Earnings Labs

Iron Mountain Incorporated (IRM)

Q4 2008 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 26, 2009

$114.36

+1.55%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+0.81%

1 Week

-3.53%

1 Month

+17.53%

vs S&P

+13.33%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, my name is Vanda and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Iron Mountain fourth quarter 2008 earnings webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any backgrounds noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instruction) Thank you. Mr. Golden, you may begin your conference.

Stephen Golden

Management

Thank you. Good morning everyone and welcome to our 2008 fourth quarter and full year earnings conference call. After my announcement this morning, Bob Brennan will give his state of the company remarks, followed by Brian McKeon, who will deliver the financial review. When Brian is finished, we will open up the phones for Q&A. For those of you here in Boston, we will be presenting at the Robert Baird 2009 Business Solutions Conference at the Four Seasons Hotels later this afternoon. For our custom, we have a user-controlled slide presentation on the Investor Relations page of our website at www.ironmountain.com. Referring now to slide two. Today's earnings call and slide presentation will contain a number of forward-looking statements, most notably our outlook for our 2009 financial performance. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to today's press release or the Safe Harbor language on this slide, and our most recently filed 10-K for a discussion of the major risk factors that could cause our actual results to be materially different from those contemplated in our forward-looking statements. As you know, operating income before D&A or OIBDA, free cash flow before acquisitions and investments and other non-GAAP measures are metrics we speak too frequently, and ones we believe to be important in evaluating our overall financial performance. We provide additional information and the reconciliations of various non-GAAP measures to the appropriate GAAP measures as required by Reg G at the Investor Relations page of our website, as well as in today's press release. With that, I would like to introduce our CEO, Bob Brennan.

Robert Brennan

Management

Thank you, Stephen. Good morning and welcome to our year-end conference call. The format of today's call: I’ll cover our business performance in 2008 as well as the progress we made against our strategy and a few remarks on how I feel about this coming year. Brian will then review details of our financial performance and provide guidance for 2009. And afterwards we will take Q&A both Brian and I. But before I get into 2008, I want to [share] some key messages with you. First and foremost the business at Iron Mountain is doing very well. Our business is performing, the team is doing a good job, the core business itself is particularly strong and continues to strengthen. We are managing well and improving both capability and execution and this is evidenced by the fact that we hit our 2008 targets and we expect to produce solid results in 2009, where we improved our cash flow and balance sheet and advance against our strategy with significant progress across all of our business segments, and I’ll touch up on that in a few minutes. Now we are experiencing some pressures from foreign exchange, paper commodity prices, which drop dramatically in the back half of last year, as well as customers deferring on some purchases with our complementary revenue. Despite those pressures though we expect solid performance in 2009. Now let’s drop back and take a look at 2008. First of all, we had a good Q4. OIBDA is at the high end of the range. We did expect pressures on complementary revenue, which represent about 14% of the total revenues. There were impacts from the completion of two public sector projects as well as lower paper prices and project sales customers did defer in some cases and continued to defer…

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks Bob. Good morning everyone. Q4 was another solid quarter for Iron Mountain, highlighted by healthy internal revenue growth and strong OIBDA gains. Storage revenues, which comprised 55% of our total revenues and are a key financial driver, grew 8% organically in the quarter. Core service revenues representing another 31% of revenues posted 11% internal growth. As expected, the record recent strengthening of the U.S. dollar did lower reported revenue and OIBDA growth in Q4. Similar to Q3, unusually large exchange rate changes also recorded as to recognize charges in other expense in our booked tax provision, which lowered our reported EPS by about $0.20 per share. These factors however don’t alter the fundamental suaveness of our business, which performed well throughout the year. For the full year, we delivered against all of our financial objectives posting 8% internal revenue growth, 13% comparable OIBDA growth and significant improvements in capital efficiency. Today we will review our quarterly results and provide an update on our full year 2008 cash flow performance, capital spending and our current debt position. We will also provide an update perspective on our 2009 guidance. Let’s turn to slide four, which highlights the key messages from today’s review. The first key message you should here today is that we continue to drive solid business performance, reflecting the strength and resiliency of our business model. In Q4 we delivered 9% internal growth in combined core storage and service revenues. We also drove a 11% comparable growth in OIBDA in spite negative foreign exchange impacts and pressures from lower recycled paper pricing. We continue to execute with discipline and leverage strong Q4 performance to deliver against our 2008 financial objectives. Revenues exceeded $3 billion for the first time in our history and we delivered 8% internal revenue growth for…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Ashwin Shirvaikar with Citi. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup: Hi guys. I wanted to ask about pricing on the storage side. Are you seeing any pushback on getting these 32% effective price increases in this environment and to what is that in your internal growth guidance?

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Its in our projections Ashwin I think fundamentally the way that we’re going about during is really very – that our customers recognize that it is a function of investments that we’ve made it really in our value proposition, we’ve been investing aggressively if you go back a few years we talked about the need to invest in security and how we are making those investments and that we wont go to realize value having full investments are in place. It wasn’t a competitive issue right, we were already more secure than in our competition in this market requirement. So we found it very much to the investment that were making we’re really not seeing any material push back because of the marked upon – is very slight majority in individual customer. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup: Okay guided and Bob you mentioned your presence in the healthcare segment in your prepared remarks as this may be too early to do this, but it might still be what – your could either size or qualitatively address the potential impact of healthcare record conversation specifically with the larger. I want to laid out in the Obama.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Well there is a great opportunity there again we have – to business in the last couple of year now have a dedicated focussed, this tremendous amount of opportunity, we have a strategy and placed ago after that we’ll relatively small compared to the market opportunity and as we go forward quarter-in-quarter, we described how we’re advancing that strategy, but there is a lot of business to be had there over the medium plant. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup: Okay thank you more to come I guess very good quarter. Thank you guys.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks Ashwin. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Vance Edelson – Morgan Stanley: Hi thanks a lot. Just back on the 20 or 21 million for facilitating the capital leases, I just want to make sure that’s baked into the ’09 the EBITDA guidance and therefore if we wanted to be -- on an accounting basis with ’08. We’re just lot 20 million of the guidance range right.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

That is accurate as – 8 to 13% growth include in our 3 point – change. Vance Edelson – Morgan Stanley: We won’t have a change, we won’t have million packed on net income or EPS because we have offset and depreciation and interest lines. Got it and sort of bigger picture question on the cross selling progress can you give us a few for how many cost of merge maybe on a percentage basis or taking multiple services how many you are just taking in a one core service and so far. Thanks.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

We continue to make that steady progress on that advance as that the I don’t have that state to breakout for this one with may lot of progress in cross selling in our customers. I will tell you that – that relative to our past we’ve improve relative to our potential at see a tremendous opportunity and improving or go to market effectiveness. Again over a long period of time. Vance Edelson – Morgan Stanley: Okay, great and you mentioned differing some data center CapEx into ’09, when you look forward based on what’s you are planned we accomplish in ’09 with that be the bulk of what’s to plan to expensive within next two to three years in that regard or with the ’09 data center CapEx bigger run rate for 2010, 2011 so far.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I think it’s a where the ladder we’re going to be continuing is growth capital support additional business and I think we are tried to highlight some of the more discrete items that are impact in the ’09 number which are the advancement in rationalizing our – real estate and the incremental investment in the growth opportunities, which is around complaint federal records but I think our underlying growth rate we’re very pleased with the progress and making an improving efficiency and I will look at system are going forward. Vance Edelson – Morgan Stanley: Okay, that helps. Thanks.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andrea Wirth with Robert W. Baird. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird: Good morning.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Good morning. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird: When you could address a little bit what’s you are seeing with your customers in the financial sector and a last analyst say, you have talk about how you actually thought about turmoil in the financial sector would actually could actually being that positive for you could you talk about those customers still growing in lined with your core business are they lagging are they actually growing a little bit faster?

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Our storage remains very solid we are seeing pressure Andrea on discretionary projects – there are some deferrals as it relates to imaging projects and new endeavors by in terms of our underlying business it remains very solid I do believe will be an net beneficiary overtime simply because regulations will prove – risk has to reduced cost has to reduced that is our value proposition. But right now its fairly distractive sector the good news is our the core business Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird: And then just a quick question on fuel could you remind us what fuel is as a percent of your cost and then when you look at it – mentioned commodity cost in total of how about at 2% impact I am assume the vast majority of that’s paper but could your break that down between paper and fuel.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

All right our energy cost as we talk in the past year about 3% of revenues that half of that is related to transportation and half of that’s relates to utilities and our facilities you are correct when we talked about commodity pricing we realized a benefit of this year probably a little sales of 1% of our overall revenue from higher fuel surcharges that’s changed quite a bit and as we look forward we are anticipating lower fuel surcharges next year so that 2% impact number the combination of paper on lower fuel pricing I just want to fuel surcharge pricing do want to highlight that the net impact of changes in energy cost are somewhat neutral for our business in that the fuel surcharges are intend to offset change in transportation energy cost so we net don’t see a significant impact on that front and we would anticipate in some benefits on hopefully in the utility side over the time that will support our gross margin outlook further. The profit impact from fuel changes is somewhat significant for us. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird: Just one final question just what was the overall pricing contribution to revenue this quarter.

Robert Brennan

Management

We don’t break that out for a company what I would say is overall because obviously saw a variety of different price product and services globally. We have highlighted in the past the trends on our records management storage pricing and as we finished this year on o year-over-year basis our run rate is we are up about 3% year-on-year which is where we were hoping to get to we think that's a good level and that is incorporated into the break out look that we have for next year. And we feel very good about our ability to sustain that kind of value proposition. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird: Thank you a nice quarter.

Robert Brennan

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

You next question comes from the line of Kevin Mcveigh with Credit Suisse. Kevin Mcveigh – Credit Suisse: Great thanks.

Robert Brennan

Management

Hi, Kevin. Kevin Mcveigh – Credit Suisse: Hey, how are you? Real nice job. Given the headwind against commodity cost in the fourth quarter you saw real nice margin expansion overall could you kind of just help us understand what's the most incremental draw before?

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

In couple of different factors and the gross margin line Bob talked about this in his comments but we are really driving net driving excellent this year in North American business on a number of fronts we just spoke to some enhancements to our pricing trends productivity initiatives I hope to improve storage margins, the efforts we are putting against transportation improvement or helping with our labor efficiencies and on the gross margin line also all contributors and as the highlighted earlier in the year, we’ve going to our overhang cost early in there are really driven acquisition integration more than anything as well as investments we initiated late in 2007, what we have been executing very discipline approaching as our investments and cost management this year and we saw the benefit that in Q4, with the moderate in growth rate, so safety we’ve drive in business – hard. This business has a lot of potential and we’ve been using this share to get very focused on organic execution and its paying off and we will going to build on that is we are going forward. Kevin Mcveigh – Credit Suisse : Great and then the CapEx shift from the incremental data center moves how much was add in ’08 into ’09.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

It’s a roughly $10 million.

Robert Brennan

Management

Okay, we just want to highlight we obviously at – came into the March number that we are report casting few months ago and this want to highlight that is one of the factors going that improvement. Kevin Mcveigh – Credit Suisse : Great thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Steinerman with JP Morgan. Andrew Steinerman – JP Morgan: Hello, gentlemen. I want to talk about the margin expansion that’s implied in 2009 by clipping your revenue growth by 2 point in keep EBITDA growth at 18% to 30% obviously you are catch on some margin expansion here, could you talk about do you think you are seeing more in the gross margin line SG&A leverage what did you confidence in the ability to product margin expansion here.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, and Andrew, just want to build on in earlier question from events keep in mind that about three points on the gain as related to the that vehicle lease change, if you peal that are out of our internal growth is 5 to 7, we’re employed constant dollar at the growth is 5 to 10 so its moderate margin improvement, we have couple of different dynamics going on. We expect to sustain solid gross margin as we work into next year there will be some impact obviously related to the changes in recycle paper pricing that sets something we can address overtime but in this short-term that’s the high margin revenue that will decline and so that is offsetting that a bit and so that we are looking to sustain our gross margins and we think that will the source of our margin improvement as we move forward on the SG&A [prompt] we are looking to sustain our revenue roughly in lined with our cost growth roughly in lined with our revenue growth and the higher balanced approach there and I think there was a key point Bob was forcing in his comments is that were driving efficiencies but we are also looking to invest in the future businesses well and you got in the balance later.

Robert Brennan

Management

And the strategy is the same strategy Andrew that will in place for you are trying I mean we are repetitive with focussing on growth returns and our three phases but it – dividends when you stayed focussed on that same strategy for long time.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

And we feel pretty good about our – put forth numbers that imply a profit add are above the rate of revenue despite some of these [Christopher] highlighting the – recycle paper we are very committed to improve the underlying returns in business. Andrew Steinerman – JP Morgan: Right did you have change anything over the last couple of months to achieve that particularly I am talking about the gross margin line or is this what you had been planning ever since kind of late 2008.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

I would say it reflects plans that we’ve had in place since 2007 that we we’ve – against we’ve been last few month clearly like any company we’ve been revisiting our investment plans to make sure that we are lined with our growth outlook and we are getting tighter about that but I think we’re…

Robert Brennan

Management

We already had this upon in our operating rhythm, but we become more and more and more discipline in light of the conditions that we see in the pressure on the complementary revenue sure. Andrew Steinerman – JP Morgan: That’s very responsible. Thank you so much.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks Andrew. Andrew Steinerman – JP Morgan: Welcome.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Edward Atorino with Benchmark. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Talked about your acquisition thoughts – down and not really looking – lot of stuff if we do not make acquisitions would free cash flow go up even with the little jump in CapEx and is that CapEx number – as it looks like did like last year.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Yes I am afraid one of use of – down is really describing our customer is related to new purchases where no way hunger down, I want to impress upon the listeners that we’re very aggressive in intend on expanding our business and our growth – that will include some acquisitions especially as we see some shakeout environment where we expect prices to become cheaper. We do not expect, we opposed the acquisitions today is in our core North American business in our core business in general, most of all, we do internationally is true joint ventures and that really we just focussed on where there’re opportunities – add to our platform from DMS prospective in a digital prospective. We don’t still the need to move right now, we think the market coming to us. We will be careful about watching our targets and to look at our past from a DMS or from a digital prospective. We generally have existing partnership with people that we are look expander deepened our partnership so we generally telegraphed these things. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: You have Stratify, which is sort of one note play in the eDiscovery business is that an area that's right to be and we rolled up in the sense but sort of expand I guess in that position we will expand laterally I suppose in the eDiscovery business?

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

I think you are right at there are opportunities laterally we do see what we with Stratify is eDiscovery services as a platform radar and that's why its gotten the attention of PriceWaterHouseCoopers and Navigant. But you are correct I think that there is lateral expansion opportunities but some of that is organic right we have a tremendous amount of intellectual property in that business so some of our expansion that will have in organically but we expect to shake out in that business further it's a smaller fragmented market. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Yes.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

And, I would expect prices to run away on us. Anything that will come to us. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: And on the CapEx question.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

I am sorry. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: In CapEx it's looks a jumping up in '09 over '08 is it kind to go back to the 13% of revenues or is it likely the sort of trend down going forward.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Well I think I will step back and say that '09 and midpoint of our guidance is basically 12.5% Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Okay

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

CapEx excluding real estate is a percentage of sales, which is…. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Lower yeah.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

We actually exceeded our targets in driving capital efficiency in '08 and so I would there are some increase that are desecrate to kind of growth in rationalization we are making but we combined we are $110 million to lower to combine '08 and '09 capital we shared in the investor day so we are driving lot of capital efficiency right now. Edward Atorino – Benchmark: Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. You last question comes from the line of Franco Turrinelli with William Blair and company. Franco Turrinelli – William Blair: Can you hear me?

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Franco.

Robert Brennan

Management

Hi, Franco. Franco Turrinelli – William Blair: Although when I going to back to one observation which is in the North American, not makes the businesses performing its seems exceptionally well, but it seem like we’ve so being talking about Europe on international business can you set for some time and I guess I would like to go back over some of things your do a specially to improve the performance to the international business in when we’ve might see some improvement back.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

Sure, so it does take time we haven’t talking about some time just you give us some perspective on it we’ve essentially upgraded the entire management team across a European business in the last two years putting infrastructure related to reporting systems as well as just some of the productivity initiatives that – we’ve actually been doing for years in North America and we are seeing in the gains from that we’ve been putting I mean in place over the last couple years. And because its really three different groups of businesses, right you’ve got joint venture partners you’ve got small acquisitions in countries we were still subscale, when you’ve got the large businesses in Australia an UK and so we think about in three different [crosstrees]. And how we manage those, I feel very good that that were positioned in UK and Australia, you will start to see the return improvements it takes longer with our joint ventures and out smaller country positions just you guesses the scale issues but, we do have a long view on this front and we believe that we can peruse North American life return over time but it is the – that is taking a little longer than – then we thought of two years ago, but I absolutely confident that we got there. Franco Turrinelli – William Blair: Just on goal, it is an fundamental differences that we should be aware of – growth backwards from exciting customers which is although see big part of the U.S. business is growth or pricing or rather things that we should understand from growth point of view.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

From a pricing perspective I think some of the dynamics of the same that we have significant competitive advantage, and where we have both that presence in this large market by U.K. and Australia we have that competitive advantage, it doesn’t exist to the same extend where we have very small presence. The other opportunity that exist internationally is that there – but for a helping customers with what inside the box which is have a describe our document management solutions business this will be a bigger part of our growth going forward and we feel that that it is very much build are be in the – information and that there is the our value proposition resin it on worldwide basis.

Robert Brennan

Management

Its part in do way a very small presence.

Brian McKeon

Chief Financial Officer

So, scaling those areas is critical to us. In general I think you can see as peruse over time, the kind of returns that you are start to see in the North America. Franco Turrinelli – William Blair: Thanks Bob.

Robert Brennan

Management

Thanks Franco. Well, thank you all for your time and attention today we’re started to ran a few minutes over I may hope you have good rest of today.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's Iron Mountain’s fourth quarter 2009 earnings webcast. You may now disconnect.