Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Sarah and I'll be your conference call facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the electronics First Quarter Fiscal 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. After the Kimball speakers opening remarks, there will be a question and answer period.
And
and questions will be taken in the order that they are received. Today's call, November 4, 2020, will be recorded and may contain forward looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Risk factors that may influence the outcome of forward looking statements can be seen in Kingbob's annual report on Form 10 K for the year ended June 30, 2020 and in today's release. The panel for today's call is done Sharon, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer and Mike Surgess Katter, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Kimball Electronics. I would now like to turn today's call over to Don Sharon, Mr.
Sharon, you may begin.
Thank you, Sarah, and welcome everyone to our first quarter conference call. Our earnings release was issued yesterday afternoon, results of our first quarter ended September 30, 2020. We have posted a financial summary presentation to accompany this conference call. It can be found on our Investor Relations website within the Events and Presentations tab, or if you are listening via the webcast, you can follow along by advancing the slides or download them from the downloads tab on the webcast portal. Will begin by making a few remarks on the quarter and then turn it over to Mike for the financial overview.
After that, we will answer any questions that you may have. We are very pleased with we set new quarterly records for for the 2nd consecutive quarter. Beyond our excellent financial results, we never lost sight of the fact that the health and safety of our employees remains our number one priority and we continue to make every effort to keep our facilities safe. Has been kept at a low level and disruptions have been kept to a minimum. Because of the disciplined response and extraordinary effort of our people around the world, we were able for their respiratory care and patient monitoring products.
Vehicle vertical increased 25% compared to the first quarter of fiscal year 2020 and were up 3% sequentially, setting a new automate pre COVID 19 run rates during the second quarter of fiscal year 2021. Sales in our automotive vertical continued to 1% from the previous quarter and down just 5% from the first quarter of fiscal year 2020. We expect the sales in our automotive vertical will return to pre COVID-nineteen levels in the second quarter steadily increase throughout the fiscal year 2021. October 1, 2020, marked a 2 year anniversary of our GES acquisition. GES was slightly accretive to our EPS for the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, which was a this pipeline for GES, we do have a degree of seasonality in that business, with the fiscal second quarter being their weakest.
However, our backlog of orders for machines to be shipped in the Third And Fourth quarters of fiscal year 2021 has been growing nicely. Our cash conversion days for the quarter ended September 30, 2020 was 76 days. Up from 73 days in the quarter ended September 30, 2019, but were down 5 days when compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal year 20 20. While the volatility in demand has made it difficult for us to achieve our inventory objectives and thus our cash conversion days objectives, we remain committed to our inventory reduction goals and actions. We invested $8,500,000 in capital expenditures the first quarter of fiscal year 2021.
The majority of these capital investments were for capacity expansion and to support the launch and ramp up of new programs. There were no shares purchased in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021. As a result of the COVID 19 environment, Our plan has been temporarily suspended until further determination by our board. For fiscal year 2020, a total of $8,800,000 was returned to our share owners by purchasing 623,000 shares of our common stock. Which brought our total to purchased since October 2015 under our of our people around continue to help us get through this together.
Our number one priority will continue to be keeping our employees healthy and safe, and we'll continue to and we are committed We will then open the call to your questions. Mike?
Thanks Don. During my comments, I will be referring to the slide deck Don mentioned can be found on our you can follow along by advancing the slides on the $31,700,000, which was a 6% increase. And as Don mentioned, a new quarterly record, compared to net sales of $313,400,000 a medical vertical and to a lesser degree, the industrial vertical, partially offset by a decrease in the automotive vertical. Foreign exchange rates favorably impacted our net sales 1% compared to the first quarter a year ago. Slide 4 represents our net sales mix by vertical market.
Our automotive vertical was down 5% compared to the same quarter a year ago. However, the automotive vertical was up 61% sequentially as the automakers began to return to pre COVID-nineteen run rates during the quarter. Our medical vertical was up 25% in the current quarter compared to the prior year first quarter to a new quarterly record of $127,100,000, reflecting the continued increase in demand for medical assemblies specifically those related to respiratory care and patient monitoring products. Our industrial vertical was up 8% from a year ago, primarily due to improved sales of automation test and inspection equipment, and higher end market demand for climate control products, which were partially offset by decreased demand for smart metering products. Lastly, our public safety vertical sales were $13,300,000, which were down 23% from the prior year first quarter, primarily due to the continued percent, a 210 basis point increase from fiscal year was driven by a number of factors including a significant improvement and positive contribution.
Lower material costs as component shortage premiums have subsided and more efficient use of our manufacturing capacity and footprint. Adjusted selling and administrative expenses, slide 6 in the deck $12,600,000 in the first quarter, up $1,500,000 in absolute dollars and up 30 basis points compared to the prior year first quarter. Resulting from our overall strong financial performance excludes changes in the fair investments. Adjusted operating income in the first quarter came in at $18,000,000 or 5.4 percent of sales, and as shown on Slide 7 in the deck, an improvement from $11,100,000 or 3.5 percent of net sales in the same period a year ago driven by the increase in gross profit previously mentioned. Adjusted operating income excludes changes in the fair value of cirp liability.
And in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, excludes $300,000 of income recognized related to proceeds received from a class action lawsuit $1,000,000 in the first quarter, which compares to expense of $2,400,000 in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020. Other income net in the current year first quarter includes $2,400,000 in net foreign currency gains, $500,000 in gains on the SERP investments, partially offset by $800,000 of interest expense. Other expense net in the prior year first quarter includes $1,200,000 in interest expense and $1,100,000 in net foreign currency losses. The effective tax rate for the current year The current period of our state tax valuation allowance related to R And D tax credit carry forwards. Mixed of earnings within our various tax jurisdictions in the quarter.
In the prior year first quarter, the effective tax rate was approximately 24%, and was unfavorably impacted by a $300,000 discrete excess tax expense related to performance shares granted during the quarter. Slide 8 reflects our adjusted net income trend. Our GAAP net income in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021 came in at 16 point $1,000,000 with adjusted net income of $16,600,000 after adjusting for the after tax impacts of the lawsuit settlement proceeds needs. This compares to GAAP and adjusted net income of $6,600,000 in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020. Diluted earnings per These compared to both diluted EPS and adjusted diluted EPS of $0.26 reported in the same quarter last year.
Cash and cash equivalents at September 30, 2020 were $73,400,000. Operating cash
flow
school first quarter was a strong $20,700,000, driven primarily by net income plus non cash depreciation and amortization. In the prior year first quarter, operating activities provided $39,600,000 of cash, largely driven from increased utilization of 3rd party accounts receivable factoring arrangements. Was up 3 days for the 3 months ended September 30, 2020 when compared to the same period in the prior year. However, it was down 5 days from decrease in PDSOH, our production days sales on hand, our inventory metric was partially offset by a decrease in accounts payable days. Slide 12 reflects our capital and depreciation trends.
Capital investments in the 4th quarter totaled $8,500,000, large related to manufacturing equipment to increase capacity and to support new production awards. Borrowings on our credit facilities at September 30, 2020 were $111,000,000, which was down $7,000,000 from June 30, 2020. Our short term liquidity available represented as cash and cash equivalents plus the unused amount of our credit facilities totaled $159,000,000 at September 30, 2020. In conclusion, our financial condition continues to be strong and we're in excellent position to take advantage while being able to confront the continued uncertainties caused by the COVID-nineteen pandemic. With that, I would like to open up today's the analysts.
Sarah, do we have any analysts with questions in the queue?
You.
First
question
comes from the line of and Jeff Soderstrom from Sidoti And Co. You may ask your question.
Hi, and thank you for taking my question and congratulations on a very strong quarter.
My first question is
going to be around the gross margin. It came in very high. How sustainable are those puts and takes in there? And how should we think about that going forward?
Yes, as Mike mentioned, there were a number of factors that drove that gross margin number. The one factor that you mentioned that, would likely change going forward is that favorable mix favorable product mix factor. As we stated in the release, we have some shifting going on in both our medical vertical and our automotive vertical. Run rates, we would see we would expect to see, obviously, automotive would grow as it walks back to pre COVID 19 run rates. Medical would decline as we work through the deliveries that were related to the COVID-nineteen patient care.
So that mix will change obviously from the quarter we just finished. And so that's the one factor I would say would not be as sustainable going forward. Of course, we'll have to see how those volumes play out here. We're still facing the pandemic and the uncertainties that are related to that. But that mix factor is one I would think we want to have a close look at, as we go forward.
And then the other, I guess, point I'd make is we did, as Mike mentioned, we did make some improvements in areas the utilization of our footprint, some of the work we've been doing on our global supply chain initiatives and material pricing. And of course, our Lean Six Sigma efforts, we've doubled down our efforts in a lot of areas to drive productivity. And those we would say would be sustainable, as we look going forward.
Okay. And in terms of the supply chain, has that sort of normalized now and that pricing has normalized or what do you see in terms of supply?
Yes, it has normalized from from especially some of the component categories that were in short supply and demand was working hard to catch up let's say, a year ago or 5 quarters ago, etcetera. That has the supply has caught up in those key areas like in the capacitors that we talked about in the past. And pricing has also returned to more normalized levels. So We expect that, that situation has resolved itself as we go forward now.
Okay. And then as I think about new ramping new programs and also switching, I guess, programs in medical how is that going to affect the gross margin?
Well, you know, certainly as we look to ramp new program, that part of the product life cycle is challenging for us as we ramp up let's say, a new program and get it to its quoted run rate. But I would say no different in how we look at the model going forward because we do have a number of mature programs that are fully ramped And as especially in the automotive vertical, as we go forward now and get back to prequel fit 2019 run rates, And actually, the other point in the automotive vertical that's critical to understand is that the inventory levels in the especially in the United States are down in terms of finished goods. And so, there will be a desire to not we replenish those inventories back to, let's say, normal levels, especially in the U. S, where, we're particularly low on inventory here. There'll be 2 factors, buyers coming back to the market and purchasing new cars, but also replenishing inventory.
And so We expect several of those mature product lines that have been down in volume, especially last quarter and have been recovering this this past quarter, I should say, the quarter before that, they were down significantly. Those volumes on those mature programs will ramp and that will help us and they'll help offset some newer programs that are ramping up.
Okay, great. And then in terms of medical, what we ability do you have there in terms of sort of COVID related programs tapering off and then how the electives are coming back?
Yes, that's a really good question and one that's difficult for us to gain a lot of visibility in our customers as well. What we do know is the COVID-nineteen patient care related products that we reported in respiratory care and patient monitoring. We have worked off the backlog that was there over the past couple of quarters and have met the demand for the most part. And so returning to pre COVID-nineteen levels will be decline for those products. What we don't have a good handle on yet are the products that went down as a result of COVID 19.
As you mentioned, elective surgery, related products for us were down during this period and how fast will they come back? And there were other product categories that actually declined during the COVID-nineteen. Pandemic period, while we were ramping up other products, they were declining. And these would be less critical, but important products how fast they come back is really the degree of uncertainty. We just don't have a degree of certainty there and not visibility.
And we're working very closely with our customers, they expect the demand to come back. It's just really more around when.
Okay. Thank you. And that was all from me for now. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you, Anja.
Your next question comes from the line of Mike Morales from Walt Hossen and Co. You may ask your question.
Doing okay as good as anybody can during this year. Congratulations. I'll echo the strong execution that you guys had during the quarter. A couple of different things I wanted to, Tom. Glad to hear that we can finally start talking about those GES in kind of a positive light.
I'd like to dig in a little bit more into the opportunities that you guys are seeing there. If I think about that business from the acquisition and kind of beyond, there were pressures from that's in the semi end market, particularly in smartphones. And one thing, at least, what I've been hearing a lot about is that the smartphone market team be doing pretty well. And if we look out, call it, a year or 2, that seems like it has some legs it was well. Can you guys just talk about some of the opportunities that you're seeing now in GES that maybe weren't there in the past?
And then from a financial perspective, maybe the margin profile of some of those products that you're looking to ship later this year?
Sure. Yes, you're right. What we the end markets we support there today are primarily in the smart mobile device area, the manufacturing of smart mobile devices. And of course, semiconductor space. And we do and have been working hard over the past couple of years on a growth and diversification strategy there.
So we do want to obviously expand beyond those 2 end markets. But we are seeing some strength and the traction that we've talked about is has really been around, supporting the manufacturer of new releases of some smart mobile devices. And and those machines that I mentioned, that the back orders have been increasing on for deliveries in the 3rd fourth quarter are primarily in that end market space. So I we do expect that strength to continue. And again, I we're working hard on a diversification strategy, if you look at that platform, if you look at GES as a platform, it's we're really positioned nicely to take advantage a lot of the industry 4.0 investments that are happening in manufacturing today.
And the automation and, of course, replacing human inspection, with machine inspection, etcetera. Those are megatrends that have only been amplified here in this COVID-nineteen pandemic. And so we expect that the opportunities will continue to grow for us not only in these end markets, but others, as I mentioned, that we're working hard to develop. GES is a technology company. Stuff in that division, if you will, in that business unit.
We add a fair amount of technology to solve the problems that our customers are asking us to solve. And again, if you think about a manufacturing process to build anything, There's more and more machines going into that manufacturing process. And so, and the quality expectations of the output of these manufacturing process just processes just continue to rise to near perfection in terms of have a fair amount of, know how, if you will, engineering technology involved in them. And so we do expect command a higher margin for that business. We're still developing our expectations, still learning about some of those end markets and what they will bear.
But we do expect because of that technology component that I mentioned that we should see higher margins in that business.
Great. So as I'm sitting here and hearing figures about 200,000,000 5G handsets going to 400 and potentially 800 after that, that rising tide should continue to benefit GES as capacity needs dictate. Is that fair?
Yes.
Great. Maybe switching gears a little bit. Could you help me understand some of the areas that you're seeing, at least in the new business pipeline now that it sounds like auto demand is coming back a little bit. Medical demand is kind of tapering off. Are there any areas that you can talk about that seeing maybe a pronounced return in demand.
And is it ahead of what you expected from a timing perspective behind what you were expecting? Just help me understand where you're seeing the most opportunities today?
Yes, I'm, you know, Mike, I'm seeing some more than green shoots, if you will, the automotive vertical, we'd actually started to slow down even before the COVID-nineteen pandemic. We had the GM strike, We had kind of probably 6, 7, 8 quarters pre COVID-nineteen pandemic that were more of a sort of a headwind in our automotive vertical. And of course, we had to endure the complete shutdown here in the U. S. And for most of Europe, which was all of March, half of April.
So we endured that and we've come back now. And last quarter, we weren't quite at, let's say, a pre COVID run rate if you look at our $118,000,000 in revenue for the quarter. Second quarter of last fiscal year, we were finishing closer to $135,000,000. So we're not at pre COVID 19 run rates. And it'll take a while to ramp production back up in the whole value chain.
But what I wouldn't want lost on that is not only mature programs ramping back up at some of the new launches that, in some cases, were delayed or at least slowed by the pandemic. And so I really believe to see some steady growth in the automotive vertical, as buyers come back to the market, which a great sign. We've actually seen year over year growth. Car companies reporting growth. Each region, China, North America, Europe, there are green shoots of growth coming back with buyers coming back to the market.
And when you combine that with the inventory levels, in the industry, I mean, it's to me, it's a great story and a great a starting point to, I think, a pretty good run. So that's that's one area that we didn't mention in this script that we did last time. We are well positioned with the application we support, whether it's a combustion engine driven car or whether it's a complete electric vehicle. And we one of the real significant growth areas inside of our automotive vertical are the electronic assemblies that we ship to our customers ship to a fully electric vehicle manufacturers. And that's been a great story for us, and we expect it to continue to grow as as we are fortunate there to be on one of the most popular electric vehicle brands in the world.
You vertical. The medical piece is definitely going to change. I think it's good news for the world if we don't need to build a lot more COVID-nineteen patient care product that means there's less hospitalizations. We're getting the pandemic behind us. And so we will see that drop back down to normal levels.
Question is how fast is some of the other products come back that have really been down for a couple of quarters now during the pandemic as those were not deemed critical care. And so things like elective surgeries were being postponed and other products that we serve in our medical vertical We saw decreases and it's really because they just were not critical to care in this pandemic, but that we do believe that business come back. Our customers believe it will come back. And medical has been a great growth story for us. And our ambition is to keep it a great growth story for us going forward.
Absolutely. And lastly for me, from a capacity standpoint, how are you guys feeling right now on your ability to, fill the demand that seems to be coming back? Are you capacity constrained will there need to be additional CapEx?
Our utilization, as Mike reported, was one of the factors that drove up our gross margin. Our utilization is fairly high and we have parts of our footprint geographically that are reaching capacity. And so we are looking at that very carefully and making plans to be ready to expand and support the growth. The one thing I would say about just bricks and mortar and square footage, our plan there is to expand where we are when we need to and not necessarily new country strategy like we did with Romania, which was our last greenfield. And so there will be a CapEx component of that, but but not the sort of greenfield long ramp up to breakeven kind of scenario.
We're focused on growing our footprint where we already rent today and I say, hot, I mean, parts of our footprint that customers are really wanting to grow, Thailand, Mexico, of course, when we did Romania, Poland was at full capacity and they remain at full capacity. So we have parts of our footprint that were pretty full and we're strategically playing to expand our square footage as we need. So I in the way I'd want you to think about it is, and I've said this several times in the past, when we're running at a growth rate that we want to, we talk often about our goal in the past. We've talked often about our goal in the past. For growth organic growth to be around that 8% number, at least upper single digits.
That we would when we're growing at that rate, we would expect, our CapEx for equipment capacity to approach depreciation or be around depreciation, the rate of depreciation. And so, but when we have to expand our footprint, that really sits on top of that kind of spending profile. And so if you think about having to expand 100,000 square feet, for example, and it's $10,000,000, of capital to do that, that sort of sits on top of the normal CapEx run rate that would support adding equipment capacity and to launch new programs.
Great. Don and Mike, I appreciate you taking the questions and the color that you've provided. I hope you guys well.
You too, Mike. Thanks,
Mike. Next question comes from the line of Richard Greenberg from Donald Donald Smitankoe. You may ask your question.
Good morning, guys. Don, I just wanted to follow-up on the margin issue. You had previously, you had talked about this 8% sales growth. And along with that, in the medium term, you were saying you would hope to get to a 4.5% operating margin. You obviously exceeded that this quarter.
Part of that is mix is some other more sustainable item. Are you willing to kind of reset that number now? Or I mean, what should we be thinking longer term is your goal in operating margin?
Yes, it's a great question, Richard. We obviously had some nice tailwinds this quarter. And Mike pointed those out in the factors that he mentioned I do I would say that we expect that the improvements that we've made in those margin items that were mentioned that we believe are sustainable, should have us more consistently landing in a landing pad around our long time stated goal of 4.5. As you know, we haven't been consistently hitting the 4.5 and had a great quarter this quarter, obviously, at 5.4%. But we would expect that we would start to be more consistent in a landing pattern around 4.5.
Is that our upper limit? No, we've got plans to grow beyond 4.5. I think the first step is just we land around 4.5. But we've got some ideas, about how we can get north of 4 point 5 and set our goal higher than that. What we've been talking a lot about as a management team is, Hey, let's consistently get to 4.5 on a consistent basis.
And then let's talk about where we can go from there.
Okay. And then regarding CAPP usage, as you said, you held off on the buyback. Cash is growing. You've talked about acquisitions. Could we maybe revisit that and in balanced force, you're thinking on what we've already talked about capital spending.
But balance force, the buybacks, debt pay down, and more of what you're thinking in the M and A area?
Yes, it's a topic on our board agenda, board meeting next week, we talk about it in each and every board meeting in terms of our sort of capital, desired capital structure and capital allocation I'll start with our priority, is going to be continue to be organic growth and to the extent that we continue to have success growing organically, we'll put a priority on organic growth. Now that being said, you can do the math in our cash flow from operations, expected cash flow from operations. We will have, as excess capital beyond what we need for organic growth. The priorities after that, yes, paying down debt is certainly one. At some point, we put our share repurchase program on hold just to be mindful of the pandemic and making sure we kept ourselves in a strong financial position.
As we gain more confidence on the outlook, will we restart our share repurchase program. Certainly, that'll be a discussion next week in the board meeting. And then finally, acquisitions, this is kind of a tough period if you're looking at targets, quite frankly, in this pandemic. And so we are we do want to remain acquisitive. We would look at strategic targets, primarily in the medical space, especially within DCMS, sort of like what we did with Metivative.
4 years ago, if you recall that, acquisition, those would be some ideal targets. But we'd have to be pretty confident in terms of what's happening with the pandemic and just the target itself to move forward there. I think the priorities would lie on the first three items I mentioned.
Okay. I mean, when you take a cold hard look at your acquisitions that you've made in the past, it seems that there's maybe some successes, but certainly a little bit of near term disappointments. You did have the goodwill impairment you took last year. Are you at all has that chastened you at all a little bit? And to say, we're pretty we're doing a great job of growing organically.
Our stock arguably is pretty cheap. Maybe we should just stick to what we know and not necessarily add more goodwill and intangibles. And hold off on acquisitions?
Well, we've talked about that a lot, Richard, over the years. And the short answer is, yes, we were not happy with the slow start we got with the GES acquisition. But I'll go up a little bit higher and look at the we've done over the years, they've really been strategic acquisitions that brought key capabilities or a market presence that we were seeking. And so those are really more long term kinds of payoffs. The Medevasive acquisition we did 4 years got us into a whole different area of capability in market.
And as we're doing very well with that, GES, very slow start. But again, the strategic assets that we brought into the company with GES are going to help us in other areas of our core EMS business, even for example. But it's hard not to go through an acquisition like ES have, have conduct an impairment study, find that you're impaired, have to take that charge those are difficult things that, that, yeah, they do impact us. As management, I would tell you, they impact our board, in their oversight of what doing from a strategic standpoint. Organically, if we can continue to grow like we've grown, these acquisitions that we look at would be more about bringing market access point that we don't have today.
Those would be the big drivers behind an acquisition. And so it's not about adding it using that tool as a tool for growth as much as it is adding capabilities developing those. And then again, kind of pushing them back towards our organic growth plans with our existing customers.
Okay. That's helpful. Thanks a lot guys. Good luck.
There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back to Mr. Sharon.
Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, everyone. That brings us to the end of today's call. We appreciate your interest and look forward to speaking with you on our next call. Thank you and have a great day.
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