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Text: Avner will review our financial performance and provide an outlook for the balance of 2021 with closing remarks from Steve.
This will be followed by Q&A.
A replay of today's call will be available for the next seven days.
It will also be read in full at the end of today's call.
Today, I would like to begin by sharing some opening comments and then provide a brief overview of the quarter.
Before I do that, I want to take a moment to recognize the contributions of Walter Scott, Jr., who served on our Board for more than 40 years and passed away late last month.
Walter was an incredible individual whose wisdom and leadership were critical to Valmont's success over the years.
His loss is felt deeply by those who knew him and the entire Omaha community.
Walter's counsel, kindness and mentorship will truly be missed by all of us at Valmont.
Moving on to the business.
Our strong performance this quarter, once again, demonstrated the solid demand across our businesses and the consistent execution of our growth strategies, even amid a challenging global environment.
Like most others, we have safety impacts of broad-based inflation, the COVID-19 Delta variant, and labor and supply chain disruptions.
Government mandated lockdowns in Australia and workforce quarantines in North America, including Mexico and the Southeast United States, impacted certain utility and coatings facilities.
Supply chain disruptions affect the timing of some shipments in our Irrigation and Solar businesses.
Despite this, we delivered a strong quarter of growth and profitability.
Our commercial and operations teams are managing exceptionally well through these unique dynamics of focus and perseverance, while continuing to prioritize employee safety and serve our customers.
I'm extremely proud of our team's execution throughout this year.
Record third quarter sales of $868.8 million increased more than 18% compared to last year.
Sales growth was realized in all segments led by higher pricing and strong broad-based market demand with particularly substantial sales growth in Irrigation.
Moving to the segments and starting with Utility.
Sales of $276.5 million grew slightly compared to last year.
A significantly higher pricing and higher volumes were mostly offset by renewable energy projects that did not repeat or that were pushed into future quarters due to customers' supply chain disruptions.
North American utilities have been increasing their planned investments in transmission and distribution projects, even exceeding recent years of higher capital spending.
Further, proposed capacity additions in the renewable energy sector are favorable demand drivers across our Utility business.
We see strong demand continuing, as both utilities and developers have been increasing their forecast of additional projects over the next several years to comply with mandates to increase renewable energy generation.
Moving to Engineered Support Structures.
Sales of $281.1 million increased 10% year-over-year, led by favorable pricing in all markets and sales growth of more than 25% in wireless communication products and components.
Pricing improvements across all product lines continued this quarter, and international markets are benefiting from higher stimulus and infrastructure investments, especially in Australia.
5G build-outs and significant investments by the major carriers are driving demand in our wireless communications business, providing a good line of sight into 2022.
Sales of $96.7 million grew 10% year-over-year, driven by higher pricing, improved general end market demand and sales from our greenfield facility in Pittsburgh.
Global sales of $240.3 million grew more than 72% year-over-year, with sales growth in all regions and higher sales of technology solutions.
In North America, sales grew nearly 55%, as strong market fundamentals and improved net farm income projections continue to positively impact farmer sentiment, generating very strong order flow.
International sales doubled year-over-year, led by solid demand in the Middle East and Africa, including the ongoing deliveries of the Egypt project and another record quarter of sales in Brazil.
Last quarter, we highlighted our acquisition of Prospera Technologies.
Integration is going well, and we are making substantial progress building on our new strategy to grow recurring revenue services.
We are on track to meet the financial targets that we shared last quarter and look forward to sharing progress toward these goals in the future.
In Irrigation, we have a unique market advantage due to our global footprint and highly differentiated AI solutions, both are critical components of our growth strategy.
Over the past year, we have been increasing opportunities for local manufacturing in the markets we serve, especially in light of the challenging supply chain environment, labor availability and higher freight costs.
For example, we recently localized some of our electronics assembly in Dubai facility and are increasing the total capacity in our Brazil factory by 50%, positioning us for long-term international market growth, while we continue enhancing service to our dealers and customers.
We are also very pleased that our Irrigation backlog at the end of the third quarter was $388 million, up 26% year-over-year.
Turning to slide five we've said before, ESG is embedded into the core of our company's purpose, and there are many ways of products and services to serve resources and improve life.
One recent example of this is using Solar solutions to transform the Sudan desert into a prosperous and sustainable region for agricultural production.
Sudan is the third largest country in the African continent.
Agriculture is quickly becoming its primary economic driver, accounting for 40% of the nation's GDP and employing close to 80% of the local workforce.
But arid conditions and a lack of direct access to electricity in the region are hindering its expansion.
To help overcome these challenges, our Valmont Solar team recently installed a PV plant to bring power to center pivots.
Sunlight is captured and transformed immediately into electricity, eliminating the need for a battery or secondary energy source.
We're proud to have initiated this project powering pivots by solar energy, 100% independent from the grid.
Our innovative solutions are leading the way, precision agriculture in Sudan, opening doors to other solutions that will enhance productivity, empower local communities to solve food security issues, and help build a more sustainable world.
Turning to slide seven, and third quarter results.
Operating income of $80.4 million or 9.3% of sales grew 20% year-over-year, driven by higher volumes in Irrigation and favorable pricing, notably in Engineered Support Structures.
Diluted earnings per share of $2.57 grew 30% compared to last year, primarily driven by higher operating income and a more favorable tax rate of 23.5%, which was realized through the execution of certain tax planning strategies.
Turning to the segments.
On slide eight, in Utility Support Structures, operating income of $24.6 million or 8.9% of sales decreased 170 basis points compared to last year.
Raw material costs continued to increase during the quarter, impacting our ability to fully recover cost to our pricing mechanism, leading to lower-than-expected margin.
Also the impact of workforce quarantine in a few North American facilities led to operational inefficiencies, which we do not expect to repeat.
Moving to slide nine.
In Engineered Support Structures, operating income increased to $34.4 million or 12.2% of sales, a third quarter record.
The benefits of proactive pricing actions have more than offset the impact of continued rapid cost inflation, better fixed cost leverage, including SG&A, also contributed to positive results.
Turning to slide 10.
In the Coatings segment, operating income of $12.5 million or 12.9% of sales decreased 270 basis points year-over-year.
Profitability was impacted by a lag in pricing to recover higher inflation costs, including raw material and labor and start-up costs at the Pittsburgh facility.
Moving to slide 11.
In the Irrigation segment, operating income of $32 million, more than doubled compared to last year, and operating margin of 13.3% of sales improved 270 basis points year-over-year.
Significantly higher volumes and favorable pricing were partially offset by higher SG&A expenses from the recent Prospera acquisition.
We're also extremely pleased with the profitability of our industrial tubing business and international margin improvement led by consistent and proactive pricing actions taken by our global team.
Turning to cash flow on slide 12.
Year-to-date, we have delivered operating cash flows of $62 million, with the use of cash this quarter of $8.4 million that reflects higher working capital levels to support strong sales growth.
As we stated in our prior quarters, rapid raw material inflation creates short-term impact on cash flow.
For the balance of the year, we expect inventory levels to remain elevated to help mitigate supply chain disruption and strategically secures raw material availability to support strong sales growth.
Accounts receivable will also increase in line with sales growth.
As our historical results have shown, we will see improvements in working capital as inflation subsides.
Turning to slide 13 for a summary of capital deployment.
Year-to-date capital spending of $81 million includes $33 million for strategic growth investments and $55 million of capital was returned to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, ending the quarter with approximately $170 million of cash.
Moving on to slide 14.
Our balance sheet remains strong.
Based on our recently amended revolving credit facility, our net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA of 1.85 times remains within our desired range of 1.5 to 2.5 times.
We're increasing our earnings expectations for fiscal 2021 by narrowing the earnings per share guidance range to $10.60 to $11.10.
This reflects strong market demand and our solid execution this year and our confidence in our ability to continue this performance.
Turning to our segment outlook on slide 16.
In Utility Support Structures, we expect operating margins to improve sequentially as pricing becomes more aligned with steel cost inflation.
Moving to Engineered Support Structures.
We expect continued stable market condition in North American transportation market and order rates are beginning to improve.
Demand for wireless communication products and components remains very strong, and we are on track to grow sales 15% to 20%, in line with expected market growth.
We remained focused on pricing actions and providing value to our customers.
We now expect sales to grow 50% to 53% this year based on strength in global underlying ag fundamentals and a strong global backlog.
Looking ahead to 2022, strong market demand across our businesses, the strength and flexibility of our global teams and our continued pricing strategies give us confidence in achieving sales growth of 7% to 12%, and earnings-per-share growth of 13% to 15% in line with the three- to five-year growth targets that we have communicated at our Investor Day in May.
Turning to slide 17.
The long-term drivers of our businesses remain solid as evidenced by our record global backlog of more than $1.5 billion, up 35% from year-end 2020.
These demand drivers are in place to sustain this momentum into 2022, and our business portfolio is well positioned for growth.
We also continue to take pricing actions across our businesses where needed.
Like others, we are closely monitoring inflation, supply chain disruptions and COVID.
We are ready to take additional appropriate actions to address these issues across all our businesses, as needed.
Meanwhile, our focus on following state and local regulations to keep our employees and customers safe is not wavered.
Turning to slide 18.
In summary, I'm very pleased with our strong third quarter results and our team's ability to navigate through challenging market dynamics.
We've demonstrated our ability to grow sales through innovation and execution, while being flexible and responding quickly to meet customer needs.
We've improved operating margins by executing on our pricing strategies and advancing operational excellence across our footprint.
And we have invested in our employees and technology to drive new products and services and build upon the strength of our operations.
Throughout 2021, we have been disciplined in allocating capital to high-growth strategic investments, while also returning capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
Looking ahead to 2022, we are confident in our plan to deliver the outlook that we have communicated and remain focused on execution and our ESG principles to build upon our success, while creating additional stakeholder value and improving a return on investor capital.

user
q3 adjusted earnings per share $2.57.
sees fy adjusted earnings per share $10.60 to $11.10.
sees fy gaap earnings per share $10.10 to $10.60.
q3 revenue $868.8 million versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $862.3 million.
in 2022 we expect sales growth of 7% to 12%.
in 2022 we expect sales growth of 7% to 12% and earnings per share growth of 13% to 15%.

assistant