Catherine A. Suever - Parker-Hannifin Corp. Thomas L. Williams - Parker-Hannifin Corp. Lee C. Banks - Parker-Hannifin Corp..

Joseph M. Grabowski - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. Jamie L. Cook - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Joe Ritchie - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC Joel G. Tiss - BMO Capital Markets (United States) David Raso - Evercore ISI Group Nathan Hardie Jones - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc. Ann P.

Duignan - JPMorgan Securities LLC Jeffrey Todd Sprague - Vertical Research Partners LLC Joseph Giordano - Cowen & Co. LLC Nicole Deblase - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. Nigel Coe - Wolfe Research LLC.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q4 2018 Parker Hannifin Corp. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remains, we will host a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference call may be recorded.

It is now my pleasure to hand the conference over to Ms. Cathy Suever, Chief Financial Officer. Ma'am you may begin..

Thank you, Brian. Good morning and welcome to Parker Hannifin's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2018 Earnings Release Teleconference. Joining me today are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Williams, and President and Chief Operating Officer, Lee Banks.

Today's presentation slides together with the audio webcast replay will be accessible on the company's Investor Information website, at phstock.com, for one year following today's call. On slide number 2, you'll find the company's Safe Harbor Disclosure Statement addressing forward-looking statements as well as non-GAAP financial measures.

Reconciliations for any reference to non-GAAP financial measures are included in this morning's press release and earnings presentation slides and are also posted on Parker's website, at phstock.com. Today's agenda appears on slide number 3.

To begin, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Williams, will provide highlights for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year. Following Tom's comments, I'll provide a review of the company's fourth quarter and full fiscal year performance together with a review of our guidance for fiscal year 2019.

Tom will then provide a few summary comments and we'll open the call for a question-and-answer session. Please refer now to slide 4 as Tom will get us started with the highlights for the quarter and the full year for fiscal year 2018 and then continue with a brief overview of the fiscal year 2019 outlook on slide number 5..

sales growth of 150 basis points greater than global industrial production growth. We want segment operating margins at 19%, EBITDA margin at 20%, free cash flow conversion greater than 100% and an earnings per share CAGR over that period of time of 10%-plus.

So with that summary, I'm going to hand it back to Cathy for a more detailed review of the quarter..

sales are divided 48% first half, 52% second half, adjusted segment operating income is divided 45% first half, 55% second half, adjusted EPS first half/second half is divided 43%, 57%.

First quarter of fiscal 2019 adjusted earnings per share is projected to be $2.45 at the midpoint and this excludes $0.02 of projected business realignment expenses and $0.03 of projected CLARCOR costs to achieve.

We ask that you continue to publish your estimates using adjusted guidance for purposes of representing a more consistent year-over-year comparison. On slide 17, you'll find a reconciliation of the major components of fiscal year 2019 adjusted earnings per share guidance of $11.10 at the midpoint compared to the prior year of $10.42.

Increases include $0.62 from higher segment operating income, $0.18 from lower interest expense and $0.04 from a lower projected share count. Offsetting these increases is a $0.10 per share decrease from higher projected tax expense and $0.06 per share from higher projected corporate G&A and other expense.

Please remember that the forecast excludes any acquisitions or divestitures that might close during the remainder of fiscal 2019. This concludes my prepared comments. Tom, I'll turn the call back to you for your summary comments..

one, the Win Strategy, second is our decentralized divisional structure, third our global distribution service and support network which is the best in the motion control space, and the fact that almost everything we ship has some element of intellectual property tied to it.

We're globally balanced and we have a portfolio that has the breadth of technologies and system capabilities that really provides a differentiating value to our customers. We're forecasting a record FY 2019, but the best thing about our future is that we know we have lots of opportunities to get better.

And as we do that, we're going to continue to position Parker among the best Diversified Industrial companies in the world. So let me just close by saying thank you to the Parker team members around the world for all the progress and their hard work. And I want to say thank you to the shareholders.

Our shareholders that have had continued confidence in Parker, we appreciate that very much. So with that, Brian, I'm going to hand it back over to you to start the Q&A..

Thank you, sir. And our first question will come from the line of Mig Dobre with Robert W. Baird. Your line is now open..

Good morning, everyone. This is Joe Grabowski on for Mig this morning..

Good morning, Joe..

Good morning. Maybe talk about the incremental margin in North America in the fourth quarter, kind of what the puts and takes were there. How have CLARCOR inefficiencies progressed through the quarter? Maybe start there..

Yeah, Joe. It's Tom. So we were really pleased with what we saw in North America. We saw continued improvement with our productivity metrics through the quarter. We track it line by line, plant by plant and we were very encouraged with the progress that we saw. We completed 80% of the plant closures in FY 2018.

We have 20% that's going to carryover to FY 2019 due to the higher volume that we experienced. So this higher volume, this is a high-class problem that we have. Just to help frame what I mean by higher volume, the Q4 guide that we gave for North America was approximately 6% organic growth, and we came in at almost 9% organic growth for North America.

So a 30% higher growth rate than what we had anticipated.

But the productivity at the plants is improving at a pace that we're very comfortable that we're going to be able to close the plants that we've got and these carryover closures in the first half and we're going to be able to take the costs out and when you do that you're going to see a very strong second half from North America.

So I was very encouraged with North America. And maybe if I could just – while I've got the stage here, just emphasize if you look at the other segments, I think it's a really good indicator of the underlying operating performance So North America really strong performance sequentially.

And if you look at International and Aerospace you saw the results there, significant progress versus prior year on a quarterly basis and on an annual basis and then total your EBITDA margin improvement. So we feel very good about what we've done on the margin side and we look forward to FY 2019..

Great. Thanks for the color. And then maybe my follow up would be along the same lines.

What were the price cost dynamics in the quarter? Have you been able to keep up with raw material inflation through pricing? And how does that look as you progress through FY 2019?.

Joe, this is Lee. Thanks for the question. As we've talked before in the past, we've got a pretty disciplined process inside the company where we start at the division level and measure our input costs through our PPI Index and measure our sales increases through our SPI Index. So we stay on top of it.

There's definitely inflation in the channel and we've been very active in neutralizing it. And I would say everything we've done has been really margin neutral, at a minimum, for the company..

Great. Thanks for taking my question..

Thanks, Joe..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Jamie Cook with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open..

Hi. Good morning. First, just some color on the orders in for International Industrial. They were a little weaker than what I would have expected. So if you could just start with that. And then I have a follow-up question..

Yes, Jamie, it's Tom. So for international first you got tougher comps there. So that's probably a big contributor to it. We saw Asia and Latin America stayed at a high level and EMEA moderated a little bit through the quarter, but still had pretty good numbers for us..

Okay. And sorry. Just a follow-up question on the last question on incrementals for 2019 second half better than first half. Is there any way you could just quantify or give a little more color? I think investors were expecting low-20s in the first half, 30s in the second half. Is that the right way to still think about it? Thanks..

Yeah, and I'll give you a range because MROS is a difficult metric to predict on a pinpoint basis. So our first half for North America for 2019 is going to be in the 10% to 20% MROS and the second half, as I mentioned, with the strong tailwind is going to be in the 40% to 50% MROS.

Full year for the total company will be in that low to mid-30s putting the whole company together..

And it just seems more back-end loaded versus before. If you could just give a little color on that..

No, I think that's about what we were anticipating. Obviously we didn't talk about FY 2019 when we were in the last quarter, but we talked about that we were going to anticipate more work with the plants for the first half of 2019. And that's where we're at. But I'm very pleased with the productivity pace.

The improvements that we're making line by line and the improvements that our team members are making is going to enable us to close those factories and take the costs out that we need to and position us to be in very good shape for the second half..

Okay. I appreciate the color. I'll get back in queue. Thanks..

Thanks, Jamie..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open..

Thank you. Good morning, everyone..

Good morning, Joe..

So, guys, when I look at the organic growth guide for the upcoming year, I know you typically will tend to guide on trend. But the trend so far on your order rates have been much better. And so how should I think about that range that you've given? The low end seems lower than we anticipated, but obviously the order trends still remain very good..

positive, neutral, negative. On the positive side, it's a very long list and I'm going to read them all because I'm excited about how long this list is.

But it starts with aerospace, ag, construction, distribution, forestry, general industrial, heavy duty truck, lawn and turfs, life sciences, mining, oil and gas, rail, semicon, refrigeration and air conditioning and telecom. So that's about everything we do is in the positive bucket. Neutral is automotive and marine.

And negative, as you might predict, is power gen. So our forecast at this time is our best view of the world. And recognize that every quarter we're going to have better data, better visibility and we're going to update that for you as we go.

But I would just characterize 2019 as a terrific environment for us when I think about the growth for the future..

Got it. That was very helpful, Tom. And obviously it sounds like the outlook remains pretty strong. And just given your visibility, I guess we'll wait and see that update later this year.

But maybe thinking about how you're thinking about the incremental margin/EBIT bridge for the year for 2019 versus 2018, when I take a look at the midpoint of your guidance, it implies roughly $115 million in EBIT.

I guess how are we supposed to think about how much of that is coming from the cost savings and the benefits associated with all the actions you've taken versus, again, how you're thinking about just the volume leverage for the rest of the year?.

Yeah, Joe. Let me take this one for a little bit here. It will be a combination. So we will see savings from efficiencies as we complete the plant closures in the first half of 2019. We will continue to see productivity and efficiency come through the margins as we continue to work on Win Strategy initiatives.

And just overall as we've seen some pretty high level of growth and to keep up with that, it's been at times inefficient in terms of premium freight and such and we've gotten better at that. We've seen improvement in that and we'll continue to see improvement in maintaining our customer deliveries in this growth period as we go forward.

So it'll be a combination of things..

Joe, it's Tom. The bottom (35:27) numbers, our MROS forecast is in the low to mid-30s for the total company for next year's guide..

Got it. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Joel Tiss with BMO. Your line is now open..

Hi.

How's it going?.

Hi, Joel..

And I just wondered, I know it's too early to start making bigger acquisitions again and all that. Can you talk a little bit about Aerospace and how that fits in? It used to be more than 20% of the mix and now it's 15%-ish.

And I just wondered, you're having great success there and I just wondered how you think about incremental acquisitions overall and Aerospace in particular..

Yeah, Joel. This is Tom. So our acquisition strategy and I mentioned this briefly at the Investor Day, one, is first to be consolidator of choice within the motion control space. So we are number one but we have only about 11% share of a $130 billion space.

So we want to be at bat – not that we'll swing at everything, but we want to be at bat looking at things that make sense for us in the motion control space. Second is, all things being equal, we want to invest in aerospace, infiltration and engineering materials in our Instrumentation Groups.

Those are groups that tend to have higher margins and a little more resilience over a business cycle. So clearly Aerospace is on that list. And maybe if I could talk about capital deployment just in a broader sense, we are in a much better position as we go into FY 2019 than we were in 2018 from a capital deployment standpoint.

Our balance sheet is in a robust position at 2.1 gross debt to EBITDA multiples. So we're going to do our dividends and we're targeting 30% of net income and net income is going to keep growing, so we – which is a big growth there. We're going to invest in organic growth and productivity.

I mentioned that at Investor Day, so strategic investments in productivity to drive productivity within the plants on additive and robotics and those type of things. And then to your point, we're going to look at acquisitions and share repurchase and make the best decisions we can for the shareholders. But Aerospace, we like about a 20/80 balance.

And I would remind people, when you look at our technologies, all of our technologies are the same. We just happen to call out Aerospace as a market-facing segment because of the customer profile there.

But it's the same motion control technologies that go into Aerospace that go into Semicon that go into all these other technologies – these other end markets. So we like it and we've done a lot of work in Aerospace over the last 10 years from the R&D work that we've done, the Win Strategy, the good work that the team's done there.

It's in a great position and it's going to yield nice benefits going forward for us..

And then just a weird question for Lee. As you go around to all the different factories, are you finding anywhere where the cost savings – like you're reaching your efficiency goals and you're running out of things to do? Or just a little sense of where you are, what inning maybe on this overall cost reduction and efficiency improvement..

Joel, can you believe me on one thing? I am not running out of things to do. No, I'll tell you, very proud of the team. We continue to make productivity improvements. We continue to change what we're working on in the factories. And I've used this analogy with many of you.

We're in the early stages of our journey because there's constantly opportunities to eliminate waste in all the businesses and our teams are focused on doing that..

All right. Thank you..

Thanks, Joel..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of David Raso with Evercore ISI. Your line is now open..

Hi. Good morning..

Hi, David..

Just curious about the first half, the comment about North America being mid-teens and on the incrementals. Just trying to get a feel.

I mean, the basic math I'm running here, it looks like for the whole company we're talking about $45 million in the sense of the first half incrementals are 17% to 18% for the whole company and then the back half of the year has kind of 200%. I know it's a really easy comp, so it's sort of a funny number.

But it seems like it's a $45 million number where if you added it to the first half and took it out of the second half, you'd be doing your 30%, 35% incrementals. So I'm trying to gauge the comfort, the understanding of that kind of size of a number on the ability to get that with the plant closures going into the back half.

Or is there maybe some cushion in the first half? I'm just trying to understand. That's a sizable number that it's loaded in the second half. So if you can maybe help me somehow understand that a little bit better..

Yeah, David, let me spell out what we think we're going to achieve in savings from our efforts. So with the CLARCOR cost to achieve efforts, we'll be spending about $13 million throughout fiscal year 2019, and that'll be heavily weighted in the first half.

Out of that, we expect to increase our margins with $75 million of synergy savings split pretty evenly first half, second half. Then in addition, we'll have our other areas of Parker working on continuing improvements through realignment.

That'll be a $22 million cost for the year, fairly evenly split first half second half, and $10 million of savings heavily weighted in the second half..

Yeah, I guess it's a little less back-half loaded than maybe the math suggests. Is it also a function maybe about obviously some of the inefficiencies go away, the slower growth is maybe a little bit easier to serve? You're a little bit in scramble mode right now.

But is there also some price increases for the calendar year that you're expecting? Or just to better understand, we all know that it was going to be back half loaded on the margin just trying to get incremental comfort on the pieces..

David, it's Tom. We do feel very good about the back half. And you're right. Clearly we've been racing up to get on top of the demand, and we feel very good about what we see on the metrics productivity freight costs going down in the second half that they will start to peel-off even more as we go into the second half of FY 2019.

Pricing actions and activity has been very robust as we've worked, as Lee described, throughout the year. I think we've done a great job on that. We have been on top of it and that will clearly help us as well as we go into next year..

Okay. I'll get back in queue. Thank you very much..

Okay. Thanks, David..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Nathan Jones with Stifel. Your line is now open..

Good morning, everyone..

Good morning, Nathan..

I've got some more math for you. Cathy, I think you just said $75 million of synergy savings from CLARCOR in 2019. If I figured out 75% split North America, that's still 110 basis points of margin expansion that you would get in North America just from the CLARCOR synergy savings.

I'd expect you'd have some productivity improvements some low duplicate costs going through as the year progresses. Yet the midpoint of North American guidance is only up 40 basis points.

Can you guys talk about what the additional drag on margins there is and why we shouldn't expect to see some of those margins improved a bit more than what's in your guidance?.

Well, Nathan, this is Tom. If you look at it in total, these are some pretty good MROSs for North America, because it's still going to come up full year in that 25% to 30% range. And all the particulars that you're talking about the ins and outs, these are still good numbers with a second half that really reflects I think what you're saying.

The first half has still got the redundant plans and activities that we're doing there over time, et cetera, that will be running. And you're going to the second half with 40% to 50%, which is going to reflect all of the numbers that you're seeing. And so I think it's weighed down primarily because of the first half performance.

But a full year in a 25% to 30% range is a very good number, given the plant closure activity we'll complete in the first half..

And I know you guys, have limited visibility into what happens in the second half of the fiscal year and you've kind of use that regression model of the 48/52 revenue split.

Can you talk about maybe what your assumptions are for first half organic revenue growth versus what second half organic revenue growth is by segment if you have those there?.

Sure, Nathan. So in the first half, Tom had mentioned that we're expecting organic growth of midpoint of 5%. That breaks down close to 6.5% North America, just under 3% International and just over 6.5% for Aerospace.

In the second half, the overall organic growth is expected to be around 2.5% and that breaks down as a little bit over 3% for North America, close to 2.5% for International and just under 1% for Aerospace..

And you guys pretty much assume that current business trends maintain into the second half.

And if there was any improvement in the economy these continue to grow there would potentially be upside to those numbers in the second half?.

So, Nathan, it's Tom. Yes, I would feel that that's the right way to describe it. I would not – just for everybody that's listening, I would not over-read the second half. Obviously, we get the benefit of being one of the first companies to describe 2019 and we're giving it our best visibility based on the models that we've built to describe that.

But I think this environment, I'm very encouraged by the economic environment, the activity levels we have with our customers and our distributors. So I think, obviously, the second half has got opportunities to improve..

Very helpful. Thanks very much for your time..

Thanks, Nathan..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Your line is now open..

Yeah. Hi. Good morning. A lot of my questions have been answered. But I wanted to go back to your comments perhaps on EAME (46:23) moderating a little bit through the course of Q2. Perhaps you could give us a little more color on that either by country or by end market or just any commentary that you're seeing in that region, please..

Ann, it's Tom. And I'm not going to go by country by country, but it continues to be a good region for us. I think most of what we saw was seasonal and typical Europe as they go into the summer period and the heavy holiday time for Europeans.

In general, if you were to look at how Europe trends versus our other regions, it tends to tread at a lower growth rate. So that was not unexpected. And that's really what we forecasted for Europe as we go into the next year.

At a high level, it's Latin America at the highest growth rate, North America and Asia towards the top end of that range that I described 2.5% to 5%, and Europe being more towards the lower end of that range..

And, Ann, this is Lee. I would just add on I've personally reached out to a lot of our larger customers. They are very, very encouraged going forward. So I think some of it is just seasonal, as Tom said..

Okay. that's helpful color. And then on the margin outlook. Aerospace 19.9% operating profit in Q4.

That can come from a lot of different things, but what drove that strong margin in the fourth quarter versus the guide for the full year for 2019?.

Yeah, Ann, we typically see a very nice aftermarket mix in both – mostly third quarter tends to be our highest best quarter for mix in terms of aftermarket, but the fourth quarter it came through as well for us. We had some nice military aftermarket that won't necessarily repeat and it helped the mix and the margin.

We also were more effective with our development costs. Development costs for the year came in at 6.5% which is lower than we were expecting. We've gotten more efficient with that effort. And then it was overall just productivity improvement in the operations as the team continues to realign and work on Win Strategy initiatives.

So a bit of it won't continue because of the mix, but we hope to see continued improvement in margins through productivity improvements and continued efficiency in the development cost activities..

And just for clarification, what were development costs previously? And is the 6.5% sustainable? Is that what's in the margin guide?.

Yeah. We have been running closer to 7.25% or higher in prior years. The last couple of years have been high because of the new platforms that we've been working hard to get into service. That will now taper down as the planes are getting ready to fly and we're at a more normal operating level for development costs.

We're expecting next year to average somewhere between 6.25% and 6.75% of sales for Aerospace..

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. I appreciate it..

Okay. Thanks, Ann..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Jeffrey Sprague with Vertical. Your line is now open..

Thank you. Good day, everyone..

Hi, Jeff..

Hey. Tom, I was wondering if we could just step back maybe bigger picture. Obviously we all have our calculators and protractors out here trying to work through your arithmetic. But we're comparing a heavy transition year in 2018 to somewhat of a partial transition year in 2019, with the carryover effects you're dealing with.

Just going to get on the other side of this, has the incremental margin profile with the company materially changed? And what would you guide us to as a reasonable underlying incremental once the dust settles from the sort of thing?.

Yeah, Jeff. It's Tom.

So, you're talking about, say, beyond FY 2019?.

Yeah..

So, I think a good number is always that 30% plus or minus a little bit. And we are on a march here. We're going to get to 19% segment operating margins and 20% EBITDA margins and we're not going to stop. But that's the next bridge we want to go over.

And we gave some visibility in the Investor Relations Day as to various buckets that we're going to go after. But what I'm so encouraged by is we're in an environment now, unless we go back to the first Investor Day that we hosted for you when Lee and I both took our jobs, we thought we were living on a 1% to 2% organic growth world.

And whether our 2.5% to 5% ends up being an actual number, it's still a significantly better environment for industrial companies than it was just a couple of years ago.

And you put all the changes we've outdone on the new Win Strategy around engagement and ownership, our premier customer experience, things we're doing, that experience for customers, all of the initiatives and growth, this has been the best period we've had demonstrating growth greater than the market than we probably have done in the last 10 years.

And we continue – which we plan to do in 2019 and clearly set a new standard for ourselves.

And then the financial performance initiatives, we haven't talked much about simplification on the call yet, but we're early days in that because we are just now starting to tackle the 80/20 of our revenue complexity and we've got more to do on Lean and supply chain and pricing activities. So I'm very encouraged.

We had a lot of work that we're doing that is sometimes difficult to see what's happening underneath, which is why I tried to give us much color as I could to the EBITDA side of things and the fact that we hit record reported margins. Just to put it in context, FY 2012 15.2% and the reported margin this year is 15.7%.

Well that was in round numbers almost $200 million. If you add up all the incremental D&A from CLARCOR the incremental costs to achieve and the restructuring $200 million of headwind and we still put 50 basis points higher than the all-time record of the company.

I think, which is the point you're getting at, is once you start to move from that and you have less of those unusual activities which we will once we clear FY 2019, there is a very strong underlying performance. And we're the kind of group that we're not going to be happy with static performance.

So it's all about continuous improvement and driving EPS to higher levels for our shareholders..

Yeah. Thank you for that. Then the one other thing I'm trying to get at with that too is I would think that 30%-ish underlying is happening as we speak and there's all this noise around that.

And just adding together those puts and takes, I think a lot of us on the phone are getting to higher numbers?.

Yes, I think you're right.

Because I think the comment – not to be too precise, but when we talked about it at IR Day, we talked about something closer more in the mid-30s because of the changes that we have made and the investment we're going to make in CapEx, tighter productivity that we'd hope to lift up in our traditional 30%, give or take, just to a little higher band going beyond FY 2019..

Great. Thank you..

Thanks, Jeff..

Thank you. And our next question will come from Joe Giordano with Cowen. Your line is now open..

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question..

Sure, Joe. Good morning..

Just in the guide, what's your underlying assumptions for IP? Should we just assume that it's 150 basis points below in a range there? Or how are you building up to that? And what's your view inherent in that on price cost for next year?.

I'll take the IP question and I'll let Lee discuss the price cost. And this is Tom, Joe. So, we have to build this because you don't typically get a global industrial forecast based on the Parker fiscal year. But we do our best to build it. That forecast is approximately 2.7%.

So at our range of 2.5% to 5%, we would clearly be performing at greater than that..

So, 2.7% is your baseline forecast for the Parker timeframe global IP?.

Right..

Okay..

I'll let Lee talk about....

Joe, it's Lee. Just maybe reiterating what I mentioned earlier. So we've got some very good processes here internally that really track input costs and sales price. And at a minimum, we'll be margin neutral going forward. We are on top of it, have been on top of it.

And if you look at us in cycles past where we've had inflation, we're pretty good at making sure, at worst case, we're margin neutral..

Okay. And then last for me. Cathy, I think you mentioned this on Ann's question, but the development cost for Aero next year, I think you said 6.25%, 6.75%.

Can you remind me of what it was in the last couple of years?.

It's been more in the 7-plus percent range. I think we finished FY 2017 at a little – about 7.3%. The year before 7.6%. It was as high as 10% back when we first started on some of these new platforms. So we're now at a more normal, stable level as the platforms are entering service..

Great. Thank you..

Okay..

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Nicole Deblase with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open..

Hi. Thanks for taking my question..

Sure..

So, my first question is just around tariffs. So, we've kind of extensively talked about what price/cost looks like for you guys this year and into 2019. But if you could talk a little bit about any work you've done on the expected impact from tariffs on your business in 2019..

Yeah, Nicole. It's Tom. So, the short answer on tariffs, and I'll give you the longer one here in a second, is we're in good shape. Our supply chain model, we make, buy and service in the region for the region. So that naturally helps us. But if I just go through Section 232 and 301 here for a minute.

So, 232, which is the steel and aluminum, because of the reduction in the number countries that are actually being exposed, the number of exemptions that were placed and the fact that this is down to milled products only, it's only about $1.5 million of impact for us, all of Section 232.

And in Section 301, if you take list number one and list number two and even list number three, which is the $200 billion that the President has talked about, even at the latest number bumping it up to 25% tariff, that's about $18 million even all of that.

So in round numbers, if you add the 232 at $1.5 million and $18 million for 301, you're looking at approximately $20 million for us. So it's pretty immaterial against our total direct material spend. And our process is, we're going to pass that on. We're going to cover that cost immediately.

And we're not going to eat one dime of that and I think our customers understand that. And so this is small for us and we're going to cover it..

Okay. Thanks, Tom. And then just one on Industrial International margins. Seems like the margin expansion that you guys are forecasting year-on-year is pretty impressive on kind of I'd say pretty modest revenue growth next year. If you could just elaborate a little bit on what's driving the confidence in the MROS there, that would be helpful..

Sure, Nicole. Yeah, we've been working hard in our international operations to realign them to a more effective cost base. And they've been now getting to the point where we are enjoying the savings from that and the higher margins. So we have more to do. There's more realignment that we continue to work on and more improvements.

They also have gotten better and better at the tools that we use through the Win Strategy in becoming more productive in our normal operations. And so we're seeing the benefits of all of that and we expect that to continue into fiscal 2019 despite the volume not increasing too significantly..

Understood. Thank you..

Okay. Thanks, Nicole. Brian, we have time for one more question, please..

Yes, ma'am. Our last question then will come from the line from Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research. Your line is now open..

Thanks. I guess I better make this a good one, right, since it's the last question..

The pressure's on, Nigel..

I know. Seriously. So most of my questions have been answered. So can we talk pension? Discount rates for you, given your 30 June year-end, discount rates are significantly higher. And market returns are also healthy, positive as well. So just wondering how the pension expense in fiscal 2019 is tracking versus fiscal 2018..

Yeah, Nigel, we're forecasting – we have raised the discount rate slightly, which will benefit our pension expense. However, as we looked at the rate of return on assets that we were using, we did decide to lower that slightly, which is going to offset the benefit we got from the discount rate change.

So we expect FY 2019 to be pretty comparable to our fiscal year 2018 pension expense..

Okay.

And then just coming back to the pricing, and I'm curious whether the strength in pricing that you're talking about and the confidence in passing through the inflationary impact of tariffs, is that both through OEM and channel? So would you describe OEM pricing power as strong as channel, or is it a case of OEMs being squishy but, say, there's enough pricing power in the channel to offset that?.

Nigel, it's Lee. Definitely the distribution channel is a little more elastic than the OEM channel, but we've been effective in both channels. And there's inflation throughout it. So these are conversations nobody wants to have, but everybody understands where we have to get to. So we've been successful in both..

Great. Thanks, Lee..

Okay. Thank you, Nigel. All right. This concludes our Q&A and the earnings call for today. Thank you for joining us. Robert and Ryan will be available throughout the day to take your calls should you have any further questions. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day..

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation on today's conference. This does conclude the program and we may all disconnect. Everybody have a wonderful day..