(Beep) Houston, you have a problem!
The results are in. As predicted in the preceding blog post the downtrend prevailed to slightly negative earnings rounded officially to “breakeven” results. Yes, negative earnings ($69,000)! When was the last time that happened on operations outside of special events? Only one of four analysts estimated earnings and this was .03 cents. Therefore, we missed again on earnings and were 2 million shy on revenue. We had the similar breakeven results last quarter on slightly positive earnings. Still, no turnaround has occurred for ENG. And, like Apollo 13 they are headed in the wrong direction before a turnaround occurs. That turnaround is going to be a while and excruciating. I don’t see a good short-term picture so be prepared. All this is ‘pipeline’, as you may know, and inertia works the same in all directions. Management will have to make more changes.
What we have seen is a change in Business Development. Michael Harrison is the new chief there and seems to have a good pedigree. I hope he can recover lost business and develop new opportunities. I would hope to think he has targeted right in on too few IR (real) news reports. I have pointed this out for years, ad nausea. Frequent news items add confidence to investors, employees, and companies seeking work. I believe they promote business. It is also a counter to misrepresentation and manipulation. These are only a partial list of benefits from active business news reporting. We have new energy in BD; a positive change but ENGlobal’s problems are not entirely solved with this move. There is an operations problem in my opinion, from my background experience, that needs to be fixed. You can get all the business you want but if you can’t execute efficiently you will falter.
When it was announced some time ago that former CEO, Michael Burrow, was giving up COB to just being the CEO a lot of good reasons were released for dividing up those roles. What happened to those reasons and company attitude after Mike Burrow retired? I think much work was now laid on one set of eyes – top responsible management was cut in half. A lot of people can run a company during good times, but invariably it is more difficult during bad economic times, now at half the observing and managing brainpower.
I would change and bolster the whole top management structure. Better information has to reach the top level being reflective of what is going on in the trenches. I have seen this problem before in other companies without a senior President and/or COO. You need more sensing capability, especially in a bad economy.
As COO I made active use of my CFO and forensic accounting. A good CFO can advise and identify with almost crystal ball precision. This information, in turn, can be converted into objectives, goals and decisions. All Presidents should meet monthly with the CFO and review progress and projections. This is how you avoid trouble. If you don’t think this is an appropriate role for a CFO then you have a bad CFO that needs replacing. ENGlobal has a great CFO.
Lets look at the report and data:
First off, the title is brilliant – complete with caveat – great IR work. The data is not so good and the reason for the title.
- Breakeven earnings per diluted share, a decrease from $0.13. Third quarter net loss of $69,000 or $0.00.
- Revenue of $87.3 million, a decrease of 29%, with $7.6 million of the decrease due to a reduced level of pass-through procurement revenue. (The one analyst projected $89.3 million)
- Consolidated gross profit margin as a percentage of revenue of 8.2%, a decrease from 11.1%.
- Continued strong liquidity, with positive cash flow from operations of $4.5 million and $18.5 million for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2009, respectively.
- 65% reduction of total long-term debt to $11.8 million from $34.0 million.
- "Overall SG&A expenses decreased $0.5 million, or 6.3%, to $7.0 million for the three months ended September 30, 2009, from $7.5 million for the comparable prior-year period. The third quarter 2009 SG&A represents an increase of 3% compared to $6.8 million in the second quarter 2009. As a percentage of revenue, SG&A expense increased to 8.0% for the three months ended September 30, 2009, from 6.1% for the comparable prior year period."
Employees have decreased by at least 600 and only a 6.3% decrease in SG&A in Q3? This percentage down does not seem reasonable for amount of employees lost. If SG&A per billable hour were calculated you could see how inefficient and costly this is. Additionally, 3Q SG&A was up 3% over 2Q, and SG&A up YOY in 3Qs as a percentage of revenue? They added 100 employees in 3Q and SG&A went up 3%. I know there is more to this but earnings were a little worse 2Q to 3Q for the rise in SG&A and big time worse (.13) YOY - simply the wrong direction. I believe I know what they are doing buy some other comments made in the CC. They are purposely carrying more overhead (people) so they can ramp up faster in case of contract increase. It is still to much, especially when you understand the capital project outlook comments in the CC forthcoming.
The conference call was rather short, 15 minutes, excluding questions. Some memorable comments were:
- Work has “somewhat stabilized” during the second and third quarters of this year. Unfortunately, over this time period, we’ve seen about one-third lower levels of billable man hours than we enjoyed at the same time last year.
- Billable hours has trended “slowly upward”…. and starting to see the first inklings of turning up…. but still roughly down about 25% from our best levels of last year.
- What we are lacking is the large capital work in domestic downstream, and that’s why we are looking into new areas to replace this lost revenue.
- Recovery in 1H or 2H. Earnings will improve sometime next year depending on capital spending.
- There will be an extended time before capital projects coming back.*
* Bill Coskey: “I think what we are seeing right now from the domestic downstream area is deferred maintenance work. I don’t think we have seen any significant large capital work to speak of.”
“We are expecting an extended, I mean I am expecting an extended period of time of low capital spending in the domestic downstream inventory, a lot of that’s driven by and certainly created around Cap and Trade, and if you have an old plant and you are refining, why would you want to go make a big investment in it, if you have that sort of hanging over your head. And a lot of it relates to utilization of these facilities and margins and spreads.”
“So, there is not many positives out there right now for the processing business of large capital work, and that’s really what stimulates us to look at these other areas. And it will eventually come back as it always does, but I think it’s going to be an extended period of time before it does.”
At least this CC is more realistic compared to the last three CCs. There had been small warnings. However, I never heard anything that would have lead me to expect these results of the last three missed quarters. I almost get the sense the company is being managed down and not up. If you have run a company or a small conglomerate you will understand.
Debt has been paid down in a fantastic way. This is great especially when you need to borrow again or going to sell the company. But does that help you earn money? The answer is no. I’d still prefer no debt, but not over earnings. It is a separate issue and that is the point.
When you look into the breakdown of the quarter the Engineering group fell off the most followed by miniscule decreases (almost par) results from Construction and Land. Automation was the star in a bad quarter and commendation is deserved.
I need to make a point about Automation. It has high variability on earnings. ENGlobal has been providing some useful information the last few years about the individual company division performance. I take that information and crunch it a little beyond what normal investors or analysts do using a statistical package called ANOVA (ANalysis Of VAriance). I have used it in scientific and performance studies. Applying this to business is unconventional from original concept. However, it does reveal where variance is, precisely. It identifies a certain type of problem in business – reliability of performance as compared to other entities. I ran it on Land, Engineering, Construction and Automation.
Land came out good. Construction came out OK – some variations, presumably overhead and job fluctuation. Engineering showed variation that is accountable by loss of work/employees. Other than that Engineering seems OK despite overhead. Note: It is unaccountable variation that is the real issue.
Automation earnings variation is all over the map. Since I respect the leadership there I have to then question middle management and what information they are using/not using with regards to their management practices. They actually boosted earnings this quarter and that is to be considered when looking at the whole quarter. With high variability comes the question, what will happen in future quarters?
Where is the stock price going to go? Consider that 2Q and 3Q are ENGlobal’s strongest quarters in the year and we got only breakeven results earning nothing. The markets have generally risen huge since the summer with no healthy retrace and basing. ENG has not benefited with participation in the run up but that is not to say it hasn’t benefited in support of its pricing at $4 range and now $3 range. With unemployment still not improving and extension upon extension of employment benefits, I think markets will fall in the future. This is important because where do you think things will go on these bad earnings in a falling or correcting market?
Hedge funds and institutions are not in a good position. Earnings are bad with a weak and iffy outlook. Short interest is down, so there is no real money to be made from a down game. Look at what happened in 2Q with terrible earnings. It looked to me like ENGlobal was propped up and supported for a long time in the $4 range on the bad news. By most accounts it should have been lower. Then, when the wind blew after 3Q finished and in late October, hello $3s. Did you enjoy Friday’s stock action before earnings? Did you see the heavy volume in the low $3s, a sudden run up about .50 on low volume quickly, then closing at $3.42? Three words – Hedge Funds, Manipulation. Now we have no good news to lift the price. It is going to be interesting – the support cash burn should be incredible. Expect more post and “news” pumping on weak analysis. If the analysis weren’t weak I wouldn’t call it pumping or bashing.
We have a long time until the next 4Q earnings report. That should come in mid March. 4Q is usually ENGlobal’s weakest quarter in which low billable hours occur during the holidays. Accounting adjustments are made in this period also. Last year was an exception to the usual low income; they had hurricane Ike work that pumped in huge money. No Ike this year.
Presently we have 3 quarters 2009 and earning only 7 cents. How are we going to predict a fair price with PE? What will 4Q yield? Last post I came up with $2.55 on apparently now over-optimistic theoretical numbers – 3 cents for 3Q (now known to be zero) and 7 cents 4Q. I have little confidence to speculate a number. But if we earned 3 cents in 4Q for total of .10 cents for the year plus a being kind 15 PE, this yields $1.50. Does this sound as bad to you as it does to me? I am hoping there will be market good will and way forward looking expectations. It all hinges on management quality and their decisions.
I will hold the shares I have. I would observe for management changes first and then real improving results before buying. This is a realistic view considering the long recovery period ahead. Good luck to everyone.
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