Actuant (ATU) Q2 2019 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

Actuant (EPAC 0.03%)
Q2 2019 Earnings Conference Call
March 21, 2019 11:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

See all our earnings call transcripts.

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Actuant Corporation's second-quarter earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, Thursday, March 21, 2019. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Barb Bolens, VP, corporate strategy, investor relations and communications.

Please go ahead, Ms. Bolens.

Barb Bolens -- Vice President, Corporate Strategy, Investor Relations and Communications

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Actuant second-quarter 2019 earnings conference call. On the call today to present the company results are Randy Baker, Actuant's president and chief executive officer; and Rick Dillon, Actuant's chief financial officer. Our earnings release and slide presentation for today's call are available on our website at actuant.com in the Investor section.

We're also recording this call and will archive it on our website. Please go to Slide 2. During today's call, we will reference non-GAAP measures, such as adjusted profit margins and adjusted earnings. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to GAAP in the schedules to this morning's press release.

We would also like to remind you that we are making statements in today's call and presentation that are not historic facts and are considered forward-looking statements. We are making those statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of federal securities law. Please see our SEC filings for risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forecasts, anticipated results or other forward-looking statements. Consistent with how we have conducted prior calls, we ask that you follow our one question, one follow-up practice in order to keep today's call to an hour, and also allow us to address questions from as many participants as possible.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation. As a reminder, during the call and as in first quarter, we may refer to our industrial tools and service segment as IT&S or tools, and our engineered components and system segment as EC&S or components. Now I'll turn the call over to Randy.

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Barb, and good morning, everybody. Let's start today on Slide 3. As you read today's press release, Actuant delivered a solid quarter, and I'm very pleased with the performance of the businesses, not only did our sales and marketing teams drive incremental sales, but operations, we're able to over come significant weather-related delays and achieve our quarter. With that in mind, I'd like to provide special thanks to our factory operations team and the management for their commitment to their customers and maintaining a high level of on-time delivery.

As we progress through 2019, we are maintaining our focus on long-range strategy. Our core sales growth initiatives continued to yield results in both segments. During the quarter, we launched more new products and significantly improved our service sales. As a result, the industrial tools and services core sales growth increased by 12% in the quarter, far exceeding our expectations.

On the engineered solutions side, we continue to capture new product platforms, increasing our product vitality index. These elements are critical to achieving our strategy of outperforming the prevailing market condition. In our effort to improve our structural cost, we have taken action to fully align the Enerpac and Hydratight businesses. This process will improve our operations, while enhancing our abilities to invest in new product development and better serve the customers.

Rick will provide more details into the efficiency program, including cost and ongoing benefit. As you noted from our announcements during the quarter, we have made major progress in our portfolio management strategy. Our sequential approach of realigning businesses, improving profitability and focusing capital allocation toward our most profitable companies is reaching its final stage. We completed the sale of Precision-Hayes and announced the intention to divest the engineered components and systems segment.

This action will unlock significant value for our shareholders, while focusing our management and capital resources. Now turning over to Slide 4, our second-quarter results exceeded our expectations in all our primary categories. Core sales grew by 7%, led by outstanding performance from our industrial tools and services segment. Tool sales grew broadly across multiple regions and markets, and we experienced significant improvement in our service operations.

The engineered components and systems segment held ground year over year with stable demand from both on- and off-highway sales and good price realization. From an earnings perspective, we improved operating profit by 36% year over year, while increasing EPS 46%. This was a direct result of our efforts to improve operation, contain cost and focus on organic growth. On the balance sheet front, we continue to maintain our debt leverage well within the desired range and position the business for future investments.

So overall, I'm very pleased with the results to quarter and the advancement of our strategy. Moving over to Slide 5, as noted earlier, our portfolio management strategy is advancing into the next stage and reshaping Actuant. As we entered 2019, we restructured Actuant into two operating segments comprised of industrial tools and component systems. By doing so, we have been able to separate the two companies and bring focus in terms of management and capital resources.

The new industrial tools and services segment is a highly profitable growth-oriented company comprised of two outstanding brands. Enerpac is a world leader in heavy industrial tools with one of the most complete dealer networks in the market, and Hydratight is well known for high-quality complex service, but also is a major supplier of industrial tools. The combination has created a great business for future growth and maintaining high quality of earnings. Engineered components and systems has become a much stronger operating company, focused on serving the world's major OEMs.

Our quality, our cost and delivery have improved dramatically over the past two years, which has qualified Actuant as a preferred supplier. Additionally, our investments in engineering has enabled the improved product vitality and sustained growth. However, given the profit profile of engineered solutions and components, it simply cannot compete for Actuant's capital allocation priority and would be better served in new ownerships. As a pure play tool company, Actuant will have the opportunity to create significant shareholder value through superior earnings, growth and cash generation.

Moving over to Slide 6, the framework of our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. We will continue our discipline toward investing in ourselves first, maintaining a strong balance sheet, while looking for strategic acquisitions, which support our tool company strategy. And finally, we'll always look for opportunistic share repurchases to return value to shareholders. Our priorities have not changed, and Rick and I are very committed to these principles and the creation of long-term shareholder value.

I'll turn the call over to Rick now to go through the details on the quarter, and then I'll come back with the market outlook and guidance. Rick, over to you.

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Randy, and good morning, everyone. Starting on Slide 7 with our one-time items. In the quarter, we recorded $6.9 million of charges related to an additional impairment of $3.5 million on the Cortland U.S. business and $2.6 million in deal costs related to all of our corporate development activities.

We also incurred $2 million of additional tax expense related to the revaluation of certain tax credits as a result of law changes during the -- as a result of tax reform. If we turn to Slide 8 onto our adjusted second quarter results, fiscal 2019 second quarter sales actually increased 3% adjusting for the impact of divestitures in the quarter. Core sales increased a healthy 7%, and this was offset by a 4% headwind from the impact of the stronger dollar. Adjusted operating profit improved year over year for the sixth consecutive quarter, up 240 basis points with strong flow-through on incremental sales.

Our adjusted effective income tax rate was approximately 26% for the quarter, in line with our expectations. Our full-year effective tax rate is still expected to be approximately 20%. Our third-quarter rate is expected to be in the mid-teens, with the fourth quarter rate in the mid-20s, similar to our second quarter here. Adjusted EPS for the second quarter was $0.19, compared to $0.13 last year and near the top end of our guidance range.

If we turn to Slide 9, core sales performance surpassed our 3% to 5% guidance range, and we delivered our sixth consecutive quarter of solid core sales growth. As Randy mentioned in his opening comments, our team executed extremely well to achieve these results despite significant weather challenges we experienced in the middle of the quarter which led to slowdowns and shutdowns of some facilities, as well as within our supply chain. The IT&S segment sales continued to be strong with core sales up 12%. We saw strong growth in North America and the Middle East.

The EC&S had flat core sales resulting from the growth of new platform launches and price realization, offset by softer demand in some of our end markets. I'll provide more color on core sales when we discuss the individual segment results here in a moment. Let's turn to Slide 10 for a summary of our top-line performance. So a 7% core sales growth, driven by $17 million improvement from volume and price.

This was offset by currency headwinds, which reduced sales by approximately $9 million, as well as the impact of divestitures which was $11 million. If you take a look at both adjusted operating profit and adjusted EBITDA on Slide 11, as we noted, a 240-basis-point margin improvement year over year. A few items to note here. As we experienced in the first quarter, the elimination of the custom heavy lifting offering which cost $2 million of cost overruns in Q2 of 2018 continues to drive profit improvement year over year, while sales of heavy lifting products are lower than Q2, the standard product line remains profitable.

We saw solid profit flow-through on incremental sales volume in line with our targets, price realization from actions taken in fiscal 2018 and earlier this fiscal year also contributed to the margin improvement. Last quarter, we provided a detailed review of pricing versus tariffs. Tariffs in the quarter were approximately $2 million and in line with our expectations. We continue to expect that our pricing actions will be sufficient to cover commodity and other inflationary increases, including tariffs.

As we discussed in Q1, should the 301 Tariffs be increased to 25%, it would require further actions likely in the form of surcharges. Our objective is to prevent margin erosion due to inflationary cost pressures. SAE expenses increased in the quarter over prior year due to a number of factors, including a few extraordinary medical claims, increased equity and cash compensation costs, bad debt recoveries in the second quarter of the prior year that did not occur this year, new product launches and timing on certain consulting costs. We expect that the rate of spend versus prior year will moderate in the back half of the year.

As we move through the EC&S divestiture process, we need to ensure that we maintain an efficient cost structure and one that is aligned with our business objectives. As a result, we have initiated a restructuring program focused on the continued integration of the Enerpac and Hydratight businesses, as well as driving efficiencies within our overall corporate structure. We expect to achieve full-year run rate savings in the range of $12 million to $15 million with onetime costs in the range of $15 million to $20 million. We anticipate completing these actions within the 18 to 24 months, and we will continue the process of assessing our corporate structure as we move closer to the divestiture of the EC&S business.

Now let's turn to Slide 12, and we'll move through the segments in detail, starting with ITS. Core ITS sales increased by 12% year over year, and this is one of the strongest second quarters for the combined segment we have had in our history. Core tools sales were up mid to high single digits and service up in the low 20s. Growth was driven by double-digit tool demand across North America and exceptionally strong service demand across all regions led by the Middle East.

European core tools were in line with prior year. Service growth was attributable to additional scoping on a few key projects and early ramp up of a large project originally scheduled to be completed in the back half of the year. Our HLT product category was down as we moved away from the special project business and the losses in lower margins associated with them in the prior year, which is one of the primary drivers of our profit improvement year over year. Incrementals for the segment were in line with our targeted range of 35% to 45%.

Turning to EC&S on Slide 13, core sales were flat in the quarter, the stronger dollar reduced sales by 2%, and the divestiture of Cortland Fibron and Precision-Hayes reduced year-over-year sales by $16 million, resulting in an overall 11% production. New platform wins and pricing actions drove top-line improvements in the quarter, and were partially offset by slightly lower sales volume for our on and off highway business, yet overall market conditions remained stable. Our open cable volumes were down during the quarter, and we saw flattish sales demands across all of our other markets. As we expected, China truck sales volumes are stabilizing, where we saw sales improve over both last year and over the first quarter.

Profit margin in the segment increased 360 basis points year over year, primarily as a result of improved pricing and operational efficiencies, including lower overtime warranty and freight costs compared to the second quarter, as well as the impact of divestitures. Turning now to liquidity on Slide 14, we used $31 million in cash during the quarter, in line with expectations and normal seasonality for our business. Accounts receivable were up significantly year over year, attributable to later quarter shipments as a result of the weather conditions, capex increased approximately $4 million year over year and we also saw higher cash taxes and deferred revenue really attributable to timing. We ended the quarter with $170 million in cash on hand.

During the quarter, we paid down our term loan by $40 million consistent with our capital allocation priorities. Leverage measured by net debt to pro forma EBITDA was steady sequentially, but showed substantial improvement from Q2 2018. We are currently at 2.1 times, down from 3 times at the end of the second quarter in the prior year. We remain right in the middle of our preferred range of 1.5 times to 2.5 times.

With that, Randy, I'll turn the call back over to you.

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Rick. Now let's move on to the market outlook, and I'll move over to Slide 15. Macroeconomic factors remain largely unchanged from our first quarter. North America demand continues to show stable growth, while the European markets have experienced sequential slowing.

As earlier stated, the industrial tool sales continued to be strong globally and with the improved conditions in the energy markets, service revenue experienced increased demand. Off-highway mobile equipment manufacturers have forecasted continued growth for 2019, although at a lower rate, in turn creating a healthy environment for our component businesses in North America. And the on-Highway sales are stable, which is reflected in our future projections.Then moving over to Slide 16, the projections for 2019 core sales growth remain unchanged from our first-quarter guidance. Industrial tools and services is expected to grow at a rate between 3% and 5% for the full year with the second-half performance being mid-single digits.

We are projecting engineered components and systems growth in the second half in mid-single digits and we are maintaining the full-year estimate of between 2% and 5%. On the consolidated basis, we're projecting growth of between 3% and 5% for the full year and mid-single digits in the second half. Then moving over to Slide 17. We're maintaining our full-year guidance, including the recent divestitures at a range of $1,150,000,000 to $1,190,000,000.

Full-year EPS remains unchanged between $1.09 and $1.20 and effective tax rate for 2019 is about 20% or double the 10% rate incurred in 2018. Our third-quarter sales are projected to be between $295 million and $305 million with EPS of 40% to 45%, $0.05 per share and an effective tax rate in the mid-teens. And finally, free cash flow remains unchanged between $80 million and $85 million. As always, all guidance excludes the impact of future acquisitions and/or divestitures.

That concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, let's open it up for questions. Thank you. 

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Mig Dobre with Baird.

Mig Dobre -- Baird -- Analyst

If I may start with just a clarification on the guidance for the third quarter. Can you walk me through how you're getting to mid-single digit core growth, I mean, at the midpoint, you're going to be down revenue wise above 5.5 year over year. So I'm trying to understand maybe FX versus divestitures. And then I've got a follow-up there.

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure. When you look at the back half that three to five in the back half, couple of things. If you remember our prior year, we had kind of an unusual back half and that we had a fourth quarter, that was extremely high and a third quarter that was not our peak quarter, which it should be. And so when we're saying three to five, it's more so driven on the comparisons.

We've got a strong finish in Q2, much stronger than last year, some of that is timing associated on the tool side that will get us back to a normal flow for tools and service with Q3 being our highest quarter, Q4 kind of moderating back down. So from a market perspective, the three to five is really a rightsizing, you are not going to see the kind of core growth you saw in Q2. It will be somewhat normal in that three to five in Q3, but it caused Q4 to be down, and that's a reflection of timing, more than anything in the flow-through of our businesses.

Mig Dobre -- Baird -- Analyst

OK. All right. But just to be specific here, when I'm talking about the third quarter, the midpoint is $300 million of your guidance. I'm trying to understand what is your expected FX impact in the third and how much are divestitures -- how much of a drag that we get from the divestitures?

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

So three to five is core. And so the midpoint is 300. The divestiture impact is around $20 million and the FX is somewhere between $6 million to $8 million on the quarter. And that should net you out to the guide for the quarter.

Mig Dobre -- Baird -- Analyst

Perfect. And then a question on margin as well. If I'm looking sequentially at revenue versus EBITDA, it implies a pretty significant incremental margin on EBITDA in the third quarter. Can you maybe help us think through this dynamic here? Is it mix, is it savings, is it something else that's boosting the margin.

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

So Mig, if you always look at our incremental margins by segments, you'll get to the answer pretty quickly. On the tool side, as we've always said, we're going to drive this business between that 30% and 45% incremental margins, and that's where it's going to land. And on the ES side, obviously, that's a lower incremental margin business in the 20-ish range. So if you net them all out, and then you apply that to our third-quarter margin advancement, that's the expectation we have of where we're going to land for the quarter.

There should be good margin expansion in the third quarter and just as we've seen in the second quarter. So I don't see anything on the horizon that could damage that. But that's the objective. And we've now demonstrated that we're capable of delivering that on a regular basis.

So Rick, do you have any other comments on that topic?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

No. I think, that I would look at it as well in terms of the incrementals. So...

Mig Dobre -- Baird -- Analyst

All right. And then I'll squeeze one more. In terms of the restructuring program that you've announced, how should we think about this in terms of the potential -- as relative to the potential dis-synergies that you're going to have once EC&S is gone?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So as we look at and we've talked about our corporate overall structure, SAE structure post an EC&S divestiture, there is two elements of that. The plan we announced today is really around driving the efficiencies within the IT&S business. We're looking there, there's largely two elements to that.

There's some operational efficiencies that will involve facilities. And then there's kind of regional structural operating efficiencies between the two segments, where there is an opportunity to streamline operations. And then on top of that, there's some, what I'll call, segment level, corporate level synergies that we can gain in the short term. So these are actions that, I guess, really to Randy's comment, that allow us to segment alone, expand the EBITDA margins beyond, gives us the benefit above and beyond that normalized incremental of 20, but also allows us to kind of right-size our structure, so that on a consolidated basis going forward, we can come out of this as a incremental or a 20% EBITDA margin business.

So that's how we look at that. What we've just announced is more so on the segment side with some corporate actions. It's a combination of people or headcount, I should say, and some facility movements. The majority of that will be executed in our fourth quarter.

You should see savings in our fiscal '20, and we'll get to runway probably mid-'20, where all of those actions will be substantially done with maybe some hangover facility actions. Obviously, as we move closer to the EC&S divestiture, we will take even closer look at the remaining true corporate costs, and there will likely be some additional actions and structural changes that we have to make as a result of that. But that's depending on the nature of the transaction and how that shapes up here going forward.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Charley Brady with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

Charley Brady -- SunTrust Robinson Humphrey -- Analyst

I just had one on the divestiture. I don't know if I missed this or not, but are you looking at this as a single unit, are you going to piece it out because of our distinct businesses within that segment itself?

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

So Charley, we've spent several years preparing for this moment, where we, as you've seen, taking out certain businesses that didn't have a relationship to our motion actuation control strategy, which has created a pretty consolidated group of companies, which serve a defined group of OEMs. So our objective is to sell it in one piece and that's exactly how we're marketing and how the process is proceeding. And that's also why Cortland Fibron was sold separately. That's why Precision-Hayes was sold separately.

And why the remaining Cortland business is being marketed separately because it is distinctly different type of company and doesn't lend itself to synergies or customer types that would bring that together and a buyer would see as valuable. So we think that we got to prepare properly, and we're pretty pleased with the process thus far.

Charley Brady -- SunTrust Robinson Humphrey -- Analyst

Is there any indication on timing as when you think this might get done and by end of fiscal year or beyond that?

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, we kind of anticipate a lot of questions surrounding the divestiture, so I'll try to be as clear as I can. We can't give you timing proceeds, values or things of that nature because obviously we're right in the midst of the process as we speak. So as we hit certain milestones, we will be making public announcements to try to keep our investors and the analyst community up to speed of what's going on. But our objective is to provide clarity when we can provide the clarity.

But in terms of where we're at in the process, proceed values, I just can't give you a lot of detail on that for obvious reasons.

Charley Brady -- SunTrust Robinson Humphrey -- Analyst

No, understood. And I'm just wondering on your commentary on the industrial tools -- the services business is seeing a nice uptick there, part of that being on a project that was completed in 1H instead of second half. I'm wondering from a margin standpoint given that services business tends to have pretty decent margins, does that -- what's the impact on the second half margins, particularly Q3. Are we still looking for up year over year in the tools business or have we kind of pulled some of that forward into 2Q?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

We're still up year over year in the tools business. With the service activities, there is no real margin impact, that when we say pull forward is more so just the timing of when the work was going to be done. And so there's no margin pressure in the back half on service. And when you think about our service work, the thing to remember is that we're really focusing on what we call true specialty service, we talked now for several quarters of getting out of the commodity-type service work.

So in our guide, it reflects that focus. And so the unusual pop that you see in Q2, there isn't an expectation that that will continue at that level in the back half of the year because we're being far more deliberate about the service work that we will do. But in doing that, it will be much more profitable service work. And so definitely growth on the tool side in the back for both service and tools, not the kind of growth you saw in the quarter.

When we talked about pull ahead, it's more so timing of a specific large project that we had phasing out into Q2 and -- I'm sorry, into Q3 and Q4. And then also, as happens on some of our other projects, we had some scope benefits to some work we were actually working on in the field.

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I just want to add one comment to that. Charley, the composition of our tool and service company is that a very, very large percentage of our company's profit footprint, and revenue footprint is focused on either product sales at extremely high margins and/or rental, which is also at a very high margin. The combination of those two comprise 85% of our revenue stream. And we provide that detail in a lot of our analyst and meetings we do throughout the year.

And that's what makes our tools and services company so structurally profitable is when you have 85% of your revenue comprising a very large percentage of your profitability makes a very winnable scenario. So service is a great additive thing as we're on job sites around the world, we're able to rent our equipment, we're able to sell our equipment, but we focus on high margin and sometimes very complex service where the margin sits, so it's never going to be a tweaked version.

Charley Brady -- SunTrust Robinson Humphrey -- Analyst

Appreciate the color already. Just one more for me. You mentioned some supply chain slowness that you experienced in the quarter, can you elaborate a little bit on that and where you are?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

In the quarter, that was more so weather-related during the polar vortex. We had some of our facilities shut down. We had delays. We had some days they were actually not moving.

And so we think we made our way through that in the quarter. We talked about a huge finish in February to kind of get back on track and get back to on-time delivery. But things are running smoothly now. It's just a mid-quarter slowdown, it did cost us, did have an impact in the quarter, but we were able to recover from a volume and a profitability perspective.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Allison Poliniak from Wells Fargo.

Allison Poliniak -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

Just going to that service. Rick, you had talked about the project finishing a bit sooner. If you could quantify what the impact is, you guys were just talking about profit side, but what about the revenue side, can you maybe help us understand sort of the normalization, I guess, in the back half of the year?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

I think without getting -- because we didn't guide where we serve as separate. I think all we're trying to say there is, the revenue you saw in Q2 relative to our guide for the year, there was no real incremental revenue relative to this project. It was just the timing of the completion of the work. And so I know that's about as granular as I can get relative to the project.

But it's not an indication of market, it's not an indication of lost work. It's a large project that we won a year ago now, that we had paced out, where they were able to get all of the work and the required activity done sooner than we had anticipated. So is in our forecast, majority of it, just finished in Q2 versus what would have been majority in Q3, and a little bit in Q4.

Allison Poliniak -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

So I guess asking again, I am very sorry, it wasn't a huge incremental to the upside in this segment in the quarter relative to your estimates and there were other components to that?

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, the upside...

Allison Poliniak -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

In comparison to the sectors.

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes, it was. And it did have a big impact on core growth relative to our expectations for the quarter. Does not have an impact on core growth relative to our expectations for the year, and so that's what we're saying.

Allison Poliniak -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

Perfect. And then just moving to sort of the acquisition environment, your leverage is in a descent range, any color on sort of the size of things that you're looking at multiples that you're seeing out there?

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, we've got a very active pipeline of companies that we're investigating and working with. I don't want to provide any clarity that gets people believing that we're looking at a third later this tool. It will be acquisitions related to tool companies that support our strategy to become a larger and a more meaningful tool provider. Multiples, I don't want to publicly state what our desired multiple range is, certainly want to get the best value we can, but I don't want to throw numbers out there that establishes and may damage our ability to negotiate particular deals.

So I really think that we have a good pipeline. Our tools company is working hard to identify those businesses. I'm personally involved in several. And we will continue to work it.

And certainly as we move forward as a pure play tool company, you're going to hear a lot more about that. And you'll find that our capital allocation priorities are going to be extraordinarily disciplined, and we will not make acquisitions unless they are the right fit for this company.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Hammond with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Jeff Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

So I know there's some noise with this service timing issue, but I'm just kind of looking at the tools guidance of plus eight in the first half, mid-single digits in the back. It seems like your worst case, you're doing 5% and maybe better. So it just seems like there's a mismatch between what you're saying for the second half and what you already did in the first half versus the full-year guide, just help me there?

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, there is always a combination effect between the service volume that we got in the first half of the year. Rick drilled into that one pretty hard. But when you do a 12% core sales growth for your tools and services business in a quarter, it does create an expectation that that's going to keep growing into quarter three and quarter four. And we expected that commentary to come out as pretty hard of why is the back half only mid-single digits.

The reality is, is that the tool side has been right in line with our expectations of three to five. In fact, it's dead center on that number. The lumpy nature of our service revenue to the extent that we can get some larger projects in the back half, there could be benefit, but I never want to guide based on what we think we can close and complete. We want to guide on what we know we can do and create an environment where we're still making our credibility march forward, Jeff, and we want to make sure we don't provide guidance that's so optimistic that we have a chance that we're going to miss it.

So I think that the three to five and the mid-single digits for the second half is a realistic number and we are standing by it.

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

So Jeff, the other thing to keep in mind and we talked about service, that will come down in the back half, that's part of the math, being able to sequentially see the growth. The other thing is, we have really strong comps for tools in the back half relative to what we saw in '18. So we are in the mid-teens in the fourth quarter of '18. So mathematically, it looks like we should see more growth.

We like that three to five, hopefully there is upside, but feel like we've given a fair estimate.

Jeff Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

OK. And then just last one. You talked about kind of the higher SG&A number and I think, some medical claims and kind of one-timers in there. Is there a way to parse out what you think was kind of one-time or abnormal versus kind of the trend?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

I think we're $7 million up in SAE. I think normal inflation, let's call probably about $4 million, $5 million of that one-time-ish versus just normal SAE growth.

Jeff Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

OK. So there's like a couple million of kind of one timers, that's the way to think about it.

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

A couple million -- there's more than a couple million of one-timers. There's about, call it, $2 million to $3 million, of just normal growth in equity comp and salaries and inflation and stuff like that. And in the rest of that increase would be either one-timers in the current year or one-timers that occurred in the prior year that didn't happen this year.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Justin Bergner with G. Research.

Justin Bergner -- G. Research -- Analyst

First question, regards the, I guess, mix affect in industrial tools. Was there any mix effect there? And I guess, the second question would be outside of this timing of the service business, what parts of industrial tools were tracking better than your expectations?

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

On the mix side, there are certain lines within our tool platforms that are very profitable. But as we talked, we got margins that are all north of 50% across the line on our tools. So it's a question do we sell more on a bolting platform. I didn't see a great deal of mix impact.

I think the mix impact year over year was relative to the HLT product lines, which had dragged down our margins significantly last year and we talked through that and it was quite painful last year. I'm hoping at some point we can stop talking about last year's event. But from the standpoint of this year, the mix was pretty regular across the line. As far as regionally impacts, North America is still very active.

European operations is active, but to a lesser extent. Latin America is still quite active and we see a little lower activity in Asia. But generally speaking, it's all falling within that 3% to 5% growth rate that we have forecasted. And so we feel like we've called that market pretty tightly and the margins we're very pleased with.

Justin Bergner -- G. Research -- Analyst

OK. Great. And then just in terms of the contributions, you said the contribution margins were strictly in line with your expectations, but your operating profit and EBITDA effect from volume and pricing was $11 million and the sales effect was $17 million. So I'm just wondering how to reconcile though what appears to be stronger contribution margins with your comment there were sort of in line with where you expected them?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

So, I guess, can you repeat the question again, I'm sorry.

Justin Bergner -- G. Research -- Analyst

Sure, just in your sales and EBIT bridges, the effect of volume and pricing on profit was plus $11 million, and the effect of volume and pricing on sales was $17 million, that $11 million over $17 million seems to be higher contribution margin than what you would expect within your business. I was just curious if there was some way to help reconcile that?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

So I think there's a couple of things happening. We have pricing -- you got about $12 million of volume and then you have pricing of $5 million. We lowered that through -- portion of the pricing goes away with the tariff of $2 million. So when you look at in terms of margin expansion, the, I think, the only thing that you're missing there is the impact of the divestitures given us an incremental boost.

So from a volume perspective, although to Randy's point, heavy lift was down, we replaced majority of that with the standard product. So you only had about $1 million to $2 million of heavy lift decreased, but significantly improved profitability because you got rid of the $2 million of losses. So I think what you're seeing flow through there is a little bit of mix within the volume and tariffs in terms of impact on operating profit.

Operator

[Operator instructions] Our next question come from the line of Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets.

Deane Dray -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst

I wanted to follow up on the restructuring action questions. Just to make sure I was clear that these are not focused on the areas of what we would consider to be stranded cost post the divestiture. And assuming that's the case, can you size for us what the stranded cost might be and how you might be attacking those on what time frame?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

We -- you cut out -- I am sorry, can you repeat your question, we missed the majority of it.

Deane Dray -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst

Sure. Just asking on the restructuring actions, not including -- not addressing stranded cost post divestiture and maybe just take this opportunity to size for us what you think the stranded cost might be and how you might be attacking those, any way you can provide color or size of that would be helpful.

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. What we've said and this is before this restructuring announcement. We have about $25 million in corporate costs. And the objective post-transaction is to come out of that 20% EBITDA margin business.

And so when you look at our SAE and you look at the $25 million in corporate cost, if the adjustments that we will have to make to get to that 20% consolidated EBITDA. Now that being said, when you look at the $25 million in costs, there are certain costs that will naturally scale down as a result of the divestiture. And so those costs will come out of the base. And then there will be others that we have to actually take actions to scale appropriately for the size of the business that we are.

So without -- we have and without providing here is the stranded cost, etc., in part because we won't know until the transaction is -we get closer to the transaction, we know that there will be a need to adjust our structure without that business to get us to the desired EBITDA margin of 20%. So part of those actions -- part of that effort is covered by this restructuring announcement. And then as I noted earlier, as we get closer, there will likely be other actions that allow us to get there.

Deane Dray -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst

Got it. But part of it sounds as though you're going to solve for the structure to get you to 20% margins?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

Well, we're going solve for an efficient structure at a minimum that's going to get me to 20% margin.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ann Duignan with JP Morgan.

Abdul Tambal -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

This is Abdul Tambal on behalf of Ann. Most of mine have been answered, but can you just give us an update on your growth strategy following the ECS divestiture? What regions would you focus your growth opportunities on primarily?

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

What we've said, our organic growth strategies have always been framed around a couple key elements, No. 1 is trying to continue our R&D investments and getting new product launches. We want a minimum of our tools and services company to have 10% of its ongoing revenue attributed from new products. And that's measured on a three-year rolling average.

And we're not quite there yet. We're making good ground. We've launched a lot of new product this year. We launched a lot of new product last year.

We're just below our objective on the 10% line. And we made a lot of progress over the last couple of years of building. I consider now building a great engineering group with a lot of talent and some real creative people that look at tools on a everyday basis, and so that's piece one. Secondly, for organic growth, we're going to be the best sales company out there, and we proven now.

We've added more boots on the ground for the past three years than we've ever had. We cover our dealers better, we respond better and we're commercially better than we've ever been. And that's how we capture above market condition. The third piece of that is obviously regional.

Now we've made a lot of progress on our Asia Pacific market. We've grown dramatically over the past couple of years. We'd still like to be stronger and a bigger footprint of dealers and companies that we own and operate within Asia Pacific market. So those are the three main elements of our organic growth plans.

Then beyond that, it's how we operate from a manufacturing side. We want to be extremely efficient, driving best-in-class, lean manufacturing on quality cost and delivery metrics, which we are doing quite well at now. And then the third piece is that we always want to be driving a component of M&A. So if you look back at our original strategy of growth, we said, we're going to have a CAGR rate of 10%.

Half of it coming from organic and half of it coming from M&A activity, give us very, very high marks on the organic side of that. Now that we've proven that we can in fact buy and run companies, we're starting to shift gears into the portfolio, which is part of the issue of supporting the company and focusing on the tool side of it. So that kind of gives you the top-level view on growth. But, I think, our CAGR rate of 10% is still going to be in our gun sites.

We will reissue our longrange strategy for the company later this year once we get completed with a few things. And at that point, we will refresh who we are and what we are as a stand-alone tool company.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Scott Graham with BMO Capital Markets.

Scott Graham -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst

So I was just hoping you could -- this is just more of a housekeeping other than anything for you, Rick. Precision-Hayes, could you just give us what the revenues were at divestiture in annual?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

Well, hold on. Precision-Hayes, overall revenue on average is about $50 million. Average revenue, $50 million for that business.

Scott Graham -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst

Just making sure, OK. And then maybe you can unbundle a couple things on sales. Were there any pre-buys in industrial tools ahead of pricing?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

No. We did not see any pre-buys. If you recall, our pricing for tools went into effect -- the last one went into effect at the beginning of the first quarter. And so we've seen no real impact for pricing on our end or from a purchase perspective as well.

Scott Graham -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst

Understood. And understanding that HLT gave you $2 million of EBIT impact, what did that cost you in sales in the quarter?

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I think net down, we're down somewhere between $1 million and $2 million.

Scott Graham -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst

OK. And is that a number that continues or is that sort of isolated to this quarter?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

Well, it will go down because if you recall at the end of the second quarter we indicated that we weren't taking any more special projects. The special project revenue was actually down closer to, call it, $4 million. We replaced that volume with standard product revenue for the net down. That delta as special project revenue year over year continues to drop off and standard continues to grow, wont be as significant.

So it is somewhat of a higher impact in Q2 than you'll see the rest of the year.

Scott Graham -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst

So you're saying that's really actually a $4 million number this quarter.

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

Don't understand...

Scott Graham -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst

Gross -- grossed up.

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

No.

Scott Graham -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst

On the special projects, no?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

Well, heavy lift technology in the quarter is down about $2 million.

Scott Graham -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst

OK. Understood.

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

If you remember, Scott, is that on the special projects, that was comprising between $12 million and $15 million a year and almost every year we incurred either expenses or extraordinarily low margins as we attempted to do those projects. And we're just simply not doing them. We will accept projects where we are adapting our non-hydraulic lifting technology and we're able to do it profitably. And we still do a few of them, but we've done them profitably and we've been very selective.

So overall, that business on an annualized basis, will be off about $12 million from its peak, once we hit the full run rate of not doing specialized tool build. But I think I'd much rather own a business at $35 million, $40 million on a very respectable profit than one that we do some really fun projects, but we lose money on it.

Scott Graham -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst

Understood. Last question, would you be able to split the pricing by segment on the sales side?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

I don't think. No, we won't. We don't have that. I mean, I think when you look at it from our tariff discussion, it's about 50-50 at ITS, ECS.

Operator

We have another question from the line of Justin Bergner with G. Research.

Justin Bergner -- G. Research -- Analyst

Just on the restructuring action, is the $12 million to $15 million a cash cost and is some of that cash cost being absorbed in your $80 million to $85 million free cash flow guide? And then, I guess, just the final part of the question would be, are there reasons why this restructuring actions didn't begin sooner, and is beginning now or there just organizational reasons why it makes sense now versus sooner than now?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

I guess, first part, yes, a portion of that is cash, not all of it, some of it is related to facilities. As I noted, the majority of this restructuring will happen later in the fourth quarter. So there shouldn't be a significant impact and that isn't factored into our $80 million to $85 million cash flow for the year. In terms of timing of the restructuring, if you recall, and Randy can chime in here, but if you recall, we announced the merger of the segments, we said we're going to focus on the opportunity first and we did not do that for cost savings purposes.

This was a go-to-market seeking opportunity to improve both businesses by leveraging our presence on both sides of the aisle and reaping some of the benefits of owning Enerpac brand and Hydratight brand, and combining those tool products and service across the aisle. That was the initial focus. We have done that, you're seeing that, we're in full launch, and so now there's an opportunity to look at the infrastructure. Because one of the things we said we weren't going to do was destroy these two businesses, trying to do all of that at once.

So now we have the opportunity to look closely at the infrastructure and do that with a clear strategic view of where we're going to play in the market, where we're going to actually go after service, what some of our opportunities are with both businesses combined. So that the timing is really driven by strategy execution.

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Rick covered it very, very well.

Justin Bergner -- G. Research -- Analyst

No. That's a great answer. You came across a little muted. So the restructuring cash cost this year is not in the $80 million to $85 million, right?

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

No. And there won't be significant restructuring cash cost this year due to the timing of the restructuring.

Operator

We have no further questions queued up over the phone lines at this time. I'll turn the call back over to you.

Barb Bolens -- Vice President, Corporate Strategy, Investor Relations and Communications

Thank you, everybody, for your participation today. We'll be around today if you have questions. And otherwise, we'll look forward to speaking with you again in June.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 58 minutes

Call Participants:

Barb Bolens -- Vice President, Corporate Strategy, Investor Relations and Communications

Randy Baker -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Rick Dillon -- Chief Financial Officer

Mig Dobre -- Baird -- Analyst

Charley Brady -- SunTrust Robinson Humphrey -- Analyst

Allison Poliniak -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

Jeff Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

Justin Bergner -- G. Research -- Analyst

Deane Dray -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst

Abdul Tambal -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Scott Graham -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst

More ATU analysis

This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability.