revenues on the orders now, or?
I was thinking about the organic sales growth for PS for this year. That was my question, and so I want to make sure if you can guide on that.
As you could see in the first quarter, we had a 15% sales growth increase.
The previous quarter was down four, for example.
Yeah. Then, of course, it depends on
It's been quite volatile
timing of the backlog, I think based on the backlog, we should expect to have an increase in PS during this year in sales.
Yeah.
You have to see then that quite a bit of that has to do with the old order backlog, with very low-margin orders that are going through also.
Right. It wasn't visible in Q1, the low-margin backlog.
That's correct.
Yeah.
Part of it was there, but it's different the time during the year. That's come a bit lumpy between the quarters.
Right. Okay. A small increase, yeah? Okay. Thank you.
Olivier, the way you look at that too is just remember, we'll be at 9% in this business from a margin standpoint in the fourth quarter. We're working our way through this reset. There's still some backlog stuff we have to really get through.
Okay, thank you.
Okay.
The next question comes from William Mackie from Berenberg Bank. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, William.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you. Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Great. Three questions, please. Firstly, quite big order declines in three of your key markets in Europe, in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland there. Could you throw a bit more light on how that fell between the divisions, and what the implications may be for the business outlook in the second or third quarters? On Power Products, if I could come back to that, I recall during the quarter that you had cautioned that the margins could fall weaker in the business, it seems that they're pretty much stable with the fourth quarter results. What was it that surprised you in there? Was it just this medium voltage that you commented on earlier, or was there something else that moved in your favor? Lastly, I know it's not one of your big areas, but I think it's been profitable.
In the Middle East, you seem to imply that excluding South Africa, the Middle East was down. A number of other competitors have reported very strong market conditions in the Middle East for a number of your end segments. Is that something to do with your decision-making centrally or within the region, or is there a mixed effect that implied that the rest of the Middle East was down on an order perspective? Thanks.
Starting with the Middle East, I'd say, we live and die in the Middle East on large orders, Will. I wouldn't take the first quarter as any indication of the Middle East being up or down. It's just the way our orders cycle in that sense. It's been broadly a big power market for us, and that's why. I talk about substations, and sometimes we land substations, sometimes we don't, and that would be the biggest swing on that end. On the P Side, I'd say primarily the difference is medium voltage. We have limited visibility sometimes. It's our shorter cycle business, and it was stronger than it was before. I think, Eric, that's from what I've seen, if you would agree, it's the primary driver.
That's the primary driver. There are some other mixed issues, too, but that's the primary driver.
On your question on Europe is a good one. Obviously, we saw some big weakness in Italy and Switzerland and also Germany. How that washes out by product line, Eric's got some data.
Yeah. Just to give you some flavor without going in deep detail, in some of the countries it had to do with fairly low power orders against high comparables. I think we can say overall that it is a lot of headwind in those large markets today.
Could you elaborate a little bit more? I think in the release you comment about the motors and drives comp business for DM seeing particular weakness. Is that something which has shifted in the last few weeks, or how do you feel about that going into the next quarter?
In general, they are in a stable trend overall, again, in their case also from their perspective, larger orders, which is not hundreds of millions, but larger orders from their perspective. Sometimes they fall in Italy, sometimes they fall in France, sometimes they fall in Germany. That's why I try to summarize the answer. Yes, there is for instance, in some European countries, lower demand than a year ago. There was also high comparables in some of those countries, like for instance, in Germany in the first quarter of last year.
Well, I wouldn't draw a line through this one. I think we're just going to have to live from quarter to quarter here for a while and see what happens in Northern Europe.
You have seen the list of countries there with pluses and minuses. We had a similar list the quarter before, you have fairly big swings in the percentages there too, they were different countries. I think the message is we have been able to keep Europe flat, both as a whole, also for automation, respectively power on total. There are quite big swings between the countries, that's also the nature of the business. I think you will also see that we have some good numbers in the eastern part of Europe, which helps us with our widespread footprint we have now in Europe.
All right, Will.
Thank you.
Yep, thanks. One more question.
The last question for today comes from [Tings Tettner] from [Canaccord Genuity ]. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, James.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Automation's now 60% of total revenue. Where would you ideally like to see the breakdown between automation power, let's say, over the next 5 years? That's question number 1. Secondly, can you talk a bit about pricing trends outside of power, in particular, for example, in the area of motors? Finally, are you seeing any change in terms of conditions in terms of customer advances in large projects?
First of all, from an automation standpoint, look, what we've done in automation versus power is this hasn't been a conscious diversification to try to move the power side down. The acquisitions have been a lot easier for us in automation because it's a more fragmented industry, and it's broader. Frankly, we have less antitrust issues there too, so it was easy. The power market's declined a little bit too, so that hasn't helped. Ideally, seeing this thing fluctuate in the 55-45 range, and you're going to see ranges of 10% or so go over time. Some of them are long cycle, mid-cycle, and shorter cycle businesses. I think 60/40 is kind of on the extremes of what we would want to see and what I would expect to see overall in the portfolio.
On the pricing for motors, I'm not aware of any increased intensity on motor pricing in any geography. Eric, are you?
No. I think, in general, the pricing in automation, let's make it more general than motor specifically, has been stable over the quarter. There is some areas of slight declines and some areas of improvement, but, overall, quite stable.
Your last question, James?
Customer prepayments, any changes there?
I haven't seen a big change.
No
Between this year and the first quarter of last year.
There's no big change in the pattern. We are still getting advances.
Great. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, James. Okay. That concludes our call. Thanks again for your interest. We're pleased with the operation performance of the quarter and also strategically where we stand. As we mentioned, we face an uncertain economy, I think as you see with our other competitors too, I want to express Eric and my confidence that the teams are up for this, and we're ready to push hard to perform well in this current situation. Thanks for your interest, and we'll be back to you at the end of the second quarter.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing conference call. For those who participated in the conference,