Vishay Precision Group, Inc. (NYSE:VPG) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 7, 2024
Vishay Precision Group, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.4374, expectations were $0.32. VPG isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the VPG’s First Quarter and Fiscal 2024 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for question-and-answer at the end. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn this conference over to our host Steve Cantor, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Steve Cantor: Great, thank you Candace. Good morning, good afternoon everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Our Q1 press release and accompanying slides have been posted on our website at vpgsensors.com and audio recording of today’s call will be available on the Internet for a limited time, and can be accessed on our website. Today’s remarks are governed by the Safe Harbor provisions of the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Our actual results may vary from forward-looking statements. For a discussion of the risks associated with VPG’s operations, we encourage you to refer to our SEC filings, especially the Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, and our other recent SEC filings. On the call today are Ziv Shoshani, CEO and President; and Bill Clancy, CFO. And now I’ll turn the call to Ziv for some prepared remarks. Please refer to Slide 3 of the quarterly presentation.
Ziv Shoshani: Thank you, Steve. I will begin with some comments on VPG’s consolidated financial results, and sales trends for the first quarter. Bill will provide financial details about the quarter, and our outlook for the second quarter. Moving to Slide 3, to summarize the quarter results, operationally we performed well given a mixed business environment, which resulted in a lower revenue compared to a year ago in the fourth quarter. Orders were flagged sequentially, reflecting continuing soft demand, mainly in the industrial weighing and semiconductor test equipment. We achieved record gross margin despite the lower revenue, reflecting ongoing cost reduction initiatives. Our cash flow remained solid, and we continue to repurchase our common stock.
Before providing detail regarding the first quarter, I want to take this opportunity to summarize our strategy, to accelerate VPG’s long-term growth. Moving to Slide 4, as we have described in the past several quarters, we believe VPG is coming to an important inflection point, as we pivot our strategic priorities to accelerate our growth, and achieve our long-term targets. Our strategy leveraged both organic and inorganic initiatives to address larger, faster growing markets. These opportunities are driven, by key technology trends, including electrification, industrial automation, defense and aerospace technologies that requires greater precision and performance. Our organic growth strategy, comprises initiatives in each of our business reporting segments that, expand our business development and engineering capabilities, to capture new customers as well as to expand applications we address.
We are investing more in these areas in 2024, and are offsetting these investments with ongoing cost reductions, and efficiency initiatives. While some of these initiatives are still in the early stages, we are already seeing an increase in the funnel of opportunities. To summarize some of these opportunities in the Sensor segment, we are leveraging our advanced sensor technology, to further penetrate the e-bike market. We are making progress in the medical and surgical robotics, as well as with humanoid robots we have discussed previously. For precision resistors, we have expanded our engagement with data center and fiber optics equipment manufacturers. In Weighing Solutions, we are working with the leading OEM customers for precision agriculture and construction equipment on their next generation equipment.
We have also launched vLite and new lighter weight force sensors, which is targeted for the industrial weighing market. In the Measurement Systems, one of the key initiatives is to broaden our market beyond steel manufacturers, to address application at aluminum mills, which is a new market for us. In the first quarter, we received an initial order for this solution. We are expanding our product offering a DSI, with a new version of our global system designed, to test small samples in additive, or 3D manufacturing systems. Concurrent with our programs aimed at growing our top line, we are continuing our focus on operational excellence. Our investments in operational capabilities and efficiencies and increased automation, have positioned VPG to address higher volume opportunities, and to achieve new level of profitability as revenue grows.
To augment our organic initiatives, and to leverage our strong business platform and balance sheet, we are continuing to look at attractive M&A that provides us with additional scale, and product offering to expand our opportunities. Moving to Slide 5, turning to the first quarter results in detail, we reported sales of $80.8 million, which was at the low end of our guidance. We were pleased with our gross margin performance, which reached a record level for VPG. Bill will provide more comments regarding our gross margin on a consolidated basis and by segment. Our cash flow was solid and we generated $13.2 million of adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.3%, and adjusted free cash flow of $4.2 million. Our book-to-bill improved to 0.93, compared to 0.84 in the fourth quarter.
Orders of $75.3 million, were even with the fourth quarter levels and reflected continued mixed trends across our markets. Specifically orders in Avionics, Military and Space, transportation and in consumer applications were sequentially higher, while bookings in the industrial weighing and test and measurement markets were weaker, as some customers continued to work down their inventory levels. Given the cost currents in the current macroeconomic environment, our expected recovery in demand has been pushed out to the latter part of this year. I’ll now review the quarter’s highlights by segments. Moving to Slide 6, beginning with our Sensors segment, first quarter revenue of $29.4 million declined 19.9% from a year ago and 14.1%, compared to the fourth quarter.
Sequentially the decrease primarily reflected lower revenue, of precision resistors in the test and measurement and AMS markets. Orders for sensors of $26.7 million were 8.9% lower sequentially, which resulted in a book-to-bill of 0.91. Bookings for precision resistors were soft, as distributors and OEM customers continued their cautious orders patterns. Bookings for the semiconductor test and AMS market were lower, reflecting the timing of customer orders and projects. We are pleased with our progress with advanced sensors for both ongoing, and new OEM engagements. While sales of advanced sensors soften modestly, compared to the fourth quarter and the year ago, orders for consumer applications continue to improve. Moving to Slide 7, turning to our Weighing Solutions segment, sales of $28.8 million were 9.5% lower than a year ago, and 5.2% lower than the fourth quarter of ’23.
Sequentially lower sales of force sensors in our other markets, for precision agriculture and construction applications, and lower sales of force sensors in our industrial weighing markets were partially offset, by increased sales in the transportation market. Book-to-bill for Weighing Solutions was 0.95. Orders of $27.5 million was essentially flat, with the fourth quarter. This reflects soft demand in our industrial weighing market, as well as in other markets for precision agriculture, and construction equipment offset, by increased orders in transportation. Moving to Slide 8. Turning to our Measurement Systems segment, first quarter revenue of $22.5 million, grew 11.1% from a year ago, and decreased 9.3% sequentially. The sequential decrease in revenue, was primarily due to lower sales of DTS products in the AMS and transportation markets, partially offset by higher sales in the steel market.
As we have discussed before, the Measurement Systems businesses are project driven and sales trends reflect the timing of customer projects. Book-to-bill ratio for Measurement Systems was 0.94, as orders of $21.1 million increased 16.4% from the fourth quarter. The sequential order growth, was driven by higher orders for KELK products as well as higher orders for DTS, which included in a multimillion order for North American developer of eVTOL or electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. These offset lower orders for DSI’s metal alloy development systems. Moving to Slide 9, we are continuing to implement our balanced allocation strategy that creates stockholders value to organic growth, successful M&A, and warranted stock repurchases.
In the first quarter we repurchased $2.8 million of stock or 85,000 shares. From August 2022, when we announced the buyback program to the end of Q1 of ’24, we have repurchased $11.4 million of stock. In addition to further leverage our business platform, we have continued to look for attractive, and value creating acquisition opportunities. Before turning the call to Bill, I would like to add the following points. We are excited about the business development efforts around VPG that, we are aimed at accelerating our long-term growth. At the same time, we are maintaining our ongoing focus on cost controls and operational excellence. I will now turn it over to Bill Clancy for additional financial details. Bill?
Bill Clancy: Thanks, Ziv. Referring to Slide 10 and the reconciliation tables of the slide deck, our first quarter revenues declined 9.8% from the fourth quarter of 2023, and were 9.1% below the first quarter a year ago. Gross margins in the first quarter of 43.4% grew from 43.0% in the fourth quarter of 2023, to a record high as improved manufacturing efficiency and cost reductions offset the negative impact of lower volume. By segment, gross margins for the Sensors segment of 36.5% declined sequentially, primarily due to lower volume, partially offset by improved efficiency. Weighing Solutions gross margins of 39.1% grew from the fourth quarter, to a record high reflecting a reduction of inventory in the fourth quarter, which did not repeat in the first quarter of 2024, as well as cost reduction programs, which were partially offset by lower volume.
The Measurement Systems gross margins of 58.1% improved from the fourth quarter, reflecting favorable product mix and positive inventory adjustments that were partially offset, by lower volume. Total selling, general and administrative expenses, for the first quarter were $27.4 million or 33.9% of revenues, as compared to $26.4 million or 29.4% of revenues in the fourth quarter of 2023. The sequential $1 million increase in SG&A was mainly attributable to 2024 incentive compensation accruals, typically booked in the first quarter of the year. The first quarter results included a restructuring charge of $782,000, associated with severance and headcount reductions, related to cost reduction programs mainly in the Sensors segment. Operating margin was 8.6% for the first quarter.
Adjusted operating margin in the first quarter was 10%, as compared to 13.6% in the fourth quarter of 2023, primarily reflecting the lower revenue. The adjusted net earnings for the first quarter, were $5.7 million or $0.42 per diluted share, compared to $8.2 million, or $0.61 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA was $12.3 million or 15.3% of revenue, compared to $16.5 million or 18.5% in the fourth quarter of 2023. Purchase CapEx in the first quarter was $2.6 million. For the full fiscal 2024, we expect purchase CapEx to be in the range, of $14 million to $16 million. Adjusted free cash flow was $4.2 million for the first quarter, as compared to $13.5 million in the fourth quarter, and $5 million in the first quarter of 2023.
We defined adjusted free cash flow as cash from operating activities of $6.4 million, less capital expenditures of $2.6 million, plus the sale of fixed assets of $400,000. The GAAP tax rate in the first quarter was 28.4%, compared to 24.1% in the first quarter of 2023, primarily reflecting a higher proportion of income, and higher tax rate jurisdictions. The first quarter operational tax rate was 27%. We are assuming an operational tax rate in the range of 26% to 28% for the full year of 2024. Moving to Slide 11, we ended the first quarter with $83 million of cash and cash equivalents, and total debt of $31.9 million. Regarding the outlook, for the second fiscal quarter, given the current market conditions and our backlog, we expect net revenue to be the range of $75 million to $85 million, at constant first fiscal quarter 2024 exchange rates.
In summary, we had a record gross margin on sequentially lower sales. We generated solid cash flow, and continued to repurchase our common stock. And we continued our strategy, focusing on accelerating our growth with strategic initiatives on larger, faster growing opportunities. With that, let’s open the lines for questions. Thank you.
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Q&A Session
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Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] So the first question comes from the line of Griffin Boss of B. Riley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Griffin Boss: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Good morning, everyone. So first, I’ll just, on the operating expense side, I was expecting to see a bigger ramp in SG&A in the first quarter, related to those business development and R&D initiatives you talked about, to drive additional growth in 2025 and beyond. I guess, can you just talk more about your expectations for growth investments and maybe OpEx projections going forward for the year?
Ziv Shoshani: Yes. Hi. Good morning. Yes. When we are looking at the initial projection regarding business development and engineering, and sales resources in order to accelerate organic growth. We took the assumption that we are expecting a certain hiring, within a given time. So, as we are moving forward, we started to hire the personnel. Apparently, we are a little bit behind the curve. The expectation is still to meet those targets in order, again, to assure accelerated growth regarding – the OpEx investments are currently for this year mostly, is expecting to support cost reduction initiatives, which you have seen some of them already being realized in Q1. And the others is also, I would say, supporting some high volume expansion product line, which we do expect to see some of the orders coming to next year.
Griffin Boss: Okay. Great. Thanks, Ziv. That’s helpful. I guess along those lines in terms of just more operational efficiencies, the gross margin was obviously very strong. In the past, you’ve published quarterly financial models, which outline profitability expectations on certain revenue ranges. It seems like that gross margin expectation, is sort of structurally higher at this point. Would it be fair to assume that that’s the case going forward, with regards to your long-term model?
Ziv Shoshani: Yes, I would say that the target that we have published, a while ago regarding the 45% gross margin, is still viable. You are correct. We are a little bit ahead of the plan. At this point in time, we believe that given the exchange rate, the product mix, and the sales revenue, this gross margin is sustainable. And the expectation is to continue, and improve that meeting our longer-term targets.
Griffin Boss: Okay. Great. And then I wanted to dig into the measurement systems. You talked about, I mean, obviously, strong sequential growth and orders there, and that multi-million dollar award for an eVTOL customer. Is that a new customer, or one of the existing customers you’ve mentioned in the past that, you’re working with?
Ziv Shoshani: Yes. The whole eVTOL sector is kind of a new sector for us for DTS. As you know, DTS has few – two end-markets verticals. One is automotive and the other one is defense. In the classical automotive market, the historical business was supporting all the sensing-related activities for crash dummies. Over time, we have developed another vertical, which is selling our miniature data acquisition systems, to other type of, let’s call it automotive type applications, eVTOL is one of them. And we do expect it to grow at least at 20% year-over-year. At this point, it’s fairly, it’s really a couple of millions. But as this business is expecting to grow, we have been designed already at some key customers, and they are running prototype testing. And we do expect to grow as the market grows.
Griffin Boss: Okay. Great. Thanks for that context. And if I could just squeeze in one more, you mentioned obviously the avionics, military and space. Revenue, I guess I was surprised to see it come in where it did. It seems kind of like it’s, perhaps in a trough right now, but you had, sequential growth in orders. If I remember correctly in the last earnings call, you mentioned expectations for modest growth in that end market, at least as it related to orders in the first half. So are you, I guess, what are you seeing now heading into the second quarter? With regards to, order trends in that segment for the second quarter?
Ziv Shoshani: So regarding AMS, we are selling two different product lines. One product line is precision resistors, which we are selling more to let’s say, call it electronic based applications, which we see those projects are being, let’s say placed, we are getting those orders. So this is the, this is really a more of a project based on the resistor side, and it’s quite sustainable. The other piece where we are selling to AMS is the DTS product. The DTS products, we have – we have been designing our, what we call the WIAMan, which is crash dummies for military applications. Those are high ticket items in terms of sales orders. It’s around, I would say, $1.5 million to $2 million per item. At this point in time, we have been designed at some key projects.
