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Text: technologies.com under the link, Investor Relations.
There continue to be a lot of challenges to overcome on a regular basis.
We're seeing some supply chain issues with delivering cost inflation, as well as the ongoing challenges from COVID.
In spite of that, we continue to see great efforts and contributions from our body across the company and for that I'm very appreciative.
Since beginning of the pandemic, our primary goal has been the same to provide safe working environment and protect the health of our employees.
We continue to do that now and we appreciate everybody's efforts to create a safe and collaborative environment our facilities worldwide.
Overall, we're very happy with how we finished fiscal 2021.
The fourth quarter showed some stabilization in our overall business with sales growth of two of the three business platforms and good margin improvement compared to our third quarter results.
Cash generation was also strong, as we continue to see benefits from our ongoing focus on working capital improvement.
Chris will get into some financial deals -- the details in a few minutes, but I wanted to start off with some top level commentary.
From a segment perspective, there are several positives to report.
Within A&D, we're seeing signs of recovery in commercial aerospace as passenger boardings continue to solidify.
More importantly, we're starting to see some order momentum from this set of businesses.
All of our businesses in selling commercial aerospace sector saw a nice order improvement in the quarter.
We're also seeing good order strength in the military side of the business.
Sales of our commercial aerospace customers were still be down in fourth quarter, but the rate of decline was improved compared to what we saw in the first half of the year.
Overall, our navy and space businesses remain strong and well-funded, but sales there were a little weaker in the quarter, which is mostly a function of a very strong fourth quarter last year by our VACCO subsidiary.
Our Test business has seen a nice pickup in its overall piece of business, we had double-digit sales growth there in Q4, and we also saw order growth of over 30%, some exciting numbers.
in the U.S., we have seen some sizable order growth from the power line filter business.
These are used in data centers to ensure clean power supply, and we've seen a lot of government activity driving the order increases.
We also had a strong quarter in Asia from a top line perspective and are excited about our prospects there, as we move forward.
We did experience a little margin pressure test during Q4, definitely seeing some impacts of inflation, we're all very aware of these days.
The team at the testing is very focused on managing our overall cost profile and also price execution, so that we see margin trends turn around in fiscal 2022.
USG business had an exciting quarter with the closing of two acquisitions.
By now, you've all heard a lot about Altanova and Phenix, but we're very excited to get these deals closed.
These businesses will strengthen USG for the long term and we're very excited to have these teams on board with our ESCO.
The business is going through the hard work of integration now doing a full product and channel assessment to gain proper alignment of the businesses on a global basis.
The acquisition to get the USG business a bit of a top line boost in the quarter and we look forward to more of that next year.
The underlying business did delivered growth in Q4 and that was good to see.
The core business -- core Doble business was a bit up and down in the fiscal '21 where we really finished the year strong.
The energy business grew 25% for the full year and the fourth quarter was consistent with that as well.
USG margins were a big part of our '21 story because the team took actions late last year to reduce cost, and we really saw good flow-through from that throughout the year and definitely saw in fourth quarter as well.
Overall, the fundamentals of our portfolio remain strong.
We're excited about the outlook for '22.
We feel good about that and are ready for the return of growth after two tough years in COVID environment.
I'll start briefly by touching on a few comparative highlights.
Sales in the fourth quarter were flat to prior year Q4 with A&D down 16%, USG was up 16% and Test grew 11%.
So we did see growth from two of the three businesses, but we do continue to fight some headwinds in the A&D Group.
Adjusted EBIT margins were 13.7% in the quarter compared to 13.9% in the prior year quarter.
The margin decline was driven primarily by deleverage within the A&D Group, given the sizable revenue drop there.
Below the EBIT line, we saw interest expense of approximately $800,000 in the quarter compared to nearly $1.5 million in the prior year Q4.
Additionally, we saw tax rate favorability compared to prior year Q4.
All these items delivered adjusted earnings per share of $0.85 per share above prior year's $0.80 per share.
Segment highlights in the quarter are as follows.
A&D did see sales weakness in the quarter as previously mentioned, the group was down 16%, in the quarter we saw declines in all major markets with commercial aerospace down 15%, space down 10% and the Navy business down 27%.
The space and Navy reductions are a function of timing and comparisons, as our VACCO subsidiary was very strong in the prior year quarter.
We did see great strong order growth by the A&D Group in Q4.
Orders were up over 25%, as we saw the commercial aerospace driven businesses pick up nicely during the quarter.
PTI, Crissair and Mayday lead the order growth for Q4, a nice indicator as we head into fiscal '22.
USG saw sales growth of 16% in the quarter.
If you exclude the impact of the Q4 acquisitions, the growth was approximately 8%.
The core utility business from Doble was up approximately 4% in the quarter, the renewables business at NRG delivered 29% growth in the quarter capping off a very successful 2021.
The margins from USG were very good in the quarter with adjusted EBIT up to 24.3% in the quarter compared to 18.8% last year.
We continue to get good flow-through from prior cost reductions and we also had favorable mix on instrument, contract and service sales.
We saw good orders for USG in Q4 and including the recent acquisitions we move into fiscal '22 with a record backlog position of $92 million.
This compares to $51 million at the end of last year.
The test business also saw strong growth in the quarter with revenues increasing by 11% compared to prior year Q4.
This growth was led by strength in China, which was up over 30%, the Americas also experienced solid growth driven by the power filter business Vic mentioned previously.
We did see margin pressure in this business, during the quarter as adjusted EBIT margins went from 16.8% in the prior year to 15.3% in the current quarter.
The business is experiencing inflation driven by materials and labor, as they manage increasing demand.
We are very focused on driving cost containment, productivity and price increases to offset these impacts as we move forward.
On the orders front, we saw continued strength in the pace of business for test, orders were a record $74 million in the quarter, which is an increase of over 35% compared to last year's Q4.
Now a few comments on the full year performance.
The A&D Group had a full year sales decline of 11%, the main driver of the sales drop was commercial aerospace, which was down 29% for the year, this was somewhat offset by 4% increase from the Navy business.
USG at a full-year sales increase of 6% excluding the fourth quarter acquisitions the growth was 4% and this was driven by 29% growth at NRG.
Test grew by 6% during fiscal '21 and for the full year consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $131 million or 18.3% compared to $133 million and 18.3% in the prior year.
We were able to hold EBITDA margins on reduced sales.
Adjusted earnings per share finished the year at $259 million compared to $267 million in the prior year overall of 3% reduction of earnings per share, which is consistent with the underlying sales decline that we experienced.
Orders for the year were $767 million before considering the impact of fourth quarter acquisitions last year's orders were $798 million but included very large in Navy orders received by Globe during 2020.
Backlog ended September 21, is at $592 million compared to $511 million at the end of September 2020.
Year-to-date, operating cash flow achieved a record of $123 million in '21.
Going back to fiscal '18, we have seen steady improvement with operating cash flow increasing at a double-digit compound annual growth rate.
We continue to see great results from our focus on driving balance sheet improvements, operating capital turnover continues to improve, and we see overall balance sheet and cash flow management as a long-term value lever for ESCO.
We have a focus program with each subsidiary and will continue driving for long-term improvement of our returns on capital.
Overall, while we continue to see some challenging conditions in a few of our end markets, we were still able to deliver solid results in 2021.
Our balance sheet remains strong and gives us great flexibility moving forward, our overall net debt position and leverage ratios leave us with the strength to invest in our core business and to expand via acquisition.
We continue to aggressively look for new companies that can be added to our portfolio.
We will continue to aggressively pursue additional deals in 2022.
And we told you last quarter, our number one focus remains the same increasing and maximizing our liquidity to position us for future M&A growth and continued investment in new products and solutions.
We still have ample capacity for further acquisitions and we obviously continue to invest in the core business to enhance the organic growth profile.
Our significant cash generation this year is a testament to this focus on liquidity.
We delivered free cash flow conversion at 129% of net earnings in '21 and we'll continue to build on the momentum achieved from our working capital initiatives.
In the release, we provided earnings per share guidance for fiscal '22.
We have seen some good trends developing with orders and are excited to issue guidance that calls for earnings per share in the range of $310 million to $320 million or growth of 20% to 24% in fiscal '22.
This earnings per share range assumes '22 sales in the range of $810 million to $830 million or growth of 13% to 16%.
We expect A&D to grow sales in the range of 10% to 12%, USG to grow in the range of 28% to 32% and test to grow 3% to 5%.
Backlog positions for all three businesses have solidified nicely during the fourth quarter and are supportive of these growth ranges.
We do have some headwinds next year with increased interest expense to $4 million in a projected tax rate of 23% to 24%, but the plan still deliver strong earnings per share in spite of these items.
We are now breaking out guidance by quarter for '22, but we do expect the Q1 results to be lower than Q2 to Q4.
The core utility-based business has been up and down over the last year and we see Q1 a little weaker there and while the test backlogs are strong right now, we don't see that growth kicking in until after Q1.
So, that's the financial summary.
Since I touched on quite a few of my thoughts earlier in my commentary, I'll just offer a few more comments before we move into the Q&A.
As Chris mentioned we feel good about the year, we just finished, and are excited for 2022 and a return to growth.
We feel great about our end market exposure and a diverse portfolio allows us to manage through periods like we've just experienced over the last few years.
We've been able to continue investing in the core business and we know how important driving organic growth is, and these programs are key to achieving that.
Examples of this across our portfolio include the F8000-series of power system simulators launched by Doble in 2021 in the Red Edge Power Lines Filters that are driving growth for test.
We've also been able to strengthen the portfolio with the ATM acquisition earlier in '21, Altanova and Phenix in the fourth quarter and then NEco in the first quarter of 2022.
These acquisitions all bring unique value to the ESCO and we're committed to delivering value to the shareholders, with these transactions.
We spent the last two days with their Board for our year-end meetings, we had a great set of meetings and covered a lot of important topics.
We appreciate all your hard work and are counting on you as we go into 2022.
So, with that, I think we're ready for Q&A.

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compname reports q4 adjusted earnings per share of $0.85.

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