Operator
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Welcome to today’s ABM Industries Inc. Fourth Quarter 2008 Investor Conference Call. At this time I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Henrik Slipsager.
ABM Industries Incorporated (ABM)
Q4 2008 Earnings Call· Tue, Dec 16, 2008
$40.43
+0.80%
Same-Day
-0.61%
1 Week
+0.22%
1 Month
-8.61%
vs S&P
+3.70%
Operator
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Welcome to today’s ABM Industries Inc. Fourth Quarter 2008 Investor Conference Call. At this time I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Henrik Slipsager.
Henrik Slipsager
Management
I am Henrik Slipsager, President and CEO of ABM. Joining me today are Jim Lusk, Executive VP and CFO, and Sara McConnell, our Senior Vice President and General Counsel. On the call today, I will provide an overview of the 2008 Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year ended October 31st. Jim will discuss the details of our financial results. I’ll conclude our prepared remarks with a summary of the company’s operational achievements for the quarter as well as provide management’s outlook for fiscal ‘09. In addition we are providing a slide presentation to accompany today’s prepared remarks. You can access the presentation now by going to our website at www.ABM.com and under the Investor Relations tab you’ll see the Presentations tab on the left hand side of the page. Today’s presentation will be the first listed.
Sarah McConnell
Management
Referring to slide three and four of the presentation, before we begin, I need to tell you that our presentation today contains predictions, estimates, and other forward looking statements. Our use of the words estimate, expect, and similar expressions are intended to identify these statements. These statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds. While we believe them to be reasonable, these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. Some of the important factors relating to our business are described in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and Annual Reports on Form 10-K that we file with the SEC. During the course of this presentation certain non-GAAP financial information will be presented. A reconciliation of those numbers to GAAP financial measures is available on the company’s website under Investor Relations.
Henrik Slipsager
Management
Before we review our consolidated financial results and operating performance for the fourth quarter and year I’d like to highlight a few of ABM’s accomplishments in fiscal ’08 which we refer to in slide five of the presentation. We are pleased with our performance and the ability to finish the ’08 fiscal year in line with the guidance that we previously communicated. We successfully continue our strategy to strengthen and extend our portfolio of leading facility services through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth. Acquisition of OneSource created an unmatched national footprint and provided the scale to enable us to better capitalize on growth opportunities and minimize the impact of the economic slowdown in certain regions and industries. Despite one of the most historical challenging economic environment we’re doing business we delivered double digit growth in revenue and operating profit demonstrating the strength of our core business and effectiveness of our broad geographic and customer bases. We also prudently managed our operations and working capital and believe we are in a strong competitive position for the 2009 fiscal year. I’ll highlight some of our 2008 results on slide six. For the year we posted 34% increase in revenue to approximately $3.6 billion. OneSource contributed $880 million of revenue for the year and our organic growth exceeded 3%. Adjusted EBITDA for 2008 and measuring with regards to the heart of our operations was $133.4 million a 46% increase from last year. Income from continuing operations grew 4.2% to $52.7 million as it benefited from a decrease self insurance reserves and improved operational leverage. Given the economic conditions we’ve been very carefully managing our resources and expenses. We improved our operating cash flow from continuing operations by $4.7 million for fiscal 2007 and $15.1 million since the third quarter. We continue…
Jim Lusk
Management
As I review our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2008 please keep in mind that the results discussed today exclude the results from our Lighting segment, essentially all the operating assets of which we sold in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 and which are accounted for in discontinued operations. Therefore, unless otherwise noted results discussed today reflect continued operations. In addition, as of the result of the impact of the lighting business net income for fiscal 2008 includes a $7.3 million loss in discontinued operations or $0.15 per diluted share. Turning now to the fourth quarter and fiscal 2008 results, on slide eight you will see that despite a recessionary macro economic backdrop we generated solid performance in the fourth quarter. Revenue for the fourth quarter grew 31% to $905.8 million from $691.4 million in the prior year period. Organic revenues increased 3% year over year. Income from continuing operations was $14.8 million. Diluted share for the fourth quarter 2008 equal to a year ago quarter. Net income for the quarter which includes the loss from discontinued operations was $11.6 million or $0.22 per diluted share compared to $15 million or $0.30 per diluted share a year ago. Our operating profit increased 7% to $25.8 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 from $24.1 million in the same period last year. Our adjusted income from continuing operations before items impact comparability increased 28 to $18.6 million in the fourth quarter fiscal 2008 from $14.5 million in the same period last year as several one time items affecting comparability. Adjusted income from continuing operations excludes expenses of $4.7 million associated with corporate and infrastructure initiatives and the integration of OneSource a $3.9 million IT deferred expense and a benefit of $4.8 million from the reduction…
Henrik Slipsager
Management
I will now briefly review the operational results for the fourth quarter as well as provide our preliminary outlook for fiscal ’09. We are pleased that despite the continued challenging economic and market conditions we delivered double digit growth in both revenue and operating income demonstrating the diversity of our business model. Turning now to slide 11, for the fourth quarter Janitorial revenue increased by $209.3 million or 50.7% to $622.2 million which included $203.7 million of revenue contribution from OneSource. Excluding the impact of our OneSource acquisition Janitorial revenue was up 1%. We continue to experience softness of revenues within the Southeast and Northeast regions where we experience reduction in accounts and revenues from existing accounts. Janitorial operating profits for the quarter increased $11.1 million or 44% to $36.1 million. I’m very pleased with these results given the scope of the OneSource integration and challenging business environment. Our results are a testament to the great team effort by our Janitorial segment not only for the quarter but for the year. Turning to slide 12, Parking revenue increased $2.6 million or 2% to $119 million due primarily to increased services for existing customers. Operating profit for the fourth quarter increased $700,000 or 15% to $5.7 million. The results of our Parking segment reflects the impact of the acquisition of HPSA and our concentration of garages operated through management contracts which generally perform better in a recession. Turning to slide 13, Security revenue for the fourth quarter compared to the comparable period in ’07 increased $3.6 million or 4% to $84.9 million primarily due to the result of new customers and expansion of current customers in the Northwest and Midwest regions. Operating profit for the fourth quarter increased $600,000 or 30% to $2.8 million. During the quarter we continued to monitor…
Operator
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from David Gold – Sidoti David Gold – Sidoti: A couple of questions surrounding Janitorial, first, if we go back a quarter we were seeing some issues there you had tag work and some of the incremental work that you were doing particularly at the financials at that point the view was that maybe had bottomed out. Can you give an update on how that’s progressed?
Henrik Slipsager
Management
I think it has bottomed out. Looking at what happened in the quarter that was a reflection of [inaudible] and also the problems in the Southeast. I think that whole thing has bottomed out for the time being. I can’t tell you what we do business with certain banks and there be consolidation coming up. I don’t know if the impact of that but its not going to be material that’s for sure. David Gold – Sidoti: Sticking with Janitorial, it was a little softer than we had expected it’s the first time in recent memory actually seeing it sequentially down, traditionally its been sequentially flat to up third to fourth. Just curious there if you can give some color on what’s happening, is that a function of less of the incremental work, is it lower office occupancy or are we losing some business from a competitive standpoint.
Henrik Slipsager
Management
I don’t think we’re losing any business from a competitive standpoint. I think there some adjustments that you will see in a market like this where we have done reductions with existing clients which as you can see did not impact the bottom line did have a slight impact on the top line. Its not loss of customers but in some cases we have some savings that we gave to certain customers due to the economic environment. Also I think that this particular quarter I don’t think is representative of what you see going forward. The activity on the sale side is probably pretty compared to what we seen the past pretty good right now. David Gold – Sidoti: So you’re saying we might see a little bit of pick up there?
Henrik Slipsager
Management
I would not expect it to go further down. David Gold – Sidoti: Presumably on a run rate basis we’re up to about $44 million of synergies from OneSource and your initial goal was $45 to $50 million so essentially we’re there. Do you still view the $45 to $50 million as a good range or do you think there’s even further potential.
Henrik Slipsager
Management
It’s getting tougher and tougher to clearly define what is the result of the acquisition and what’s not a result of the acquisition. I’ll put it this way that the areas that we have targeted and defined specifically as part of the synergies has been achieved to a 90%, 95% level as you can see. Will we have opportunities when we finalize our shared services fully to make further cuts? I believe so. Is that associated with the acquisition or not I think that can be discussed. The acquisition is producing exactly what we expect and the other initiatives we have taken on should produce further savings in our overhead. David Gold – Sidoti: Can you walk through a little bit business line by business line where you think you see the most impact from the downturn, what economically scares you the most from a business standpoint?
Henrik Slipsager
Management
Are you talking about the segments? David Gold – Sidoti: Right, by segment.
Henrik Slipsager
Management
I think and believe that you’ve seen the worse on Janitorial and it was, as you know, very heavily hit on the financial segment but pretty sizable. If you look at Engineering I’m very encouraged with the activity we’ve seen in the Engineering group and I believe the growth in Engineering might be even greater than what you’ve seen in the past. I think on Security, based upon activity and not necessarily the economy we see continued growth in that area. Parking I think you’ll see that might be essentially flat going forward. We are very fortunate because we’ve been able to get much more into the management side of contracts versus leasing. Our financial risk is much less than it was in the past. Basically all the results that we just went through, Parking is the result that surprised me the most positively because they’ve been able to manage their expenses achieving growth with pretty flat sales. As I sum up Parking and Janitorial are flat to small growth and Security and Engineering represent greater opportunities in this tough market. David Gold – Sidoti: In any of the segments, particularly Janitorial, would you expect further pricing negotiation given the environment?
Henrik Slipsager
Management
Yes. David Gold – Sidoti: You think the pricing environment gets a little tougher?
Henrik Slipsager
Management
Not necessarily. Pricing negotiations also opens up opportunities. There might be pricing negotiations where we do part of a client and you can include the whole client and get more work associated with it. Pricing negotiations from our point of view is not necessarily a negative because it gives us opportunity to manage and operate the job probably better than anybody else can do it. I don’t think that’s going to have any kind of impact on the margins. It might have a positive impact on the margin percentage and I think its going to have no negative impact on the dollar margin. David Gold – Sidoti: Based on assuming Janitorial and Parking to be flat and Security and Engineering have some growth it sounds like you’d expect as we go into ’09 to see a flat to modestly up year from a revenue perspective on an organic basis.
Henrik Slipsager
Management
Yes, I do expect an up year. Probably not to the extent we’ve seen in the past but we still expect an up year.
Operator
Operator
It appears we have no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. Slipsager for any additional or closing remarks.
Henrik Slipsager
Management
Thank you very much for listening and I would also like use this opportunity to thank our shareholders, our Board and our employees for a great ’08 and looking forward to working with all of you in ’09. Have a happy holiday.
Operator
Operator
That does conclude today’s conference. We want to thank you for your participation and you are now free to disconnect.