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Amdocs Limited (DOX)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 11, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Amdocs Management Limited Q4 2015 Earnings 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, this conference is being recorded. I'd like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Matt Smith, Head of Investor Relations. Sir, please begin.

Matthew Smith - Corporate Secretary and Head of Investor Relations, Amdocs Inc.

Management

Thank you, Vince. Before we begin, I would like to point out that during this call, we will discuss certain financial information that is not prepared in accordance with GAAP. The company's management uses this financial information in its internal analysis in order to exclude the effects of acquisitions and other significant items that may have a disproportionate effect in a particular period. Accordingly, management believes that isolating the effects of such events enables management and investors to consistently analyze the critical components and results of operations of the company's business and to have a more meaningful comparison to prior periods. For more information regarding our use of non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations of these measures, we refer you to today's earnings release, which will also be furnished with the SEC on Form 6-K. Also, this call includes information that constitutes forward-looking statements. Although, we believe the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that our expectations will be obtained or that any deviations will not be material. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ from those anticipated. These risks include but are not limited to the effects of general economic conditions, and such other risks as discussed in our earnings release today and at greater length in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2014, filed on December 8, 2014, our Form 6-K furnished with for the first quarter of fiscal 2015 on February 9, 2015, our Form 6-K furnished for the second fiscal quarter of 2015 on May 11, 2015, and for the third fiscal quarter of 2015 on August 10, 2015. Amdocs may elect to…

Tamar Rapaport-Dagim - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thank you, Eli. Fourth fiscal quarter revenue of $927 million was within our guidance range of $915 million to $955 million and included a negative impact from foreign currency fluctuations of approximately $9 million relative to the third fiscal quarter of 2015. Our fourth quarter guidance range has included a minimum sequential impact from foreign currency fluctuations. The revenue performance was therefore slightly above the midpoint of our expectations after adjusting for the foreign currency fluctuations. We remind you that the foreign currency hedging program is designed to protect our profitability and free cash flow generation rather than revenue, and we are pleased that this approach has proven effective through the volatile currency markets of fiscal 2015. As expected, our fourth fiscal quarter non-GAAP operating margin was 16.9%, a decrease of 20 basis points compared to the third fiscal quarter of 2015 and towards the high end of our long-term target range of 16.2% to 17.2%. Below the operating line, non-GAAP net interest and other expense was $1.4 million in Q4. For forward looking purposes, we continue to expect the non-GAAP net interest and other expense in the range of a few million dollars quarterly due to foreign-currency fluctuations. Diluted non-GAAP EPS was $0.84 in Q4 compared to a guidance range of $0.79 to $0.85. As anticipated, our non-GAAP effective tax rate was above the high end of our target range of 13% to 15% in Q4, but within our expected annual range for the full year of 2015. Diluted non-GAAP EPS excludes $30 million of non-recurring restructuring charges associated with acquisition of the Comverse BSS assets. Free cash flow was strong at $180 million in Q4. This was comprised of cash flow from operations of approximately $207 million and $27 million in net capital expenditures and other. Let me…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question is from Ashwin Shirvaikar of Citi. Your line is open.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you. Hi, Eli. Hi, Tamar. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: Hi, Ashwin.

Tamar Rapaport-Dagim - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Ashwin.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

My question is with regards to telcos and how they're thinking about their own strategic positioning nowadays, we're seeing a lot of telcos clearly spend on initiatives outside the purview of their core communications market, whether it's in mobile money or Internet-of-Things or in the media market with regards to distribution and such. And how does your product meet the change and what investments do you need to make in order to go after these opportunities? I know you already have in mobile money, for example, but what needs to happen here to actually tap that opportunity? Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: So, Ashwin, the answer is that I mentioned several times that we usually have to have a crystal ball of 1.5 years to 2 years down the road horizon, and up until now, especially in recent years, we did a good job in predicting where the market is going. And as such, we keep on investing in these type of initiatives, but I believe that we are well positioned today into the needs of the carriers, including the initiatives I just mentioned. You know that we did an acquisition and accelerated R&D in the mobile financial services. We see it mainly as an emerging markets new business for carriers in Southeast Asia, in Brazil, in Ecuador, and other places like this. But obviously, it also expands to countries like America, if you're talking about corridors of money between Mexico and the U.S. or Turkey and Germany and Philippines and everywhere in the world, and so on and so on, and so it's another component of mobile money. We're also talking about more and more sophisticated type of top box (24:26), which is a way to transfer money as well. So that's all under…

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Got it. So it sounds like ongoing investment, nothing that would change in the near term to be material acceleration or anything like that. And so the second question, unrelated, is it was not clear – maybe I just missed it, the Comverse assumption that you're making with regards to next year's outlook? Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: So what we tried to say basically that we knew that when we were buying Comverse, Comverse repeatedly in the last many quarters actually repeated a trend of reduction of revenue. So we knew that we're actually getting a business that lost momentum. So what we're trying to say is that we are not magicians. We cannot turn around and stabilize the revenue and then grow it over a quarter or two. So what we are saying is that we see good stabilization process with existing customers and we provide them additional services and better capability to run the business, maintaining their business, but at the same time, we're building pipeline. So I would expect in the next following quarters to start announcing maybe new activities around Comverse assets, which will give us the feeling that we are doing the right things in terms of generating new businesses. We're just trying to depict the timing of it and so on and so forth, but the direction should be there. So we're assuming current revenue size for a couple of quarters and then increase of this business as we generate new pipeline around Comverse.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Understood. Got it. Thank you. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: By the way, Ashwin, the strategy that we're taking there is that we are developing enough openings, let's put it this way, or enough connectors within the Kenan assets, the Comverse assets in such a way that we can leverage the CES component, such as our world-leading product catalogue, customer management, e-commerce, ordering, and you name it to existing Comverse customers. So it doesn't have to be necessarily a full transformation flowing away something, it could be gradual as well, which is a very beautiful strategy and I think that we get a lot of credit for that from the current existing Comverse customers.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

I understand, it's a policy of surrounding their product with a lot – because they're not a full-fledged product, so surrounding that with a lot of the other modules that you have. That makes sense. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: Exactly. And we would not exclude options, of course, to transform everything, but it's not the mandatory or the only way to do it, yes exactly.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Yeah, great. Thank you. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from S.K. Prasad Borra of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

S.K. Prasad Borra - Goldman Sachs International

Analyst

Thanks for taking my question. Eli, if you could probably just elaborate on the revenue guidance for FY 2016, seems like a bit convoluted. Is that largely driven by your expectations around AT&T and the certainty of the revenue stream over the next few quarters, or is it largely related to the recent Bell Canada deal, which you have signed? Was there a big contract renegotiation around it, because you're signing it ahead of the normal cycle? So just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: So, maybe Tamar will add some color later on, on the Bell Canada, but let's start from the end. The Bell Canada deal is something that we're very proud of because I think it's a win-win. It's an extension, but also expansion into different buying centers and new projects in Bell, and it's a good demonstration of a good renewal and extension of our relation with Bell Canada. It has nothing to do with the way we project revenues in 2016. Look, when we usually project revenues as bottom-up, we go account by account, activity by activity, probability of sales in terms of it and we build it up. But and there is a lot of moving parts underneath these things. And – but we don't want to bother you with all the small things. If you ask me the two major things that shape the slower beginning and accelerated growth in the second half are AT&T discretionary expenses and the Comverse build-up of the pipeline. Two different things happen to be more or less in the same timing. The Comverse I mentioned already, it was a reduction of revenue for quite some time and we're stabilizing it now, and we're building the pipeline,…

S.K. Prasad Borra - Goldman Sachs International

Analyst

Thanks. Eli. Probably just to follow up on your comments on Comverse. Could you specify – or could you just probably elaborate on the point around the expectations. Is it now ahead of your expectations or is it broadly in line what you are expecting with? And beyond Comverse, on the M&A pipeline, does it look still rich; are you comfortable with the valuations out there and still M&A being a priority going forward? Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: So for the first question, I think we're about where we thought we will be, maybe slightly better in terms of the response of the customer, the dialogue that we have with them. We're finding a lot of serious customers that need a lot of help, which can be translated eventually to revenue and growth and so on and so forth. And so the same goes with the people, the engineers and so on and so forth. I think that we are at where we thought we will be at this stage, maybe slightly ahead of it, but it's marginal. So, let's call it par. In terms of the M&A pipeline, our pipeline is very rich. In terms of technology, consolidation, diversification, getting into new areas, yeah, we believe that M&A will be important for us in 2016 definitely. As we demonstrated when we don't have the right target or when we negotiate better price, which had been the case in twice the last two or three years, then we can afford to accelerate buyback and dividends, stuff like this. And it will be in terms of timing, it will be more active on M&A, it could be that it will slow down a bit, the buyback. But this was actually the 50%-50% thesis from day one. I'm pleased that it's working. I think that we are showing that we are disciplined, in other words, when we can, we accelerate buyback, we don't have any – we don't need to feel the pressure or something, we just do it. And on the other hand, if 2016 and 2017 for sake of discussion will be more acquisitive, then maybe we'll slow down a little bit the buyback, but that was our message all along and the pipeline is rich, we're a good company and we're in good position. So, companies come to us and they want to be part of us.

Tamar Rapaport-Dagim - Chief Financial Officer

Management

S.K., just to clarify, the guidance we've given for fiscal 2016 does not factor in any new M&A that may come along.

S.K. Prasad Borra - Goldman Sachs International

Analyst

Okay. That's great. Thanks for taking my questions. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: Thank you, S.K.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Mark Sue of RBC Capital. Your line is open.

Mark Sue - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Thank you. If I look at Comverse as a contributing factor and I look at the new growth areas of mobile financial services, NFV, big data analytics, is there a way to quantify how big these things would be over the longer-term. For example, as a percentage of revenue when they might reach 10% in the future? Just trying to see how the ramp might be, considering we're still in the very early days, but you do have very good examples of customers such as Telefonica that are starting to percolate, so we're just trying to see the trajectory there please? Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: So, Mark, it's a very good question. I'll try to give you an answer and I'm not sure it will be full answer. Look, the Comverse deal we knew from day one were about – all about customer – and reaching the customer list and the customer presence, and it was not about technology, it was not about – it was accelerating partial or full transformation in the market by the fact that we own the legacy serial and the future. And if we will do a good job, we will see maybe a couple of new customers moving to new technologies every year, every three quarters, and that will be a proof point that we are doing the right things on the Comverse deal. It's all around the classical revenue management enhanced by customer management and so on and so forth. When you're talking about the NFS and BDA and NFV, these are completely new topics. In BDA, we see already tens of millions of dollars coming in generally, so it went from zero maybe a year ago to few tens of millions of dollars already. So this…

Mark Sue - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

That's helpful, Eli. And then if we just look at the snapshot of your customers, the service providers who are going through quite a bit of change, pricing, churn, some are even going through transformative M&A and asset sales. In your discussions in terms of what their core competencies are, do you feel that people are – service provider customers are now more inclined to use solutions such as Amdocs or still kind of debating the benefits about sourcing their network? It is a segment that's changing rapidly and I feel that we're at a tipping point in the industry. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: So, it's a good question, again. I don't think that it's – I can tell you there is a trend or there is a typical answer because we work with different carriers all around the world and they have very different opinions about this question. Some of them already maturing to this and some of them are really trying new ideas how to outsource some of their operations and so on and so forth. I don't think there is one answer to that and I think it's a bit too early to talk about it as a trend. The one thing I can mention is not on the network aspect, but everybody is now talking about digitizing their customer management. That is to say there is a huge trend to push the traffic from the high-end, high-cost call centers, CSRs, and bump up to the self service, including commerce, e-commerce and telecom is very complex, very complex. So, all this care and commerce is going through a major transformation under the code name digitizing the customer management. These are the trends that we see all around. We're well positioned for that, because we made all these investments a year ago, year and a half ago. Our – the latest component, which is our e-commerce is already six months in the market and we have some good wins. The one that we mentioned actually is SingTel of this consolidation of their, what they call Project Spring. But it's their consolidation of the customer, self-service customer management, digital customer management, including commerce is something that we are now going to do for them. So these are trends we see already. The other side of digitization is actually the network digitization, which is the NFV, network function virtualization. And the business model that would come along with it is really hard to call it a trend yet.

Mark Sue - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Understood. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: I hope that I gave you some color that will help you understand the dynamics.

Mark Sue - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Yes, the framework is helpful. Thank you.

Mark Sue - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Thank you very much, Mark.

Operator

Operator

Thanks. Your next question is from Tom Roderick of Stifel. Your line is open. Tom M. Roderick - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Hi, guys good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Eli, I wanted to ask you a little bit particularly on the rest of world's region for you, ROW was I think a new record and 27% growth, so really strong performance there. A lot in the news lately, particularly revolving around emerging markets, so what are you seeing out there in real-time. Any evidence that that segment is slowing down for you, if I look at some of the new wins, particularly SingTel, it doesn't necessarily imply that. But kind of curious what you're seeing on the ground and how we ought to think about the construct of the ROW segment as you put that into your guidance for 2016? Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: So, Tom, as a matter of fact we don't see a slowdown and the bottom line is we do not see a slowdown. I don't know that we can really repeat 27% a year, okay. Let's be honest there. And we had lumpiness in this number, it was always double-digit but we had different years. I think that what we're enjoying right now is all this foundation and all this wins that we won more than a year ago, and we go to good execution, and we build the operational centers to support it and so on and so forth. So what we see right now is actually a result of something that we've done in the last year, some time period. As for the future, if you are – if I analyze the pipeline and the richness of the pipeline, it's actually everything. We have full…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Shaul Eyal of Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Shaul Eyal - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thank you. Hi. Good afternoon, Eli and Tamar, Matt as well.

Tamar Rapaport-Dagim - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Shaul. Shaul Eyal - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Eli, you mentioned already 10 use cases with respect to the big data activities. Do you think maybe there is room down the road to partner with some of the leaders also in the big data space? Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: So, first of all, I mentioned eight or nine and we count them one by one, so I don't want to round it to 10. We'll get to 10. We'll get to 20, too, but I'm an engineer, so we have to be accurate. To your – but that I'm teasing you, but in terms of the partnership, look, it's an ecosystem. We are partnering in some cases already. So all the generic tools of the data leg, the Hadoop database, all that, we work with IBM, with EMC. We work with already with some open source, which was an interesting angle to this space. In terms of data models, we're working with three different universities. We are not trying to develop our own data models. A lot of it is available out there, but the new ones that we need to do, we're actually working with some academia in academic research. So it is an area for collaboration. I am not sure that necessarily it will be with the traditional people that are saying that they invest billions in big data analytics. I actually think that the initial signs at least show that our approach is much more practical. We spend not a lot of money, very, very tailored, very targeted to specific things that we understand better than anyone else. Don't forget it, all start with data and trends of data. We understand the data elements and how to look through them, and how to sift through huge amount of data, probably better than anyone else. So, I do not exclude cooperation at all, we are doing some of it already. But I think that the magic powder would come from us in the next used cases as well. Shaul Eyal - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Got it. Tamar, this quarter backlog actually up nicely from a sequential basis, think about $70 million, prior quarters, it was about $20 million, $20 million something on a quarterly basis. Is that driven by some of the recent announcements you guys have made today, those additional press releases?

Tamar Rapaport-Dagim - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yes, definitely. I mean some of this project we announced whether it's the digital project in SingTel to win in Vodafone UK Enterprises, et cetera, et cetera, definitely (56:28) themselves into the next 12-months backlog. Some of the announcements we've had are more about increasing visibility into the longer term like the Bell Canada renewal and Rogers. So, I think we have a good mix of drivers of growth into the announcements we've had today, as well as protecting the long-term and then creating recurring base also for years 2018, 2019, 2020. We want to see the, of course, obviously this continue for the long-term. Shaul Eyal - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Got it. And if I may, just a final one, Eli. Your own thoughts on the Cisco and Ericsson strategic announcement. Do you view it as being done from a direction and point of strength or rather the other way around? Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: I'm not sure I'm the best person to opine on it. A, I'm not objective to start with, but I think it's a very complex deal, okay. It has a lot of – if you ask them how exactly they're going to do it, and mix the Internet and broadband equipment with their wireless and who exactly is going to – but the point mainly, in my opinion it's all about the history not about the future. It's very complex to develop NFV applications, I'm telling you as someone who doing it right now, is one company. You can do it with one of your customers, that's fine too. But two companies that have very different approach to life, if that's about the future, I think it will be even more complex to execute some of it. Whether it comes on a strength or a weakness, I think you better ask this company.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Will Power of Robert Baird. Your line is open. Will V. Power - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Great, thanks for taking the questions. Let me first maybe start on North America. You've provided some good color on AT&T. I wonder if you could give us any thoughts on Sprint, and in particular, because they've made a number of recent public comments about desiring to cut $2 billion in annual costs and they've singled out a number of areas, but including billing and IT. And so I guess could you maybe frame for us how you think about the risk and/or opportunity there as they try to turn around things? Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: So, Will, listen, I think that we have been proving the point that we are part of the solutions of the future of Sprint rather than being their problem, several times in the past and including change of ownership, and the Japanese coming in and believing that they know everything and the Americans understand nothing and through change of a CEO, with a new CEO with new energy coming in, I can tell you that our base business with Sprint is very solid, is very relevant, is very strong and discretionary is always a question. So, in – actually in recent quarters, we had some very important milestones that we delivered to Sprint, which we believe that will help them in their future business, including some sophisticated turbo charging and high-speed turbo charging that they can put to their war right now, their war against the competitors. All kind of self-service applications that would probably come with it in the future, so nothing is guaranteed there, but so far we are…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Sterling Auty of JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Sterling Auty - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Yeah. Thanks. Hi, guys. You talked about the building of the pipeline by Comverse business and assets, but just wanted to ask as I wasn't quite clear, have you seen any churn or any customer losses out of the target list of customers that you brought over through the deal. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: No.

Sterling Auty - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

All right. Great. And then can you help us in terms of – you talked about Bell Canada, but how would you characterize the pricing, scope and size of the deals, the other deals that you announced relative to other transactions that you've experienced over the last year in those regions. So in other words, just looking for more color around some of the pricing and size of deal trends that you saw with these recent round of deals outside of Bell Canada. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: Outside of Bell Canada, in 2015 and if I can think – as far as I think about 2014, we've seen a wide range of size of deals. I mean from typical $20 million, $30 million deals to large deals it could be $40 million, $50 million, all the way to mega deals that could be north of $100 million each. So, the diversity of size of deals varies quite dramatically and we've seen all types. Obviously, Bell Canada because it's five years and it's Bell, it's a big company. It's hundreds of millions of dollars over the five years, but in terms of pricing, look there is – the competitors are very aggressive, I have to tell you because we have such a wonderful win rate, and when you have a wonderful win rate, someone does not have a wonderful win rate. So, and it's against, all of our competitors combined, it's not like against one of them, it's against all of them combined. Of course, it's not 100%, it's not even close to 100%, but it's very high. So, obviously the way to fight it, if you cannot fight on quality and breadth of offerings and services and experience and finger licking type of service that we provide around the world, they fight on price. Usually, we are not – let me put it this way, always we are the most expensive bid out there. But some aggressive scenarios will push the price down for a while; over time it will fix itself. Because we will always, we are very open with our customers what we can do and what we cannot do. So, we have pressure of price always, I mean like I don't think the last year or two year have been different, maybe since specific country and specific deal, it was more aggressive than other. Altogether, it's something that we are fighting all the time.

Sterling Auty - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Got it. Thank you, guys. Eli Gelman - President & Chief Executive Officer-Amdocs Management Limited: Thank you, Sterling.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Smith for any closing comments.

Matthew Smith - Corporate Secretary and Head of Investor Relations, Amdocs Inc.

Management

Thank you very much for joining our call this evening, and for your continued interest in Amdocs. We look forward to hearing from you in the coming days, and if you do have any additional questions, please call the Investor Relations group. Have a great evening. And with that, we'll conclude the call. Thanks.