Image source: The Motley Fool.
Rockwell Automation Inc (ROK -0.97%)
Q3Â 2019 Earnings Call
Jul 25, 2019, 8:30 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Thank you for holding and welcome to the Rockwell Automation Quarterly Conference Call. I need to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded. Later in the call, we will open up the line for questions. [Operator Instructions]
At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Jessica Kourakos, Head of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Ms. Kourakos, please go ahead.
Jessica Kourakos -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Rockwell Automation's Third Quarter Fiscal 2019 Earnings Release Conference Call. With me today is Blake Moret, our Chairman and CEO; and Patrick Goris, our CFO. Our results were released earlier this morning and the press release and charts have been posted to our website. Both the press release and charts include reconciliations to non-GAAP measures. A webcast of this call will be available at that website for replay for the next 30 days.
Before we get started, I need to remind you that our comments will include statements related to the expected future results of our company and are therefore, forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our projections due to a wide range of risks and uncertainties that are described in our earnings release and detailed in all of our SEC filings.
So with that, I'll hand the call over to Blake.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Jessica and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call today. Before I start, I first want to thank Steve Etzel, who is transitioned from Investor Relations back to his Treasury duties full time. He has served us well in the IR role for the last few years. I also want to welcome Jessica Kourakos, as our new Head of Investor Relations. Jessica brings a wealth of experience from both the sell-side and buy-side and we're excited to have her on-board.
With that, let me start with some key points for the quarter. So please turn to Page 3 in the slide deck. Globally, organic sales were up 0.5%, lower than we expected. In general, we saw a strong growth in our longer-cycle end markets, while shorter-cycle end markets weakened. Organic sales growth was led by heavy industries, including oil and gas, pulp and paper and mining, as well as life sciences, each of which grew double-digits.
In oil and gas, we saw strong growth in all regions as our customers are focusing on productivity, improvements and digitization initiatives. Pulp and paper continue to do well for us. With most of the growth this quarter coming from North America. Strong growth in mining was driven by CapEx investments in iron ore and copper, electric vehicle related commodities and investments around digitization.
Life sciences was another standout vertical for us this quarter. Our offerings align well with industry trends, including personalized medicine and cyber security. Offsetting the longer-cycle growth in the quarter with weakness in shorter-cycle end markets, including automotive, semiconductor and food and beverage. Automotive was down about 10% year-over-year and slightly up sequentially versus Q2, in line with our expectations.
Semiconductor in the quarter was weaker than expected, impacted by an overall slowdown in the global semiconductor market. Food and beverage was down low-single digits, although the industry continues to focus on modernization to drive productivity, we saw some project delays.
Logix was down 3% organically, largely due to automotive weakness. Process control sales grew 3% organically, led by strength in longer-cycle end markets. Information Solutions and Connected Services continue to do very well, growing double digits in the quarter. This is a measure of the new value being delivered to customers in all industries. This business increases recurring revenue streams and includes FactoryTalk innovation suite and EMEA software as well as high-value services such as remote monitoring to enhance cyber security and optimize production.
Commenting on regional performance in the quarter, North America was about flat organically. Pulp and paper and oil and gas had strong double-digit growth, while automotive, semiconductor and food and beverage declined. EMEA was up 2% in the quarter, led by life sciences, oil and gas and tire. While Asia declined 1%, China grew low-single digits. Latin America sales were up 6%, led by mining and oil and gas.
I'll make a few additional comments about our Q3 results. Adjusted EPS was up 11% and segment operating margin expanded 130 basis points year-over-year. The increases in adjusted EPS and segment operating margin include a benefit from lower incentive compensation expense. Patrick will elaborate on our third quarter financial performance in his remarks.
Let's move on now to guidance for full year fiscal 2019. We believe that uncertainty with respect to global trade is impacting some customers investment decisions, particularly those related to the timing of capital investments. Taking into account our year-to-date results, we now expect our fiscal 2019 organic sales to be up about 1.5% year-over-year. Including the impact of currency translation, we now expect reported sales to be about $6.6 billion. We are reducing the adjusted EPS guidance range to $8.50 to $8.70, which includes aligning spending to the current market environment. As Patrick will discuss in a few minutes, this guidance does not include the impacts of the Sensia joint venture.
Before moving on, I want to mention that yesterday, our Board authorized an additional $1 billion for share repurchases. Our strong financial position allows us to deploy capital in line with our priorities, organic growth, inorganic investments, dividends and share repurchases.
Let's talk a little more about our organic and inorganic investments. Regardless of what is going on in the macro environment, we are confident that we are executing well and we see evidence that we are gaining share and making the right strategic investments to drive profitable growth. Beginning with our core business, we continue to invest in our Logix architecture and connected smart products. These enable us to capture a broader set of opportunities across discrete, hybrid and process end markets. Customers are telling us that our latest generation Logix processor outperforms our biggest competitors. It is also the industry's first certified secured controller, having a whole new level of security on the plant floor. In high performance motion control, utilizing our highly differentiated Independent cart technology, we work with KUKA to secure a multi-million dollar order in Q3 from a large global automotive manufacturer, being European competitors that lack this capability.
We're also increasing our penetration within process oriented end markets like oil and gas, which continues to show strong growth for us and is the largest automation market. We're going after this market organically by building up our process capabilities both within Logix and our FactoryTalk analytics platform, as well as inorganically through our Sensia joint venture with Schlumberger.
The new value from Information Solutions and Connected Services is another way to win across all industries. We are already seeing this acceleration in markets like life sciences, where we have grown strong double-digits over the last two years and are gaining significant market share. Here are differentiation in PharmaSuite MES, cyber security and FactoryTalk Analytics has resulted in many recent deals going our way, including a recent win with a very large medical device company against the traditionally strong process competitor.
Our offering were seen as the best technology to increase overall equipment effectiveness. Our Analytics and MES differentiation also drove a key automotive win in Asia, where our software will be used on top of a competitive control platform. We won because our solution was more reliable, we have deeper domain expertise and our digital roadmap was better. EMEA measure highly strategic regions for us and we plan to invest both organically and inorganically to strengthen our reach. These and other wins give us confidence that no one is better positioned to benefit from the global convergence of IT and OT, than we are and we're actively directing spending in our operations and through capital deployment to the areas of highest return to make that happen. We look forward to speaking in greater detail about these initiatives at our upcoming Investor Day in November.
Now, I'll turn it over to Patrick to provide more detail around our Q3 results in our 2019 sales and earnings guidance.
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Blake, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide 4, which provides our key financial information for the third quarter. As Blake mentioned, sales slowed down in Q3 with reported sales down 2%, organic growth of 0.5% was weaker than expected and currency translation reduced sales by 2.5%. Segment operating margin was 23.8% expanding 130 basis points compared to last year. The increase in segment margin was mainly due to lower incentive compensation expense, partially offset by higher investment spending.
Our incentive compensation plan reflects our strong pay-for-performance culture and track record. We have a companywide incentive plan that covers most of our employees globally, with bonus earned being very aligned with financial performance of the company. To reflect the revised outlook for full year fiscal '19 financial performance, we lowered our estimate for bonus expense. The total adjustment booked in the third quarter was about $30 million, which represents about 170 basis points of segment margin, about two-thirds of the $30 million is booked in the Control Products & Solutions segment, the balanced in the Architecture & Software segment and general corporate net.
Looking at our performance through the first three quarters of the fiscal year, segment operating margin is 23.7%, up 80 basis points year-over-year. Earnings conversion ex currency is 35% and adjusted EPS is up 11%. General corporate net expense in the quarter of $24 million was down $9 million compared to last year, mainly as a result of lower functional expenses including lower incentive compensation expense. Adjusted EPS of $2.40 was up 11% compared to the third quarter of last year. The year-over-year increase in adjusted EPS is mainly the result of lower incentive compensation expense, higher organic sales and a lower share count, partially offset by higher net interest expense. The lower tax rate also contributed to the increased year-over-year adjusted EPS. Free cash flow performance was $323 million in the quarter or 114% of adjusted income. A few additional items that are not shown on the slide.
With respect to tariffs. The net impact on financial results in the quarter and through three quarters is neutral. With the higher costs being mitigated through a combination of supply chain actions, negotiations with vendors and targeted price increases on affected products. Average diluted shares outstanding in the quarter were $118.6 million, down $7.2 million or about 6% from last year. We repurchased $1.5 million shares in the quarter at a cost of $246.3 million. Through June 30, we are on pace to get to a $1 billion full year target per share repurchases. At June 30, we had $333 million remaining under our previous share repurchase authorization. As Blake mentioned, our Board has approved an additional $1 billion share repurchase authorization.
Slide 5 provides the sales and margin performance overview for the Architecture & Software segment. With a 1.9% organic sales decline, this segment had weaker organic growth performance compared to the company average as it generally is overweight on shorter-cycle end markets and does not include any of our solutions and services businesses. For the quarter, segment margin decreased 60 basis points year-over-year and remains about 30%. A margin tailwind from lower incentive compensation is more than offset by the impact of lower sales and higher investment spend.
Moving on to Slide 6, Control Products & Solutions. This segment had 2.7% organic growth in the quarter. The product businesses in this segment declined about 2.5% year-over-year, similar to the Architecture & Software segment, while the solutions and services businesses in this segment grew about 6% organically. Operating margin for the segment increased 320 basis points compared to Q3 last year, primarily due to lower incentive compensation and higher organic sales, partially offset by higher investment spending. Book-to-bill performance for our solutions and services businesses in this segment was 0.98 in Q3, reflecting an increase in project delays.
The next Slide 7 provides an overview of our sales performance by region. Blake covered most of this in his slide in his remarks, so I'll move on to Slide 8 guidance. As Blake mentioned, we are reducing our full year expected organic sales growth guidance to about 1.5%. This implies a Q4 organic sales decline of about 3% to 3.5%. We now project fiscal '19 sales of about $6.6 billion. We continue to expect strong segment margin of about 22%. General corporate net expense is expected to be $95 million to $100 million for the full year, similar to our April guidance. We believe the full year adjusted effective tax rate.will now be about 18.5%, 0.5 point lower than our April guidance and mainly as a result of favorable discrete tax items and a change in the geographic mix in global pre-tax income. We continue to target $1 billion in share repurchases and we now expect average fully diluted shares outstanding to be about $119.3 million for fiscal '19.
We are revising our adjusted EPS guidance range to $8.50 to $8.70 at the midpoint. This is a $0.40 decreased compared to our April guidance. Our updated range reflects the impact of lower organic sales growth, partially offset by additional spend reductions, lower incentive compensation expense and is somewhat lower tax rate. Compared to fiscal '18, the full year midpoint represents a 6% adjusted EPS growth on slightly lower reported sales. And we continue to expect free cash flow conversion of about 100% of adjusted income.
Before I turn it over to Jessica, I'll make some comments about Sensia. We are waiting for some customary regulatory approvals and continue to expect Sensia to close this calendar year. No impact associated with Sensia is included in our current guidance, assuming the transaction closes this fiscal year and including an associated tax benefit. We now expect the adjusted EPS impact of fiscal '19 to be about neutral. With that, Jessica.
Jessica Kourakos -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Thanks, Patrick. Before we start the Q&A, I just want to say, that we would like to get to as many of you as possible, so please limit yourselves to one question and a quick follow-up. Thank you. Operator, let's take our first question.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Your first question comes from the line of John Inch from Gordon Haskett. Your line is open.
John Inch -- Gordon Haskett -- Analyst
Good morning, everybody.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning.
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Good morning.
John Inch -- Gordon Haskett -- Analyst
The down 3% core growth for the fourth quarter, are you guys assuming that there is, this is just a function of projects being further pushed out. Are you actually assuming there is embedded deterioration say in both distribution and projects in terms of the cadence?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
So looking at the different industries, John, we're expecting that in -- for the full year that automotive overall is going to be down about 10%. We see some sequential improvement as we had seen some purchases beginning in some of the projects that we've been tracking. But we're still looking at about 10% for the full year. I think the stories in Q3 that inform our outlook for Q4 are that, in the quarter, while automotive performed about as expected, we did see weaker-than-expected performance in areas like semiconductor, food and beverage weakened a little bit and then chemicals, power, some of those areas. So those weaker-than-expected performances in Q3 inform the outlook implied with Q4.
John Inch -- Gordon Haskett -- Analyst
I think, like you talked about, you had thought so there is going to be some automotive turnaround projects or model changes coming through in the second half, is that still part of the calendar year? Is that still part of the expectation? Or does that look like and deferred as well?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
No, actually purchasing has started on a lot of those projects that we were tracking. The ones that we've been talking about that included some line of sight, which seen early purchases there. So we've won the ones that we expected to, plus a little bit more. It's just not clear whether the majority of the volume from those purchases is going to happen in Q4 or into 2020.
John Inch -- Gordon Haskett -- Analyst
Just lastly China, stepped down a little bit. Still -- it's still pretty decent given the overall sort of macro, but is there any color you could give us vis-a-vis end markets in China, say, heavy industry infrastructure, auto, consumer, stuff like that?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Sure. We've talked previously about the impact of some of the stimulus in China and we saw it again in Q3. So mass transit, water-wastewater, which would be most impacted by government stimulus. Those were strong performers for us in China in the quarter.
John Inch -- Gordon Haskett -- Analyst
And was there anything incrementally weaker, would you -- that you would call out?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Auto was a little bit weaker in China in the quarter. We had some wins in different areas and we'll talk about that. When we talk about our Information Solutions and Connected Services, but overall, auto in China weakened.
John Inch -- Gordon Haskett -- Analyst
Got it. Thanks for the color.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, John.
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, John.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Julian Mitchell from Barclays. Your line is open.
Julian Mitchell -- Barclays -- Analyst
Hi, good morning.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning.
Julian Mitchell -- Barclays -- Analyst
Maybe just give us a little bit of color as to -- you're guiding for organic sales to dip into the September quarter. How does this environment feel today compared with when you've gone into other sales downturns in the past? And you taking much mitigating action on the assumption that this sales decline could last several quarters. If it's consistent with history?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, Julian. We haven't assume that this is a big the beginning of something that's going to last multiple quarters, what we've also seen historically is even during continued periods of expansion, we have seen times where that growth has leveled off for a quarter or two. However, we have taken cost reduction measures and you saw the impact of that in Q3 and we're actively looking at other ways both to match our spend with market conditions as well as take the opportunity to more rapidly reinvest and look at ways to direct resources to the areas that are going to be most important in the future. So we have taken cost reductions. We're looking at areas that would be opportunities going forward, and we're watching the development of this quarter Q4 very closely.
Julian Mitchell -- Barclays -- Analyst
Thank you very much. And then my quick follow up would just be around the Process business. I think your revenue growth in that slowed to about 3%. Do you had been running at 10% growth in the March quarter? Should we assume that also dips into negative year-on-year territory in the September quarter? And any color associated with that on the backlog in solutions and services?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. So solutions and services backlog remained slightly up year-over-year and we do continue to see growth in some of the key areas driving process such as oil and gas and mining. Some of the project delays that we saw in Q3 impact process. I would say the project delays that we saw were split between the longer cycle that typically makes up most of those projects, but it was also colored by a fairly significant portion of delays in shorter-cycle businesses as well.
Julian Mitchell -- Barclays -- Analyst
Fantastic. Thank you very much.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Julian.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Joe Ritchie from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Joe Ritchie -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Joe.
Joe Ritchie -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Blake, could you maybe just talk about any discernible trends that you saw as the quarter progressed. For example, we've been hearing from a lot of companies at June had turned out to be worse than expected. And so anything on the trends that you can tell us about?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, but not that, actually for us April and May were weak and June, got a little better sequentially. So in the quarter we saw it finish a little bit stronger.
Joe Ritchie -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Were there any specific end-markets that were driving that?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
I can't pick any in particular, except perhaps, chemical may have follow that a bit, where it started the quarter out weaker and obviously, since chemical is kind of sits a bit in the middle in terms of the applications that we play in. We watch that fairly closely and that started to improve a bit as the quarter went on. I would make the other comment that for our quarter, it doesn't progress in a linear fashion. So the last month the quarter is always the strongest, and so we can't extrapolate the way that a quarter has started out and just run it out and make predictions about the full quarter.
Joe Ritchie -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Got it, OK. And then maybe my follow-on question there is on just looking at the CP&S margins, clearly, really strong and you guys called out incentive comp, as a big driver. Was there anything else that impacted the margins favorably this quarter? And then how should we be thinking? I know that you're stepping down incentive comp as well in 4Q, but what should we be thinking about like a normalized number I guess from an incentive comp standpoint on the go forward?
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Okay. Joe, Patrick here. So with respect to CP&S segment margin, the largest part of the year-over-year increase is related to incentive compensation. The segment of course, had some organic growth in the quarter, which helps us well and then currency was just a slight tailwind or less than 0.5 of margin for that segment. Instead, in terms of incentive compensation, the way that you can think about it is a fully funded incentive compensation plan for Rockwell Automation is about $100 million and the current guidance for fiscal '19 is about 60% of that.
Joe Ritchie -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Okay, got it. Thank you, both.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Joe.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Steve Tusa from JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Stephen Tusa -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Hey, guys.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Steve.
Stephen Tusa -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
I just wanted to talk about the food and beverage is kind of a broad way to characterize that end market kind of vertical. Does that include some of the packaging machinery types of guys that are out there? What are you -- is this like a lot of the machine tool, like the bottling guys and that kind of stuff? Or is it more enterprise business with the crafts and the world and things like that. Can you maybe just kind of like break out the food and beverage dynamics will more?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Sure. So food and beverage includes both. So it certainly includes the global end users. So the Kraft's and the Mondelez, Nestle, that would be an example of a few of those ADI [Phpnetic], it also includes the packaging, the machinery builder. So you're looking at the packaging OEMs around the world. That's a fair part of our business in Europe for instance, as well as in the US, and it includes that part of the business as well. They both work together and we have a strong focus at both ends of it. What kind of performance we can provide at the machinery builders, as well as how it works together an integrated system at the user.
Stephen Tusa -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
But I guess what -- when you talk about the performance this quarter kind of exiting the year. I guess just simply how is the -- how did the OEM business do? I know you guys kind of characterize the OEM business and within that, this kind of packaging, food and beverage, vertical where I think you serve a lot of these small and medium size machine builders so well, how did that business do?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
So Steve, the way you can thing about is our global OEM business was down about mid-single digits and within that packaging was down high single digits in the quarter.
Stephen Tusa -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
And how fast did that grow in '18?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Probably mid single digits because consumer was about this last year.
Stephen Tusa -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Thanks as always for the color. Appreciate it.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Steve.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Sprague from Vertical Research. Your line is open.
Jeffrey Sprague -- Vertical Research -- Analyst
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Just two from me actually. Just thinking about food and beverage also being kind of broadly consumer oriented. I'm wondering if you could speak to anything else that you're seeing in consumer related markets either those happen to kind of track in line with the segment averages?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Sure, I'll make a couple of comments and then Patrick here might have some more. When we talk about consumer broadly, we think of three areas underneath that typically and so, food and beverage, it's home and personal care. So think of tissue and so on, and then, life sciences. Food and beverage and home and personal care performed roughly similarly. And I think our outlook is similar, but life sciences is really the stand down in terms of strong double-digit growth.
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. So within consumer Jeff, as Blake mentioned, life sciences good double-digit growth. Home and personal care up mid-single digits in the quarter. And so it's really food and beverage, which represents about 20 points out of the 30 of the consumer, which is dragging down our performance in consumer.
Jeffrey Sprague -- Vertical Research -- Analyst
Right. Thank you for that. And then just on the comp expense. So it sounds like Q3 you had a year-to-date through up, there was another $10 million in Q4. My question would just be then on kind of the investment spend -- those investment spend on a year-over-year basis actually increase or decrease. Could you give us a little bit of color on that?
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
The way you can think about our investment spending, we we exclude incentive compensation for that metric. In our current guidance, our investment spending grows about 2% year-over-year, a little less than that. So a little bit more than our revised organic growth rate for the full year. In Q4, we expect that to be down year-over-year.
Jeffrey Sprague -- Vertical Research -- Analyst
Thank you.
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
And at the same time, I would say that where we are making adjustments in the spending is more on discretionary items not on the R&D side. For example, in Q3, R&D was still up 8% year-over-year.
Jeffrey Sprague -- Vertical Research -- Analyst
Okay. Thank you very much.
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Jeff.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Richard Eastman from Baird. Your line is open.
Richard Eastman -- Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. -- Analyst
Yes, good morning. Blake, could you just speak for a minute or two to the book-to-bill at 0.98 that's significantly less than the seasonal book-to-bill would suggest it should be. I presume a lot of that is in heavy industries and I'm curious you referenced project delays impacting the book-to-bill, but your line of sight on those projects. In other words, they weren't booked in the quarter, but you have a healthier view of the line of sight on projects that are out there, is that, how we kind of interpret your comments?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
I'd say, we continue to have good visibility to those projects that didn't close in the quarter and as we look at the reasons, why the obvious question is, is this just a precursor to them getting pushed out further or canceled or were their unique plausible reasons why they didn't go in the quarter, but they could come back in the near future, including some in Q4. And the latter was our -- based on our review that was the sense of the majority of those that there were delays, but there were unique plausible reasons in each case that cause them to push out in the quarter and not necessarily being gone. I mentioned before, that there was a little higher component in those project delays of the shorter-cycle businesses. So think of it this way, the percentage of delays of shorter-cycle business in that book-to-bill was higher than the total bookings of the solutions and services business.
Richard Eastman -- Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. -- Analyst
So again, you're feeling as we track into the first half of fiscal '20 is that some of this could drop in higher percent short cycle, it doesn't necessarily mean that, again, you're caution -- you're cautious, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're planning on first half of '20, fiscal '20, that is down.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
That's right. And while we don't wait for November to give the guidance, we're watching Q4, but our front log, our quoting activity remains healthy.
Richard Eastman -- Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. -- Analyst
Okay, OK, that's where I was getting at. Okay. And just one last question, could you just define or Patrick, could you give us a kind of a pricing number here, just gross priced capture in the quarter?
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
We're at about 1.5% price realization two, three quarters, and in for Q3, about the same, it's about 1.5%, which includes Rick, the price we get associated with the tariffs. And so you may recall that we implemented targeted price increases on products impacted or affected by the tariffs and so that the price realization. This year 1.5% is a little bit larger than prior years, but includes that price associated with the tariffs actions.
Richard Eastman -- Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. -- Analyst
And that's not, that's not a surcharge, correct? Or is it? In other words, will that come off part of it?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, the intention, one of the price increase was to neutralize the impact of tariffs, so not to make money out of that. And so the expectation is that if tariffs was -- would be eliminated that at some point those price increases would also be adjusted, and the objective being to neutralize the impact of tariffs.
Richard Eastman -- Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. -- Analyst
Got you. Okay, great. Thanks again for the questions.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Rick.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Nigel Coe from Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Nigel Coe -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
Thanks, Good morning. Picture a little color as always, I'm going to say, I'm struggling to get to the -- to your 4Q EPS guidance at the lower end of the range. And the only way I could get there would be if A&S is significantly weaker, than the 3% to 4% organic 0.2 for 4Q, is that how you thinking that A&S could be down mid to high single digits organic with CP&S probably flat to slightly up, is that sort of how you're building up 4Q?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Nigel, to get to the low end of our current guidance that's not an unreasonable way to look at it.
Nigel Coe -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
Okay. Okay. So directionally that will be accurate. And I think Blake, you mentioned down the call is not unusual within the context of a -- an up cycle, and we certainly saw that in FY '16. Are we in that sort of situation where we have several quarter enable growth, the cycle through before we get back to growth. So do you think that there is something here, like it's not expect to grow quicker. I appreciate your thoughts there?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Well, as we talked about, the continued uncertainty that we've been mentioning for quite a while. We think it is impacting investment decisions at this point. And so a reduction of that uncertainty some stability and the outlook, which certainly help in terms of the fourth quarter, it would have to be in short-cycle businesses, right. So some improvement in longer cycle outlook might impact orders, but it would take a while for that to flush down as revenue and profits. In terms of the duration of what we're seeing currently. Again, we're going to be looking very closely at the development of the quarter. We're going to be looking at the macro progress on trade which certainly help, but we're not counting on that at all.
Nigel Coe -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
I mean, just touching that last points. The channel clearance would be a factor that might snap things back quicker. Can you just maybe comment on within A&S how you're sell-in the sell-through sales attracting right now?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Say again, Nigel, please?
Nigel Coe -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
I'm just curious if you've seen any, I guess make the question little bit clearer, are you seeing inventory headwinds in your A&S channels?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
No. We -- as you may know, we have really good visibility into what our distributors carry of our product that's particularly the case in North America. Inventory changes have not been a material impact to our results, including whether it's A&S or the other segments on the product side.
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes, we are closely aligned. We're closely involved with our distributors, as they replenish inventory and there is nothing different that's being done there.
Nigel Coe -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
Okay. Thank you very much.
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Robert McCarthy from Stephens. Your line is open.
Robert McCarthy -- Stephens -- Analyst
Good morning. Can you hear me?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
We can.
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Hey, Rob.
Robert McCarthy -- Stephens -- Analyst
How are you doing today? Yeah, I guess the first question is just expanding on some of the questions around fiscal '20, and I know you don't want to give guidance for fiscal '20 as much as we're going to try. Could you just talk about maybe the compares across auto and some of your other businesses where you might think that you're kind of -- you could get closer to bottom here. And how do we think about -- how we just think about some as we step into '20 some of the comparisons where you feel better versus more limited visibility better versus worse?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. So let's start with auto, I mentioned, we saw a little bit of sequential growth. And importantly, the results were stable with our expectations. What would give us more concerns is if projects that we've been talking about through the year win away, that's not what happened, and in fact, we're starting to see a little bit of purchases associated with those the EV companies, while we continue to see that as a relatively small of our overall business. They're going to bring vehicles to market and they're going to need automation to do it competitively. And we continue to be highly engaged there as well as with traditional vehicles as I look at new models and in new places to build them. So we see that continuing and as I mentioned before, the front log is fairly healthy. For other longer-cycle businesses, where we would have visibility that might go out across multiple quarters, things like oil and gas and mining, there continues to be good activity there and you saw that reflected in our current results and so through the fiscal year, we don't see changes there. The shorter-cycle business, of course, it's more difficult to look at the outlook and we'll have more details on what our view is informed by the quarter in November.
Robert McCarthy -- Stephens -- Analyst
Okay. No, that's helpful. And I'd rather light a candle in person darkness. So why don't we talk about the continued strong double-digit growth that Information Solutions and Connected Services and it looks like PTC last night were have a challenging quarter in the relationship with you actually had a pretty decent quarter? Maybe you could talk about the metrics and key wins there and how you're feeling about that collaboration?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Happy to and glad to see, you're lighting a candle, Rob. It's been good and we are probably a little more excited even about the relationship then we started a year ago on this journey. So we continue to see good wins come in, across industries and across geographies. There is a wind and PTC talked about it last night with Vuforia expert capture, was that a big tire company in Korea. We like Vuforia because it's a differentiator. Very few of our competitors have any sort of augmented reality offering and we're selling it in somewhere around a third of our FactoryTalk Innovation Suite wins currently. We continued to see wins and life sciences. I talked about the double-digit growth there. And the combination of our basic control in life sciences, the software that we have had for some time specifically MES, plus the new FactoryTalk Analytics that were brought to market, the PTC offerings really puts us in an open field in an industry that continues to grow very strong. So I'm happy with it. We're going to talk in one last comment. We're going to talk a lot more in November about the comprehensive things that we're doing as an organization to accelerate our move to more recurring revenue streams and more proficiency in managing a growing software component of our overall business. It certainly not just sales, it's about our business model, it's about our IT infrastructure and we're going to talk a lot about that in November.
Robert McCarthy -- Stephens -- Analyst
Well, I'll leave it with this. I think you won something with Eaton and I think they believe in the IP of the PLC. So I think that's a very notable win for you. So...
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. Thanks, Rob.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Deepa Raghavan from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
Deepa Raghavan -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyts
Hey, good morning.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning.
Deepa Raghavan -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyts
Two questions from me. First, can you please update us on your regional growth outlook? And just talk about how you review the change in the quarter based on what you're seeing across regions?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
So we continue to see Latin America as providing growth in the year. We also see EMEA for the full year. I've seen growth in the low and the low-single digits. In Q3, North America and Asia with the regions that were a little weaker than we expected. Yeah, the way you can think about, Deepa, as per our current guidance for the full year, all regions are a little bit lower than the prior guidance and North America went from mid-single digits a little bit below the company average, to low-single digits. So that EMEA and Asia, and Latin America is still teens. It's still about 10% rather than the mid-teens that we were expecting before. So our outlook in every of the regions has come down a bit.
Deepa Raghavan -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyts
Got it. Thanks for the color. Follow-up from me. Blake, you talk about short-cycle weakness a few times now. What are some of the conversations you're having with your clients in those markets with regards to what the trepidation is or what their the current expectations are? And curious if you are surprised based on your discussions, if you're surprised by the duration or magnitude of the current weakness? Thank you.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Sure. No, I think in some part, we're seeing the continued uncertainty over trade and tariffs that is starting to weigh on investment decisions, particularly around capital. We see these customers, even short-cycle businesses that are continuing to look for ways to improve productivity on top of their basic production and I think that's part of what's contributing to the continued strong growth of Information Solutions and Connected Services. But in terms of capital, as these customers way the prospects for near-term demand on those shorter cycle products that's what we're seeing. And again, as we went through and look project-by-project at the delays, the reasons that are being given are specific and plausible as opposed to some general precursor to further push outs and in cancellations.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Kaplowitz from Citi. Your line is open.
Vladimir Benjamin Bystricky -- Citi -- Analyst
Hi, good morning. It's Vlad on for Andy.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Vlad.
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Good morning.
Vladimir Benjamin Bystricky -- Citi -- Analyst
So, just following up on that last question on delays in your comment that there specific and plausible drivers of the delays versus necessarily precursor more push out and cancellations. I guess what -- what are you hearing from your customers in the context of tariffs and uncertainty, that gives you confidence that these are sort of transitory delays versus something that could linger and be more widespread?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
I think these companies are doing thing similar to what we did and continue to look at coming into the year. They're looking at restocking their supply chains to deal with the information we have in terms of tariffs. So -- and so there is some movement of where products are being built, who are the sub suppliers of those various products as people are trying to get to where we are and that is to neutralize the impact of those tariffs on their cost inputs. And so that's a lot of work. These things -- the decisions aren't made overnight and so being able to react to the current environment, but in a way that won't have to be undone in some short-term time horizon. That's the kind of uncertainty that we're talking about that we've dealt with and that our customers are dealing with.
Vladimir Benjamin Bystricky -- Citi -- Analyst
Okay, that's helpful. And then just if I could shift to CP&S for a minute. You talked -- I think you said solutions and services business was up 6% organic in the quarter. Obviously you guys have had some very good momentum there. So can you remind us what, how big that business is within CP&S? And also just your visibility to continued mid-single-digit growth there?
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
The way you can think us Vlad is within Control Products & Solutions, the solutions and services business is about two-third of that segment.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
And I think just to peel it back a little bit further that, so that includes the longer-cycle projects for us. The average duration of some of the oil and gas projects, for instance might be five or six months from the time we get the order to the time that we shipped it. It also includes the services, which would include the -- say shorter-cycle repair operations things that track product businesses, but also importantly the growing connected services portion of that as well that often attends those projects, things like remote monitoring, network consultation and things like that. So it's a mix of those define scope projects as well as high-value services. And then also the engineer to order business so motor control centers and things like that. All of that contributes to that two-thirds number that Patrick gave of the overall CP&S segment.
Vladimir Benjamin Bystricky -- Citi -- Analyst
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. I'll hop back in queue.
Jessica Kourakos -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Operator, we'll take one more question.
Operator
Your last question comes from the line of Nicole DeBlase from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Nicole DeBlase -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
Yeah, thanks. Good morning.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning.
Nicole DeBlase -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
So I just want to dig into 4Q organic a little bit more. So you said that thing is actually got a little bit better in June, sequentially. I guess just July corroborate that 3% to 3.5% organic decline, could there be some conservatism baked into that? I'm just having a hard time understanding why things get so much worse in the fourth quarter given the 3Q organic trend and the comment that you made about the quarterly progression?
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. Nicole, I'll make a comment and then Patrick might want to add, as well. As much as we would like to be able to extrapolate out performance through the quarter that we're reporting on and then take a peek at the first -- the first days of the next quarter. We can't -- we can't apply a linear correlation to that. As I mentioned before, June is the strongest quarter, typically we were encouraged as we looked at the development of Q3, but we can't draw conclusions that inform our outlook based on that and looking at their early July performance that helps inform the outlook. It's one of the factors that we take into account as we look at Q4, but we just can't draw a straight line with it.
Nicole DeBlase -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
Okay, got it, Blake. That's helpful, thanks. And then just a clarification question on the investment spending. So Patrick, I know you said up a little bit less than 2% for the full year, just in dollar terms, can you clarify, I think previously you were saying up $50 million to $55 million for the full year. What does that mean in dollar terms versus the prior guidance that it's on a clear apples-to-apples basis?
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
$35 million to $40 million now. It's both down. Okay. Thanks, Nicole.
Operator
There are no other questions, I turn the call back over to the presenters.
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
So just to summarize, the quarter saw a sharp difference in performance between shorter-cycle business and longer-cycle project-oriented business, I'm happy with how the market is embracing the Rockwell offerings that had innovation and new expertise to help our customers be more productive. This is important, regardless of the macro environment.
We also continue to look for ways to be more productive in our own operations by using all of our strengths and directing resources to the initiatives that best accelerate our strategy. That begins with our highly engaged employees and partners, who are committed to their roles in this journey. They bring the connected enterprise to life every day, at our customers and in our own operations, and I thank them all.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]
Duration: 56 minutes
Call participants:
Jessica Kourakos -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Blake Moret -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Patrick Goris -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
John Inch -- Gordon Haskett -- Analyst
Julian Mitchell -- Barclays -- Analyst
Joe Ritchie -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Stephen Tusa -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Jeffrey Sprague -- Vertical Research -- Analyst
Richard Eastman -- Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. -- Analyst
Nigel Coe -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
Robert McCarthy -- Stephens -- Analyst
Deepa Raghavan -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyts
Vladimir Benjamin Bystricky -- Citi -- Analyst
Nicole DeBlase -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
