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Industrials - Industrial - Machinery - NYSE - US
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$ 2.3 B
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EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT 2016 - Q2
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Executives

Joe A. Raver - President and Chief Executive Officer Kristina A. Cerniglia - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Analysts

Daniel Moore - CJS Securities, Inc. Liam Burke - Wunderlich Securities Inc.

Operator

Good morning, everyone. And welcome to Hillenbrand's Earnings Teleconference for the Second Quarter of Fiscal 2016. A replay of this call will be available until midnight Eastern May 18, 2016, by dialing 1-855-859-2056 toll free in the United States and Canada, or 1-404-537-3406 internationally. And using the conference ID number, 95916795.

This webcast will be archived on the company's website at www.hillenbrand.com through May 20, 2016. If you ask a question during today's call, it will be included in any future use of this recording. Also note that any recording transcript or other transmission of the text or audio is not permitted without Hillenbrand's written consent.

At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the conference over to Joe Raver, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hillenbrand. Mr. Raver, please go ahead..

Joe A. Raver

Thank you operator. Good morning, thanks for joining us on our second quarter fiscal year 2016 earnings call. Kristina Cerniglia, our Chief Financial Officer will be on the call with me today.

Prior to getting into our prepared remarks about the business, I would like to remind you that during this call, we may use certain forward-looking statements that are subject to the Safe Harbor provisions of the securities laws. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and our actual results could differ materially.

Also during the course of this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP operating performance measures.

I encourage you to take a look at our 10-K, which can be found on our website for a deeper discussion of forward-looking statements, risk factors that could impact our annual results, and more information on our use of non-GAAP operating measures and their reconciliation to GAAP financial measures.

Today, we will discuss our second quarter results and provide an update on our outlook for the second half of the fiscal year. Let me begin with a brief discussion of Hillenbrand’s strategy.

Our vision is to transform Hillenbrand into a world-class, well diversified industrial company, seek to leverage our strong financial foundation and the Hillenbrand operating model to deliver sustainable profit growth, revenue expansion, free cash flow.

Intern we reinvest that cash in newer growth initiatives for our existing businesses as well as in strategic acquisition to drive profitable growth. At the core of our strategy is the Hillenbrand operating model, framework and process that we believe help us produce consistent and sustainable results across the business.

Included in the operating model are management practices that have been among Hillenbrand’s strength for years, such as our strategy management process, lien business practices and [indiscernible] talent development.

Hillenbrand has grown and evolved and enhance our operating model to strengthen its application to our business and have added management practice such as 80-20 and voice of the customer. We use the model to bring focus to the critical few things that we think will have the greatest impact on creating sustainable value for our shareholders.

We’re transforming Hillenbrand into a diversified industrial company serving end-markets around the world where we see the potential for long-term growth. In support of our strategy we’ve made a number of strategic investments in the businesses that now form our Process Equipment Group.

Over the past several years, those acquisitions have driven our transformation. I would like to provide a brief update on our most recent additions to our portfolio. As you’ll remember from prior discussions, we completed the acquisitions of two businesses in the flow control space this year.

ABEL has now been part of Hillenbrand for two quarters while Red Valve just closed in February. ABEL is now fully integrated in all back office functions and the team is implementing the Hillenbrand operating model to realize targeted synergies.

Red Valve is approaching the completion of its 100-day integration plan and over the first few months the integration has gone well. We already completed the consolidation of a small production facility and sales leadership that ABEL and Red Valve are collaborating on opportunities to leverage our global sales channel and share leads on new projects.

We believe the combination of these two businesses forms a strong basis for flow control platform where our strategy is to become a leader in highly engineered and differentiated products that safely move, measure and manage high value fluids. We’re pleased to have both companies as a part of Hillenbrand.

Turning to our results for the second quarter, I’ll make a few summary remarks and Kristina will walk through the financial details. The overall economic environment has not changed dramatically over the past quarter. Industrial markets in which we compete around the globe remain relatively weak.

With that in mind, we were encouraged by results that although below the prior year on the top-line showed stability sequentially. In addition, I am very pleased that our focus on the areas of the business that we can control help drive continued margin improvement in spite of the market headwinds.

Revenue was down for the quarter, but improved margins in both Batesville and the Process Equipment Group generated adjusted earnings that were in line with the prior year and with our expectation. We continue to pursue productivity improvement and aggressively manage our cost structure. We also delivered another solid quarter of operating cash flow.

Let me provide a bit more color on our two segments beginning with Batesville. Batesville’s revenue was lower than a year ago reflecting a decline in the number of deaths in North America. The mortality rate associated with the flu is usually a factor in our second quarter results.

As we expected, flu season this quarter was very subdued in comparison to what we experienced last year. While that’s a good news for society in general, it has an adverse effect on Burial Caskets demand.

Additionally, Batesville continues to face the pressure of a secular decline in the burial market based on the increasing rate at which families opt full cremation. Given the lower revenue, we’re very pleased with Batesville’s margin performance this quarter. Batesville earned a sterling reputation in the market for quality, service and innovation.

The company has built long-term durable customer relationship by partnering with the customer to help them become more successful in their own businesses. We recognize there are successes tied to our customer success, we feel good about Batesville’s ability to continue to thrive and win in its evolving marketplace.

the Process Equipment Group, revenue was down compared to prior year driven by significant decline in a few key end-markets including frac sand, coal powered mining and mineral mining and processing. In general, demand in industrial markets remains low.

Despite lower volumes, margins remained strong in the Process Equipment Group as we look to increase efficiencies and size our business appropriately given current demand conditions.

Generally speaking however, the end-markets served by the Process Equipment Group continued to be characterized by weak demand and investment in the industrial sector remains low. Last quarter, we adjusted our guidance to reflect our revised expectations for the year.

We are reaffirming the guidance given last quarter, but we now expect to be at the lower end of the range for revenue and EPS. Let me take a minute to explain the rationale behind that.

First, our second quarter bookings for large projects mostly in the plastic industry were below expectations and will reduce the amount of revenue and earnings we can realize from these projects in this fiscal year. Second we had an unexpected cancellation for our large minerals project.

Value on our backlog was approximately $15 million, a portion of which was expected to contribute to our 2016 results. While it is normal for us to see the timings of projects change its unusual for us to see project of this size cancel.

I think it’s important for me to point out at this time and with what we know today, we do not expect to see other significant projects in the backlog cancel. Despite these market related setbacks, we expect Batesville to have a solid second half for the year.

Our parts and service business to provide stability to realize the benefits of efficiency and restructuring actions we’ve implemented. With that, let me turn the call over to Kristina for a bit more detail on the quarter and the forecast..

Kristina A. Cerniglia

Thanks Joe and good morning everyone. As we reported in our filings yesterday, we delivered revenue of $387 million in the second quarter. That was down 4% from last year including 1% attributable to FX. Batesville was down 8% including 1% from FX and the Process Equipment Group was down 2% but was essentially flat in constant currency.

Adjusted EBITDA of $68 million increased 4% and as Joe mentioned, we are very pleased by the overall margin improvement especially in light of lower volumes. Once again, higher gross margin in both the Process Equipment Group and Batesville contributed to year-over-year EBITDA margin expansion an improvement of a 130 basis points to 17.5%.

Looking at our bottom-line for the quarter, adjusted net income of $31 million resulted in earnings per share of $0.49 right in line with last year. Our adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 31.8%, 30 basis points higher than prior year and we expect our tax rate will approximate 30% for the full-year which is in line with historical rates.

Our balance sheet remains strong and we delivered another quarter of sold cash flow. Operating cash flow of $52 million in the quarter was about equal to last year.

Year-to-date operating cash flow of $87 million is significantly better than the prior year, which included a substantial use of working capital for large projects in the Process Equipment Group as well as payments related to the conclusion of the one-time litigation settlement.

During the second quarter, we paid down $45 million of debt apart from the $133 million of new debt related to the Red Valve acquisition. We also returned nearly $13 million to our shareholders in the form of cash dividends and we bought back 39,000 shares of our common stock for a total cost of approximately $1 million.

Turning to the next slide, I will discuss segment performance beginning with the Process Equipment Group. The Process Equipment Group delivered $236 million of revenue in the quarter down 2% but flat excluding the negative effect of foreign exchange. On an organic basis revenue was down 7%.

Last year, we experienced the strong second quarter in terms of revenue from large projects, but that volume did not repeat this quarter. In addition, as Joe said, we continue to experience weakened markets, particularly in mining and in the processing proppants for hydraulic fracturing, which had an effect on parts and equipment sales.

ABEL and Red Valve performed as expected generating $13 million of revenue. Order volume was flat sequentially but increased 16% organically in comparison to the prior year.

That year-over-year increase was driven by projects in the plastics market and we expect to see a good level of those projects continue to come in the second half of the fiscal year. Our newly acquired flow control businesses contributed approximately $15 million of additional orders in the quarter.

Order backlog of $525 million grew 4% sequentially over the first quarter and finished 1% higher than the prior year. Again that year-over-year increase was primarily driven by projects in the plastics industry offsetting the decline in backlog from our crushing and screening businesses.

We continue to have visibility to a healthy pipeline of projects in the plastics market and remain optimistic about long-term demand across the business.

The Process Equipment Group adjusted gross margin was up 90 basis points to 35.3% driven by the additions of ABEL and Red Valve and our continued focus on driving recurring revenue and spare parts mix as well as ongoing process improvement.

We delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.8% in the Process Equipment Group building on our trend of year-over-year margin improvement. Moving to the Batesville business, revenue for the quarter was $151 million, which was down 8% from last year. The decrease was driven by lower burial unit volume.

Despite lower volumes, adjusted gross margin of 40.9% for the quarter was up 70 basis points from last year and adjusted EBITDA margin of 28.4% was up 150 basis points, primarily as a result of supply chain productivity improvement, lower commodity prices and ongoing efforts to manage costs.

We also began to see benefits from restructuring actions that were initiated earlier in the year. We are very pleased with those results. The Batesville team continues to find ways to manage cost and improve efficiency to protect the profitability of the business. With that let me turn to our guidance for the second half of fiscal 2016.

We are reaffirming our guidance for the year with a direction that we expect to be at the lower end of the range for revenue and EPS for the reasons Joe shared in his remarks. Our estimate for constant currency organic revenue growth is a range of negative 2% to flat.

Including the acquisitions of ABEL and Red Valve, we expect total revenue growth at 2% to 4%. Revenue growth from the Process Equipment Group is projected to be in the range of negative 1% to plus 1% organically and Batesville is expected to deliver revenue that is down 3% to 5%.

Our revenue guidance is based on constant currency growth rate and assumes approximately 3% of negative translation effects compared to fiscal 2015. Our guidance for adjusted EPS for 2016 is 205 to 215. Let me comment briefly on timing.

Considering the expected timing of projects in our current backlog, as well as the projects in our pipeline for which we have line of sight, we anticipate modest improvement in our third quarter results, which we expect to be similar to the prior year, followed by a strong fourth quarter.

We are expecting the second half to be stronger than the first for the Process Equipment Group, which is typically the case. We have the added benefit this year of having ABEL and Red Valve in the mix for the entire second half.

The comps will also start to get a bit easier for the Process Equipment Group in the second half of the year especially in the fourth quarter. Finally, we are very focused on aggressively managing cost and executing on our previously announced restructuring activities in response to the challenging end-markets.

As you know, we have a goal to drive 100 basis points of EBITDA margin improvement annually in the Process Equipment Group.

We still expect to drive higher margins in fiscal 2016 however, given the significant year-over-year decline in demand for the crushing and screening equipment we supply to the mining, power and frac sand markets, we do not expect to reach the full 100 basis points improvement this year.

We’ve not been able to reduce our fixed cost base fast enough to improve margins in that part of our business. Last quarter, we did share our plans to expand restructuring actions and we’ve made good progress on those plans to-date. During the quarter, we closed down a small manufacturing facility that was part of the Red Valve acquisition.

We also announced two smaller facility closures and scaled back activities at a third, as we consolidate certain purchasing customer service and administrative functions.

We have reduced headcount by more than 100 people and we expect to achieve the targeted savings of approximately $10 million on an annualized basis with an estimated benefit of $4 million in fiscal 2015, as previously outlined.

We expect the results in footprint reduction and headcount actions will make our operations more efficient and cost effective and we believe we will be well positioned to respond as the market demand returns. Overall, we are satisfied with our second quarter results in light of persistent headwind.

we are managing through some challenging market dynamics to drive margin improvements across the business. We need to capitalize on some opportunities in our pipeline and continue to execute on cost savings and restructuring activities to stay on-track for the second half for the year and that is exactly what we intend to do.

At this time, I will turn the call back to Joe for his concluding remarks..

Joe A. Raver

Thanks Kristina. Before closing, let me briefly comment on our M&A activities. We remain active on the M&A as we pursue acquisitions that are strategically relevant and that would help accelerate our growth. However, our primary focus at this time is integrating ABEL and Red Valve with excellence.

Given our current leverage ratio of 2.7 time debt to EBITDA, we are prioritizing paying down debt and do not expect to close another significant transaction this fiscal year. As always, we are committed to maintaining a disciplined approach in this area to ensure that we deploy capital in a manner that will drive shareholder value.

In closing, our results continue to demonstrate our focus on the things that we can control. Evidenced by the margin improvement in both segments in the face of continued market headwinds.

While we do not anticipate meaningful improvement in market conditions this fiscal year, we continue to execute our operating model to protect our profitability and prepare the business to respond to customers’ needs as demand returns.

Our management team remains committed to the long-term strategy that we believe will transform Hillenbrand into a world-class global diversified industrial company. We continue to pursue profitable growth in our business and an attractive return to our shareholders. That concludes our prepared remarks. We’re ready to take your questions.

Operator would you please open the line for Q&A?.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We will take our first question from Daniel Moore of CJS securities. Your line is open..

Daniel Moore

Thanks for taking the questions. I was hoping Joe you could provide a little bit more color. You mentioned there was one project that was in backlog that was cancelled.

I know that is a rarity what were the factors that caused that decision and then similarly maybe the factors that are causing some delays in other projects that you would hope to close during the quarter? Thank you..

Joe A. Raver

Sure Dan. Related to the project that was cancelled, it is unusual for us to have a project of this size cancelled. The other thing that’s a bit unusual about this is that it’s a minerals mining project and there is typically a pretty big investment before we get the order in a project like this.

And so despite that given some of the prices related to fertilizers and the global market, we’ve seen the push out of some of these projects.

In this case, it pushed out to a indeterminate sort of timeframe and so we removed the project from backlog with the expectation that they would go ahead a rebid the whole package once they decided to bring that capacity online.

So we don’t see much of that typically, but given sort of a global decline in commodities in particularly fertilizer prices that’s what we experienced during the quarter.

and a $15 million project like that is a pretty significant project for us, because that’s a good margin business, I mean it’s really - it’s not a system sale, it’s a pieces of equipment that are highly engineered and with a lot of application, expertise supplied.

So that’s really a solid business for us not a lot of buyout compared to some of the other larger projects. Where we don’t feel the bottom-line impact as much because there is quite a bit of buyout product in them.

So that’s the project that cancelled and related to some of the larger projects, we’ve actually had a pretty decent quarter on the plastics side of the business, plastics and polyolefins.

The project pipelines are pretty strong and they remain strong, particularly in South East Asia, we’ve seen quite a bit of business coming through in Asia as the price of oil mix and a more competitive feedstock.

But again the other side of that coin is that some of the oil and gas companies that are involved in petrochemicals and plastics have shifted some of their capital spending out a bit. We don’t expect these projects to cancel, we still have line of sight to those projects, it’s just a timing issue.

And by the way, we’ve seen optimism in this quarter as we enter the third quarter given the fact that those projects, we still expect those projects to close. They are just going to be too late to recognize enough revenue in the fiscal year..

Daniel Moore

Very helpful. And maybe just shifting, talk about the areas that you’re targeting for a more significant restructuring in cost savings. Just refresh us which pieces of the business of those focused on and are there areas called perhaps or any others that are maybe facing more secular declines versus what we had thought might be more cyclical..

Joe A. Raver

Yes, if we think about our businesses let me start on the process equipment side, if you think about our business, plastics is by far the largest segment in terms of the end-markets that we serve and demand for plastics is pretty good globally and so we’ve seen pretty solid demand on that side.

We’ve really seen some dramatic downturns in a few of our key markets related to our crushing business and that’s mostly coal power and coal mining specifically in North America. As we enter the year, experts said that they thought that coal production would be relatively flat in the U.S.

we’ve seen a pretty dramatic decline particularly our second quarter with a warm winter lower exports and so that’s dropped pretty significant. So we’ve taken more aggressive actions in terms of restructuring related to our crushing business.

And then as the frac sand business has really you know had a huge year last year on frac sand equipment and that’s essentially dried out. We have not seen that business come back. So on our screening side of the business as well we’ve taken some pretty significant restructuring activities.

On the Batesville side Chris Trainor and his team are always looking to stay ahead of the cost curve. We are very pleased that the margins that we’ve experienced they have produced this year, we did take a pretty significant restructuring action in the second quarter.

It was a lot of SG&A and so he has really simplified the business aligned the business. We use our 80-20 and voice of customer practices to focus on those areas where we think we can get the biggest bangs for the investment.

And so we’ve reduced investment in certain parts of the business and actually have increased investments in other parts of the business where we think we can grow profitability. So the Batesville side had a pretty significant restructuring in the quarter as well..

Daniel Moore

Okay. Lastly, Kristina do you have a number the amount that ABEL and Red Valve contributed to backlog, just trying to get a sense of what our backlog look like year-over-year on an organic basis..

Kritina A. Cerniglia

Yes good morning Dan. So they contributed about $15 million to the backlog..

Daniel Moore

Very helpful. Thank you I'll jump back in queue..

Joe A. Raver

Hey Dan its Joe, I was going to make one other comment on the backlog. If you look under the covers a little bit on the backlog, it's the same story that we’re talking about sort of at the top-line which is we’ve seen an increase in backlog on the plastics side of the business and then the market for frac sand and coal powered mining have declined.

We’ve seen a decline in backlog. So on the surface backlog looks pretty flat underneath the covers it follows the trends that we’ve been talking about related to end-markets..

Daniel Moore

That is helpful. Thanks Joe..

Operator

Your next question comes from Liam Burke of Wunderlich. Your line is open..

Liam Burke

Thank you good morning Joe, good morning Kristina..

Joe A. Raver

Good morning Liam..

Kritina A. Cerniglia

Good morning Liam..

Liam Burke

Joe, polymer is a big part of the peg revenues source. You mentioned in previous calls that food processing as an example or other verticals that you’re looking into sort of diversify your reliance on polymer.

How have those diversification efforts gone?.

Joe A. Raver

They’ve gone well. I think we talked a little bit about in the last call. Food is a more stable business generally processed food is a more stable business and we’re seeing pretty stable demand right now. We've closed some nice reference projects in the food space.

Last year, we spent quite a bit of time in product development to modify products to make sure that we were compliant with FDA regulations and et cetera. So it's one of the areas that we’re seeing very good growth in and we expect huge good growth on the food side of the business.

There on the food side it's a little bit different than the big projects that we see in plastics. We sell more components, so we sell feeders, small pneumatic conveying systems, valves, et cetera, but we’re also doing some sub systems as well. So it's a very positive story for us.

Right now, it's just too small right, we’re working to continue to grow that part of the business to make it a more significant part of our overall business..

Liam Burke

Okay great. And on the ABEL, Red Valve you mentioned that there you had made progress looking at the two separate sales forces and so potential cross selling opportunities.

Do you see yourself being able to realize any revenue synergies in those two businesses any time soon?.

Joe A. Raver

We do. We’re unlikely to see anything significant in this fiscal year. As you know it takes a little bit of time to coordinate the channels, we use third party sales reps and so there is work to be done there. But we have been sharing opportunities in terms of projects.

We have had the company talking across sales channels and are working to identify the best strategies to leverage sales channels both in the U.S. and in Europe. But that takes a little bit longer, we don’t expect to see the benefits any significant benefits to that until our fiscal 2017..

Liam Burke

Great. Thank you Joe..

Joe A. Raver

Thanks Liam..

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Daniel Moore of CJS Securities. Your line is open..

Daniel Moore

Thank you again. Focusing still on ABEL and Red Valve, just talk about the outlook demand environment that you’re seeing, how that may have changed or if it’s pretty stable since acquiring those two businesses..

Joe A. Raver

Yes Dan, this is Joe. The demand has remained about as we expected, we haven’t owned those businesses for a long time. Like in our model et cetera that the demand has been as we’ve expected. The municipal market in United States is pretty good right now as municipalities have money to spend and there is infrastructure needs on water and waste-water.

So for Red Valve the market feels pretty good particularly in North America which is where they are strong. Industrial market is actually pretty decent for Red Value. Yes and then on the ABEL side, we’ve seen a little bit of a pickup in Europe, so we’re seeing industrial and water and waste-water pick in Europe.

We’ve seen some slowness, we do some large projects. So what ABEL does is they moves high concentrates flurry, one of the places that they can really create value is in coal power removing the fly ash which is an issue in India.

So we have line of sights at a number of significant projects, they’ve been a bit lower than we’ve expected but nothing significant. And then in mining, ABEL participates in the mining industry and while mining is down everywhere, we’ve actually had some pretty good success in mining and the reason for that is because in a lot of these places.

For example South America, electricity and water are at a premium and because these pumps are used to pump high concentrates slurry the total cost of ownership is - the payback is pretty quick.

So as mining works to take cost out and get more efficient, we actually have a really great solution for them, because we utilize a lot less electricity, less water and because of the nature of diaphragm pump there are less ware parts. So they experience less spare part cost. So we’ve been pretty successful.

So overall, we feel really good about both of those businesses and we’re sort of right on expectations in terms of demand..

Daniel Moore

Okay. And then in terms of Batesville, I know I’m jumping around a little bit, but one are you seeing more of a shift to cremation over the last few quarters and two, we sort of get used to this exceptional performance given in the face of volume declines on the margin side.

You talked about some of the factors that enabled you to increase EBITDA margin but maybe just drill down into that and a little bit more detail on how much was input cost reduction versus how much is more internally driven..

Joe A. Raver

Why don’t I answer a couple of those questions that are high level and then Kristina may weigh in a bit more detail. So in terms of the market, we had a really good market last year in terms of Burial Caskets, because of a very strong flu season.

We really haven’t had much of a flu season at all this year, so the market is down, the Burial Caskets market is down pretty significantly as we’ve seen less deaths and the typical rise in the cremation rate. So the market is down consistent with sort of in the range of where our revenue is down.

We haven’t seen anything unusual on the cremation rate, it’s in line with what we’ve typically seen at that sort of ever increasing kind of 120, 130 basis points year-over-year rise. So it’s really a death issue that has driven the burial market down. In terms of margins as I said on the prepared remarks, we’re very pleased with margins at Batesville.

The year-over-year margin increase is nice, but if you’ll remember to be fair, we didn’t perform all that well last year in the second quarter when it came to a margin perspective.

We had some inefficiencies at our plants, we’ve gotten those fixed, the plants are running pretty darn well right now, we feel very good about the efficiency of our plants and our logistics system. In addition, we have some tailwinds on commodity prices. So we didn’t see a lot of steel benefit last year, because the way our contracts are structured.

So we’re seeing year-over-year steel benefits this quarter, fuel is lower this quarter which is a benefit and we’re seeing a little bit of increase on the hardwood side, hardwood prices are up again this year and of course wages are up, but we’re always working hard to take cost out of the system.

So all-in-all, we feel good about the gross margins at Batesville given the lower volume, it was a high fixed cost business, so they did an exceptional job this quarter keeping cost in line. As we look forward, they took a pretty significant restructuring activities in the first half of the year.

So we expect to see very positive margin performance going forward, because quite a bit of SG&A cost came out as Chris Trainor and his team have simplified the business and again aligned it with sort of our key strengths and key places where our customers get the most value from us.

Kristina do you want to add anything?.

Kritina A. Cerniglia

No, I think you have covered it yep..

Daniel Moore

Yes that’s a great candor and pricing despite the volume declines remains fairly rationale out there?.

Joe A. Raver

You know, it remains fairly rationale. It’s always a tough - we’ve seen this cycle. When volume is good, people feel pretty good, their inventory flowing out particularly the smaller players are getting good cash flow.

As the market declined and everybody is scrambling for volume, particularly the smaller players, they have got a lot of inventory there, they want to liquidate their inventory to generate cash. And so we do see some pricing pressure in the marketplace in the second quarter, typically when volumes are low.

I think we’re sort of through that so we don’t expect to see any - there is no major shift in pricing in the market and we expect sort of - our second half of the year is always just much more stable than the first half. So we feel pretty confident about our forecast for the second half of the year.

But we haven’t seen any big shift in the marketplace around pricing or any other competitive activities..

Daniel Moore

Okay, and then last question and I promise for the day. Maybe put on your crystal ball or had if you will for looking out to fiscal 2017. Given the long lead times and percentage of completion accounting around a lot of the projects and process equipment.

When do you need to start to grow backlog more materially in order to start to kind of show an improved organic growth picture for fiscal 2017?.

Joe A. Raver

Yes. So interestingly we have been growing backlog on some of those longer lead items already. So we’re seeing some of the longer lead jobs, the bigger projects and those are particularly in the plastics and the polyolefin business, we’re starting to see that bill, we saw that bill this past quarter.

I think as we communicated, we expect to continue to build through the third quarter. The part of the business that we really rebuild is our backlog is down pretty significantly as it relates to screening equipment that’s used in frac sand, particularly if you look at it on a year-over-year basis, as well as coal powered mining.

And so we really need some of those - right now what we believe is for 2017 it's more of just an end market issue. Those end markets coal, mining and power frac sand, potash and other fertilizers, they move faster than some of these really large polyolefin projects right.

So once we get the order, it turns relatively fast compared to the lead times we see on the [indiscernible] side of the business. So that’s what we really need to have happen to get meaningful growth in 2017..

Daniel Moore

Very helpful. Thank you again..

Joe A. Raver

Alright, thanks Dan..

Kritina A. Cerniglia

Thanks Dan..

Operator

We have no more questions. So now I would like to turn the call back over to Joe Raver for final comments..

Joe A. Raver

Thank you operator. And once again, I want to thank everyone for participating in the call today. We look forward to speaking with you again in August when we report our third quarter results. Have a good day..

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect..

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