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Agilysys, Inc. (AGYS)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, May 14, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Agilysys Fiscal 2014 Fourth Quarter 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 follow at that time. As a reminder today’s call is being recorded. Some statements made on today’s call will be predictive and are intended to be made as forward-looking within the Safe Harbor protections of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act Of 1995. Although the company believes that its forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ materially. Important factors that could cause actually results to differ materially from these in the forward-looking statements are set forth in the company’s report on Form 10-K and 10-Q and news releases files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Jim Dennedy, President and CEO.

Jim Dennedy

Management

Thank you, John, and good afternoon everyone. We appreciate you joining us on the call today to review our fiscal 2014 fourth quarter and full year results. With me this afternoon is our Chief Financial Officer, Janine Seebeck. Before we get started, just a quick reminder that we’ll be discussing some non-GAAP metrics on today’s call, primarily adjusted operating income from continuing operations and adjusted income from continuing operations, which eliminates the effect of restructuring another items that are either non-cash or non-recurring. Reconciliations to GAAP metrics are provided in the financials of the press release issued earlier today. 24 months ago, we implemented a strategy to align our future, to the needs of the hospitality industry. The cornerstones of our strategy focused on emphasizing strong capital discipline while simultaneously prioritizing the continued engineering and development of our solutions to deliver innovative way for our customers to maximize their connections to their guests, grow revenue and operate more efficiently. Over the last two years, we have made consistent progress with our execution on these key principles as we have evolved our product portfolio including our mobility products to better address our customers’ current needs and has similarly evolved our sales efforts and organization to better serve our customers. We've also made consistent progress with the development of our next generation platform. A product set that we believe will demonstrate our clear understanding of how technology solutions can benefit hospitality operators across many areas at their enterprise. I believe what a tremendous advantages Agilysys has possessed is our willingness to involve and listen to our customers and to turn feedback into value added solutions. This key competency will serve us well going forward. In terms of market focus following on the earlier divesture of our Retail Solutions Group, we recently announced…

Janine Seebeck

Management

Thanks Jim. We are pleased with our year-over-year improvements in revenue and adjusted operating income, which reflect the healthy growth in product sales and recurring revenue as well as our continued prudent management of operating expenses. Before I begin, I would like to remind everyone that our fiscal 2014 fourth quarter and full year results along with historical periods presented in our press release and discussed today reflect the classification of the company’s former operations as a discontinued operation following the sale of that business on March 31, 2014 and of the former Retail Solutions Group as a discontinued operation following the sale of that business on July 1, 2013. Our fourth quarter revenue increased 26% year-over-year to $27.8 million from $22.1 million in the prior year period. The increase in fourth quarter revenue was the result of strong growth in product sales to $10.4 million which includes remarketed product revenues associated with the enterprise wide selection of InfoGenesis at Caesars Entertainment that Jim mentioned earlier. In addition included in our product revenue is an approximate 31% increase in the sale of proprietary products. We also saw 11% growth across our support, maintenance and subscription business our recurring revenue, with subscription services contributing a 13% increase over the same quarter a year ago. Moving down the income statement, while we still have peer-leading gross margins, we did see a decrease in gross margins of 730 basis points to 60% in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014 compared to 67% in the prior year quarter. This was expected as we announced during our last quarter call, as we continue to place into service certain capitalized software access associated with recent product releases. Operating expenses, which includes product development, selling and marketing, general and administrative and depreciation expense increased 5% from $18.3…

Operator

Operator

Okay. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Brian Kinstlinger from Sidoti & Company. So Brian, please go ahead. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: Good evening, guys. How are you?

Jim Dennedy

Management

Great. How are you, Brian? Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: Good. Wondering if you could highlight as now you have broken your business out in four segment just going to highlight the growth rates maybe in fiscal '14, which ones maybe you expect a bit stronger in fiscal '15, I assume this year we would see those the growth weighted towards gaining but maybe that’s just one quarter?

Janine Seebeck

Management

Yes, no I think that's fair Brian. When we look at growth, what we saw this year year-over-year, we definitely a bigger growth in gaming and gaming has obviously still been biggest segment, it was about 52% last year, up to 55% this year. So that’s still the biggest, we expect to continue to see gaming to grow, but where we are really helping to see continued growth and expansion is going to be in the RUSH segment or the restaurant…

Jim Dennedy

Management

Restaurant, university, stadium, healthcare.

Janine Seebeck

Management

Yes.

Jim Dennedy

Management

There is a point of strategy Brian. If you evaluate the gaming market it has more of a finite market opportunity in terms of its own industry growth with the amount of participation we experienced today particularly in restaurant, university, less so in stadium, bit more in healthcare. We see more of an opportunity to address market opportunity that we have not yet participated as fully as we would have liked in those other segments. In gaming, I think it’s going to be more round trying to take share from competition offering a better business value proposition for gaming customers to switch to Agilysys provided solutions. There is going to be more new fresh market opportunity in restaurant, universities and healthcare. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: Okay. The stadium is in there too, stadium…

Jim Dennedy

Management

Stadium is in that group, yes we call that group we prefer to it as price RUSH, restaurant, university, stadium and healthcare. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: And then is the market in those right, what I mean to that is, is there a cycle, these are upgrades in this restaurant, stadium segment, is it untapped where there are not very, very old software, just maybe give us a sense for where the markets have right now there?

Jim Dennedy

Management

Well I think you see in that particular segment with all of the components in it whether it’s restaurant, university, stadium and healthcare. The cycle, the refresh cycle is more frequent. You see that’s sort of averaging in a two to three year period. And the hotel and the gaming segments we’ve seen the refresh cycle be sort of more in the three to five year period. So, you see a little bit greater turnover or inventory turns if you will in that restaurant, university, stadium and healthcare. But I also think you see more new starts particularly in restaurants than you would in let’s say gaming and so there is more opportunity for new starts, now those deal sizes are smaller than the gaming certainly but there are more of them. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: And then you haven’t touched it on the hotel resorts crews and the food management services, should we expect growth there to be a little bit slower maybe than the other two?

Jim Dennedy

Management

I think in the core hotel market you will see our growth rate in that particular element contribution to hotel, resorts and crews be slower growing until we introduce our nextgen product. Right now the products that we have in the market whether it’s LMS or V1. On the LMS side address more of the super tanker size property and on the V1 side or Visual One side address more of a diversified offering like the hotel spa, gulf packaging that you might see in some of our Visual One customers. For the core hotel product we have not participated strongly with the property management system there although we think we have a targeted campaign to offer hotelier a much better FMB offering in our InfoGenesis, E-tech and workforce management solution combined than our competition, we are going to lead with that product offering at least in our fiscal ‘15 and you will see us leading more strongly in fiscal ‘16 and beyond with a more combined approach for the property management system in our V.NEXT product that can address the core hotel market more effectively than our other two products. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: And then you in the press release and in your presentation mentioned that fiscal ‘15 growth will be better than the hospitality market. What do you use to gauge, what you expect the hospitality market is going, do you have your own assumptions; is there some kind of source that you are tracking?

Jim Dennedy

Management

Well, as we indicated on previous call we commissioned the study from IHL and Smith Travel Research towards the end of summer in 2013. We specifically asked them to focus on these end segments that we serve. And aggregating those end segments, the growth rate we saw averaging into the future by the study from IHL and STR was in the 5% to 7% range. I think if you look at the earnings releases from our competitors in this industry, you will see that a similar rate of growth for the markets or end markets they address is the similar percentage rate of growth, it’s still in that 5% to 7% range. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: Okay. And that was you said last quarter. And could you maybe talk about the trends in your two new mobile products that you talked about at the Analyst Day, what kind of bookings or revenue maybe they’re producing? I know it’s still little bit early and maybe get feedback and where you expect this contribution might be for this year?

Janine Seebeck

Management

Yes. Sure, so I’ll take that one Brian. So obviously we are still pretty early I think when we are looking at, we’re obviously seeing good traction from a pipeline perspective, revenue itself is still pretty nominal from where we are from a bookings perspective and from a pipe perspective, we are starting to see that fill nicely. The way we are obviously going the market what that is every time we quote IG or go out or go out with it or go out with LMS, we are actually adding those things to the quote to try to drive that through as part of the strategy. So it is a component of how we think we are going to get back cross-selling and drive that strategy through as part of fiscal ‘15. But yes, it’s still too early to really say it’s generating significant impact on the results that we discussed today. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: Okay. And the Caesars product contribution, will that also hit the current quarter we're in, or was that a one-time item that hit that revenue line? Should we expect lumpiness is I guess basically my question for products.

Janine Seebeck

Management

Sure. So, obviously there was a large component of that deal that was related to the hardware there, but that -- so there was some component to that that will not repeat anything about the hardware, but obviously there is an ongoing support and software stream and the implementation costs that are baked into our assumptions for our growth rates for this year. But for purposes of modeling and thinking through it, there was some incremental if you will that hit in Q4. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: And you mentioned some increased investments in fiscal ‘15. Can you highlight maybe one, two, maybe even three of where you are deploying the most capital in terms of your increased investments?

Jim Dennedy

Management

I'll talk about two in particular, sales and marketing and then product engineering. In the sales and marketing, I think in the third quarter earnings call and I believe also in the second quarter earnings call, about yourself and Rob Moses and other investors happened to ask questions about opening net new logo business in our revenue line. And it was a project on which we were working to address expanding greater participation from net new logo business versus things that our current installed base demanded. And so this creation of the role of the business development executive as an additional layer on top of what is already a fairly, a highly effective account executive and major account executive sales force is really the new investment in the sales area. The new investment in the marketing area includes greater talent around the area of product marketing to help make our markets more aware of how specific solutions can address the unique needs in each one of these segments. And one other major addition in the marketing area and that's more around a true SaaS or cloud-based offering. So as you think about the products that we have in market today, most of it is sold as a premise based delivery. InfoGenesis has about 15 years of hosted, point-of-sale delivery, we are I think market leaders in that particularly for product that complexes as InfoGenesis sales for point-of-sale. But as we think about (inaudible) and it's primarily a SaaS based product it is and breaks true cloud architecture. The selling cadence and value proposition to the market is modestly different. And we hired a new marketing talent to the organization with that specific experience so they can contribute to the overall voice to the market. With respect to product engineering, the…

Jim Dennedy

Management

Well, I expect no disruption, but I don’t think that our expectation is going to be fully met. So with the new addition of Michael Buckham-White as the Head of Sales and Marketing it makes a lot of sense to me to unify the sales and marketing initiatives at a level, one level below the CEO and have an executive with experience and having done that lead that effort. We’ve retained both the Head of Sales, Tony Ross and the Head of Marketing, Beth McClure under Michael, but the effort has been unified under his leadership that also enables me to spend more time with customers. Janine and our product engineering team led by Larry on how we can more effectively deploy the balance sheet towards really kind of product roadmap advancement. So you will see probably more of my time spent in corporate development and on the area of more business development that Michael and his team will address. With the addition of this new layer as the business development executive over the top of the major account executives and account executives, we have experienced some turnover in the sales force. But more importantly, what we have added is probably 25% to 30% additional capacity in new positions created and had an overall greater selling capacity in the organization from what we expect greater results in 2015 and beyond. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: When you say capacity you are looking to hire them right now or you’ve actually started...

Jim Dennedy

Management

Yes. Hire right, we have still some and we have still open positions available to show. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: And what’s your total sales headcount right now?

Jim Dennedy

Management

Total sales headcount is…

Janine Seebeck

Management

For product carrying it’s around the 20 range.

Jim Dennedy

Management

Yes, we are looking somewhere -- we were around the mid-teens prior to this initiative. So we are just under 20 and the target is right around mid 20s for total product carrying sales force. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: Great. Last question Jim, you have had a lot of cash you’ve talked a little bit about in the past about potentially looking at acquisitions; are you closer to deploying it, you have not seen anything you really like out there maybe touch on share repurchases? That’s my last one. Thanks.

Jim Dennedy

Management

You got it, Brian. Thank you. Share repurchases is not something that’s currently contemplated by the business. In terms of M&A that typical we don’t comment on M&A it’s generally insufficient for investors to hear that. We have been active; we are extremely choosy. It’s not that we are extremely choosy because we just want to be. We have an experience at Agilysys of having acquired things with the technology that might be more or (inaudible) food service and aligned and that’s taken a substantial amount of investment after acquiring them to integrate them. So when I think about M&A, it’s not just the initial purchase, but it’s also what we call an acquired technology remediation plan to get the acquired technology on to the same platform as we have our current products and then also the investment expense associated with more fully developing them as we move it forward. For that we develop a very robust business plan to reach opportunity we review. It has to have prescribed return on invested capital opportunity that we can recapture not only what we invested, but a respected return on that investment as our investors would expect. So we are pretty disciplined in our approach to M&A and not just going to deploy the capital just to grow size. It’s not just size, it’s the only thing that matters. It’s the return on that investment that matters more to us. Brian Kinstlinger - Sidoti & Company: Thank you.

Jim Dennedy

Management

Yes sir.

Operator

Operator

Okay. Thank you, sir. (Operator Instructions) Okay. At the moment, I show no further questions. I would like to turn it back to your host for any concluding remarks.

Jim Dennedy

Management

Thank you, John. While we believe our fiscal 2014 was a good year for Agilysys outpacing the rate of growth generally reflected in the markets we serve, we are looking forward to delivering greater value in 2015 and beyond. We are excited the progress we are making with the development of our next generation platform and believe our recently introduced [innovations] in our new solutions will help to grow our overall market opportunities. The improving outlook for the overall hospitality industry, our more streamlined business and our success in deploying capital in areas that generate attractive returns, provides a solid foundation to drive future improvements and shareholder value. Though we face tough competition, I had a great privilege to lead the strongest team in our industry. This team has built and is improving our strong solutions portfolio, the team has identified and lead to many complicated and value increasing changes and transformations in our business during the last two years. Our team has clearly demonstrated its ability to not only execute and drive aggressive productivity improving changes, but also to deliver exceptional leadership by retaining the top count we have, while recruiting and integrating additional market leading talent to the organization. Thank you all for your time and participation today. I'm sure you can get a sense for our excitement and optimism about the future and our sense of accomplishment around our past. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues at Agilysys who are responsible for our success and the foundation for our future. I also want to express my thanks to our customers who entrust us with their business and to our partners who value our integrity. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference. You may now disconnect and have a great day.