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Text: Joining me on the call today are Nish Vartanian, Chairman, President and CEO; and Ken Krause, Senior Vice President, CFO and Treasurer.
These risks, uncertainties and other factors are detailed in our Form 10-K filings with the SEC.
Yesterday, I reviewed our annual employee engagement scores and was really pleased to see the overall scores improved from our high levels a year ago.
The connection our associates have with our mission was a highlight of the survey.
Today, I'll provide a quick overview of the quarter then I'll highlight three areas that give me confidence in our business.
Beginning with the quarter.
It was a challenging start to the year.
Quarterly revenue was down 10% from a year ago.
Keep in mind, Q1 2020 reflects a pre-pandemic environment for MSA.
So it's a challenging comparison.
In addition, our business is seasonally lower in Q1.
Economic conditions and COVID impacts created additional pressure.
We saw that pressure in January and February, followed by a strong recovery in March.
I'm optimistic that recent trends in our order book support a much brighter outlook and also recognize the road to recovery might not be a straight line.
Based on economic stimulus and vaccine deployment, the U.S. is leading the recovery in our business.
At the same time, the situation remains challenging in Europe, Latin America and some other smaller markets with COVID lockdowns.
That said, on the whole, we're optimistic that the worst is behind us from a demand perspective.
We're staying close to the challenges associated with the supply chain.
We expect resin supply to improve in Q3 and anticipate continued challenges with electronic components throughout the year.
We've managed through effectively with limited constraints in production.
We recognize this as an evolving situation, and we've experienced inflation in these areas, and we'll manage that effectively.
As macroeconomic conditions become more favorable, I'm very confident in our position to create value for all of our stakeholders.
As you've heard me say before, there are three key areas that continue to support my confidence in the future of MSA.
We've made progress in each of these areas in the first quarter.
First, MSA's innovation engine is stronger than ever.
In Q1, we continue to launch technologies that solve our customers' toughest safety challenges.
Second, our continuous improvement culture positions us to achieve our long-term margin aspirations as revenue growth returns.
We've made some nice progress with our manufacturing footprint.
Third, we're using our balance sheet to make strategic acquisitions that strengthen our position in key markets.
In Q1, we closed the acquisition of Bristol and the integration work is on track, and our M&A pipeline remains healthy.
Starting with the first area.
MSA's innovation engine and R&D pipeline, which is really the lifeblood of our business.
Our engineering excellence has never been more evident than our breakthrough innovations in connected firefighter technology and connected industrial technology.
I'm pleased to report that our team has celebrated exciting milestones in both of these areas.
On the fire service side, we launched the LUNAR firefighter location system.
It's a big accomplishment for teams of associates across MSA that worked on this system and it's the most technologically advanced product and software system that we've ever unveiled.
LUNAR is a handheld device that uses cloud technology to deliver fire scene management capabilities for incident commanders.
It also helps search and rescue teams locate a separated firefighter, and it's a thermal imaging camera.
I know the fire service is excited about this product.
It will help them tremendously with their work.
Our connected platform also provided competitive advantage in industrial markets.
We recently began delivery to supply one of the largest utilities in the U.S. with connected gas detection, utilizing our cloud-based grid software.
This customer is now able to use databased insights to manage their gas detection program with greater effectiveness.
They ordered thousands of ALTAIR 5 timesR portable gas detectors with safety IO subscriptions.
Over the next few years, this will result in a total order value of over $5 million.
These are just some of the indicators I'm seeing in Q1 that our innovation engine is running strong, achieving the milestones we've expected.
Long-standing investments in connected technology position us to deliver new to world products for our customers.
This is timely as the pandemic has accelerated connected applications that will help workers become safer and more efficient.
Our team is always striving to drive higher levels of productivity and efficiency throughout the organization.
Along those lines, we continue to execute our gas detection manufacturing consolidation project.
As we announced in 2020, we're making capex investments to expand our Cranberry township gas detection center of excellence.
Consolidation -- production -- consolidating production will help with inventory management and having our engineering and operations teams under one roof will certainly drive greater effectiveness and efficiency, which will improve margins.
As part of the program, we remain on track to close a manufacturing operation in California in the third quarter of this year.
As you know, I worked with the team out there when we acquired General Monitors, and I'm very proud how our associates have managed through this process.
The third area I want to discuss today is using our balance sheet to make strategic acquisitions that strengthen our leadership position in key markets.
At the start of the quarter, we closed the acquisition of Bristol Uniforms.
Our integration plans are off to a good start.
We've spoken before about the U.K. fire service market being a potential growth opportunity for MSA.
We're investing organically and inorganically to penetrate this opportunity.
Both the recent launch of the M1 SCBA and now Bristol are great examples of the investments we've made.
And will see benefits across the entire international fire service market by having a greater range of head to toe solutions for our customers.
In addition to having strengthened our balance sheet, we continue to move forward with an M&A pipeline focused on evaluating assets that align with our safety mission.
So to summarize, there are three key areas that give me confidence in MSA's future: First, MSA's innovation engine is stronger than ever; second, our continuous improvement culture is positioning us for long-term success; and third, we're effectively using our balance sheet to grow our business.
I'll start the discussion with financial highlights centered on revenue, profitability and cash flow.
First, looking at revenue.
We expected the first quarter to present challenges versus the record quarter a year ago.
We also talked about COVID lockdowns pressuring demand in Europe and labor constraints in certain factories due to precautionary contact tracing.
With that, I am pleased to say that our order pace strengthened in March and into April.
Fire service order activity is healthy, and the order pace in industrial-related markets started to show year-over-year growth in March.
That strength has continued into April, and that gives us good momentum moving into Q2.
Second, our profitability was pressured based on the lower revenue and trends that unfolded within gross profit, and I'll provide more detail on that shortly.
And third, I continue to be pleased by our cash flow performance.
We generated cash flow conversion in excess of 100% of net income.
The strength of our balance sheet positions us very well to pursue additional growth opportunities across the portfolio.
Now let's take a closer look at the financial results in the first quarter, and let's start with a focus on revenue.
Quarterly revenue of $308 million was down 10% from a year ago or 11% in constant currency.
In constant currency, revenue in the Americas was down about 9%, while international was down 16%.
The more severe international decline partially reflects the impact of COVID lockdowns in key geographies like France and Germany.
Expanding on my earlier comment, we saw challenging comparisons in three key areas: FGFD, industrial PPE products and respiratory protection.
First, our FGFD business declined 16% compared to our very strong Q1 of last year, while much of this business is project-based and will respond slower to economic recovery.
We are seeing good growth opportunities with orders up in April.
The business trends in this area take time to ship and while one month is not indicative of a longer-term trend.
I am encouraged by the uptick in orders in April and pipeline of new opportunities.
Second, we knew industrial PPE revenue in the quarter would provide a challenging comparison.
We did not start to see the impact of the pandemic until April a year ago in the industrial PPE lines.
Turning to page and looking at the first quarter of this year, we had a slow start in January and February but we saw return to growth in March and April.
Orders across these areas were up 9% in March and were up double digits in April versus a year ago.
We know the pace of deliveries and revenue performance could be impacted by the challenges in our supply chain but I am especially encouraged by the improvement in demand levels across our international or -- I'm sorry, our industrial-related products.
And third, our air purifying respirators presented another tough comparison due to the initial pandemic surge last year.
This landscape continues to evolve as stimulus packages are allocated to enhance PPE supplies for workers.
While the pace of incoming business in 2021 has been a bit disappointing thus far, we continue to stay ready to supply these products when called upon, consistent with the MSA mission.
Touching on fire service, backlog remains very healthy in this area.
It was also encouraging to see that funding allocated to our first responders and municipalities was included in the U.S. stimulus packages.
This funding and the mission-critical nature of our products provides a healthy outlook for the fire service business.
Gross profit declined 240 basis points from a year ago.
The decline is related to three primary areas: first, lower demand led to lower throughput in our factories, which drove inefficiencies and inventory charges.
The inventory charges were primarily related to lower demand for respiratory protection.
Second, a less favorable product mix and higher input costs impacted margins.
We've made adjustments to certain pricing actions already, and we will continue to evaluate additional pricing opportunities as we navigate the inflationary pressures.
And last, our Bristol turnout gear business was about 50 basis points dilutive to overall gross profit.
Gross margins for turnout gear are lower than our corporate average.
And that said, we expect to improve Bristol margins as we execute our integration plans.
Now I'll shift to SG&A expense.
Our expense of $75 million was down 6% or about $5 million from a year ago, and this includes $2 million of costs associated with the recent acquisition of Bristol.
We delivered $7 million to $8 million of savings from restructuring programs and discretionary cost savings associated with reduced travel, controlled hiring, professional services and other costs.
About half of these savings are temporary, and I expect these will return to some extent as the business improve and travel opens up.
The other half, however, of the savings are structural in nature.
Overall, I remain confident in our ability to deliver the cost savings we've committed to for 2021 across the income statement.
In the second quarter, we will continue to manage our cost structure very closely.
However, we expect the year-over-year SG&A comp to become more difficult.
I say that because our SG&A in the second quarter of 2020 was $69 million, and that number reflects the initial cost reduction activities that occurred at the onset of the pandemic.
Our quarterly adjusted operating margin was down 330 basis points on the gross profit headwinds and overall lower revenue volume.
Looking at our segment performance, International margins were down 270 basis points to about 8.8% of sales.
What we're seeing here is the impact of the lower revenue.
Our cost reductions and pricing programs remain very much on track.
But it's difficult to get leverage on the double-digit sales decline.
Bristol, which is our operating -- which is in our International reporting segment, was dilutive to the international margins by about 120 basis points.
And looking ahead, I know we remain well positioned in this area.
I say that because I believe we will see continued margin expansion in the international segment as the volume comes back online and COVID lockdowns ease.
Americas margins were down about 420 basis points to 21.7%.
The gross profit challenges that I mentioned previously drove this decline.
We are focused on driving improvements in our Americas segment margin performance, and I am confident in our ability to drive improvements in this area going forward.
From a cash flow and capital allocation perspective, quarterly free cash flow conversion was about 100% of net income.
In fact, operating cash flow was up more than 200% compared to a year ago.
We generated strong cash flow despite the P&L challenges, and I'm encouraged by the strong performance across working capital, which declined about 100 basis points as a percentage of sales from year-end without the impact of Bristol.
As I've noted on many different occasions, growth continues to be a top priority in our capital allocation strategies.
We deployed $63 million for the Bristol acquisition in the first quarter, and leverage remains very healthy at 0.7 times EBITDA on a net basis.
We remain active in pursuing M&A opportunities as well as funding organic projects that drive long-term growth for MSA.
As we look ahead, we're operating in a very dynamic environment.
There are a number of evolving factors that will continue to influence our revenue outlook.
These factors include, among other things, the effectiveness of the vaccine rollout, risk of additional COVID lockdowns, industrial employment rates, the pace of economic recovery and the extent of supply chain challenges as economies open back up.
Collectively, all of these variables make the outcome very hard to predict, but we know our order trends have improved in March and April, and they've improved across a number of key areas in our business.
So today, I do have a greater sense of confidence heading into the second quarter.
To wrap up, my optimism is based upon our March and April order book performance.
While near-term supply chain challenges could impact revenue performance, demand levels are improving.
Our market positions have never been stronger, and we continue to invest in growth and productivity programs across our business.
Further, I remain confident that the steps we're taking to improve our competitive position and our business model will be beneficial for MSA as conditions continue to improve.
While it was a challenging start to the year, the improving order book in March and April provides more optimism for the second quarter and beyond.
I'm very confident that our long-term focus areas will position MSA for success in the years ahead.
At this time, Ken and I will be glad to take any questions you may have.
Please remember that MSA does not give guidance.

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q1 revenue fell 10 percent to $308 million.

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