Earnings Labs

ADC Therapeutics S.A. (ADCT)

Q4 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Dec 10, 2008

$3.74

-0.66%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is [Brittany] and I will be your conference operator today. (Operator Instructions) [Mr. Switz], you may begin the conference.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

Thank you. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us on the call. Bob Switz, ADC's Chairman, President and CEO, and Jim Mathews, ADC's CFO, are with me today. Before we get started, I need to caution you that today's conference call contains forward-looking statements and that future events and results could differ materially from the forward-looking statements made today. Actual results may be affected by many important factors, including risks and uncertainties identified in our earnings release and in the risk factors included in Item 1(a) of ADC's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2007 and as may be updated in Item 1(a) of ADC's subsequent reports on Form 10-Q or other reports filed with the SEC. This earnings release can be accessed at the Investor Relations section of ADC's website at www.ADC.com/Investor. Also, we have shortened our earnings release and placed links to our Form 8-K, where you can review the financial statements. ADC's comments will be on a continuing operations and GAAP basis. As previously announced, our Professional Services business in EMEA is classified as discontinued operations. The results referenced on this call and any guidance is exclusive of the EMEA Professional Services business unit. 2008 EMEA Professional Services revenue was $37 million and its operating income was neutral. Bob will provide an update on ADC's business developments and highlights. He will then turn the call over to Jim, who will cover the financial results and provide forward-looking financial model guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2009. I will now turn the call over to ADC's Chairman and CEO, Bob Switz. Bob?

Robert E. Switz

Management

Thank you, [John], and good afternoon to everyone on the call. I'd first like to begin today by thanking all of the ADC employees worldwide for their hard work and for delivering a very good set of results in fiscal year 2008. ADC experienced a solid year, despite facing substantial headwinds from an increasingly challenging global macroeconomic environment. In fact, there were many highlights across our business in FY '08 that give us confidence that we are entering 2009 in a very good position to face the uncertainties that might lie ahead. Given the current economy, perhaps our most significant accomplishment in 2008 was our ability to further strengthen the company's balance sheet. We are beginning the new fiscal year with about $631 million in cash. Cash flow provided by operating activities from continuing operations provided $174 million in fiscal '08. Our cash position enabled us to execute and just last week complete our $150 million share repurchase program. This program is important as it reflects our ongoing confidence in the long-term potential of ADC's business. We will stay very focused on maintaining a strong balance sheet in 2009 and will continue to monitor the external environment very closely. At the same time, we believe that our strong financial position, coupled with our leading market positions in fiber-based and wireless communications networks and enhanced global presence, will give us a competitive advantage and makes ADC a valued company to work with, particularly in these uncertain times. During 2008 we had many other accomplishments that reflect ADC's solid position in the telecommunications marketplace. We grew our revenue to $1.46 billion, a 14% increase over 2007. We also had a very good year internationally, with revenue outside of the United States of $594 million, representing more than 40% of our overall sales.…

James G. Mathews

Management

Thank you, Bob. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to begin with an overview of our fourth quarter operating results, focusing first on the more significant items. In advance of that, however, as John stated in the introduction to the call, we have filed our financial statements in an 8-K on a link to our press release, and there was, as John mentioned earlier, $37 million in our APS, that is, our Services business in EMEA which is now in discontinued operations. So for quarterly comparables, I'm just going to give the quarterly revenue and OI effect so that those on the call who are wanting to track this against prior quarter results will have the ability to do that. So throughout the year, APS EMEA in quarter one generated $9 million of revenue, in quarter two, $10 million of revenue; in quarter three, $9 million of revenue, and in quarter four, $9 million of revenue. That's $9, $10, $9 and $9 throughout the year. The operating income impact of our APS EMEA business was immaterial. Now I'll move through the fourth quarter results specifically and, again, excluding the APS EMEA business. Our fourth quarter sales of $352 million grew 10% year-over-year and were down 8% from the third quarter of 2008. This 2008 fourth quarter sequential decline compares to a 2007 decline of 4%. Excluding sales from the LGC Wireless and Century Man acquisitions, fourth quarter 2008 sales were flat on a year-over-year basis. Adjusted gross margins were 31.5%, which I will expand upon later. This compared to adjusted margins of 34.2% in the third quarter and 35.4% in last year's fourth quarter. GAAP diluted earnings per share was a loss of $0.39 in the quarter, but this included $0.58 per share of charges that I will detail below. Total…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Scott Coleman - Morgan Stanley.

Scott Coleman

Analyst

First, maybe a housekeeping question. I haven't been able to find the revenue breakdown by product category like you provided in the past. Are you stopping providing that or am I just not looking in the right place?

James G. Mathews

Management

We are not providing that in the release.

Scott Coleman

Analyst

Will you provide it in your filings?

James G. Mathews

Management

In our 10-K filing?

Scott Coleman

Analyst

Yes, or 10-Q?

James G. Mathews

Management

Yes.

Scott Coleman

Analyst

Okay. That is, I think, an important element to understand what's going on in end demand. I know I speak for a lot of the folks on this call and your investors that I think it's valuable information to have at the time of the release.

James G. Mathews

Management

Okay.

Scott Coleman

Analyst

Maybe moving on to my question, Bob, if I go back to 2005, you guys had a very challenging fiscal Q1, down 30% quarter-over-quarter. But also at that time was the very early stages of FTTX rollouts. I note that both in your press release and on the call you talked about a significant number of trials under way for FTTX, and I'm wondering - I think everybody gets that the macroeconomic is very different, but could you give us an idea of what you're seeing in the carrier landscape in terms of these FTTX trials? When do you think they might turn into revenue? Could they be the same kind of materiality that we've seen over the last three or four years from ADC?

Robert E. Switz

Management

Yes. You know what? It's a great question, and there are many spread around different geographies in the world. They're all on different time tracks; they're all of different size and scope and scale. And I guess my view is consistent with what I said several years ago in that I believe the international marketplace would start to come on about the time that the U.S. market would peak, and I think that's in general playing out. I would not anticipate in 2009 any meaningful revenue coming out of these trials. I would expect that we would start to see awards during 2009. I think some of these will go from trials to RFPs and awards, which should start the revenue streams in 2010. How do they stack up in order of magnitude against the U.S.? Hard to tell at this point in time, but they could be quite meaningful. But we're not going to see, I don't think, we're not going to see one carrier that resembles Verizon, okay? But I do think you're going to see a number of very sizeable awards or programs, and I think it really will depend in our case how many do we prevail in. That's going to determine what kind of a boost we get to the FTTP business over time. But we're highly engaged. We're involved in many. There is one that's in [RST] now, and it's in a highly competitive price-sensitive market with a highly price-sensitive customer, so we're not sure exactly how that will play out. We do expect to win some portion of that, so that could be one that we potentially announce in 2009. But I think you ought to think about these international opportunities as more in some cases progressing to larger and more serious trials in some cases to progressing to awards in others that will begin to hit pay dirt mostly in the 2010 timeframe and beyond.

Scott Coleman

Analyst

And if I could ask one follow up, are there deals or RFPs, maybe this one, that the pricing is so aggressive that you would consider walking away from to preserve margins?

Robert E. Switz

Management

The answer to that is clearly yes, okay? We're doing a couple of things, so let me comment on that. We are developing product for highly sensitive markets in our Century Man facility in China, so we have a portfolio that is geared to address some of the competitive needs of these price-sensitive markets. So it's not exactly the same product you're going to see in a Verizon network, but it would be comparable to some of the competition we might face in price-sensitive geographies. The portfolio is not as yet as extensive as the one we have here in the U.S., but at least we have a start and if some of these awards indeed begin to take place out in 2010 and so forth, the portfolio conceivably could be expanded by then and put us on equal footing. But the answer is yes, we will walk from business that we're not going to make a reasonable return off of. But we're trying to get ourself in a position so that we could accept lower pricing on some of these and still make a respectable gross margin.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Lawrence Harris - C. L. King.

Lawrence Harris

Analyst

The revenue guidance obviously for the first quarter is down year-over-year. If you were to just to look at the various - excluding the acquisition - if you were to look at the various product categories such as copper connectivity or fiber connectivity or network solutions, is there one area where you're seeing greater impact and other areas where there's probably less of an impact on a year-over-year basis?

Robert E. Switz

Management

I'll answer that maybe a little bit differently and maybe not as granular as that, and if Jim wants to provide some more color around it, I'll let him. To address our first quarter guidance, I think what we're doing is being very careful just given the lack of clarity and what I think will be somewhat delayed decision-making on the part of our customers around their budgets and spend for 2009. You know, we've gone through this year with certain customers not having recovered from prior years due to M&A considerations. We've all heard the rumors in terms of what AT&T may or may not do, Verizon, and so on and so forth. You know, AT&T this year, to the best of my knowledge, has virtually overspent their budget and that has been spent, so the balance of the year, I think, obviously, the calendar year, is probably going to be light from AT&T. They have a lot things they're considering in terms of their capital spending considerations. So I think from our standpoint one of the things that we're trying to account for is what we do believe will be a slower start to the fiscal year due to macroeconomic uncertainties, okay? So we're trying to account for that. Now, getting specific around product areas, we do think copper in the U.S. and FTTP in the U.S. will probably be down a little bit, and potentially, you know, our in building could be down in the first calendar quarter. So those are the areas that right now we think may be soft, but in general I don't think they skew it dramatically. We had a project last year in Dubai that was pretty significant on a quarter-over-quarter basis, something in the neighborhood of $10 million in one project,…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) There are no further questions at this time.

Scott Coleman

Analyst

Okay. Well, thank you very much for participating on the call and at this point we're going to end the call.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.