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Welbilt, Inc. (WBT)
Q1 2019 Earnings Call
May. 7, 2019, 10:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good morning, my name is Adam, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Welbilt, Inc. 2019 First Quarter Earnings Call and Webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise and after the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) Thank you.
Richard Sheffer, you may begin your conference.
Richard J. Sheffer -- Vice President of Investor Relations, Risk Management and Treasurer
Good morning, and welcome to Welbilt's 2019 first quarter earnings call and webcast. Joining me on the call today is Bill Johnson, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Marty Agard, our Chief Financial Officer; and Josef Matosevic, our Chief Operating Officer.
Before we begin our discussion, I need to review our Safe Harbor statement with you. Any statements in this call regarding our business that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and our future results could differ materially from any expressed or implied projections or forward-looking statements made today. Our actual results may be affected by many important factors, including risks and uncertainties identified in our press release and in our SEC filings. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement whether as a result of new information, future events or other circumstances.
Today's presentation and discussion will include both GAAP and non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our earnings release for our non-GAAP reconciliations and other important information regarding the use of non-GAAP financial measures.
You can find a copy of the press release and the presentation slides for this earnings call in the Investor Relations section of our website, www.welbilt.com.
Now I'd like to turn the call over to Bill.
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Rich, and good morning. As you saw in today's earnings release and on slide 3 of our presentation, we had a solid top line results in Q1, getting 2019 off to a good start. We delivered 7% growth in the quarter with 3.5% coming organically, another 6% from the Crem acquisition. Foreign currency translation was a 2% headwind. Operationally, the expected headwinds from material cost inflation and tariffs were the biggest drivers of our margin decrease. As we stated on last quarter's earnings call in February, we expected a fast start to the year as we were experiencing inflation and tariff pass-through increases from our vendors along with the direct impact from Section 301 tariffs, that began in last year's third quarter.
We believe these impacts are primarily a first quarter event, as we expect them to be mitigated by our March price increase during the balance of the year. I'll let Marty get into more details on our first quarter margin performance in his comments.
Our Q1 adjusted net earnings were lower than prior year primarily due to lower adjusted operating EBITDA, higher adjusted tax expense, and higher interest expense, driven by the increase in debt year-over-year following the Crem acquisition last April by higher interest rates than last year. As previously discussed, when Welbilt exited the spin, we embarked on a simplification and rightsizing plan. This initiative generated approximately 400 basis points of margin improvement, was the first step in improving the operating performance of the Company. Now, that we have completed that chapter, it's time to get on with the next phase of our margin enhancement journey. I'd like to begin the discussion on the next phase by sharing a few preliminary thoughts on the recently completed operational review on our transformation program.
We spent eight weeks examining all aspects of our business, with the focus on strategies for creating brand preference, manufacturing operations, regional distribution, procurement, engineering, KitchenCare and SG&A. We have confirmed that we have substantial short, medium and long-term opportunities, move our margin profile into the upper tier of our industry. We have formulated detailed plans to execute the program in short surges or waves to bring full focus and efforts to bear on a small number of opportunities in a short timeframe before moving to the next opportunities.
And we will move onto the next opportunities until we have verified that we'll have not only implemented the changes, but that the people at those locations have been fully trained and can demonstrate the ability to sustain the improvements. At our Investor Day next week we'll discuss the short and medium-term opportunities we plan to capture in the next 30 months in more detail, provide the cost to execute the program and what our 2021 financial targets are. That's all we're prepared to share today on this topic. So please hold your questions on this until next Tuesday.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Josef for summary of our segment results.
Josef Matosevic -- Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Thank you, Bill and good morning, everyone. I will make a few comments on our top line results within the segments. Starting on slide 4 with EMEA, third-party net sales increased 41.8%. Organic net sales increased 25% while the Crem acquisition contributed 25.4% growth. We again benefited from a rollout with a large chain customer this quarter, but that has largely run its course.
We saw increased sales of Merrychef high-speed ovens with the large chain better Frymaster fryers, and Garland grills sales in the region, higher Convotherm sales in the marine sector, Germany and Netherlands and improved Multiplex beverage sales. KitchenCare aftermarket sales also increased in EMEA.
Moving to slide 5, third-party net sales in APAC increased 20.1% in the first quarter. Organic net sales increased 11%, while the Crem acquisition contributed 12.4% growth. We had strongest sales to large chains of Garland grills. While general market and sales were down slightly we did have strong sales of Merrychef ovens in the channel. We also saw growth in both KitchenCare aftermarket sales and Fabristeel project sales.
Looking at the Americas on slide 6, third-party net sales decreased 3.7% with organic net sales decreasing 3.1%. We had a good start to the year in the general market as sales increased with the majority of our buying group customers. The strongest growth came from NexGen as we are beginning to see to a sales ramp-up. This helped to partially offset tough comps from last year's large chain rollouts.
KitchenCare aftermarket sales decreased due to additional consolidation at the end-customer level, which caused some short-term disruption in ordering from the affected dealers. We believe this will be short lift and we don't foresee the same level of extended disruption, that we experienced last year. From a product standpoint, we saw stronger sales of Multiplex beverage equipment especially on our new automated fresh blend smoothie machines and an increase in Manitowoc ice machine sales. Sales of Frymaster fryers, Delfield refrigeration and Garland grills were also down due to last year's large chain rollouts.
I will now let Marty get into the operating details for the quarter and our 2019 outlook. Marty?
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Josef, and good morning, everyone. First, it's great to join the Welbilt team and I look forward to working with them and our investors and analysts. Josef covered the top line comments. So, let me start with some comments on the adjusted operating EBITDA margin drivers shown on slide 7. Before I discuss the specifics, I'd like to point out that we've updated some of the categories to better reflect how we want to discuss the business going forward. The order follows the P&L, revenue oriented drivers, then cost and gross margin drivers, then SG&A and lastly, what I think of is non-organic in this quarter Crem and FX.
The idea is actually to provide more transparency here to help us all see where and how our transformation program contributes over the next 30 months along with other natural business dynamics that influence our margins. Now to the quarter itself, looking at volume, mix and net pricing, all three of these components were positive. The net pricing contribution is related to last June's price increase that we put through due to the Section 232 tariffs and rising freight costs.
The price increase that we put through in March came too late in the quarter to provide any benefit, but are kicking in during the second quarter. Material costs including tariffs were combined 260 basis point headwind. Slightly more than half of this reflects cost increases and pass-through tariff costs from our vendors and some residual of the higher cost experienced in Q4, as that production made its way through inventory.
The balance came from the direct impact from the Section 301 tariffs that began in the third quarter of 2018. Moving to SG&A, the primary drivers here were higher marketing costs related to the biannual NAFEM trade show that was held in February, higher third-party commissions and a few other smaller items. If you're reading the face of the income statement, SG&A has also elevated by the inclusion of the transformation program investment not included in adjusted operating EBITDA and the inclusion of Crem.
Some of the items mentioned above were seasonal or periodic in nature and the deleveraging should abate as we proceed through the year. The last item to comment on is the 70 basis point headwind from FX and Crem. Crem accounted for 40 basis point of the 70 basis point headwind and we have now lapped the acquisition, so this will be embedded in our prior-year comparisons going forward and will no longer be a call-out item.
Moving to slide 8. Free cash flow was at $68.9 million use of cash. Seasonally we normally use cash in the first quarter as it's the smallest sales and profit quarter of the year and we have a few lumpy cash outflows that occur, exacerbating the seasonal effect for the investment in the transformation program and timing related reductions in accounts payable. We expect free cash flow to be positive for the remainder of the year.
Our overall debt balance increased by $148.8 million. This is primarily due to the termination of our off-balance sheet accounts receivable securitization facility during the quarter. That facility had a balance of $96.9 million at the end of 2018, and with the termination cash receipts related to the program were retained to pay off the securitization facility balance creating a build in working capital funded by our revolver. Effectively that off-balance sheet debt has moved on to our balance sheet via the increase in our revolver borrowings. At this time, we are not intending to enter into a replacement securitization program.
Finally on slide 9, I'd like to make a few comments on the 2019 guidance that we reiterated in today's earnings release. Beginning with sales, we expect to grow organically by 2% to 5% in 2019. We are expecting growth in all three regions with stronger growth in EMEA and APAC. In EMEA, we expect higher general market sales to drive that growth with continued momentum from our Merrychef and Convotherm ovens. The benefit from some large chain rollouts that help the last two quarters have mostly run their course and we aren't expecting that level of contribution from large chains over the balance of 2019.
In APAC, we also expect higher general market sales with continued market penetration by our Merrychef and Convotherm ovens and our Frymaster fryers. In the Americas, we are expecting modest growth as we have tough comps in the first half from the large chain rollouts in 2018. We expect higher sales in the general market with improving conditions in the dealer channel, benefits of the continued ramp up of sales to NexGen and the effect of the March price increase.
Our adjusted operating EBITDA margin is expected to be between 18.5% and 19.5% even with the low first quarter. We expect volume, mix and net pricing to be positive by 225 basis points to 275 basis points in 2019 as our March price increase begins to materialize in our results and KitchenCare shakes off its slow start and begins to grow over the balance of the year. We expect material costs and tariffs to have a considerably lower year-over-year impact, the balance of the year, given we begin to anniversary the tariffs in Q3 and have now fully sold through the higher cost production from the lag of the fourth quarter.
We expect other manufacturing to range from neutral to contributing plus 50 basis points of benefit. We used to separately call out simplification and right-sizing initiatives as a separate category but as from my earlier comments, we are retiring that today. Rather than gather up and set aside program benefits like those, I'd like to articulate the key margin drivers, price, materials, manufacturing and SG&A inclusive of good things we're doing and challenges we faced. So, if a category isn't positive, that means we didn't really capture the savings we thought we did or, just wasn't sufficient. We expect SG&A to be dilutive by 75 basis points to 125 basis points.
This includes our investments into our KitchenConnect and common control initiatives and other investments to revitalize our brands, which we view is strategically vital to our long-term growth. We don't expect to repeat of the items that impacted our first quarter performance and will be focusing on initiatives to improve SG&A expense over the balance of the year.
Finally, the FX and Crem category is expected to be in a range of neutral to a 50 basis point headwind with Crem having a full year impact of 10 basis points and FX being the balance. Our adjusted diluted EPS guidance range remains $0.71 to $0.81 per share. This range assumes 141.8 million fully diluted shares outstanding and a 28% to 30% effective tax rate.
It also assumes interest expense will be between $92 million and $97 million in 2019. Our interest expense forecast is based on the current interest rates, which are higher than a year ago. Also, it does not include any potential savings from refinancing our $425 million high yield notes at this time. On this point while market conditions have improved, the high call premium to refinance these notes leaves us only marginally positive and leaves us to look for an even better window relative to our own results, leverage levels and potentially ratings before we consider calling these notes.
That concludes my comments. So, operator, we will now open the call up for questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And your first question comes from David MacGregor of Longbow Research. David, your line is open.
David MacGregor -- Longbow Research -- Analyst
Yes, good morning, everyone. Just a couple of questions, first of all in the Americas, I think with regard to the chain business, the challenging compare was pretty well understood, you guys had communicated that pretty effectively. But, how do you see 2Q growth or drag there and how should we think about chains growth or drag for the full year? I have a follow-up. Thanks.
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. So the chain business, as we said earlier, was going to be a challenge for us in the first half but we -- we certainly saw that in Q1. There is a little bit of -- there is some rollouts happening in Q2 that will help and where, we know those are going in Q2. For the year the QSR segment, we continue to see and are positive about it, but we had those really large rollouts in the first half of '18 that really the general market helped us overcome -- will help us overcome in the first half and then our pricing strategy will kick in as well.
David MacGregor -- Longbow Research -- Analyst
Okay. And then, the second question just on mix, you've called mix as a positive, I guess, which stands in so many contracts with observation you've made on past calls about customers mixing down. I wonder if you just elaborate on what you're seeing there and that would be great. Thanks.
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. So, when we look at the mix, we look at it, both on the portfolio side and then on the good, better, best. I would say that, this is more of a portfolio mix where we've seen really good on the hot side. We had a strong quarter on the hot side and so it's more about the portfolio mix than it is about kind of the good, better, best positions.
David MacGregor -- Longbow Research -- Analyst
Is the mix down and response to pricing still an issue and what does that mean given you've got another price increases, you are just launching into the market now?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
No. I wouldn't say. I think it's a very positive pricing environment right now. I think it's -- people are expecting it. It's -- the market has seen everybody come out with price increases. So I think it's -- I don't think that it's a surprise to anybody.
David MacGregor -- Longbow Research -- Analyst
Okay. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from Jeff Hammond of KeyBanc. Jeff, your line is open.
Jeffrey Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst
Hey, good morning, guys.
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Hey, Jeff.
Josef Matosevic -- Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Good morning, Jeff.
Jeffrey Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst
So just wanted to go through the moving pieces and how you're thinking about the EBITDA margin, guys, because it looks like you just rebucketed everything differently. So can you just talk about what's changed? I think you said last time price cost was neutral and you're kind of moving pricing into a different bucket and then I think you had simplification and rightsizing as a plus -- a big positive. And I'm just wondering where that falls out? Yeah, I don't know if SG&A has a higher headwind than it was before? Thanks.
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. This is Marty. I'll help a little bit. So what we've done is we have sorted out the pricing and mix which often is kind of driving a price feel to it and put those together in a price and mix and did not net cost against those. So that's a pretty clean number, you see the year-over-year gains from the -- mid-last year's price increase and then you'll see some more lift in the second quarter as that March price increase kicks in. And you'll see some mix that's moving around in there and, for this quarter anyway, my comments were -- it's about half from pricing and about half from those mix effects, and we'll provide some color to that going forward.
And then on the cost side, that material cost is going to be more about tariffs and inflation, commodity-oriented things and we'll keep that pretty clean, and to the extent we get into some simplification rightsizing or the new transformation program that gets into some opportunity there, that all -- that should show some savings in that area to the extent, we get into again sourcing strategies and so forth. So, that'll be a clean view of our costs related to materials, manufacturing will pick up things like overhead absorption footprint work that may still have opportunity to the extent we run well or inefficiently labor and overhead-wise, you'll see that kind of on a cleaner basis there.
And then SG&A will be a bit more there -- there is some variable nature of SG&A, but there is also a leverage effect in terms of the sales pace and in a given quarter, SG&A as a percent of sales can move around a fair amount, so that's what you'll see there. So, that's kind of the breakdown -- the only real change I think in there is may be breaking SG&A and other manufacturing out and then leaving any simplification and streamlining stuff that we might have separately kind of collected leaving that in the area that it would affect, whether that's material, it's might be pricing, because there'll be some opportunities around revenue that come from that program or some of the manufacturing costs, which are also being implicated by that.
Jeffrey Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst
Okay, great. And then, I think you showed Delfield being weak, I know that's a new brand within the NexGen, can you just speak to that and then may be just talked about how NexGen is progressing, what you think the incremental or the contribution or incremental contribution from NexGen is going to be in '19 and how that line, was kind of NexGen full run rate?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, sure. So Delfield was one of the brands that had last year, the rollout was had a significant impact on the Delfield numbers in the first half of '18. So they were a major component to that. And I will say, NexGen is doing a great job of about moving volume to us, we have seen that volume come. It's as expected and they're continuing the ramp that up and we'll continue to see that ramp up through the rest of the year. But, as expected doing exactly what they said they would do.
Jeffrey Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst
Is there a way to think about what the NexGen contribution would be this year?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
We don't really give out the magnitude of it. But it's enough, when we look at the first half, it helps us really close the gap from those rollouts that we had last year.
Jeffrey Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst
Okay, great. And then just finally, KitchenCare is kind of been a source of weakness and we thought there was an easier comp, and I think you're expressing some confidence that it gets better. Can you just kind of but not -- how we get comfortable that KitchenCare is no longer a drag? Thanks.
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. So, KitchenCare was up in both the EMEA and APAC, where we saw a little bit of drag in the first quarter was in the Americas and that had to do with some field service kind of consolidation at the distributor dealer kind of distributor level. And so there is a little bit of overhang from when they consolidate the distribution channel. And I will say that the our partners here are doing a excellent job of converting generics to OEM parts.
We see that as a real growth driver going forward. We're working hard with our partners in this field. We have seen this start to come back. So we think that throughout the rest of the year, we should see it improve.
Jeffrey Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah.
Operator
And your next question comes from Mig Dobre of RW Baird. Your line is now open.
Mircea Dobre -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Hi, Mig.
Josef Matosevic -- Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Good morning, Mig.
Mircea Dobre -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
Hello. Hello. I would like to start with free cash flow if we can. Can you maybe help us better understand the impact of this securitization change on the accounts receivable drag? In the quarter what was specific to that, maybe a little more color as to what happened with accounts payable. That was also little bit unusual. I'm looking to understand how you're thinking about free cash flow for the full year. We just start there.
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, it's Marty here. So the first thing on the securitization as we were collecting receivables, we needed to apply those against the securitization program that roughly $100 million. So, why not having the regular flow of receivables going through that program we had it build it up on our balance sheet as I said in our prepared remarks. So besides bringing the debt on to the balance sheet not such a big impact, it does pollute the GAAP-based cash flow statements little hard to read, but I think the footnotes and stuffs should get you through that really not such a big impact.
We did build some inventory in the quarter and then we had some payables that we carried into the year and we were just more aggressive in terms of getting those paid back down and taking advantage of cash discounts and so forth. So that was probably the one more timing oriented thing in nature. And then we did spend some money on the transformation program and had a little bit higher SG&A and some of it, what I call the earnings base, cash earnings based impacts. As we think about the next three quarters, we will see stronger EBITDA per for sure and we won't have those working capital drags on AAP or inventory and we see considerably stronger free cash flow going forward.
Mircea Dobre -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
Okay. I guess I understand that part, but I'm wondering, and obviously, there's quite a bit of leverage on your balance sheet, so free cash flow matters, when you're looking at your net income guidance and you're thinking about the free cash flow for the year, how should we think either cash flow as a percentage of sales or free cash flow versus netting?
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. I think, free cash flow as a percent of net income feels like a good measure for us. Yeah, I don't know if you're looking for a specific number or...
Mircea Dobre -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
I am looking for a specific number. Can you show?
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, so -- yeah, I think not specific to the individual course, but I would say one times net income kind of free cash flow, feels like a metric will be shooting for here.
Mircea Dobre -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
Okay. And then I think this EBITDA margin breakdown or bridge, if you would is really helpful. So, I appreciate all that detail but I just want to make sure I understand the buckets correctly. When we're looking at your material cost and tariffs, so you're expecting this to be a 75 basis point to 125 basis point drag for the full year in Q1, you were 260 basis points. So, essentially we're talking about improvement here in subsequent quarters of call it, nearly 200 basis points.
Now, I think, I recall you're saying that 130 basis points of the 260 basis points in Q1 were related to tariffs. So how, what's the progression in terms of how we're kind of lapping these comparisons, we sort of have a similar drag in Q2 and then starting the Q3 this goes away. And then also related to this, the remaining, call it 60 basis points, 70 basis points of improvement, where is that coming from?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes. Good question, Mig. Let me help unpack the 260 basis points and in the context of the guidance, I think it will help. So, in my prepared remarks, I made reference to this. Let me start with the smaller half of the 260, which is the Section 301 tariffs. It started in July, so those will continue as a headwind in the second quarter and then should be anniversaried in the third quarter.
Taking the larger half and splitting that roughly in half, I'll call the first large quarter if you will, inflationary pressures and pass-through tariffs of the 232 variety that came at us through our vendors that while it kind of set in over some period of time, I would say, we'll anniversary itself close to the fourth quarter of this year. So it will run a little bit longer as a headwind. And then the last of those what I call large quarters really traces back to some of the issues we had in the fourth quarter that led to higher cost in our inventory and that flowed through. Those issues were resolved kind of operationally in the fourth quarter, but we still had some inventory that had those higher costs that came through in the first quarter and those have run their course.
And so that piece of this will step to our favor kind of in the second quarter and forward. So this thing will go from about 260 basis point headwind in the first quarter to considerably less than that in the second to probably neutral in the back half and potentially even favorable as we compare against the tougher fourth quarter from 2018. So that's how this thing goes from 260 basis points in the first quarter to something like 125 basis points on the year that we talked about 75 basis points to 125 basis point that we talk about full year guidance on slide 9.
Mircea Dobre -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
Okay. That's super helpful. Thank you for that. And I -- my last question, I want to ask about, basically the same dynamic with volume mix and net pricing there is basically better than 64 bps, 60 bps to 80 bps improvement as the year progresses. Now obviously, I know that pricing is coming through to help. I'm just wondering if that's whole price that we're talking about here or if there's something else moving around that what makes for.
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. Let me do the same thing, because there is no question that our guidance calls for going from a 13% adjusted EBITDA margin to something north of 20%, so that we can settle in on that full year level. So this is a -- this will be a real progression. If I take them in order on slide 9 in the guidance section there, volume mix and net pricing going to 225 basis points at 275 basis points. It was 190 basis points in the first quarter and we do have this March price increase, this rolling through.
So, and frankly we're probably again from the transformation program be able to find a little bit more revenue opportunity. So we feel good about that continuing to be a significant contribution. And in fact, bit of an expanding contribution year-over-year going forward. The material cost coming down from 260 basis points to the 75 basis points to 125 basis points I just covered from a manufacturing cost standpoint, it was a 10 basis point headwind in the first quarter and we think that's something in the same range going forward. We call that 0 basis point to plus 50 basis point.
And again that, the first quarter did reflect a little of the fourth quarter's hangover, so we can point at that and say, we expect that to be better going forward. On SG&A, it had a little bit of seasonal stuff. It's a soft -- it is a soft quarter sales wise and the spending was a little bit heavier, and so it contributed to the headwind. While we expect, through the year, the year-over-year stuff to be a little bit of a drag. Sequentially, comparing the first quarter to the second, third and fourth, SG&A as a percent of sales dips down significantly 300 basis point type of range. And that's the same pattern, you would have seen in 2018. So, that is a big part of going from 13% to sort of 20% kind of EBITDA margin, is that SG&A leverage in the first quarter is really, really suffered from that.
And then lastly on FX and Crem, that 70 basis point, first quarter headwind. If you think about Crem, it's first still facing some of the integration challenges. It's really only inorganic comparison point is this first quarter, because it really, we closed in the middle of April last year and so by second quarter. Mostly, it will be an even comparison point.
And then, on FX again, the big currency moved really was through the first quarter of last year. It has been in the same zip code, as it is now in the quarters two to four, so, we also feel like that headwind has generally been the combination of FX and Crem is really a first quarter phenomenon and that's why we say it goes from a 70 basis point headwind to something between 50 basis point and 0 basis point, with currency always being a bit of that unknown. So, when you add all that stuff together, that's how you go from a 13.3% adjusted EBITDA margin to something in the 2021 range and get us to the guidance on the year.
Mircea Dobre -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
Really helpful. Thank you so much.
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes, thanks.
Operator
Your next question comes from Larry De Maria from William Blair. Larry, your line is open.
Larry De Maria -- William Blair -- Analyst
Hi, thanks. Good morning, everybody. That color was really helpful. I guess what I just don't fully understand just yet is kind of this, the quarter from a revenue perspective is pretty good. But, obviously if the profit is trailed. So, what was different in terms of your expectations given you knew about material cost, you knew about chain roll out, the KitchenCare. So what was so diverse as to what was planned from when you obviously talked both in mid-February?
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Well, it's Marty here and I'll offer some comments. I wasn't here, but I did listen to the call. And what I would tell you is, we don't want to guide quarter-by-quarter, but we did try to set some low expectations and some of you probably pick that up a little, little more clearly. But, we were trying to signal this kind of slow start. So I would say the short answer is not a lot has changed relative to our plans, and that's why we reiterate the guidance, what we did.
Larry De Maria -- William Blair -- Analyst
So, to that (multiple speakers) plan.
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes, this is Bill. I mean, the quarter played out pretty close to what we had planned. I would say, we knew, we -- on the revenue side of things that we had some lift coming from NexGen, the increase there. We knew we had the headwinds from some of the QSR rollouts, mix was favorable and we knew that. So I mean, look there is always a little thing here or there that creeps into the quarter that next year, but for by and large, it was as we expected and as we look at the year going forward we were convinced with our guidance is found.
Larry De Maria -- William Blair -- Analyst
Okay. And secondly, two kind of quick questions, was there any kind of pre-buy ahead of the price increases and sorry to miss this, but is there a year-end debt target?
Josef Matosevic -- Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
No, surprisingly Larry that was not. So there was no pre-buy in any significant way that we would usually see so.
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
And on that debt target, we'll talk next week about, I'll show some projections and how we expect to delever and so I'll kind of save the thunder for that one if you don't mind. But we do expect to bring it down from where we sit now at the end of the first quarter.
Larry De Maria -- William Blair -- Analyst
Okay. That's fair enough and then just last question from me. I think you guys rolled out Crem here in North America really started to. Just curious, how you are taking orders? What's the reaction? And what kind of expectations do we think about Crem moving forward?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. So we're in the process, we showed Crem at NAFEM. We'll also be at NRA with the product lines, we're introducing fully automatic called our unity line and we'll plan on taking orders that in the second -- starting in the second quarter. So we're going through, we're finishing up the registration and testing and certification process, but that will be ready to take orders here in the second quarter.
Larry De Maria -- William Blair -- Analyst
And that will go right through the existing channel right or you have to go direct relationships on that?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
It will go through our channel partners.
Larry De Maria -- William Blair -- Analyst
Okay.
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
To support our channel partners in both.
Larry De Maria -- William Blair -- Analyst
Yeah. Thanks, and see you guys on next meeting.
Operator
And your next question comes from Jamie Clement of Buckingham. Jamie, your line is open.
James Clement -- Buckingham -- Analyst
Hey, good morning, gentlemen. Was noticing, I was wondering if you could kind of take us through kind of what the demand environment looks like through the first quarter and specifically did you all noticed the same kind of soft start to January that perhaps some of your peers have already mentioned publicly?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, I mean January started off a little slower. It's starting to pick up. We probably had some advantages in terms of share gain that maybe some of the competitors didn't have, that helped us in the quarter. So we're excited about that and we continue to see that ramp come exiting the quarter and our order intake continues to be as expected, and supporting our forecast.
James Clement -- Buckingham -- Analyst
Yeah, it didn't, it sounds like the answer is no, but I just wanted to be clear, but in terms of saying that you didn't notice any significant pre-buying ahead of your price increase, obviously the timing of industry price increases with your competitors was not the same timing as yours, did you notice any distortion in terms of your perception of your own sales levels relative to that phenomenon?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
I mean with couple pricing and value, we have people who prefer our brands to go to market that way and we pick up our costing from that play. So, I'd say, look, we performed as expected, the teams -- the sales and marketing teams delivered along with our channel partners, delivered the growth we wanted and we're so happy about that.
James Clement -- Buckingham -- Analyst
Okay, great, thanks a lot for your time. I appreciate it.
Operator
And your next question comes from Walter Liptak of Seaport Global. Walter, your line is open.
Walter Liptak -- Seaport Global -- Analyst
Hi, thanks, good morning, guys. I realize you want to save the thunder for the Analyst Day, but when they get -- see, if I get a clarifier on your opening comments about the next phase thoughts. And I think you mentioned that you wanted to be at the upper tier of the industry and so, I wondered you mean upper tier of the publicly traded companies are kind of all in commercial foodservice?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes. So it's -- we tend to look at it in our peer group as a publicly traded company.
Walter Liptak -- Seaport Global -- Analyst
Okay. That's great. And in the Americas region, the organics down understanding what that may be about, but I wonder about the timing of the tough comp, is something that where we would have organics that continue to be tough in the full first half and then turning more positive in the back half on that easier comps or again, are there large customers that rolled off in already in the first quarter?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
And I mean there is a large chunk of it hit us in the first quarter. We have some of the strength of the general market, as we said, and we -- the general market and we believe KitchenCare will rebound for the rest of the year. And look, it's hard to predict these rollouts and we have some nice things in the works for the second half, that hopefully materialize, we have some rollouts in the second quarter that we know will materialize. So, I would say, we kind of took our lumps on the QSR headwinds in the first quarter and going forward that general market and KitchenCare should really offset any of the remaining pieces of it.
James Clement -- Buckingham -- Analyst
Okay, great. And if I could just have a follow-on to that, you know the -- I wondered about the international customer funnel, you know we've heard a lot about macro things with international slowing but your large customer projects look pretty good this quarter. What does the funnel look like internationally from those large customers or from other large customers?
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. So you know again these are all kind of lumpy things that happened in EMEA in particular in the first quarter, we had very nice rollout -- chains that you saw the growth there. That won't continue into the second quarter, but we knew that going into the planning process and into our guidance and we've built a plan. So we're sticking by our plans for both EMEA and APAC in terms of total year growth. So, it wasn't kind of a blue bird that flew into that. We didn't know that it was going to happen. We knew these things are in play, and so they're built into our guidance.
James Clement -- Buckingham -- Analyst
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from George Godfrey of C.L. King. George, your line is open.
George Godfrey -- C.L. King -- Analyst
Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to come back to the securitization of the receivables. Can you explain again why you chose not to sell or securitize more versus keeping it on your balance sheet and what factors go into determining how much you securitize or sell each quarter? Thanks.
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Well, the simple fact is that the program offered a marginal cost of funds kind of savings, but had a lot of operational and administrative sort of headaches to it and with the change in the accounting standard that made it runs through the cash flow statement, the way it did just made auditing difficult as well. So on balance it just became a marginal program and we did upsized the credit facility and the revolver to allow, to handle this comfortably enough. And so it just didn't feel like an effective program any longer.
George Godfrey -- C.L. King -- Analyst
Okay. So if I look at the days sales outstanding, historically it's been somewhere in the mid 20s maybe high 20s this quarter. It looks like, by my math it's about 52, so that should be the new level of days sales outstanding, we should expect going forward.
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
I want to say, yes but I'm -- I haven't done all those calculations myself to really know, if there's anything that's not quite at a run-rate yet. I think our terms of sale are shorter than that in the US, but probably longer than that internationally, so there could be some blended, that doesn't sound surprising to me, but I'd like to maybe get another quarter closed without the securitization in place before I told you that was exactly right.
George Godfrey -- C.L. King -- Analyst
Understood. Thank you for taking my question.
Operator
And your last question does come from David MacGregor of Longbow Research. David, your line is open.
David MacGregor -- Longbow Research -- Analyst
Yeah, thanks. Just a couple follow-ups. In the Americas, US was up slightly, but other Americas was down by about a third. So what happened there and what was the EBITDA impact? And then also, I guess, the Americas, to what extent did first quarter revenues benefit from carryover of cold side orders from the fourth quarter? Thanks.
Richard J. Sheffer -- Vice President of Investor Relations, Risk Management and Treasurer
David, this is Rich. I don't think we disclosed anything specific within the Americas, US versus other countries. So, we tend to look at it as one region. So I -- we're struggling to come up with an answer, but I don't think we ever said that the US was great and Canada, Mexico were soft. I think it's a blended region.
David MacGregor -- Longbow Research -- Analyst
I think Rich in your press release, you breakout net sales by geographic area you drove distinction between US and other Americas and that's where the observation comes from?
Richard J. Sheffer -- Vice President of Investor Relations, Risk Management and Treasurer
Okay. So those would -- those do not reflect intercompany eliminations. So, I'd be -- I'd hesitate to draw any conclusions from that.
David MacGregor -- Longbow Research -- Analyst
All right. Okay. And then just to what, I mean you had some supply channel issues back in the fourth quarter. I'm just wondering to what extent first quarter revenues benefited from the carryover almost crossovers?
Richard J. Sheffer -- Vice President of Investor Relations, Risk Management and Treasurer
Yeah. There really wasn't any benefit from carryover from this.
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Now, we were able to supply to source our compressors in Q4. So, we really didn't have lost sales really in Q4 that would have been caught up in Q1 related to that.
David MacGregor -- Longbow Research -- Analyst
Okay, thanks very much.
Operator
And we have no further questions at this time. So, I'll turn the call back over to the presenters.
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
To conclude today's call, I want to reiterate that I believe Welbilt has the right strategy to focus on profitable growth and can drive significantly more dollars to the bottom line. We expect to drive our profitable growth by improving our go-to-market approach to drive more dollars of sales and by improving operations and therefore, margins. The operational review, we recently completed as part of our transformation program, allowed us to develop concrete action plans and achievable timelines to capture that opportunity. I have confidence in this team to continue delivering profitable growth and delevering the balance sheet. I'm excited for the opportunity to share our plans with you at our Investor Day on May 14th. This concludes today's 2019 first quarter earnings call. Thanks again for joining us this morning and have a great day.
Operator
And this does conclude today's call. You may now disconnect.
Duration: 47 minutes
Call participants:
Richard J. Sheffer -- Vice President of Investor Relations, Risk Management and Treasurer
William C. Johnson -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Josef Matosevic -- Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Martin D. Agard -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
David MacGregor -- Longbow Research -- Analyst
Jeffrey Hammond -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst
Mircea Dobre -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
Larry De Maria -- William Blair -- Analyst
James Clement -- Buckingham -- Analyst
Walter Liptak -- Seaport Global -- Analyst
George Godfrey -- C.L. King -- Analyst
