Q4 2022 Mullen Group Ltd Earnings Call
Speaker 3: Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero.
Speaker 4: I would now like to turn the conference over to Murray K. Mullen, Chair, Senior Executive Officer, and President.
Speaker 5: Please go ahead.
Speaker 6: Thank you and welcome everyone to Monoproot Sportlake Conference call. Before I commence today's review, excuse me, I'll remind everyone that our presentation contains forward-looking statements that are based upon current expectations on our subject to a number of risks and uncertainties.
Speaker 7: And as such, active results may differ in material. Please, for further information that is identifying these risks on certain these assumptions, take a look at the disclosure documents which are filed on Cedar and at www.mollonhyphengroup.com. So with me this morning, I have our executive team of Richard Molloney.
Speaker 8: Senior Operating Officer, Joanna Scott, Senior Corporate Officer, and Carson Arlacker, will be speaking shortly, Senior Accounting Officer. So what happened in Q4 and in 2022? Well, with today's release...
Speaker 9: And our 2022 annual financial review, and this call of a day, we will be officially putting closure to 2022.
Speaker 10: Today, what we'll do is we'll focus on the fourth quarter results and highlight the factors that influence these results.
Speaker 11: And since we telegraph most of what we were talking about today just three weeks ago during our 23 business plan call
Speaker 12: We'll keep this presentation short and focus on the key points. And truthfully because nothing has really changed since our last call, we will not be holding a Q&A session.
Speaker 13: we will not waste your time repeating what we've already discussed. Besides, a complete and full disclosure of the fourth quarter and full year results can be found in the annual financial review. And this document once again can be found on Sisa.org
Speaker 14: and on our website at www.mollonhyphengroup.com. Carson, her lacquer, and his team, I've got to give him a lot of credit. They did a great job preparing this detailed report. I encourage anybody that wants to get all the details and take a look at it.
Speaker 15: So in 2022, our business was running, I would suggest, on all cylinders. We grew consolidated revenues by 35.3%, reaching $2 billion in annual sales.
Speaker 16: I would have to classify these as pretty impressive growth statistics.
Speaker 17: Just as important, free profitability was enhanced.
Speaker 18: I would also suggest you primarily by pricing increases and a very nice gain in the fourth quarter on the sale of some non-core assets. As a result, net income was a record $158 million or $170 million a share.
Speaker 19: We increased the dividend mid-year to an annual rate of 72 cents per common share. We bought back over 1.8 million shares at an average price of $12.30.
Speaker 20: And when you compare the MTL stock performance other leading industrial companies on the TSX, we were one of the top performers last year.
Speaker 21: But 2022 will also be remembered as the year we did not engage in any significant or meaningful M&A activity. And for one fundamental reason, we did not like the asking prices. So we passed. We used the pre-cash astray for the balance sheet. And as I told the team,
Speaker 22: patients would ultimately be rewarded. Besides last year, we didn't really have to do anything in corporate office. Our 38 business units did an outstanding job managing the freight demand surge that occurred and
Speaker 23: the inflationary cost-versions. All you got to do is look at the results in the 7- and they did a great job.
Speaker 24: So now I'm going to pass the call over to Carson Ehrlacher and he's going to provide additional detail on our fourth quarter results. Carson you're up.
Speaker 25: Thank you, Murray, and welcome everyone. I'll provide a bit more detail, however, our annual financial review fully explains our financial performance. As such, I'll provide you with some of the highlights.
Speaker 26: Overall, the fourth quarter can be characterized in two ways. We strengthened the balance sheet and we set several new financial records that finished off one of the most successful years we've had since going public 30 years ago.
Speaker 27: Most of our growth this quarter came from our existing business units versus acquisition.
Speaker 28: In the fourth quarter, we generated 502.7 million in revenue, a record compared to any previous quarter quarter.
Speaker 29: Revenue increased by approximately 61 million, or 13.8%, compared to the prior year, and was primarily due to three reasons.
Speaker 30: First, general rate increases negotiated earlier in the year, along with steady demand, resulted in a $23.6 million increase in revenue.
Speaker 31: Secondly, our fuel surcharge revenue increased by $28.2 million to $65 million due to the 65% year-over-year increase in the price of diesel fuel. And lastly, we recognized $9 million of incremental revenue from acquisitions.
Speaker 32: In terms of our adjusted OIVDA, we generated 77.6 million, being the highest amount we've generated in any fourth quarter in over a decade.
Adjusted OIBDA increased by 17 million or 28% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, with all three of our asset-based segments contributing to the increase.
In terms of margin, our adjusted operating margin improved by 1.7% to 15.4% in 2022, compared to 13.7% in 2021, and was mainly due to rate increases implemented in 2022, which more than offset inflationary costs.
All three of the asset-based segments contributed to this margin improvement. So let's take a look at how they performed by segment.
Starting with the largest asset-based segment, the LTL segment grew revenues by 22 million to 190.8 million.
17.2 million of the increase was due to higher fuel surcharge, while acquisitions accounted for 5.5 million of incremental revenue.
Segment revenue was negatively impacted in the fourth quarter as inclement weather and the timing of holidays reduced the number of days available for us to work, particularly in the month of December .
Adjusted OIBDA increased by $6.1 million to $31.8 million in the quarter, which was largely due to steady demand and general rate increases implemented earlier in the year, while acquisitions accounted for just under $1 million of the increase.
Adjusted operating margin increased by 1.5% to 16.7% as compared to 15.2% in 2021.
Our second largest asset base segment, being our L&W segment, grew revenues by 22 million or 16.7% to $153.8 million.
Above the $22 million increase in revenue, 14 million was due to general rate increases and strong demand for freight services at virtually all of our business units. All fuel search are accounted for the remaining $8 million increase in segment revenue.
Adjusted OIBEA increased by 7.1 million to 30.4 million in the quarter and was mainly due to rate increases that led to the strong performance at virtually all of our business units. Adjusted operating margin increased to 19.8% in 2022.
from 17.7% in 2021. As freight rates remained elevated and more than offset inflationary costs.
Moving to our SNI segment, revenues were up by 26 million to 108 million in the quarter, which is mainly due to rate increases and strong demand for specialized services, including pipeline hauling and streaming services, construction projects in Northern Anatolba, and from greater activity levels in the energy sector.
leading to improved results for our drilling-related services business units and from those involved in the transportation of fluids and servicing of wells.
adjusted OIBDA increased by 6.8 million or 55% in the quarter compared to the prior year.
are adjusted operating margin increased by 2.7% to 17.7% compared to the prior year due to rate increases, strong performance of pre-made pipeline and smooth contractors, and from greater activity levels in the energy sector.
Our non-asset-based US 3PL segment revenues were down slightly to $52.6 million as freight demand in the United States for full truckload shipments continued to soften in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to the prior year.
Adjusted to IDDA decreased by 1.1 million to just under a million dollars.
Adjusted operating margins were 1.7% on a gross basis while operating margins on a net revenue basis were 19.6%.
margins were negatively impacted by the combined effect of lower revenues and a slight increase in SNS and A costs as we added talented IT staff to build up our proprietary silver express technology platform.
our net income of $61.5 million and our earnings per share of $0.66 per common share were both records compared to any previous fourth quarter.
net income increased by 41 million and was mainly due to a 30 million dollar increase in the gain on sale of property, plant and equipment, which was mainly due to the sale of an on-court property located in Surrey, British Columbia.
Other increases to net income include 11.8 million increase in the YBDA, a $2.9 million dollar positive variance in net performance change and a $2.8 million gain on the fair value of equity investments.
Somewhat offsetting these increases was a $7.8 million increase in income tax expense.
We continue to buy back our own stock, repurchasing and cancelling just over 150,000 common shares at an average price of $13.67 in a quarter.
As a result of our strong performance, our return on equity improved to 25.9% in the quarter and 17% on a year-to-date basis.
Looking at some other notables, we continue to generate cash in excess of our operating needs, as net cash from operating activities in the fourth quarter was over $100 million, compared to $65.8 million in 2021.
This increase of $34.7 million or 52% is mainly due to two things. One being the $11.8 million increase in the YBDA and the other due to a $23 million variance in changes in non-cash working capital items.
This strong cash flow generation and the sale of the non-core asset in business enabled us to reduce the amount being borrowed on our credit facilities by 76 million dollars in the fourth quarter alone.
Our balance sheet remains strong. Our debt-operating cash flow covenant under our private debt agreement is down to 1.67 to 1, which is lowest we've seen since 2014.
We have also a total of 250 million of bank credit facilities available to us, which we had 22.8 million drawn at the end of the fourth quarter, leaving us with over 225 million of room available.
Our private debt has an average annual fixed rate of 3.93% and matures in two tranches with principal repayments net of cross currency swaps of $217 million and $208 million due in October of 2024 and October of 2026 respectively.
We've entered 2023 with ample financial flexibility on our private debt covenants and on our credit facilities, allowing us to be opportunistic on the out on the acquisition front.
Now to really put this into perspective, if we chose to leverage up to two and a half times on our debt to operating cash will covenant.
We could effectively borrow up to 750 million of total net debt. Meaning we could add approximately 200 million of debt to pursue acquisitions and still have one full turn of debt to operating cash flow on our covenant.
So with that, Murray.
I'll pass the conference call back to you.
Once again, good summary course.
And just to kind of put an explanation point on Q4, December was kind of a tough month, but part of that was just the way the holidays fell Saturday, Sunday, and then you have the holiday season started.
Monday Tuesday off so you kind of we kind of lose really 10 days and then the weather hit kind of bad so
Tuesday off so you kind of we kind of lose really ten days and then the weather hit kind of bad so it's tough to
really used December as a barometer, but it was a difficult month. There's no doubt about it. And that hurt our numbers in the fourth quarter, a little lower than what we anticipated for sure. Whether it was dueancing, it was EquOda, it was dialing and it was developing the business models saw really hope our trandectors needed to
So some closing remarks before we call it a day. On January 16th, we provided a full analysis of our expectations for the three along with the business plan that we believe reflected reality.
Our early January numbers are confirming our forecast with revenues trending, I would say trending a little stronger than what we'd expected, and showing a very nice recovery over December , which, as I just said, it was a short month due to holidays and a virtual shutdown due to weather.
impacting a lot of our business. So just to summarize our overall view for 2023, we believe that the combination of rising interest rates, stubbornly high inflation, and fewer supply chain bottlenecks will impact the overall freight demand supply situation.
So on the consumer side, spending is, you know, spent, which is generally, by the way, speaking a derivative of the job market, you know, we still think that should remain reasonably constant provided employment levels stay at our near current levels. Now that's a positive for our business, but to be clear, we don't see any overall demand growth.
Where we do see some weaknesses, there will be some pricing in a revision as it supply chain bottlenecks normalize.
But this also creates the opportunity for our business units to focus more on cost and on productivity. Initiatives that will minimize the impact of the lower freight rates.
and since we're a diversified company and we operate in multiple verticals of the economy.
We believe that we will see some growth in our specialized industrial services segment.
Lastly,
Last year, you wrote me a comment earlier. I said, we were, we, 22 was the year in which we, we didn't do a lot of acquisitions and M&A activity. But the, the consolidation thesis that we've talked about on so many equations.
That's still going to provide my group with a lot of growth opportunities in 23.
All we need is the right fit at the right price point.
And I would reiterate the tuck-ins are our preferred acquisition.
target because we can realize synergies relatively quickly. In our view, that's the purest way of adding value to our existing shareholders. I think all of you know by now we don't do acquisitions to grow, just to grow. We do it because we can add value to our business and to our shareholders. So this brings our call to close today. We want to thank you for participating in this.
and I would say this, we are prepared. Thanks folks, have a great day. Talk to you again.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines.
Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.
pri for.