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Text: Our discussion today includes certain non-GAAP financial measures, which provide additional information we believe is helpful to investors.
These measures have been reconciled to the related GAAP measures in accordance with SEC regulations.
Please consider the risks and uncertainties that are mentioned in today's call and are described in our periodic filings with the SEC.
For the third quarter, Barnes Group delivered respectable financial performance as we continue to manage through the challenging environment presented by the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic.
We generated earnings per share toward the high end of our July outlook, and our cash generation continues to be good.
We also saw incremental sales growth in both of our operating segments over the quarter, with promising signs of recovery in our industrial business, and the moving on from what we believe was the second quarter revenue trough in our Aerospace business.
Clearly, there remains a lot of uncertainty, but we can see signs of a path to recovery with more clarity.
Given our strong management team and thoughtful actions, we expect to drive profitable performance throughout this challenging period, while maintaining a sharp focus on accelerating our key strategic initiatives to position the business for future growth.
For the third quarter, total sales decreased 28% over the prior year period with organic sales down 26%, driven by lower volumes given the pandemic's impact on our end markets.
On a positive note, total sales did improve 14% sequentially from the second quarter, primarily driven by the performance of our Industrial segment.
Adjusted operating income decreased 53% compared to a year ago, while adjusted operating margin declined 640 basis points to 11.7%.
Earnings per share were $0.30, down 66% from last year, obviously, significant declines from a year ago, but somewhat better than expectations we laid out in July.
More importantly, total sales improved sequentially through the quarter.
At the same time, cash performance was once again solid, and our leverage continues to remain manageable.
Ongoing cost management and further working capital improvements in the quarter also helped to mitigate some of the impact of lower demand.
Moving now to a discussion of our business segments and end markets.
At Industrial, we're seeing some of our end markets exhibiting positive signs of recovery, coinciding with what has been a rapid increase of manufacturing PMIs.
U.S. and Europe PMIs have risen substantially from the second quarter lows, and China has strengthened to its already favorable reading.
Exiting the third quarter, all had solid PMI readings of 53 or better.
Overall, segment book-to-bill was slightly better than one times and orders grew 24% sequentially from the second quarter.
In our Molding Solutions business, sales of medical molds and hot runners remained solid.
And for the second consecutive quarter, we saw a nice year-over-year pickup in both packaging and personal care orders, reflecting the release of previously deferred projects.
Correspondingly, we generated a sequential sales increase in both of these end markets in the quarter.
In our automotive hot runner business, while sales were relatively flat to the second quarter, order saw a sequential bump as a few postponed projects were released.
We're seeing this market slowly ramping, in part driven by the influence of new electric vehicles.
In our Force & Motion Control business, sheet metal forming market saw a modest sequential improvement in orders and sales, while general industrial orders and sales likewise trended positively.
At Engineered Components, general industrial end markets experienced the meaningful sequential bump in orders and sales, another positive signal and fully aligned with the trend in manufacturing PMIs.
Our global automotive production markets saw the most sequential improvement, which was foreshadowed by the positive auto production forecast trend we highlighted last quarter.
While global automotive production is still anticipated to be meaningfully down in 2020, next year's growth is projected to be up in the mid-teens.
In our Automation business, we saw a solid quarter of performance with both year-over-year and sequential improvement in orders and sales.
Demand for our end-of-arm tooling solutions and various automotive applications saw a nice bounce, while precision grippers for medical and pharma applications also remained a bright spot.
For the segment, we continued to forecast sequential orders and sales improvement into the fourth quarter as the recovery progresses, albeit at a measured pace.
Moving now to our Aerospace business.
In the third quarter, total Barnes Aerospace sales were down nearly 50% with OEM down 44% and aftermarket down 58%.
Commercial aviation remained significantly disrupted by the global pandemic, yet passenger traffic has improved from the lows of April.
In the short-term, we expect our OEM business to see soft demand for its manufactured components as aircraft production rates of both Boeing and Airbus have been lower.
Although we expect our OEM sales to improve sequentially in the fourth quarter, getting back to pre-pandemic levels is forecasted to take several years.
In the aftermarket, lower aircraft utilization and weakened airline profitability will no doubt result in a slow recovery as less maintenance is required and/or gets deferred.
However, as commercial flights return with domestic traveling -- travel happening sooner than international demand, we anticipate volumes in our aftermarket business to gradually pick-up.
For the fourth quarter, we forecast flattish sequential aftermarket sales.
Despite a second consecutive quarter of 50% down sales, Aerospace delivered adjusted operating margin of close to 10%, a tribute to the quality of the team.
Also, while addressing the substantial day-to-day challenges of the current environment, Barnes Aerospace improved its position by securing a long-term agreement with GE Aviation for the manufacturer of existing and additional components on the LEAP engine program.
With this agreement, we'll employ our expertise and technology in the machining and assembly of complex hot section engine components.
The agreement provides for an increase of production share for select parts on LEAP engine programs, extends the term of previous agreements by 10 years for select parts and expands our portfolio of components on LEAP engines.
Inclusive of the contract extension benefit, the estimated sales is over $700 million through 2032.
Just before I close today, I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about another very important aspect of our business, which is Environmental, Social and Governance or ESG matters and to highlight the progress we are making.
At Barnes Group, we are committed to being an exemplary corporate citizen, and we take that responsibility very seriously.
In doing so, over the last several years we've worked to further our ESG progress and have recently published our sixth annual ESG corporate social responsibility report.
You can find our report and a summary of our ESG efforts on our company website under About BGI.
At Barnes, we began our ESG journey several years ago by educating ourselves on the global standards for measuring and reporting sustainability progress.
Barnes Group's ESG efforts are currently focused on aligning our sustainability actions around the Global Reporting Initiative or GRI.
The GRI is a common language used by organizations to report on their sustainability impacts in a consistent and credible way.
Our teams are engaged in several projects that will illustrate to our varied stakeholders how we are striving to meet those sustainability standards.
I'm also proud to report that we have recently established environmental targets for 2025.
As a company, we will work to reduce the energy we use in our factories as measured in carbon dioxide equivalents by 15%, reduce the amount of water we use by 20% and reduce the amount of industrial process waste we generate from our manufacturing operations by 15%.
These efforts are a testament to our Barnes Enterprise System.
Reducing all types of waste and inefficiencies to achieve operational excellence is the hallmark of our operating system and demonstrates our commitment to running sustainable businesses that conserve natural resources, while minimizing the impact of our footprint on the environment.
So to conclude, we continue to effectively manage our business as we deal with the disruptive effects of the pandemic on our end markets.
Across the company, we've been focused on the safety of our employees, protecting profitability and driving cash performance.
At the same time, we are pursuing various opportunities for growth, like the recent GE deal, to better position Barnes Group to leverage the speed at which we exit the current downturn.
As difficult as the last couple of quarters have been, I am very proud of the Barnes team and encouraged by the direction of our progress.
And while the level of uncertainty remains elevated, I am very optimistic that our end markets have begun the recovery and that the future looks promising.
Let me begin with highlights of our 2020 third quarter results.
Third quarter sales were $269 million, down 28% from the prior year period, with organic sales declining 26%.
As you'd expect, the severe demand disruption brought on by the global pandemic continues to impact many of our end markets.
As we previously mentioned, we view the second quarter as the sales low point, with modest recovery commencing in Q3 led by Industrial, which is indeed, what we're seeing.
We saw a 14% sequential improvement in sales relative to the second quarter.
However, on a year-over-year basis, the pandemic impact remained significant.
Also, influencing our sales results, the divestiture of Seeger had a negative impact on sales of 4%, while FX had a positive impact of 2%.
Operating income was $31.2 million as compared to $67.6 million in last year's third quarter.
Operating margin was 11.6%, down 650 basis points.
Interest expense of $3.7 million decreased $1.6 million from the prior year period due to lower average borrowings and a lower average interest rate.
Other expense decreased by $2.5 million from a year ago as a result of favorable FX.
The company's effective tax rate for the third quarter of 2020 was approximately 44% as compared to 23.4% for the full year 2019.
The increase in the third quarter's tax rate over last year's is primarily due to a change in the forecasted geography sources or the geographic sources of income with reductions incurring in several low tax jurisdictions, and the impact of global intangible low tax income, commonly referred to as GILTI.
Our current expectation for the full year 2020 tax rate is approximately 39%, which includes the recognition of tax expense related to the Seeger sale that occurred in the first quarter.
As we look out to next year, given where things stand today, we expect our 2021 tax rate to be in the range of approximately 27% to 29%.
Net income for the third quarter was $0.30 per diluted share compared to $0.89 a year ago.
Let me now move to our segment performance, beginning with Industrial.
Third quarter sales were $197 million, down 15% from a year ago.
Organic sales decreased 12%, Seeger divested revenues had a negative impact of 6%, while favorable FX increased sales by 3%.
On the positive side of the ledger, total Industrial sales increased 19% sequentially from the second quarter.
Industrial's operating profit for the third quarter was $24.4 million versus $34.8 million last year.
Like last quarter, the primary driver is lower sales volume, offset in part by our cost mitigation efforts, which included the previously announced workforce-related actions and the curtailing of discretionary spending.
Operating margin was 12.4%, down 260 basis points.
I'll close my Industrial discussion with quarterly organic orders and sales relative to last year.
Molding Solutions organic orders and sales were down approximately 10%.
Force & Motion Control organic orders were down mid-teens and sales down approximately 20%.
Engineered Components organic orders were up 8% with sales down approximately 10%.
And Automation organic orders were up high-teens with sales up low-single-digits.
Clearly the business remains under considerable pressure.
Sales were $72 million, down 49% from last year.
Operating profit was $6.8 million, down approximately 80%, reflecting the lower sales volume and partially offset by cost actions.
Operating margin was 9.4% as compared to 23.2% a year ago.
On an adjusted basis, excluding $300,000 in restructuring charges, operating margin was 9.9%.
Between the volume impact on factory absorption and the unfavorable aftermarket mix, the Aerospace team did a nice job to protect profitability.
Aerospace OEM backlog ended the quarter at $534 million, down 4% from June 2020, and we expect to ship approximately 45% of this backlog over the next 12 months.
Year-to-date cash provided by operating activities was $163 million, an increase of approximately $2 million over last year-to-date, driven by ongoing working capital improvements.
We continue to have good receivable collections, and we began to see reductions in inventory levels.
Year-to-date free cash flow was $133 million versus $124 million last year.
And year-to-date capex was $30 million, down approximately $8 million from a year ago.
With respect to our balance sheet, our debt-to-EBITDA ratio, as defined by our credit agreement, was 2.8 times at quarter end, up from 2.4 times at the end of June.
The company is in full compliance with all covenants of our credit agreements and maintained sufficient liquidity to fund operations.
As we announced last week, the company has amended on a temporary basis the debt limits allowed under our credit agreements.
For the next four quarters, our senior debt covenant maximum, our most restrictive covenant, has increased from 3.25 times EBITDA as defined to 3.75 times.
Given the level of uncertainty in several of our end markets, we believe that is a prudent risk mitigation action.
Our third quarter average diluted shares outstanding was 50.9 million shares.
Our share repurchase activity remains suspended.
For the fourth quarter, we expect organic sales will be lower than last year by approximately 20%, though up approximately 5% sequentially from the third quarter.
Operating margin is forecasted to be approximately 11%, while adjusted earnings per share are anticipated to be in the range of $0.27 to $0.35.
Forecasted 2020 capex is approximately $40 million, a bit lower than our prior view.
So to close, while significant challenges remain in the current business environment, we're focused on managing those items that we can control, whether they be growth opportunities, cost actions or cash management.
All things considered, our financial performance demonstrates that focus.
As Patrick mentioned, the sentiment is that we're starting to turn the corner on a recovery.
And while much work is still to be done, our efforts on positioning the company to best leverage and improving environment continues.
Operator, we'll now open the call to questions.

user
compname says operating margin is expected to approximate 11% for q4.
q3 gaap earnings per share $0.30.
q3 sales $269 million versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $245.6 million.
sees q4 2020 adjusted earnings per share $0.27 to $0.35.
for q4 of 2020, will continue to be impacted by covid-19 global pandemic.
current view is for q4 organic sales to be lower than last year's q4 by approximately 20%.
adjusted earnings per share are anticipated to be in range of $0.27 to $0.35 for q4.
full year 2020 capital expenditures forecast of $40 million is down slightly from prior view.

assistant