Welcome and thank you for standing by. [Operator Instructions] Now I will turn the meeting over to Scott Montross, CEO of Northwest Pipe. You may begin..

Thank you, Donna. Good morning and welcome to Northwest Pipe’s conference call. My name is Scott Montross. I am President and CEO of the company. I am joined by Robin Gantt, our Chief Financial Officer.

As we begin, I would like to remind everyone that statements that we make in this call about our expectations for the future are forward-looking statements and actual results could differ materially.

Please refer to our most recent SEC filing on Form 10-K for a discussion of risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. I will now turn to Robin who will discuss our third quarter results..

Thank you, Scott. Our adjusted third quarter net income was $9.1 million or $0.93 per diluted share compared to an adjusted net income of $2.1 million or $0.21 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2018. Sales were $75.2 million in the third quarter of 2019 compared to $52.5 million in the third quarter of 2018.

Gross profit as a percent of sales was 20.6% in the third quarter of 2019 compared to 9.9% in the third quarter of 2018. The sales increase was due to a significant increase in tons produced, partially offset by a decrease in selling prices per ton that occurred with a change in product mix.

Gross profit and gross profit as a percent of sales improved with the increases in production volumes. In addition, we received $300,000 in insurance proceeds, net of the expenses incurred in the third quarter related to the fire at our Saginaw facility.

If we exclude the benefit of these net proceeds, our gross profit as a percent of sales would have been 20.2%, which is the best quarter since 2014. You will recall that we had additional cost of $3.2 million in the second quarter.

So the net impact of the fire on gross margin through the end of September is about $2.9 million, which gives us a year-to-date gross margins of 16%. We will have additional costs in the fourth quarter, but we will also hopefully have additional insurance proceeds to offset the remaining cost.

Selling, general and administrative cost decreased to $4.9 million in the third quarter of 2019 from $5.3 million in the third quarter of 2018. This decrease was primarily due to nonrecurring costs in the third quarter of 2018 related to the acquisition of Ameron, which were partly offset by increased incentive compensation expense.

Our adjusted net income excludes about $1.7 million after tax for our legal settlement we received related to pipe produced at our former tubular product facilities. We had an income tax rate of 19% in the third quarter of 2019 compared to a rate of 14.2% in the third quarter of 2018.

Our 2019 rate was impacted by the estimated changes in the valuation allowance and by the issuance of final Section 965 regulations in June related to certain foreign tax credit aspects of the transition tax. In the first 9 months of 2019, the company provided $21.4 million in cash from continuing operations.

Depreciation and amortization were $9.5 million in the first 9 months of 2019 and $6 million in the first 9 months of 2018. Capital expenditures were $5.9 million in the first 9 months of 2019, which were for ongoing maintenance capital expenditures.

We have planned about $11 million in total capital expenditures for 2019, most of which falls under maintenance capital spending and includes the replacement building and equipment in Saginaw. Now I will turn it over to Scott for an update on our business..

one, improving performance of the business by focusing on margin over volume; two, driving cost reductions and efficiencies at all levels of the company; and three, finding strategic growth opportunities for our water infrastructure business. At this time, we would be happy to answer any of your questions..

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Brent Thielman of D.A. Davidson..

Thanks. Good morning. Congratulations on a great quarter..

Good morning, Brent. Thank you..

I guess first question obviously, I guess vast majority of the growth driven by volume. You mentioned kind of the decline in price per ton due to mix.

Can you talk about the change in mix you are seeing where that might be headed or whether that’s changing? And then would that have any adverse impact on these margins despite how high they were in the quarter?.

Yes, I think when you look at the price that we report on the earnings call, it’s a matter of timing and the mix in specific months based on specifically the tons that come off of the spiral mills. So if you have a month that has really high tons without a lot of downstream processing, you can see a price that looks somewhat lower.

Conversely, if you have a month that has relatively few tons processed on the spiral mill and a lot of downstream processing, you are going to see a price that’s significantly higher.

We just happen to be in the phase now when we’re going through these projects like Bois d’Arc and Houston and a lot of other these projects, where we’re producing a lot of tons off of the spiral mill.

And Brent, when you look at kind of pricing levels and what the effect is on pricing levels, we look at what we’ve booked year-over-year, and looking at 2018 versus 2019, the pricing levels are still moving up.

I think the other thing that we are starting to see is the spread between the pipe price and the hot-rolled coil price is continuing to increase as that coil price moderates back toward normal levels. As everybody knows, when 232 was announced, it really had a huge driving-up effect on the coil price where hot-rolled coil was in the mid-$900 range.

Now you are getting back down to relatively normal levels where it’s in the $500 a ton range. So that spread continues to increase between that hot-rolled coil price and the pipe selling price, which obviously has an additional positive impact on the market or on the margins.

So, the prices that you are looking at when we report is the matter of the timing and mix that we are running in the facilities, but when you look at overall pricing we still see pricing moving up and we see the spread increasing between hot-rolled coil and pipe price..

Okay.

And Scott, did you burn through any legacy backlog associated with Ameron or the work they bid prior to when you did the deal or is that behind you now?.

There is still a little bit of that being done now that we are getting through. There is not a whole lot of that left.

I think what we would say is we are starting to really get into the meat of the backlog now that we have seen that’s resulted from the bidding over the last year that we have been talking about in these calls, which ultimately has very solid margins in the backlog..

Okay. And it sounds like you will burn through more of this backlog into year end, can you talk about maybe how the schedules sort of look for bid schedules look for early 2020.

I don’t know I know you don’t provide an outlook, but I guess, how kind of you are thinking about 2020 and how the market is shaping up for next year?.

Yes. We look at – first looking at the fourth quarter, where we expect a little bit down because again, you move into a period of year that’s affected by the holiday schedules and can be affected by weather-related. But what we are seeing right now doesn’t have it down being very much.

As we look out into 2019, we are seeing a year that looks pretty similar – excuse me into 2020 we are seeing a year that looks very similar to what we saw in 2019 as far as total demand with even maybe a little bit of upside potential as far as the demand is concerned.

So I think what you will see is you are going to see a backlog that remains elevated by historical standards as we go through the year, but it’s going to fluctuate based on the bidding levels in the specific quarters because, as you know, you have got the first quarter is usually a little bit slower and then that grows in the second and third quarter.

And what we are seeing this year is more of a growth in the late third quarter, early fourth quarter of 2020. So we are expecting a pretty strong year in 2020 and expect those backlogs to remain historically relatively high levels.

I think the interesting thing about the backlog is, is that when you look at it and look at year-end backlogs for the past 13 years, same for the last quarter of 2018, which was a relatively large backlog, which we are comparing the last quarter of ‘19 to. We only had like one quarter I believe that ended over $200 million, okay.

So when you look at where we are now, for the last five quarters, we have had $200 plus million in backlog. And obviously, we are expecting the fourth quarter to be pretty high too which bodes well for going into 2020. So if you look at 2020, projecting out I think you are starting to see more of the same that we have recently seen in 2019..

Okay. I will pass it on. Thank you..

Thank you..

Thank you, Brent..

The next question comes from David Wright of Henry Investment. Your line is open..

Alright, okay. Good morning..

Good morning, David..

So you made $10 million on $75 million in revenue..

Yes..

That’s a great quarter..

Thank you..

Congratulations. Couple of questions. In your remarks, Scott, here for the three goals, number one was sort of trying to continue to drive margins higher.

I think in the past you’ve sort of said, well, 18%, 20% is kind of historical peak and we would like to get back to it and you did this quarter, do you think you can get up into the low 20s?.

Well, I think one of the things that we have continued to work on, David is cost reductions through our lean manufacturing programs and taking the hours it does or it takes to do a specific job down, which I think should lend itself to improvement in those margins that we have seen historically.

Now we get really careful about saying how high the margin is going to go. But I think that based on cost reductions that the team is working on here that certainly, you should start seeing that or you should continue to see that show up in the margin levels as we move forward.

As long as we have a relatively stable market condition, which it appears that we have for a prolonged period of time here going forward..

Okay.

And on the Cape Fear contract, are you going to produce that in West Virginia?.

We would likely produce that in West Virginia, yes..

That’s kind of a new geography for you, yes?.

Well, we have had jobs in the east down in North Carolina. It’s a little bit of a new geography for us. I think that the owner and the contractors recognize the importance of having a study product like steel in that kind of project.

So I think that maybe a little bit of new ground for us and hopefully that kind of thing continues as we go into the future. So I think the team has done a really good job promoting the steel pressure pipe advantages in all regions of the country.

And I think we are making a little headway in some of the different regions now than maybe what we were making previously..

Okay, great. Thanks very much..

Thank you..

Thank you, David..

The next question comes from Brent Thielman of D.A. Davidson..

Hey, thanks for taking the follow-up. Hey, again phenomenal margins, you guys talked for a while this is kind of the threshold you want to get to, Scott, the sort of 20% plus or where you think the business should be operating at notwithstanding some seasonality you are going to see in the business here and there quarter-to-quarter.

Is this the new base we can kind of think about going forward?.

Well, we have talked about these for a period of time as you have mentioned, Brent. And we think those are the kind of margins in a stable market condition with stable demand levels that are I guess what we would call good demand levels. Those are the kind of margin levels that we think we should see.

Again that doesn’t stop variations from quarter-to-quarter. You can see one-off things hit quarters like the fourth quarter could be impacted by for example a lot of insurance recovery, which could show things being significantly higher. But I think when you look at natural margins that are produced from the business.

Those are the kind of numbers that we like to think that we are going to keep going forward and we are going to expect going forward..

Okay.

And just real quick on your thoughts on cash flow into year end?.

Well, basically, we see it continuing. We have been able to maintain fairly even sales volume over the year and so working capital has grown a little bit, but at an even pace. And so clearly, we have been able to stay at. We did have borrowings at the beginning of the year and we paid that down.

And so we have been able to maintain fairly debt-free for the year. So, we see that continuing. Anything with timing could cause us to be in a position of any 1 day of being borrowing, but with what the activity we are seeing right now, we should maintain our balance sheet pretty much where we are today..

Okay, great. Congrats again. Thank you..

Thanks, Brent..

Thank you, Brent. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Mike Morales of Walthausen & Company. Your line is open..

Hi, good morning guys. Congratulations on the strong quarter..

Good morning, Mike. Thank you..

Touching on the third point of your priorities looking forward the strategic growth opportunities, can you just give us a little bit of color on as you see the landscape today, what the margin profile of the potential M&A you are looking at is relative to the corporate average now and then what you are seeing from a multiple perspective out there?.

Yes. What I would say is the margin profile that we look – the things that we are looking at. And as we have mentioned, Mike, when we talked to you before we have been on this M&A track for many, many years and continue to look at various things that fit.

When we look at the margin profile, we look at things that have EBITDA margins that are similar or better than what we have in this period of time. And the other thing that we look at is a situation with cash flow.

Ultimately, we have done a lot and I think Brent asked the question just recently about the cash flow, we have done a lot to work on cash flow with reducing the amount of days sales outstanding, with working on getting progress payments on some jobs and things like that to really improve the cash flow of the existing business.

So we are looking at something that has margin levels that are at least just good, if not better, with a better cash flow profile and likely something that is a little bit more OpEx related that you see quicker turns and have a lot more I guess bats on as you go through the market in a specific year.

And something that we can take and we can because of our skill sets mold into the company and be successful at doing it. So those are really the things that we look at..

And as far as the multiples that you are seeing out there, Scott?.

No. Right now, it depends on the size of what you look at, but the multiples are still relatively heavy. We see anywhere from probably 7.5x up to in some cases 9x. When you look at some of the bigger technology companies that quite frankly are out of our reach at this current time, you see multiples that are significantly higher.

You can see 12x, 13x, 15x, but stuff that we are looking looks like more like 7.5x to probably 8.5x..

That’s very helpful, Scott. Thank you for the color and keep up with the work..

Thanks Mike..

Thanks Mike..

Thank you, Mike. At this time, speakers, we no longer have any questions in queue. [Operator Instructions] At this time, we still do not have any questions in queue..

Okay. Well, we thank everybody for listening in on the call. Obviously, we are starting to get back to the business levels and the profitability levels that we have been working for, for a long time. We think we continue to have some work to do on those things, with continuing to improve those and to grow the business.

So we look forward to our next call, which will be in....

March..

March of next year. So thank you very much everyone..

Thank you, speakers. And that concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect..