Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Cummins Incorporated first quarter 2016 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question- and- answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star then zero on your touch-tone telephone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Mark Smith, Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.
Thank you, Kaylee. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our teleconference today to discuss Cummins results for the first quarter of 2016. Participating with me today are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Linebarger, our Chief Financial Officer, Pat Ward, our President and Chief Operating Officer, Rich Freeland. We will all be available for your questions at the end of the teleconference.
Before we start, please note that some of the information that you will hear or be given today will consist of forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such statements express our forecasts, expectations, hopes, beliefs, and intentions on strategies regarding the future. Our actual future results could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements because of a number of risks and uncertainties.
More information regarding such risks and uncertainties is available in the forward-looking disclosure statement in the slide deck, and our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly the risk factors section of our most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and subsequently filed quarterly reports.
During the course of this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures and we refer you to our website for the reconciliation of those measures to GAAP financial measures. Our press release with a copy of the financial statement and a copy of today's webcast presentation are available on our website at cummins.com under the heading of Investors and Media. Now I'll turn it over to our Chairman and CEO, Tom Linebarger.
Thank you for that warm introduction, Mark. Good morning, everybody. I'll start with a summary of our first quarter results and provide an update on our outlook for the full year. Pat will then take you through more details of both our first quarter financial performance and our forecasts for the full year. Revenues for the first quarter were $4.3 billion, a decrease of 9% compared to the first quarter of 2015. First quarter EBIT was $484 million, or 11.3% of sales, compared to $562 million or 11.9% in the same quarter last year.
Our decremental EBIT margin was 19%, as the benefits of restructuring actions, improved quality, lower material costs all helped mitigate the impact of lower sales. Engine business revenues decreased by 10% year-over-year due to lower demand in the North American heavy-duty truck market and weaker sales to global off-highway and Power Generation markets. Shipments of high-horsepower engines declined by 20% and reached the second lowest quarterly total in the past 12 years. EBIT of 8.6% of sales declined from 9.7% a year ago, as strong operational performance from our manufacturing plants and benefits from restructuring material cost reduction initiatives and improved quality were offset by the impact of lower volumes.
Revenues in our Components segment decreased 5% from a year ago, with lower demand in North America, more than offsetting growth in China. Sales in China increased by 27%, outpacing our end markets as we continue to capitalize on tighter emissions regulations and capture increased content and market share. EBIT of $173 million or 14% of sales declined from $195 million or 15% due to the impact of lower volumes and currency. Distribution revenues decreased by 1% compared to the first quarter of 2015.
The negative impact of currency and weaker sales to off-highway markets more than offset the positive impact of acquisitions made in the second half of 2015. EBIT for the quarter of 6.5% improved from 6% a year ago, with operational improvements more than offsetting the negative impact of currency. In the Power Generation business, revenues declined by 19% year-over-year, with weaker sales in most markets, especially Asia and Latin America. EBIT declined from 7.2%- 5.6% as the impact of lower sales more than offset a 17% reduction in operating expenses.
The first quarter is typically the weakest quarter for revenues in the Power Generation business, and we do expect sales and margins to improve in subsequent quarters due to improving order intake in Europe and North America. Over the past three months, we've announced plans to further rationalize our manufacturing footprint, including the closure of an alternator facility in Mexico, a generator assembly plant in India, and the exit of generator set assembly operations in Kent, England.
These actions will start to generate savings in the second half of 2016, with additional savings in 2017 and 2018, and should help us stay ahead of any further risk of declining volumes. I will comment on some of our key markets, starting with North America. Our revenues in North America declined by 10% in the first quarter due to weaker demand in off-highway markets, especially heavy-duty truck. Shipments to the North American heavy-duty truck market exceeded 16,000 units in the first quarter, a decrease of 33% from 2015 levels. First quarter market share was 29%.
We have lowered our projection for full-year industry production to 210,000 units at the midpoint of our guidance, down from our prior forecast of 22,000 units, as slower freight activity has contributed to weak industry orders and higher dealer inventories. We currently expect our market share to be in the range of 27%-30% for the year, down from our prior forecast of 30%-33%, as Daimler has reduced the number of engines that it plans to order from Cummins and Navistar's market share has declined.
In the medium-duty truck market, we delivered almost 22,000 engines in the first quarter, down 13% from last year. Our market share in the first quarter was 78% down from 80% a year ago when we completed our final shipments to Ford. We expect full-year industry production to be 123,000 units, down 1% compared to 2015, and our market share to be 75%, unchanged from our prior forecast. Our engine shipments to North American pickup truck OEMs increased by 29% in the first quarter. Shipments to Chrysler increased 9% to more than 34,000 units, the highest first quarter volume in 10 years.
Sales also increased to Nissan following the launch of our 5 L V8 engine in the fourth quarter last year. We currently expect our revenues in the pickup segment to increase by 12% in 2015, unchanged from our prior forecast. Our engine revenues from the North American construction market decreased by 9% compared to the first quarter last year. While housing and commercial construction activity remains positive, demand for new equipment from rental companies has declined due to a slowdown in business in the oil and gas market.
Power generation revenues declined 4% in North America in the first quarter due to lower orders from data center customers. We expect full-year revenues in North America to be flat to up 2% as order rates have improved this year following the weak close to 2015. Our international revenues declined by 8% year-over-year, with weaker sales in Latin America and Asia driving the decline. First quarter revenues in China, including joint ventures, were $ 767 million, a decrease of 5% due to the negative impact of the depreciation of the RMB against the U.S. dollar and weaker demand for power generation equipment.
Industry demand for heavy and medium-duty trucks in China increased by 9% in the first quarter. We continued to increase our penetration at Foton, which is now at 74%, up from 55% a year ago, and at Dongfeng, which is up more than 5%- 50%. Our overall market share was over 15% in the first quarter, down slightly from a year ago as both Dongfeng and Foton adopted a more cautious start to the year than some of their competitors and underproduced relative to the overall industry.
We still expect that our share will reach 18% for the year as our partners increase production and sales more in line with the industry and our penetration continues to grow. We currently forecast full-year industry sales to decline by 4%, unchanged from our previous forecast. Industry demand for the first quarter was stronger than expected, but visibility to demand in the second half is limited, and we believe it is prudent to be cautious about market improvement.
Shipments of our light-duty engines in China grew 9% in the first quarter compared to 3% decline for the overall market as we increased penetration at Foton, displacing local competitor engines. Our share of the overall market reached 7% in the first quarter, up from 6% a year ago. We currently project industry sales to decline by 4% for the year, again unchanged from three months ago. Our power generation revenues decreased by 27% year-over-year compared to a strong quarter a year ago.
Sales weakened in the second half of 2015 as the industrial economy slowed, and we haven't seen any signs of improvement yet. Industry sales of excavators in China increased by 15% in the first quarter as OE dealers pushed sales of tier two inventory ahead of the transition to tier three emission standards that came into force in April. Overall numbers of excavators sold though remains low, and while there is little downside risk left, there is no obvious catalyst for significant growth in the near term. Full-year revenues in China across all segments, including joint ventures, are expected to be flat for the year, consistent with our view three months ago, with no major changes to any of our market assumptions.
First quarter revenues in India, including joint ventures, were $309 million, up 7% year-over-year, primarily due to recovery in the Indian truck market. Industry demand in the truck market increased 25% compared to the first quarter a year ago as the economy continues to improve. Our market share in the first quarter was 38%, down from 39%, due to stronger growth in sales of vehicles below 10 tons in weight, where our penetration in the market is lower.
We now expect industry truck production to increase 10% for the year, up from our prior forecast of 8% growth. Power generation revenues in India declined 1% in the first quarter with a weaker rupee offsetting 3% growth in volumes. We currently project full-year revenues, including joint ventures, to be flat to up 2%, with higher domestic volumes largely offset by the depreciation of rupee against the U.S. dollar. First quarter revenues in Brazil were $72 million, down 42% from the first quarter last year with the economy in recession and the real having depreciated a further 16% against the U.S. dollar.
Industry truck production fell 36% year-over-year, while our engine shipments declined 35%. Revenues in all of our businesses were lower than a year ago due to the economic challenges in the region. We currently expect a full-year decline of 20% in industry truck production, with slightly easier comparisons to come in the second half of the year. Let me now make a few comments on high horsepower markets. As I said in my opening remarks, volumes are extremely weak, with the first quarter's volumes down 20% due to lower demand in commercial marine, mining, and power generation markets.
New orders in the U.S. oil and gas market are very scarce. We expect full-year shipments of high horsepower engines to decline by 6%, helped by growth in sales of our new QSK95 liter engine and easier comparisons in the second half of the year. We were very pleased to receive EPA tier four final certification for our QSK95 engine for rail applications recently, allowing us to win some important business in the high-speed passenger rail market.
In summary, we currently expect company revenues to decrease between 5% and 9% for the year, unchanged from three months ago. We did lower our outlook for heavy-duty truck production in North America offset by an additional North American distributor acquisition and a less negative impact from currency than our forecast from three months ago. We expect EBIT to be in the range of 11.6%-12.2% for the year, consistent with our prior forecast. We made solid progress in executing our cost reduction plans in the first quarter, and every organization throughout Cummins remains focused on driving further productivity and cost improvements.
As one example, starting in April, we combined our power generation segment and high-horsepower engine business into a newly formed segment called Power Systems. This reorganization will consolidate two businesses that are already strongly interdependent and will allow us to streamline business and technical processes to accelerate innovation in those markets, to grow market share, and more efficiently manage our supply chain and manufacturing operations. Dave Crompton, previously leader of the Engine Business, is now leading the new Power Systems segment, and Srikanth Padmanabhan heads the remaining Engine Business.
Tracy Embree and Tony Satterthwaite will continue to lead Components and Distribution segments, respectively. Finally, we returned $745 million to shareholders in the first quarter through dividends and the execution of our accelerated share repurchase program, consistent with our plan to return approximately 75% of our operating cash flow to shareholders in 2016. Thank you for your interest today. Now I'll turn it over to Pat, who will cover our first quarter results and full year guidance in more detail.
Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. First quarter revenues were $4.3 billion, a decrease of 9% from a year ago, with currency movements reducing our sales by 3%. Sales in North America, which represented 61% of our first quarter revenues, declined 10% from a year ago, due primarily to lower demand in North American truck markets and continued weakness in industrial markets. International sales declined by 8% as a result of lower demand in Power Generation and industrial markets and the impact of the stronger U.S. dollar. Gross margins were 24.6% of sales, a decline of 80 basis points from a year ago.
Lower volumes and an unfavorable product mix were partially offset by improvements in material costs and warranty expenses and the benefits from the restructuring actions. Selling, admin, and research and development expense of $656 million, or 15.3% of sales, decreased $56 million from a year ago after taking restructuring actions in the fourth quarter of last year. This was 20 basis points higher as a percent of sales due to lower revenues. Joint venture income of $72 million increased by $4 million compared to a year ago.
Results in the first quarter a year ago included an impairment of our investment in an off-highway joint venture, which did not repeat. Earnings before interest and tax were $484 million, or 11.3% of sales for the quarter, compared to 11.9% of sales last year, and this equates a decremental EBIT margin of 19%. Net earnings for the quarter were $321 million, or $1.87 per diluted share, compared to $387 million or $2.14 per share from a year ago.
The effective tax rate for the quarter was 28.4%. I will now highlight the performance of the individual operating segments during the first quarter. In the Engine segment, revenues were $2.3 billion, a decrease of 10% from last year. Industrial revenues declined by 13% from weak global demand for engines in marine, mining, and oil and gas markets. On-highway revenues decreased 8% as production in the North American heavy-duty truck market declined compared to a year ago. Segment EBIT was $200 million, or 8.6% of sales, compared to 9.7% last year.
The benefits of the restructuring actions, material cost savings, and lower warranty expense were more than offset by lower volumes and an unfavorable product mix, primarily from a reduction in North American heavy- and medium-duty truck volumes and a 20% reduction in high-horsepower engine shipments. For the Distribution segment, first-quarter revenues were $1.5 billion, a decrease of 1% compared to the prior year. Foreign currency movements negatively impacted sales by 4%, where organic sales declined by 5%, with lower sales in North American off-highway markets more than offsetting growth in China and in Europe.
Acquisitions added 8% to revenues. EBIT margins for the quarter increased from 6%- 6.5%, despite a 70 basis point unfavorable impact from foreign currency. Excluding the currency impact, margins improved by 120 basis points due to the benefits of restructuring, a stronger mix of aftermarket revenues, and positive pricing. The Components segment recorded sales of $1.2 billion, a decrease of 5% from a year ago. Sales in China increased in the first quarter by 27%, which helped partially offset the decline from lower heavy-duty truck production in North America and the negative impact of foreign currency.
Segment EBIT was $173 million or 14% of sales, compared to 50% of sales a year ago, as lower volumes, unfavorable pricing, and currency more than offset the benefits of material cost reductions and restructuring actions. In the Power Generation segment, first-quarter sales were $550 million, down 19% from last year. International sales declined 27%, with Asia and South America experiencing the largest decline year-over-year due to the slow pace of investment in infrastructure projects. EBIT margins were 5.6% in the quarter, down from 7.2% last year. The benefits from the restructuring actions and lower material costs partially offset the impact of the volume decline and helped keep decremental margins to 14%.
For the company, cash flow from operations was $263 million, better than the same quarter last year by $90 million due to lower working capital requirements as sales declined. As we indicated at the beginning of the year, we plan to return approximately 75% of cash generated from operations to our shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases this year. During the first quarter, we repurchased 4.9 million shares, primarily resulting from the previously announced $500 million accelerated share repurchase program.
We made dividend payments totaling $170 million, up from $140 million a year ago. Our cash and marketable securities balance declined in the quarter by $537 million, primarily due to the share repurchases, the increased dividend payments of $170 million, and capital expenditure of $71 million. As Tom mentioned, our guidance for our full-year performance is unchanged from three months ago. We are projecting total company revenues to be down 5%-9% in 2016.
Lower levels of production in the North American on-highway markets, reduced demand globally for off-highway and Power Generation equipment, and the negative impact of currency movements will drive the majority of the reduction in revenue. We expect some offset from the introduction of new products and increased revenue from distributor acquisitions. We expect EBIT margins of between 11.6%- 12.2% for 2016, and this compares to 12.5% for the full year 2015, excluding the restructuring and impairment charges and represents a decremental EBIT margin of 25%. Benefits from material cost savings, restructuring, and other actions will help mitigate the impact of lower volumes.
Joint venture income is still expected to be flat compared to 2015. We anticipate operating cash flow performance in 2016 will be within our long-term guidance range of 10%-15% of sales, and capital expenditures are expected to be in the range of $600 million-$650 million in 2016. As Tom just discussed, effective April, we reorganized the company into new operating segments.
We will issue restated results for the first quarter of 2016 and results for 2015 and 2014 to reflect our new operating segments before we report second quarter results. We will also issue full-year guidance for each of the new operating segments when we report second quarter results. Just to confirm, our current full-year guidance for the company is unchanged from three months ago. Now, let me turn it back over to Mark.
Thank you, Pat. Now we'll move to the Q&A section of the call. In respect of the feedback that many of you give me, I would like to ask that you limit your questions to one question and one related follow-up to give everybody the chance to ask a question. Thank you very much. Now we're ready for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press star then one on your touch tone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. Again, that is star and then one to ask a question. Our first question comes from the line of Joe Tiss with BMO. Your line is open.
How's it going, guys?
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
I wonder if you could break out the impact of the warranty change in the quarter, and are we getting toward more normalized levels, or is that going to be a number that continues to come down?
Yeah. Let me start on that one. Warranty in the quarter was 2.2% of sales for the company. That was down from 2.6% last year. We are very comfortable with our full year guidance of 2%. We are right on track with that. No real difference with what we talked about three months ago, Joe, with regards to our outlook for warranty and the improvements that we are seeing in the quality of our products throughout the company.
Okay. Just sort of a bigger picture question, it seems like Power Gen, in general, has been declining for kind of five years or so. Are we getting toward the end of that process, or you think there's still pockets of weakness out there that are going to last for the next two years or so?
Yeah. It's a good question, Joe. I don't really know the answer for sure, but we're certainly been declining for much longer than we expected. I think that's why you've seen us take a succession of actions as opposed to just one bigger one, which, in retrospect, would've been better. But we are, of course, preparing, as you can tell from these actions, for continued weakness for some time. I think that's why we decided to take further actions in the business.
When we did our restructuring in the fourth quarter, we did much more out of the Power Generation segment. We've now taken some significant plant capacity out now with these three closures. So we are anticipating that we may be weak for some period. Hopefully, it improves faster than that, but we're prepared for it now after watching it decline for quite some time.
That's great. Thank you very much. Okay, sorry.
Joe, hey Joe, if I could just add that the combination of our segments also, I think, gives us the opportunity now to begin to share overhead, drive improvement and efficiency in our processes between the large engine and the Power Gen business, which we think not only will help us in this tough time, but as the market springs back, we'll be able to capture more share and respond more quickly. We think it's good for the short run to reduce cost, but it also, I think, drives productivity and launch and ramp-up processes that are much better in the future.
Joe, this is Rich. Just one more comment is, I agree with Tom that the overall markets, we're not too optimistic on, but we're restructuring like we talked about, but also creating some of our own growth opportunities. Most of the QSK95 sales that we have are into the Power Generation markets, and they're into places we weren't there before. So trying to grow share at the time when the markets are low, we're having some good success.
That's great. Thanks. I'm not getting back in queue. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Joe.
Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Volkmann with Jefferies. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Maybe let's just go one step further with that line of questioning. You've talked about, Tom, the margins in Power Systems getting better sequentially, I guess, on the back of the restructuring that you've done already. If the markets don't recover and sort of stay in this depressed period situation, where do we think these margins can kind of normalize just based on what you've done so far?
Yeah, we have some work to figure that out, Steve. Of course, as you know, we've talked before about trying to get back to double-digit margins, even in weaker markets. The markets have clearly fallen far more than any of us anticipated, and we've now taken a set of actions that we think normalizes us to these volumes. But we have some work to do to figure out where we think we can get margins at these levels. Clearly, it would help a bunch if revenues stabilized and stopped dropping. But it won't take us long to figure that out.
The reason we still have work to do is, as you know, we just combined the segments. We're just now eliminating some of the capacity, and the comparison like- for- like will be a little complicated given the combination of segments. But expect us to be figuring that out pretty quickly and being able to set guidance for what the combined segment is and where we can take that in the future. But we're targeting all our segments at double-digit margins, even in tough times. So we're trying to figure out how to get there again. There's no question that right now we're not there, and we've got work to do to get there.
Okay, fair enough. My follow-up is just more on the heavy-duty truck side. Can you just tell us what you're seeing relative to cadence as we go through the quarters? I assume we'll sort of march down again here in the second quarter. What happens in the second half, if you have any visibility there? Do things stabilize? Does it turn up a little toward the end of the year, or do we just kind of continue the glide slope?
Yeah. The way we're looking at what's implied in our guidance is actually some more downward pressure in the second half of the year. If you just look at where we were in Q1, that would be a 224 market if you just multiply that by four. I think actually Q2 holds in okay. Past history says that with backlog down as low as it is, that we start to see some reductions in production in the second half of the year, as we need order boards more full.
That's a normal reaction that we see. That's what we're putting into where we've taken the guidance down to 200-220 from the 220 range before, is potentially some back in. Most of the reductions happen. We're down 33% already Q1, Q1. Most of the reduction is in place for what we saw in Q1.
Great. That's helpful. I appreciate it.
Our next question comes from the line of Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Jerry.
Tom, wondering if you could update us on your plans for the distribution back office integration now that you're on the tail end of wrapping up the acquisitions. Over what timeframe are you looking for to complete the back office integration at this point? Can you just calibrate us on the magnitude of cost savings opportunities we should look for when that plays out?
I'll go ahead and take that, Jerry, and Tom, pitch in here. The piece that's behind is, or a lot of it is most of the back office work has been done. We got a little more integration work to do there, but some of the bigger ones are still in front of us. Like the distribution we talked about, we had 15 distribution centers. We want to go to much smaller. We've put two in place. We'll put three more in place this year. Over the next couple of years, we'll get that savings. The purchasing savings, which is to build in, we've got a really good purchasing process.
You've seen the results we've had in the business of driving costs down. We're just now beginning that one. We talked about getting $100 million in synergies, kind of maybe $40 million-$ 50 million of it in cost and the rest in sales. We're just really getting started. We're probably a quarter away through that on the cost side and more to come over the next couple of years.
Jerry, I would just add that the processes that do the back office work, we have now set all those in place. There's still some follow-through work to do on those. But as Rich said, it's really now just a little bit of just follow through on making sure that all the HR processes are working well, and we're still acquiring a distributor, so each time we acquire, we got to do them again. The opportunities are still in front of us, so we've actually had to go negative before we've gone positive.
We've added cost and various processes to make sure that everybody's on the same pay systems and pension systems. We're going to see the benefits really starting to flow now. We're pretty excited about those, and both from a sales and support and service point of view for customers, but also for our On the cost and return side, which Rich talked to you about.
Okay. Thank you. Pat, can you talk about where engine margins should count on the quarter relative to your internal expectations? It looks like decrementals were 25%. I think the full-year guide at the midpoint would imply 17% decrementals, so an improvement. Is that in line with your plan? What is the offset to the weaker volumes to heavy-duty truck based on the new market and market share forecast?
Yeah, I was really pleased with how the engine segment came out in the quarter. I think decrementals, my numbers generally show a 20% EBIT margin, decremental EBIT margin for the quarter, which in the face of a 33% reduction in North America heavy-duty truck volumes and a 20% reduction in high horsepower, I think is a very good performance. Clearly, we are seeing benefits come through from material costs.
We are seeing the benefits from the lower warranty expense that I was talking to Joe about a few moments ago. The restructuring actions that the engine business took in the fourth quarter and the resulting lower SAR spend, I think is all helping to keep those decrementals below what would normally be an acceptable level for them. So I think we are off to a pretty good start this year.
The comps are easier, is your point, Pat, in coming quarters? Because I think the guide at the midpoint would imply better decrementals than the first quarter.
Yeah, I think if you look at the engine segment last year, certainly by the time you got to the fourth quarter, it was a very difficult fourth quarter for them. So the second half, I would expect to see a little bit better performance year-over-year.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Jamie Cook with Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Sorry, just a couple more questions on Power Gen and High Horsepower. Can you talk about how comfortable you feel with your inventory levels and what is in the channel in both of those segments? As I think about the restructuring you have announced in combining those segments, does that imply you think things could take another leg down? Could 2017 potentially be up? I am just trying to think if there is any read-through with regards to what you are doing and what that means for how you are thinking about demand, if you are more negative or positive.
Then I guess my second question relates to market share on the heavy-duty truck side. You brought that down. Again, you talked about Navistar, you talked about Freightliner. Tom, confidence level in your longer-term market share goals in North America heavy-duty truck with, I think PACCAR saying on their call a couple weeks ago, their addressable market is now, I think 80%-85% versus before they were targeting a 50% market share. Thanks.
Thanks, Jamie. I am going to let Rich talk a little bit about inventory and maybe heavy-duty truck. Again, just getting back to the high-level question about do we think there is more downside to come in the Power Gen side and in the large engine side generally. What we decided to do was prepare ourselves for that potential outcome. We just don't know. The truth is we don't know if there is more downside to come.
We do not see obvious signs of turnaround today. What we decided to do with this last set of actions, both in terms of the restructurings in Q4, the manufacturing footprint reductions, and the combination of this and reorganization these businesses to prepare ourselves for whatever is in front of us. That is what we have committed to do. That is what we are doing. We have said that all along, if we need to take more actions, we will take them.
These are an example of that. We just don't know what is going to happen in the future, but we feel more prepared to deal with it, whatever it is. We feel like we have got our cost structure in place for what the business is now. If, again, it gets a lot worse, we will figure that out and take actions when we need to. But we really like the actions we have taken here as better positioning us for a really challenging market that exists today. Rich, you can talk about the inventory question.
Okay. Let me take your last question first, Jamie, and then I will get to the High Horsepower inventory. The long-term view on share, let me just repeat what I think is going on in the market today. What we see is that we took it down as we saw our share go down at Daimler a bit. We had forecast that to go down, but I think in an environment of excess capacity, we are clearly seeing more pressure to utilize internal resources and more incentives and discountings to do that. We also assume some modest increase in Navistar this year.
Again, nothing major, but we have actually seen that go down. So those two things were behind the immediate change we put in place. Our approach, we are going to stay disciplined. We are not going to chase share with discounting. The product's performing well, so we're going to continue to sell that value to the customer to get that back. At the same time, align our cost to deliver really good financials in this environment.
I think longer term, as we think about the share, our view is it's still a 50% big bore, 50% medium bore market. Okay? Today we compete really with a 15 L product. That was part of our announcement that we made in New York that we'll be bringing a medium bore product to the market in 2017 to compete on the other end, where we used to have kind of the ISM product. We're going to have a terrific product down there at that end. So we see our share with PACCAR kind of in that 50%-57% range now.
Their market tends to be a little more big bore than medium bore. So we see while from a horsepower range, 13 L products can cover a larger part of the horsepower range. They're just the wrong. They're the wrong product in certain duty cycles, and the customer kind of draws that to more of a 50/50. So that's what's behind our guidance kind of looking forward.
I think on the inventory side, I'll let Rich comment more, but we don't feel any concern about our inventory of high horsepower engines. We produce to demand. It's a really easy thing to look at. We do not have any issues with that. Jen said the same thing. In our distribution network, we also don't have extra inventory. We've been planning well, but the market has been down for some time. There wasn't a big shift.
The biggest concern, I think, in the marketplace really is unused equipment, is where people have parked equipment. In the mining market, this is an issue. In the oil and gas market, it's an issue. What that means is as business starts to pick up, there'll be a lull before we start to see the kind of equipment orders that we'd like to see when that business picks up. That's just the reality of what we see in some of these markets, so that's what we're planning for. But in our system, our inventory levels are as they should be for this level of business.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning.
Just a couple of follow-up questions. I know you won't guide for 2017, and that's not the purpose of this question, but can you talk a little bit about on the heavy duty North America on-highway side, do you see 2016 as kind of a mid-cycle slowdown that we just have too much inventory and we need to clean that up and next year will be a more normal year? Or are you seeing cracks in the fundamentals out there? I think you addressed it somewhat with the unused idled trucks that are out there, but just your kind of philosophical thinking on 2017 for on-highway.
Ann, the way I would answer that, the actual amount of freight moving is pretty reasonable, especially if you're in the consumer side, the housing side, the passenger car side. Some of the industrial folks are down. But the freight, actually, most of those indicators look pretty good. What we had last year, the backlog came down 60,000 units. We shipped 60,000 units of backlog last year, and that's just not needed this year. I just think we're in more of a normal replacement cycle right now, which is in kind of the 220- 240 range is where we are.
I think this year could be potentially lower because the backlogs are pretty low, and it's hard to run plants, and there's just no future visibility. I think what you'll see, and what we're projecting anyway, and again, not that we have any great insight, just happened in past cycles, is production rates come down a bit the second half of the year to build up a little bit of backlog. Then you're back to kind of macroeconomic for 2017, and which your guess is as good as mine. But right now, the general freight looks pretty good.
Ann, my comment about unused equipment was really in the high horsepower market, not about trucks. Really just to add to Rich's comments, the only real negatives on the freight side have been the oil and gas business is down, and they do buy a lot of trucks, and in and around that market, there's a lot of trucks. You know the currency's a little strong, so some of the exporters have been down, but that's been true for a while.
That's not really changing very much. The freight activity that we've seen has been pretty steady, as Rich said. I think it is normalizing. We'll see, obviously. The macroeconomy in the U.S. I think will be the primary driver of whether we see further reductions from here or whether we kind of stabilize and hang out at the levels of the second half on into 2017.
Yeah, I guess I would share your view on that, so I appreciate that. Just to follow up on, I think when you were at our conference in March, there was some discussion that if there were any upside risk this year, it would be to JV income. Can you just talk about the pluses and minuses, what you're seeing in the joint ventures?
Yeah, I think I'll highlight a couple, then I'll let Rich add. You heard us comment on China. We had a strong quarter in China the first quarter, and I think there's some signs that things maybe could be improving, and we're just remaining a little cautious. So we left our forecast where it was, and it's partially because we've just seen China promise better and the market not be that strong the rest of the year a couple of years in a row. So we just want to be prudent and watch and see, and see a couple of quarters before we really call an upside, and also just fundamentals don't look that much different.
So I think that's the place where maybe if things are improving, as some people suggest, we could have some upside in JV income there. But again, right now our view is we think we're going to stay where we are from the point of view of forecasting. On the off-highway side, maybe it's the opposite. It's not that things are great now, but I just feel like it's weak markets all over the place, and so maybe there's a little bit of downside still on off-highway.
But again, there's not much to go. The good news is that we're so low that there's not much to go, but there is just a lot of parked equipment and a lot of challenge in those markets. So again, I think we're pretty balanced on our forecast. I think our JV income line's pretty well balanced, and I'd leave it where it is. But Rich, anything to add?
I think from a market standpoint, 100% agree. I think just our position in that market, a couple of positive things we feel good about. One is the enforcements of the regs are pretty good and probably maybe better than we would have guessed even a year ago as we introduced that, which is good for us. Second, we saw the growth in market share as we've displaced competitive engines, especially with Foton, with the ISF and the ISG engine. These engines are doing a terrific job. You heard Steve talk about revolutionary, and they, in fact, are.
They're lighter weight, they're higher performance. They don't break down. Just one number, the ISG engine is 150 lb/L , and all the competitive engines are up to 200 lb/L. They're just engines that it's a different market, where the old model was you had an engine that was easy to fix because they broke, their parts were inexpensive.
We're changing the market here with an engine that you don't have to get into and don't have to change and have telematics on it. We had the rapid rise with just displacing. Now we're going to be working with the partners to grow share versus competitors. That'll take some learning with customers to get used to a new technology and really a whole new product than what they're used to. So I like where we stand in that race.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ross Gilardi with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.
Yeah, good morning. Thank you.
Hi, Ross.
I just wanted to stay on that China discussion. You mentioned that your market share took a little step backward, and obviously, you guys have been growing share pretty rapidly over there. You've kind of characterized it as more of a, it sounded like a customer downtime issue. But I'm just wondering, has there been a stronger competitive response from Weichai or any of your local competitors there, given how quickly you have taken share in that market? And is that part of the reason why the share stepped back a little bit?
Yeah. Thanks for the question, Ross. No, in fact, that's what I wanted to highlight in my comments, that our penetration at our customers, which also by other engines, has grown. To the contrary, we continue to make inroads for exactly the reasons Rich mentioned. The engines are doing really well. They're advantaging our customers. What happened was our truck customers basically didn't discount as much and didn't participate in the market as much in the first quarter. There was quite a bit of activity in the market, and quite a bit of discounting by a couple folks, but just more activity.
They didn't participate in that same sort of thing, and so they stepped back in their truck share. We're not the least bit worried about that. We think that that all works itself out over the course of the year. We feel very good about our market share projections. In fact, our penetration's ahead of where we'd hoped it would be, so we're feeling really good about that. So very good position, very strong. The real question really is going to be how well does the market do. Market does well, we'll see good pickup. We're in a better position we've ever been, and so we're just waiting for the market to pick back up.
Got it. Thank you. I think you mentioned 25%-30% growth in China components, if I got that correct. Is that showing up in your components segment or your JV income? Assuming it's in the segment, is that a major reason why you were able to hold a 14% margin in components? If that tailed off, would you have to give some of that back, do you think, over the course of the year? I'm talking on the way you're currently reporting it, obviously, as opposed to the restatement you're going to make.
Yeah. Components will not be affected by the restatement, by the restructuring, just to be clear. But the point about components that the China business that you talked about, 27% increase, and that was a result of, again, as Rich was saying, they are enforcing their standards. We are having much more equipment go on Chinese engines, both after treatment, that's the main one, but also fuel systems going into these equipment because electronic fuel systems are now pretty much required in order to meet the standard.
What we're seeing is more content on our customers' engines, and our own engines in order to meet these new standards. That's really what's driving that. It's good business. It does contribute to our business, but it is not a higher mix in terms of margin or anything else. I would say our 14% margin is good all the way around.
Yeah, the reason why the margin stayed up as strong as what it did in components, even though North American markets were down quite significantly, is again, back to that material cost focus. We've seen terrific improvement in material cost in the components segment, which enabled them to offset the volume and offset a fairly significant foreign currency impact, and still stay at 14%.
Thanks very much.
Thank you, Ross.
Our next question comes from the line of David Raso with Evercore. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. I was curious, six months now since the analyst meeting, and obviously the tone there was very positive about looking for deals. I was just curious if you can give us some updates six months later. Are we closer, further away? What are some of the impediments to getting the deals done?
Great. Thanks, David. Thanks for the question. Yes. So we remain actively engaged in that process. As I mentioned at the investor conference, I've got a group of people that I'm working with directly on that, so I'm very engaged in it personally. And we are d utifully looking along the tracks that we talked about there, where we think we can leverage our capabilities to grow. We are also, of course, remaining disciplined in terms of what we think is value added to the shareholders in terms of how we do it.
The unfortunate thing about things like this is there's nothing to report until there is something to report, and anything in the interim would bias our own process. So unfortunately, I can only say that we are remaining active. I'm very optimistic that we're looking in the right places and thinking about the right things, and that whatever we do, when we do something, it will be beneficial to our shareholders and beneficial to the company long run.
That part I'm sure. I'm sorry that I can't provide you more details, and it's just because anything I'd say would just not help us in any way and help our shareholders. But I would just tell you that nothing has changed about our process. We are still very active, and I still feel good about what we're looking at.
I guess maybe a way to answer a little bit. Are you, six months later, a lot further down the road on narrowing and focusing on what you logically can target and think a deal could occur, or is it still as wide as it was six months ago?
No, we have done a lot of work to focus and figure out what is most important to us. A lot of work on that. We do feel--
Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Yep.
Our next question comes from the line of Steven Fisher with UBS. Your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning.
Morning.
Can you just talk about how you expect to manage higher input costs in the second half of the year, given higher commodity prices, and what is your latest thinking on pricing impact overall for the year?
Yeah. Pricing impact overall for the year is pretty much in line with what we said, again, three months ago. That is somewhere around 0.4%, 0.5% negative impact on margins. We have seen that in Q1. We clearly overcame that through material cost improvement and no change, no update on that as we look forward now through the rest of the year. The first part of the question was?
Commodity prices. Commodity prices are increasing.
Yeah. So how do you expect to manage that in the second half?
I think that what we've looked at, it'll be minimal impact on us. We do see some of that, and we also have agreements with both customers and suppliers. We do some hedging in that area. So at least at the level that we're projecting commodity price increase the second half of the year, that it'd be minimal impact on our EBIT.
The good thing for us is we're kind of operationally hedged in the sense that as commodity prices increase, of course, so does demand for mining products. There are short-term differences, where things move a little bit and mining doesn't pick up, but and costs do. But generally speaking, when commodity prices rise in a significant amount, that's hard for us to offset in our cost structure. We also see mining business improve, which more than offsets it. So in a way, commodity prices improving is a good thing rather than a bad thing for us.
Okay. Outside of M&A that David was asking about, to what extent has the weakness in the heavy-duty truck market caused you to accelerate any of your other strategic plans, maybe product oriented, that you talked about at your Investor Day? I thought you had said at the Investor Day the 10 L and 12 L was a 2018, and I think on this call you said 2017. Are you accelerating some of those, maybe more product strategies?
No. Let me clear that up. We'll actually bring product here in 2017, late in the year, which is same as what I intended to say at the investor conference, then really go into production in 2018.
Yeah. In terms of the strategy work that David asked about, we are accelerating now, we're accelerating then. We are fully focused on the efforts that are important to us strategically. There's not a change, but we are working pretty quickly to figure out what's most important for us to do and figure out how to do it.
Okay. Thank you.
Yep.
Our next question comes from the line of Tim Thein with Citigroup. Your line is open.
Good morning. Thank you. Question on distribution. First off, just in light of the updated currency assumptions, which obviously hits that segment especially hard in both ways. How should we think about the update there, as well as the distributor acquisition? I know at this point that there's probably only small ones left, but maybe any color on those two items in terms of how it potentially impacts the balance of the year?
I'll think on foreign currency. I'll answer really for the company, and then we can dive into distribution deeper if you want. In the first quarter, we had a 3% negative impact on sales, and around a $19 million impact on profitability negative for the company. Given where currency rates currently are today, we expect the foreign currency headwind on the company for the rest of the year to be much less than what we've seen for the past year and a half. We are now guiding for the full year on currency to be down around $200 million in sales, so 1 percentage point. Fairly neutral, actually, on profitability for the full year.
If you just back into the rest of the year, that would imply that the sales impact is going to be less than the 1% negative as opposed to 3% in the first quarter, and profitability should get a little bit better across all the segments than what we've seen in Q1 and for most of last year. Obviously distribution, given its footprint, it's been the segment that's been most exposed to currency movements, so that should help it as it moves forward, too.
It doesn't always balance out. I think you probably know that, Tim, that sometimes because distribution operates in every currency, still we can have currencies which are strengthening or weakening relative to the U.S. dollar. But on balance, they can work their way out because some might be going the other way. So I think distribution still has currency exposure, but hopefully, as Pat said, on balance, we'll see a little bit less of a negative impact.
The one thing I would just highlight to you is that we did see improvement in margin this quarter, and that's despite currency and other challenges there. So that's a pretty good evidence that some of the synergies and other work we've been doing is starting to pay off as to the question earlier. I think with the distributor acquisition, you're right, there's just the one left in North America left to do.
That's the one we'll finish this year. That's in California. So it's not that small a distributor, actually. It's not the biggest, but it's decent size. We'll be acquiring that in the second half of the year. When that's complete, we will now then own all the North American distributors, and the process will be complete for North America. As Rich highlighted earlier, we'll be then full into figuring out how we capture the synergies that we know are available to us.
I think to just to summarize, Tim, then, a little bit more negative on the engine business revenue outlook given the heavy-duty truck market, little bit better on distribution from currency and from the acquisitions leaves us basically in the same place overall for the company. Then we'll refresh every segment's guidance with the new report instruction next quarter.
Okay, understood. Just maybe one quick cleanup on components. Again, surprised at how few questions relative to the contribution of profits there. I know that segment, you can have some lumpiness just in terms of how some of the engineering costs flow through the quarters. Was it seasonally low in the first quarter and it'll pick up, or was that not much of a factor either way in the first quarter?
That was not much of a factor in the first quarter.
All right. Very good. Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Tim.
Our next question comes from the line of Joe O'Dea with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Could you talk a little bit about the heavy-duty truck revenue? You talked about some of the challenges in its OE volumes into North America, but the overall kind of revenue there better than what we're seeing in North America, new equipment trends. What you're seeing on the parts side, whether owning distribution is improving some of the demand there as you manage that process, but some of the offsets to North America heavy-duty truck volumes within the reported heavy-duty truck segment volumes.
The parts revenues have remained pretty steady and actually continue to grow slightly through this in the heavy-duty side. The distribution piece is more indirect on the parts sale. We think by our regional distribution strategy, increasing availability, et c, we'll get some upside there, but it's more around the synergies of getting product out there on parts. I wouldn't attribute the acquisition to increasing parts sales, although now we participate in those where we didn't used to within the joint venture or at the same level.
The other thing that I was just going to mention indirectly to your question, and it relates a little bit to components in the heavy-duty space. Our strategy is we sell engines to people who are vertically integrated. We sell engines, but when we don't sell engines, we sell components. Some of the movement between engines and components, the Components business continues to benefit from that. Our share in things like turbos are over 60%, and that's remained solid. Our share in after treatment over 50%. We've continued to maintain that in a time regardless of what's happening on market share on the engine side.
Then just to address your specific question, I think asking about the overall heavy-duty revenue segment, Joe. Really other than North American on highway, there's no other change to the assumptions. We'd planned around flattish parts revenue for the year. That's still the assumption. We're not seeing any significant change in trajectory. We're not seeing any significant change in some of the international markets like Australia or South Africa that make up the rest of that segment. So a modest lower outlook for the overall heavy duty as you're asking that question, I think.
Yep, that's perfect. Thanks very much.
Thank you, Joe.
Okay, thank you very much, everybody, and I'll be available for your calls later on. Appreciate your time.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program, and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a wonderful day.