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ABM Industries Incorporated (ABM)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 9, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ABM Industries First Quarter Fiscal 2016 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Susie Choi, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Susie Choi - Director-Investor Relations, ABM Industries, Inc.

Management

Thank you all for joining us this morning. With us today are Scott Salmirs, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Anthony Scaglione, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We issued our press release yesterday announcing our first quarter fiscal 2016 financial results. A copy of this release can be found on our corporate website. But before we begin, I would like to remind 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 of what the future holds. While we believe them to be reasonable, these statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. These factors are described in a slide that accompanies our presentation. During the course of this call, certain non-GAAP financial information will be presented. A reconciliation of those numbers to GAAP financial measures is available at the end of the presentation and on the company's website under the Investors tab. I would now like to turn the call over to Scott. Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Susie. Good morning and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Before we begin, I want to start by introducing Susie Choi, who just did our introductions for the call, and has joined ABM to lead Investor Relations. Susie has replaced David Farwell who left us at the end of February after more than 13 years of service. I want to commend David for his distinguished career at ABM. By now, I'm sure you all had the chance to review last night's press release discussing our fiscal 2016 first quarter results. We reported a strong quarter and I'm very pleased with…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Andy Wittmann from Robert W. Baird. Andrew John Wittmann - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Hi. Good morning. I guess I wanted to dig a little bit into the top-line trends here. You talked about tag revenue a couple of times on the conference call. Can you just give us maybe what the year-over-year contribution was from the tag delta? Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure, Andy. So, for tag, if you look at it in two components, the big drivers were Janitorial and our Facility Services. On the Janitorial side – and overall, we had about an $8 million increase year-over-year or roughly 12%. On Janitorial, we saw continuous growth and Scott can allude to the specifics, but we saw some continued growth in Janitorial tag. And on the Facility Services, which growth in tag is truly pass-through, so, from a margin perspective, it's not going to have the same impact that it does in Janitorial, but we saw continued growth in tag on the AFS side. Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. And what I would add, Andy, is typically in the first quarter, we see good tag sales because you have the holidays baked into that. But I think also, there's a change in the firm. People understand that there's typically higher margins associated with tag. So, as we focus on our EBITDA margins, we're placing more emphasis on selling through tag. Hope this trend continues, but again, optimistic with what we saw in the first quarter. Andrew John Wittmann - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Yeah, that makes sense. I guess what I'm eventually working to here was about $30 million of…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Joe Box from KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Joe G. Box - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Hey. Good morning, guys. Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Joe G. Box - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Couple of questions for you on the guidance. One, is the WOTC number a true $0.20 number, because I guess I was always under the impression that it was $0.08 per year or $0.16 if it's retroactive. And then two, you guys put out a really helpful adjusted EPS bridge last quarter. Aside from the tax items that you're calling out this quarter, would there be any changes to the buckets that you laid out last quarter to get you to the annual guide of $1.50 to $1.60? Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So, let me answer the WOTC. So, WOTC, as you articulated, there's a cumulative impact and then there's a full year impact. The cumulative impact is the $0.20 that we guided towards. In the quarter, we had two components. One was a catch up of 2015 which added roughly $0.09 to the quarter, and then there's $0.02 related to 2016 WOTC which will continue to accrue for the balance of the year. So, roughly the $0.20 is where we're seeing the guidance from WOTC being updated.

Joe G. Box - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, got it. Thank you. And then on the walk? Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. On the buckets, we don't see any major changes to the drivers. So, we still feel pretty comfortable with what we articulated in terms of the headwinds being insurance and the benefits being 2020 in the operational. So we're still pretty good with those.

Joe G. Box - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, great. And then, Scott, can you maybe just help us understand how you're thinking about revenue growth versus margin preference, especially at this point in the restructuring? I guess if you look back over the last couple of quarters, I thought some of the preference was to call out some lower quality business. Optically, it looks like that really didn't happen this quarter just based on revenue growth and then the margins. Just any color on the near-term strategy to call out business at this point in the restructuring would be helpful. Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, look, we're always trying to strike a balance between growth and margin, right? Our focus and what we're putting out there is margin enhancement as one of the primary drivers of 2020 Vision. But that's part and parcel to revenue growth. And what we're finding is we're just seeing a lot of collaboration in our firm for cross-selling. And I think what we're seeing now, especially when you saw the margin increase, is that message is resonating within the firm. And as that resonates, with it is coming sales growth. So we're really proud we have 3.7% organic revenue growth. And we're looking at our pipeline going forward. We're feeling really good about the balance and how we're handling our forward – really strategic approach towards picking up new business. But I don't think we ever really said 2020 Vision was about how we exit big amounts of business. It's really about how we grow going forward.

Joe G. Box - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Right. Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And let me add a little color to that as well. If you look at our healthcare business which has had – very small component of the business, had some challenges. And if we exited the contract subsequent to Q1 that will improve the comps going forward for that business. So we are still taking a hard look at existing business on a renewal basis to make sure it makes sense. But to Scott's point, this is not about culling revenue for the sake of culling revenue, but where there's opportunity for us to improve the margin, we will. And if it doesn't meet the margin profile on those renewals or there's not a glide path for that margin profile, then we're taking a harder look at that business.

Joe G. Box - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Got it. Appreciate the color there. And then just lastly, could we just take a step back and maybe look at some of the fundamental backdrops for some of your segments? Where are you feeling best about organic growth maybe accelerating versus where do you think fundamentally we could actually see some deceleration? Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. So if you look at the SG&A, we kind of articulated the balance of the last year was BESG was a second half story last year. So first two quarters last year we had some tough comps, but they over delivered in the second half. And that over delivery is translating into a good pipeline and good bookings continuing in the quarter. We expect that for the ongoing quarter. If you do a comparison from Q3, Q4 of last year to what we expect the full year to be, Q3 and Q4 will be more normalized. But overall, we see good growth in our technical services business in particular. Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, I was just going to also add, if you look at Air Serv this quarter 15% plus in organic revenue growth. So I think as we start shaping these industry group focuses or verticals, you're going to see acceleration. We haven't put out exact guidelines yet because we're still going through the process. But really the motivator for 2020 Vision is to get the focus by industry and really accelerate our growth. Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So I think the summary is we don't see any wholesale headwinds in any of our businesses from a growth perspective. Could the growth taper in one and accelerate in the other? Absolutely, but at this point, we feel pretty comfortable for the full year.

Joe G. Box - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Michael Gallo from C.L. King. Michael W. Gallo - C.L. King & Associates, Inc.: Hi. Good morning. Could you speak at all to the margin compression you had at Air Serv in the quarter and more specificity in whether you would expect the business to be back on historical margin trends going forward? Thanks. Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, we've experienced some localized issues in Air Serv and some one-offs. The localized issues were specific to a particular region. And the team there is keenly focusing on an operationalizing and getting back on track. They have a plan for that. So for full-year outlook from an operating profit percentage, we're probably going to be in that 3.3% to 3.4% range. And that's really going to be a number of factors. Last year we had outsized growth from our UK portion of Air Serv. It's going to be normalized. That portion has a much higher EBITDA and operating margin contribution. The U.S. business had good or fantastic top line growth, but they had these one-off items that impacted the quarter. And as I've just mentioned, they have a plan in place to get back on track. So, overall, nothing systemic, but something that we're obviously keenly focused on.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of George Tong from Piper Jaffray. Adrian S. Paz - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Hi. This is Adrian Paz on for George Tong. Can you provide some color around the sequential increase in SG&A cost as a percentage of revenue? And how you see those costs progressing? Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. So, overall, if you think about SG&A, there's a lot of costs related to our items impacting comparability. So it's difficult to look at it in totality given the pluses and minuses quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. The way I would look at SG&A is obviously as part of 2020 some of the savings are going to come out of – or most of the savings are going to come out of the SG&A line that we'll be operating our savings as well as it relates to the organizational design. So the way I would characterize it is the savings that we have both from an SG&A perspective impact from 2020 plus the operating perspective is going to get us to that $10 million to $20 million realized savings. So it's a little bit challenging given the year of transformation and the puts and takes to get to an exact number. But as we move on throughout the year, we'll provide additional clarity. Adrian S. Paz - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Thanks. And on the Vision 2020 cost savings, sounds like you didn't realize any savings this quarter, but can you provide us an update on the progression that you're seeing these savings coming in? Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. So we're right on track with our plan. So many of the actions that…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of David Gold from Sidoti. David J. Gold - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Hi. Good morning. Just two points, if I will. One, can you speak a little bit about the potential that you see from tag revenue from here on out, particularly in the different business lines? I guess we've always understood it to give high incremental margin on the Janitorial side. But I was interested to hear that in some cases with some of the other business lines is a pass-through. So just if you can speak about the potential by business line and also what you see as potential growth there or maybe at peak level? Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. So tag really has an impact on two business lines: Facility Services and Janitorial. On the Facility Services side, it's a pass-through. So from a margin perspective, there's really not a lot of margin uplift – good sales that we can penetrate additionally. And we expect the growth to be in line with historical averages. Janitorial, obviously, the margin profile from tag sales is much higher. And back to Scott's point, we have a Q1 uplift due to the holiday season and the focus from the operational standpoint given the margin focus is going to be driving the tag. So, I think that's going to be continuing to be a focus area. We don't provide annual guidance on tag, but it is a focus area and one we're going to continue to look at going forward. David J. Gold - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Yeah, sure. Okay. And then (35:43) can you give a couple of things, one by way of refresher because I think it's out there, percentage…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Jeff Kessler from Imperial Capital.

Jeffrey Ted Kessler - Imperial Capital LLC

Analyst

Thank you. You've put together the compensation packages for the executives, and you've also put together the cross-selling package. Can you give a real-world scenario of how you're going to go about succeeding and achieving the cross-selling capabilities that you've been talking about now? How is one group of performers going to help the next group of performers in another segment? Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So, let me break that down to two components. So, for this fiscal year, we've aligned compensation to the main drivers that we're looking for, both short-term and long-term, and that's margin growth, revenue growth and safety and risk drivers. As it relates to the cross-selling initiatives, we have programs in place that are more commission-based programs in place, so that's not really the bonus program. And as we move forward into 2017 and 2018, the localized programs which in this current year are enterprise-wide will become much more focused on driving the behaviors and driving the performance at the vertical level. So, you'll see more of the verticalization cross-selling, and I think that's what you're alluding to, as part of next year's compensation plan, not as part of this year compensation plan, because we're not operating in that framework today. Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. And I think the other way you could think about it, in our current format when we're organized by service line, if you have a Janitorial contract, you're motivated to cross-sell some services, but you're motivated on a commission basis. When we move to a vertical-based organization, you're responsible for the customer. You're not just responsible for Janitorial. So, when you're controlling that customer, when you're controlling that P&L, you're much more motivated to bring services in and really have an end-to-end experience for that client. And that's how we're going to be measuring people's performance. So, it's going to be a very different paradigm at ABM in really 2017.

Jeffrey Ted Kessler - Imperial Capital LLC

Analyst

Okay. And that was the crux of the second part of my question is, it's one thing to say it, obviously, and the company has talked about this for many years, but actually doing it, getting a vertical responsibility for someone who has responsibility for this is a total change of customer. Is this going to require a change out of some personnel or have you gotten most of the people onboard who are going to be involved in this process already? Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So, I would look at this in a couple of different ways. First of all, we have a really good group of people that understand customers, understand our services. But as part of any transformation, you bring in talent from the outside. And we are bringing people from the outside. We just brought in a really strong performer, a gentleman named Dave Carpenter who's going to be running our education vertical and has a terrific background in that area. So, it's always good to bring in new talent. But the third leg of this, besides the existing people and bringing in new people, is the training. And as part of 2020 Vision, we have a whole other work stream on training and talent development. And you're going to see new people coming into the organization to fill that area. So, we're really excited about that because we know part of the transformation includes structural change to the organization. But the other piece of it is developing the tools to help acceleration. And if you look at how we've messaged way back to even in Investor Day, we said there are a number of different phases to this transformation. First phase is developing the structure and the organization and putting people into seats. But the second phase that we're going into in April is about creating the tools, creating the business plans, creating everything around accelerating the business once the organization is structured. So, you bring up a great point and that's something that is one of our key work streams.

Jeffrey Ted Kessler - Imperial Capital LLC

Analyst

Okay. One quick follow-up question that is with the advent of the increasing effect of smart grids out there, how does BESG begin to dovetail with some of the more technical grid questions that come up and how can you service that portion of the critical infrastructure to increase your total available market? Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, energy has been one of the huge focuses of the firm over the last two years or three years, and you've seen some of our acquisition in the ABES area. One of our latest acquisitions, CTS, is all about energy and power, working in data centers, working on smart grids. And we have a gentleman on the West Coast named Tom Bowen, who's very focused on the energy sector. So, we see this as a trend that's continuing, and we think our glide path in this area is playing right into where the whole energy movement is heading. So, we're excited about our trajectory in that space.

Jeffrey Ted Kessler - Imperial Capital LLC

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Andy Wittmann from Robert W. Baird. Andrew John Wittmann - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. Thanks for taking my follow up. I guess I wanted to build on the last question, a little bit about the new organization, a new Chief Human Resources Officer, new Head of Education, Head of Procurement, and then this whole idea of Centers of Excellence, Scott, with Commercial Growth and Strategy. Certainly, I think they make sense in terms of what to do for the business. How much incremental cost is there to carry some of this to develop your people and the organization where it needs to be? And is there a risk here at least in the near term as you work on your glide path for margin improvement that this is a step back before it's a step forward? Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So, Andy, we're not breaking this out necessarily separately, but I will tell you that baked into our estimates in organizational savings, includes net investments. So, this isn't just about taking cost out. So, when we talked externally about our cost savings targets, there are always net targets. So, we factored them in. We have timing and cadence for everything, and we're taking it one step at a time. So, this will not be a step back at all. It won't be a step back at all. It's all part of the milestones that we set out for this project. Diego Anthony Scaglione - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And, Andy, if you look at the organizational design, there may be certain areas where we're not going to be filling the positions immediately, because as we build…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And that concludes our question-and-answer session for today. I would like to turn the conference back to company management for any closing comments. Scott Salmirs - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, thanks, everyone, for participating. We appreciate the questions. And as I said, we're encouraged with that start. We still have a long way to go, but we are on the road and we have a highly motivated management team and a highly motivated organization that's excited about where we're heading. So, thank you for the time, and we look forward to messaging back in the second quarter.