Nordson Earnings Call INSIGHTS: Coatings Business, AT Order Pattern

On Tuesday, Nordson Corporation (NASDAQ:NDSN) reported its third quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call. Take a look.

Coatings Business

Christopher Glynn – Oppenheimer: Question on the coatings business, 2Q orders very strong, third quarter also very strong, didn’t seem to see the backlog conversion there. Does that matter more mismatch between the different comps for orders in revenues or more lead time thing, looking like a kind of a huge fourth quarter for Coatings?

Michael F. Hilton – President and CEO: Chris, I think it is – there’s a bit of background in this segment. We do have larger dollar orders within this portfolio and some of those can be longer lead time items. So, I think what you’re seeing in this particular quarter, is the result of few orders that are larger dollar systems orders that have longer lead times associated with them.

Christopher Glynn – Oppenheimer: Then the ATS operating margin was that just all volume leverage or any mix strength. And as a corollary, do you need to build more structural cost in that segment at this point?

Michael F. Hilton – President and CEO: I’d say, most of what you’re seeing there in improvement is significant leverage around our systems business and in particular so it is largely volume leverage and we have been investing really in that business over the last three or four quarters both resources and capability. We did mention the build out in Suzhou and where we’re at as the physical facility is there and we will be building up our product capability and product line capability as I mentioned over the next 9 to 12 months. Beyond that there might be very modest tweaks here or there to expand capability but largely we can run with additional resources if we need to and we can flex up and down pretty effectively there. So, probably not a lot of additional capital required.

Gregory A. Thaxton – SVP and CFO: Chris, this is Greg. The only thing I’d add to that is as we have been doing and we’ll continue to do, the investment there is largely about adding resource capability in the emerging markets. Specifically, we have stepped up over this last year and we will continue some technology investment in each of the key product lines within that business.

AT Order Pattern

John Franzreb – Sidoti & Company: Last quarter you cautioned about the sustainability of the Advanced Technology order book due to product rollouts, this quarter was a great quarter. Could you talk a little bit about the sustainability of AT orders going into the fourth quarter and little bit color there would be helpful?

Michael F. Hilton – President and CEO: Yeah, if you look at sort of our typical order pattern for the Company, but in particular for that business it tends to be fairly weak in the first quarter given the holiday periods and pick up and being strong in the second and third quarter and then as we get into this period of time start to decline again as most purchases are made for the various rollouts and holiday season. So, we typically would be in a period now where orders would start to decline going forward in that typical seasonal pattern. Sometimes while orders peak in the second quarter versus the third quarter, this year kind of peaking in third quarter as a function of customer rollouts of (indiscernible) and particularly in the mobile space that has a big impact on timing. So, orders were strong this quarter with rollouts and there are continued strength at the beginning of this quarter, but we would expect them to decline in the normal seasonal pattern going forward.

John Franzreb – Sidoti & Company: In Industrial Coatings, last quarter you said that the order book is largely driven by mid to larger sized customers, but some of the smaller customers have been on the sidelines. I guess; A, had the smaller customers returned; and B, kind of on the heels of, I guess, the backlog number, and Greg, you kind of mentioned about longer lead times it’s the largest backlog number since – I don’t know, back down to 2001. Should we be thinking about that backlog differently in the composition of it?

Michael F. Hilton – President and CEO: The first question is really around the smallest customers and the answer is no there really an add back in the mix at this point yet. Most of them have interest in doing projects they really can’t get the financing to support that, so that’s not changed and that’s primarily U.S. and European phenomenon there, so there is really sort of that mid-tier and larger tier that’s driving growth. From an order standpoint, I’d say there is not a fundamental shift in these sort of delivery times in the business it is just as – if you get sort of lumpy sizeable orders that come in some could stretch out over the period of time that we are talking about here.

Gregory A. Thaxton – SVP and CFO: John, this is Greg. I wouldn’t characterize it as something that we see as a structural shift in that business or the composition of that business. What I would say is we have more systems orders typically in this time of year relative to sort of our consumables and so that has an impact as well.

John Franzreb – Sidoti & Company: You feel capacity constrained at all?

Gregory A. Thaxton – SVP and CFO: No, we are not capacity constrained, no.