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Text: Joining the call today are Tom Ferguson, Chief Executive Officer; Philip Schlom, Chief Financial Officer; and David Nark, Senior Vice President, Marketing Communications and IR.
Those risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, changes in customer demand and response to products and services offered by the company, including demand by the power generation markets, electrical transmission and distribution markets, the industrial markets and the metal coatings markets; prices and raw material costs, including zinc and natural gas, which are used in the hot-dip galvanizing process; changes in the political stability and economic conditions of the various markets that AZZ serves, foreign and domestic; customer-requested delays of shipments; acquisition opportunities; currency exchange rates; adequate financing and availability of experienced management and employees to implement the company's growth strategies.
In addition, AZZ's customers and its operations could potentially be adversely impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
We continue to gain momentum in the second quarter and completed our fourth consecutive quarter of solid performance after the disruptions from COVID in the first half of last year.
Their perseverance through the past 19 months of COVID-19 turmoil has allowed AZZ to obtain the results we are now reporting.
Overall sales of $216 million improved 6.4% versus the prior year, or 8% when adjusted for the divestiture of SMS. Metal Coatings turned in another excellent quarter with sales up 10.7%, almost $130 million, and Infrastructure Solutions flat at about $87 million.
Sales were somewhat impacted by labor constraints and COVID-19-related material shortages in some businesses.
I will get into the details of this as we go along.
We are pleased to have completed another strong quarter performance.
We continue to generate strong cash flow during the second quarter, while also returning capital to our shareholders.
We generated net income of $18.9 million and earnings per share of $0.76 per diluted share, reflecting the resiliency of our businesses and the dedication of our people.
Our businesses leverage the realignment actions taken last year to improve profitability while maintaining their focus on providing outstanding quality and service to our customers.
We also benefited from lower interest expense while incurring a 20.4% tax rate for the quarter.
In line with our strategic commitment to value creation, we've repurchased over 290,000 shares for $15 million and distributed $4.2 million in dividends.
In Metal Coatings, which represented 60% of our sales in the second quarter, we achieved 24.4% operating margins on sales of $130 million.
This resulted in operating income being up over 17% from the previous year.
The margin improvement was primarily due to driving operating efficiencies and productivity, while realizing improved pricing in the face of rising zinc, labor and energy costs.
While we have several active acquisition discussions underway, we were slowed somewhat due to the uptick in COVID Delta variant cases that reduced some travel.
Our Metal Coatings team continues to demonstrate their ability to perform and deliver great results while managing labor shortages and the increasing zinc costs.
Our Infrastructure Solutions segment demonstrated continued profitability improvement through their seasonally slow second quarter.
We were up about 4.3% when considering the impact of the SMS divestiture.
The team delivered operating income of $7 million or 130%, up dramatically versus the prior year.
The segment benefited from its realignment actions from last year but did face some labor constraints and material delays.
We are focused on strategic selling initiatives and are well positioned to deliver a strong fiscal year 2022.
For fiscal year 2022, while COVID continues to generate some uncertainty in many sectors, given our strong performance in the first half and due to seeing more opportunities than risk the balance of this year, we are tightening and raising our guidance.
We anticipate sales to be in the range of $865 million to $925 million and earnings per share at $2.90 to $3.20.
This excludes any acquisitions or divestitures.
Metal Coatings is continuing focus on sales growth, including leveraging our spin galvanizing operations at several sites, operational execution and customer service as labor and operating expenses increased due to inflation.
Our Infrastructure Solutions segment has seen more normalized business levels and entered the third quarter with some momentum in bookings activity, particularly in electrical.
Our WSI business is seeing good results from the expanded Poland facility, although internationally the business continues to experience some intermittent project delays due to COVID outbreaks at certain customer sites.
The electrical platform is focused on operational execution and growing its e-house and switchgear businesses.
We anticipate continuing to benefit from low interest rates.
While we expect solid performance in the third quarter due to the continued COVID impact on our international markets, we do not anticipate quite as strong of a performance as we experienced in this past first quarter.
While the fall turnaround activity is good, we're seeing several projects that are already likely to stretch into the fourth quarter.
I will note that we are already seeing a lot of activity lining up for the spring season.
For fiscal year 2022, AZZ will continue to execute on our strategic growth objectives to drive shareholder value.
Our commitment to superior customer service is unwavering.
Our ability to generate strong cash flow is based on initiatives that drive operational excellence, manage costs, ensure pricing discipline and emphasis on receivables collection within our operating platforms.
We are confident that our businesses remain vital to improving and sustaining infrastructure.
So we are actively working to position our core businesses to provide sustainable profitability and regardless of whether we see any infrastructure legislation.
Bookings or incoming orders in the second quarter were $231.8 million, a $23.2 million or a 11.1% increase over the second quarter of the prior year.
Our bookings to sales ratio increased to 107% as we saw improving market conditions across both the Metal Coatings and Infrastructure Solutions segments.
As Tom previously mentioned, second quarter fiscal year 2022 sales of $216.4 million were $13.1 million or 6.4% higher than the prior year second quarter sales of $203.4 million.
We generated gross profit of $55.1 million compared with gross profit of $46.1 million in the second quarter of the prior year.
Our gross margin was 25.5% for the quarter, which was a 280-basis-point improvement compared with a gross margin of 22.7% in the second quarter of last year, as business in both segments continues to recover from the pandemic lows witnessed this time last year.
Operating income for the quarter was $26.5 million compared with $652,000 in the second quarter of the prior year.
During the prior year second quarter, we recorded restructuring and impairment charges of $18.7 million.
We believe the difficult decisions and actions management took last year are strongly impacting our financial results in both of our segments this fiscal year.
We believe we have established a strong foundation for future growth.
Our earnings per share of $0.76 was $0.26 higher than last year's second quarter adjusted earnings per share of $0.50 and $0.83 above the reported loss of $0.07.
The prior-year second quarter loss was significantly impacted by the impairment and restructuring charges and impacts of the pandemic as previously discussed.
Second quarter EBITDA for fiscal year 2022 was $36.6 million compared with adjusted EBITDA reported in the second quarter of fiscal year 2021 of $30.7 million, an increase of $5.9 million or 19.1%.
Year-to-date sales through the second quarter of fiscal year 2022 were $446.3 million, a 7.1% increase from last year's second quarter year-to-date sales of $416.7 million.
Excluding the impact of the SMS divestiture, sales would have increased 11% year-over-year.
Fiscal year 2022 year-to-date net income of $41.3 million was $22.8 million or 122.8% above the prior year-to-date adjusted net income of $18.5 million.
Prior year-to-date net income as reported was $3.8 million.
Year-to-date earnings per share of $1.64 was 131% higher than the prior year-to-date adjusted earnings per share of $0.71.
Turning to our liquidity and cash flows.
We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet and return capital to our shareholders.
The following are our capital allocation highlights: During the quarter, we renegotiated and renewed our five-year credit facility, retaining our facility at $600 million in borrowing capacity, supported by a strong group of banks.
Gross outstanding debt as of the second quarter is $183 million, $4 million above the $179 million in outstanding debt at the end of the second quarter of the prior year, which reflects increased share purchase activity as we have purchased nearly 70 million in outstanding shares during the last year.
Year-to-date, we have deployed $13.1 million in capital investments and we anticipate to still make capital investments of roughly $35 million this year.
Supply chain constraints have impacted and delayed to some extent the timing and spending of our planned capital expenditures.
As Tom noted, we repurchased $15 million in outstanding stock during the quarter and $21.2 million on a year-to-date basis.
We declared and continued our prior history of making quarterly dividend payments.
For the first half of the year, cash flow from operations was $37.8 million, up $5.6 million or 17.4% from prior year as a result of strong sales and solid net income generated by the business.
Free cash flow was $23.2 million, $10.3 million or 79.8% above the $12.9 million realized in the prior year.
We continue to execute on several merger and acquisition opportunities and expect to make announcements regarding the same before the end of our fiscal year.
Here are some key indicators that we are paying particular attention to.
For the Metal Coatings segment's galvanizing business, we are carefully tracking fabrication and construction activity, material and labor cost inflation and progress of infrastructure legislation.
For the Surface Technologies platform, we are primarily focused on expanding our customer base and benefiting from improved operational performance.
For Infrastructure Solutions, domestic turnaround and outage activity has returned to a normal level.
The fall season is currently looking to be good albeit somewhat muted as noted earlier, due to international customers being impacted by COVID-related issues.
The Electrical platform is benefiting from transmission distribution, utility spending and growing data center and battery energy storage activity.
In regards to the strategic review of Infrastructure Solutions, we have further narrowed the number of options we are pursuing and are increasingly confident that AZZ can and will become predominately a focused metal coatings company.
As we have noted previously, we are having regular meetings with the Board.
But due to the sensitivity of ongoing discussions and confidentiality agreements, we cannot be more specific at this time, but realize we are rapidly approaching one-year anniversary of our announcement.
We remain committed to our growth strategy around Metal Coatings and achieving 21% to 23% operating margins with galvanizing performance being quite steady, while we continue to improve Surface Technologies.
We will remain acquisitive, particularly in Metal Coatings.
For Infrastructure Solutions, we are focused on profitability and cash flow.
Our AIS business units should benefit from more normalized turnaround and outage seasons and a solid market for T&D, utility and data center, e-houses and switchgear.
Our corporate office is actively engaged in several merger and acquisition projects, while continuing to maintain tight accounting controls and providing support to the field for acquiring and retaining talent.
And finally, we will soon be issuing our first ESG report.
So please stay tuned.

user
azz inc q2 earnings per share of $0.76.
compname reports results for q2 of fiscal year 2022; generates earnings per share of $0.76 and revises guidance.
q2 sales rose 6.4 percent to $216.4 million.
azz - sees annual sales to be in the range of $865 million to $925 million.
sees earnings per share to be in the range of $2.90 to $3.20 per diluted share for fiscal year 2022.
qtrly sales of $216.4 million, up 6.4%.

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