Richard Johnson - Chief Financial Officer.

Katie Tryhane - Credit Suisse Mike Ryskin - Bank of America.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Phibro First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the call over to Richard Johnson, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, you may begin..

Our gross leverage ratio of debt-to-adjusted EBITDA was 2.5 times at the end of September, and we had $76 million of cash and short-term investments on the books at the quarter end.

For the quarter, we used $15 million of cash for operating and investing activities, including $10 million used for business acquisitions, and we also had some seasonal working capital needs that used cash. Notably, we have increased the quarterly dividend by 20%. The increased dividend of $0.12 per share will be paid in December 2018.

The increase reflects Phibro’s positive cash flows and balance sheet strength. And looking at our updated guidance, we’ve updated our annual guidance based on our expectations for the effective tax rate for the full year.

Because of the GILTI tax aspects of the recent legislation, we now expect the effective income tax rate to be between 28% and 28.5% for the year. The higher taxes as a result of the higher effective rate, result in an adjusted EPS of $1.68 to $1.72 per share, that’s a reduction of $0.04 to $0.05 per share compared with our initial guidance.

We are reaffirming our guidance for sales and profit, but we now consider it more likely to be at the lower end of the ranges provided. Animal Health sales growth in the current year will be more weighted to the MFAs and other product category.

We continue to expect nutritional specialties and vaccines will grow at double-digit rates as our business develops. However, current year growth will be more subdued.

Our operating visibility for the year has been reduced by a number of negative or difficult factors; including volatile currencies, economic turbulence in some international countries, unfavorable short-term challenges in the minerals business, continued difficult dairy conditions, ongoing trade disputes and various other factors.

Operator, that’s the end of our prepared remarks. If you would please open the lines for questions. Thank you..

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Erin Wright from Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. .

This is Katie Tryhane on for Erin. We are just wondering, what was the acquisition that you mentioned in the press release, and can you just elaborate or quantify that contribution? Thanks..

I didn’t hear the word, Katie, what that we mentioned on the press release?.

What was the acquisition?.

The acquisition. We had – well we did two things in the quarter, one that we talked about as part of our year-end release. We finalized the full purchase of the, it’s called MJB swine vaccines in the United States, and that was the bulk of the spending in the quarter, like the business acquisition, cash flow in the quarter, that was a swine vaccine.

We also bought a small vaccine manufacturer and sort of a developer, which we haven’t released more information about. But they do have some, and we did acquire some interesting technology and potential products for the agriculture industry..

Okay, got it. That’s helpful. And then can you just speak a little bit more to when you could get back to double-digit growth in vaccines and nutritional specialties? Thanks. .

It’s hard to say, you know precisely when. I think, as we said we are seeing this year our visibility is probably more cloudy than it’s been in a while as far as the – as what our customers are thinking how their businesses are progressing. So, I’m hesitant to say precisely when, I think, you know it will be - it’s hard to say when.

So, can’t really put a date on it. But I think we still have a lot of confidence and belief in the portfolio, and we see our customers more and more broadly accepting the fact that these are kind of the best products for them to use. But there’s a lot of other factors affecting our customers right now..

Okay, got it. Thanks. .

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Derik De Bruin from Bank of America. Your line is now open. .

Hey guys, it’s Mike Ryskin on for Derik. Thanks for talking the call. A couple questions, I want to start with sort of your closing remarks there. You talked about all the challenging conditions.

I think the biggest one still in my mind and correct me if I’m wrong, is the challenges in the dairy markets and how that’s affecting some of the nutritional specialties. That’s been ongoing for some time, but it seems like it’s really, you know in the broader market gone to worse in recent months.

Do you have any sense of visibility into when that will improve, because in my understanding that’s mostly tied to just the glut [ph] in the market in terms of oversupply, but if you could just talk about the dairy markets in a little bit more detail?.

Yes. This is a global problem, Mike. But most of our business today is in the United States. And so what we’re seeing is dairy producers, the farmers are just getting squeezed unmercifully by the supply demand imbalance.

So this is only going to sort itself out when the industry probably sorts itself out in terms of only the strong survive and some of the weaker players fall away and you know supply comes back into more of a balance. There’s also global factors of how much of dairy products.

And when you think of dairy, everyone thinks of liquid milk, but really we are talking about skimmed milk powder, whole milk powder, components of dairy really that go into many foods around the world.

So, I think this has been lower, longer than many people have expected, and the industry will come out if at some point, but hard to put a timeline on when that might happen..

All right, thanks. And especially in vaccines and some of the other segments you talked about the international impact on some of the timing. I was curious if there was, if you could break out a currency, a straight FX impact as well..

Actually, so the currency is not so much just, that we - the currency is the fact that in many markets we price in U.S. dollars, but if the local currency devalues by 20% or 30% or more percent, all of a sudden you know that customer’s price in his market has gone up by 20% or 30%.

So it’s a complicated equation, we don’t have a precise number I can give you. But I can tell you it was a negative to our business in several markets. And then in some markets, we do price in local currency, and there we’ve seen currencies devalue, and that’s hurt our top line and hurt our profitability too..

Okay, thanks. And then, one last one if I could squeeze it in. You talked a lot about you know investment in SG&A, investment in the portfolio, if you could give a little bit of color on whether the investment is going to the commercial sales force or the R&D, the product pipeline.

And specifically on that, if you could talk a little bit more about any products that are coming up that we should keep an eye on, or if you have any progress on some of the companion animal investments going on there?.

I’d say our investment is more in - so first of all, our investment is focused on the nutritional specialty and vaccine categories, and so it’s really pipeline development.

In the case of vaccines, we are looking at some new products; we are also building out and developing the idle vaccine facility that we purchased six months ago or so, and we’re spending money on that as we ramp-up that facility. You know products, I can’t give you any specific products, but those are the categories that we are working on.

I would say in the companion animal space, we continue to make progress, both in the product that we talked about previously and another one or two products. And so, we could be out there at least doing some test marketing in perhaps the next six months, but it’s too early to really say where that might go..

Great, I appreciate all that. Thank you. .

Alright. .

Thank you. And I’m not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Richard Johnson for any closing remarks..

All right, everyone. That’s a wrap for today. We’ll talk to you again on our next quarterly call. So until then take care. Bye now..

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Everyone, have a great day..