Earnings Labs

Iron Mountain Incorporated (IRM)

Q4 2009 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 25, 2010

$114.36

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Taylor and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Iron Mountain Q4 2009 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Thank you. Mr. Golden, you may begin.

Stephen Golden

Management

Thank you and welcome everyone to our 2009 fourth quarter earnings conference call. After my announcement this morning, Brian McKeon will review our financial results, followed by Bob Brennan's CEO remarks. When Bob is finished, we will open up the phones for our Q&A. Following today's earnings call, Brian and I will be presenting at the RW Baird Business Solutions Conference here in Boston. As you may have seen in today's earnings release, we introduced two new metrics, adjusted OIBDA and adjusted EPS as part of our ongoing effort to enhance our investor communications. The year-over-year growth in these metrics is an important measure of our performance. As such, we believe that excluding certain components of these results will be helpful with respect to comparability. Adjusted OIBDA is operating income before depreciation and amortization, excluding asset gains and losses. This metric more accurately reflects how we plan, forecast and evaluate the performance of our business. Adjusted EPS is reported EPS, excluding asset gains and losses, other income expense, the tax impact of these reconciling items and discrete tax items and net income loss attributable to non-controlling interest. This metric more accurately reflects how we forecast our earnings. Both metrics also facilitate the comparison of our results for the current periods and guidance for future guidance with results for past periods. Per 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 2010 financial performance. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to today's press release, the Safe Harbor language on this slide and our current report on Form 8-K filed on March 8, 2009 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, we use several non-GAAP measures when presenting our financial results, adjusted OIBDA, adjusted EPS, and free cash flow before acquisitions and investments among others are metrics we speak to frequently and ones we believe to be important in evaluating our overall financial performance. We provide additional information in the reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to their 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 CFO, Brian McKeon.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Thanks, Steve and good morning, everyone. We've got a lot to cover today, let's go right to it. Slide three highlights the key messages from today's review. Q4 wrapped up a strong year of financial performance for Iron Mountain as we continued to deliver strong year-on-year profit and cash flow gains despite economic impacts that are constraining top line growth. Revenue performance in the quarter was as expected. Storage internal growth was a solid 5% with gains moderated by the impact of constrained new sales and higher destruction we've experienced in recent quarters reflecting recessionary impacts. Service revenues were flat overall as continued pressure on activity levels offset solid gains in areas such as eDiscovery services. Despite economic impacts, we continue to deliver strong profit and free cash flow performance. This is a result of our focus on operational excellence including productivity initiatives, pricing program improvements, and overhead and capital spending controls. This focus enabled us to drive almost 300 basis points of improvement in our adjusted OIBDA margin this year with solid gains across each of our major business segments. For the quarter, we delivered adjusted OIBDA growth of 14% on a reported basis and 12% excluding the impacts of foreign currency rate changes. About 2% of this growth is due to the initial re-characterization of vehicle leases discussed in prior conference calls. We also continued to improve our cash flows and strengthen our balance sheet. Free cash flow for 2009 reached and all-time high of $336 million, driven by strong profit performance and controlled capital spending. Looking ahead to 2010, we are targeting improved revenue growth and strong sustainable underlying operating performance. Today, we are raising our guidance to reflect recent performance, changes to macro factors, and the impact of the Mimosa acquisition. Today, we also announced that…

Bob Brennan

Management

Thanks, Brian and good morning, everyone. As Brian explained, our financial results for the quarter came in as expected. We had a good quarter, we had a good year, and we've done well. Our revenue growth was moderated by the economy and factors we've discussed on previous calls. But despite a tough selling environment, we managed well, applying discipline and focus to operating Iron Mountain with excellence. We advanced our strategic position and I'm very proud of the way the team delivered strong profit and cash flow gains across all segments of the business. On this call, I want to shed light on the current trends in our business and emphasize some key areas of focus for the year. I also, of course, will provide more detail on two strategic fronts, both announced in just the last two days. First, the advancement of our Digital business through the acquisition of Mimosa and second, our shareholder payout approach. Both are right up the alley of our strategy and I'll share those details in a few minutes. There are three things I want you to hear today. The first is about growth because while we are working through some economic headwinds, we are targeting an improved growth trajectory in 2010 and remain optimistic about Iron Mountain's growth potential going forward. The second key message I want you to hear is that we remain focused on managing our business with discipline and intent to leverage continued gains from our operational excellence initiatives to drive strong profits and cash flow this year and in the years that follow. The third message is that we are advancing our long-term strategic agenda, demonstrated by our investments in technology services. So let's go to the top of the agenda. Let's talk about growth and the trends in…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of David Gold of Sidoti. David Gold – Sidoti: Hi, good morning.

Bob Brennan

Management

Good morning.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Good morning, David. David Gold – Sidoti: Couple of things. First question, on the organic storage growth, as we start to think about that, it sort of sounds like feeling better and the guidance sort of brings up the lower end of maybe what you were thinking three or four months ago by a point. I guess, last year at I Day [ph], you spoke about three disparate trends, increased destructions, delayed sales, and reduced activity. And I guess just wanted to get a little bit of a better there for sort of which of them are either rolling off of change and enough to give you the extra little bit of confidence.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Yes, I think David, why don't I take initial cut on this? I'm sure Bob can add. The – we are in a similar place to where we were a few months ago in terms of our outlook and the trends, the improvement in the internal growth rate and some of that's driven by the favorable changes we've seen in factors like recycled paper pricing gives us more confidence at the low end of the outlook, but we are in a similar kind of growth range to where we were a few months ago. The destructions have, I would say, stabilized, but remained at relatively higher levels than historically. So some of those carryover impacts that we saw from the growth in destructions here during 2009 will put a little more pressure on the growth rate early in the year, but we think we will be looking at some better comparisons as we work through the year on storage. New sales, it takes awhile for any changes in our sales to work through our business and has continued to be a challenging selling environment, but as Bob noted and I'm sure he can add more to this, we are getting after that aggressively and hopefully, we can improve on that front going forward. So I would say the – in the immediate term, the – those trends are similar, we do think we can do some things to influence that positively as we move forward and obviously, if the economy improves, that will be a big help as well. The activity piece, David, is I would say is really less related to the – there is some impact on storage than it tends to have impact on our service revenues, but the economy continues to be soft and we factor that all in, we think we can still deliver solid growth and relatively improved performance and position ourselves well for when those economic factors improve.

Bob Brennan

Management

Yes, I agree with you. I think the activities are tied to the economy. We are very much focused on improving our selling organization and they are doing a good job reacting to the current situation to drive more depth out of the accounts we have and get net new accounts and I had mentioned that in my comments. That's an area where our – I just – I like the way we are reacting, I like the way we are getting after it. David Gold – Sidoti: Perfect. And then just one other, if I might. You had also mad some comments on the newer initiatives for the – in the record center optimization, et cetera and I was just curious, I know a few months ago, the comment was you are about halfway through. So just curious on update there or – so have we made any progress there in sort of what's the time frame for completing North America and, say, moving on to overseas?

Bob Brennan

Management

So we've put in a global support structure so that we can export the North American playbook, and we've done to do – we have begun to do that in our larger markets and we take a market-by-market approach with each of these initiatives and it is – it's rolling thunder, right? So like global procurement is just starting, transportation improvements started, you heard me talk about that years ago and sort of pretty far along with transportation improvement, we are in the middle stages with the record center optimization, we are just beginning with global procurement. We see these as sustainable opportunities to continue to drive our profit performance out of the core Physical business. David Gold – Sidoti: Got you. So just a time frame maybe for at least completing the North American portion?

Brian McKeon

CFO

I think we've got – we are well along with the North American initiatives, but we are obviously looking to – for a significant benefit on that front this year and we can – and we've got new wave of initiatives that I think will help us going forward. As Bob mentioned, procurement, we are looking at our go-to-market capabilities and think there is opportunities to be more effective and efficient on those fronts. And so we have additional ideas that we can apply. And so I think we are well along with some of the things we talked about, but we've got new things in the pipeline that should sustain these improvements going forward.

Bob Brennan

Management

In other words, you don't see a completion date, David. David Gold – Sidoti: Okay. It's a moving target.

Brian McKeon

CFO

It's how we are running the business. I think it's the key thing to understand. David Gold – Sidoti: Got you. Fair enough. Thank you, both.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Thanks.

Bob Brennan

Management

Thanks, David.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Steinerman of JPMorgan. Andrew Steinerman – JPMorgan: Good morning, gentlemen. Good job. I want to talk about the implied EBITDA margin, middle of the range. In the first quarter, I think it's 27.6% compared to the just reported 29.5% and I just wanted to know what would be driving factors between first quarter EBITDA margins and fourth quarter EBITDA margins.

Brian McKeon

CFO

That's – it's principally seasonality. So if you look at – that would imply OIBDA growth ahead of revenue growth in the first quarter. So that would imply margin improvement and so – year-on-year. And so the difference is between Q4, we just have –there are some seasonality differences in our business, I'm just thinking offhand, in places like our Digital business, fourth quarter tends to be a high licensed software sales quarter, just energy – Steve is giving me some notes here. There are payroll taxes, there are some recognition of expenses and timing of when you – so there are some seasonality differences in our quarterly flows, but this is not a indication of a change in kind of our trajectory towards sustaining our margin improvements and building on them. And we did try to reinforce today, Andrew, some heightened disclosure on our segment performance and I just want reinforce, if you look at how we are performing by segment to where we are driving performance on a full-year basis improvement across our business. So we think we can build on these strong trends we've been driving. Andrew Steinerman – JPMorgan: Right. And could you comment on first quarter implied internal growth? Would FX be about 1% and Mimosa would be less than 1% and so you've got to net those out from the middle of the rate to 8%?

Brian McKeon

CFO

Yes. No, the – I did mention in my comments that it implies internal growth of 3% to 6% and FX is a little more favorable in Q1, I think it's closer to 3% I believe, in just 2% to 3%. So it’s a little more favorable and there is limited impact from Mimosa in Q1 just given the timing of the close. So it's – 3% to 6% is the internal growth and I just wanted to highlight the – we will see our toughest comparison in storage comps in Q1 just given kind of the cumulative effect of what went on in 2009. So that growth rate will probably be a little bit below our full-year goal and – but we will see favorability from things like recycled paper, we will – their most stable compares we will see on that front in Q1. So net-net, it – we should have a good internal growth quarter. Andrew Steinerman – JPMorgan: Right. And how do you see core service so far in the quarter?

Brian McKeon

CFO

I don't want to comment on in-quarter trends, but similar – we've seen similar trends in terms of pressure on activity levels. So it's – that's baked into our outlook for the full year and we haven't projected an improvement and we are working through that. It's the economy and hopefully, we will see improvement on that front as the economy gets better. Andrew Steinerman – JPMorgan: Okay. It sounds like a great start. Thank you.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Thank you, Andrew.

Bob Brennan

Management

Thanks, Andrew.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Thanks. Good morning.

Bob Brennan

Management

Good morning. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: With regard to your comments just now, Brian, on storage being a little bit softer in the first quarter on the tough comp, should we see a significant variance in the internal growth rate, something perhaps outside of the 4% to 5% range for 2010 or are you going to be pretty tight quarter to quarter?

Brian McKeon

CFO

I would – I try not get into – trying – I'm trying not to get into like quarterly projections for components of our growth. I think we are – the – what we are trying to highlight is the 4% to 5% for the full year is obviously our goal. And I think in that context, Q1 is going to be tougher compared – I think we will have – hopefully – we will have easier comparisons as we work through the year. So I really don't want to get into – I guess the key point I want to make here is this isn’t a change in our business, this is a – it's the flow through of the effects that we talked about in 2009 that really kind of started after the first quarter or kind of accelerated post of the first quarter that stabilized, we are confident on our full-year outlook for storage growth. This isn't projecting improvement, it's more reflecting that we are going to see a easier comparison as we work through the year and it's just – the first quarter – the way things flow through our business, kind of the buildup of things like softer new sales and higher destructions, we are – we've got our toughest compare coming out of the blocks, but we're confident in the full-year number and that's what we are focused on. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Thanks. That's helpful and I just wanted a sense of magnitude. How are destructions coming along? I mean, is it – do we see the end of that anytime soon? I got the sense from the call that that's feeling a little bit better incrementally, but if you could take us a little deeper there?

Brian McKeon

CFO

I – Scott, I think it's stabilizing, right? And customers forecast that for us and so we did see a bolus as things worsen, we see it stabilizing now. I don't want to forecast a change in it, but as the economy improves, I would expect that to become less of an issue. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Okay, thanks.

Brian McKeon

CFO

And we should – I just want to comment. We should see naturally some benefit over time and that – this reflects to a degree of pent-up actions by customers to look at cleaning up their records and recognizing some savings and we will hopefully work through some of that and the – it's not something that we would expect to be an accelerating trend or an ongoing trend. We think that we will see an end to this, moderation, I should say, at some point. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Thanks. And can we get an update from you guys on pricing, how customers are reacting? It's been in place now, but you've increasing that for awhile and obviously, embedded in the guidance into 2010, but just how is that progressing on the customer front? Thanks.

Bob Brennan

Management

Well, I think it's – the way to think about it, Scott, is how it's progressing on our front. We are getting better and more disciplined and smarter about this as we learn and it allows us to take a more methodical, careful approach that we – where we can drive sustainable benefits over time. So I would say that we are developing muscle memory around it.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Yes, I think there has been positive reaction from customers on the use of list price methodology and a discount-off list. I think it's a very clear pricing approach and that's lead to the right kind of discussions. It's obviously a tough economic environment, so we have lots of dialog with customers about how to help them be more efficient and – but our focus is to maintain discipline in our pricing and focus more on how we can add value to how they manage their records programs and –

Bob Brennan

Management

Fundamentally focus on driving out costs.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Yes, and we feel good about how that's progressed. So we think we've got a good system in place, we think we can sustain that going forward and look, there is always things that we are working on on the margin and – but we think we take – we took a big step forward and we are in a better place and we have something in place now that we can sustain our performance for a long period of time.

Bob Brennan

Management

Yes. We have learned lessons, we are not really going to discuss those in great detail, but we've learned as we've gone. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Okay. One final one if I could. Within SG&A, some investments in growth and then obviously productivity related – and you touched on that a little bit already. The question here is how much flexibility – do you look at a year, start the year and say, okay, here is what we are going to spend and it's pretty fixed and firm as you do it or is there a good bit of flexibility on what you do with the gas pedal as you move through the year based on perhaps the macro conditions and how that's affecting your top line?

Bob Brennan

Management

So the way that we think about it is that the pencils never go down in planning, right? While we work from year to year on operating plans and performance, we are always focused on being adroit in how we manage the business and we have the capability to invest within the context of the range that we've set for our performance and that's – the key is to be disciplined within that performance range.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Yes, the thing I'd share is one way to think about this, there are a couple of components to our costs. One would be the SG&A as you discussed, which is we have a degree of flexibility and we are – of course, we will always look at that in the context of our business trends. Actually, the bigger lever here is the – that costs are directly related to our business. It provides services in our business and – rather than the SG&A, but the costs that support service delivery. And the thing I would highlight to you is just the capability that we've built in places like our North American organization. I mean, last year, we clearly had a big change in our growth outlook versus what we had expected given the economy and I think we demonstrated an ability to adapt quickly and adjust our cost structure to fit the new growth environment and deliver our profit objectives and so I think we have excellent capability to adapt our cost structure to changes in the growth outlook and we feel very confident in ability our – our ability to deliver our profit objectives because of that. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Okay, thanks.

Brian McKeon

CFO

All segments performed. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Excellent. Thanks, guys.

Bob Brennan

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ashwin Shirvaikar of Citi. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citi: Thanks. Good morning and congratulations on the good results and guidance.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Thanks, Ashwin.

Bob Brennan

Management

Thanks, Ashwin. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citi: My question – my first question is on the CapEx outlook. Is it possible for you guys to break out the impact of higher shredding and destruction with freed-out space, because that might be viewed as sort of one-time in nature versus other initiatives which sort of have an ongoing benefit?

Brian McKeon

CFO

Yes. Let me try to tackle this. I – in terms of the reductions to our – we've obviously taken capital spending down a lot in the last couple of years. An element to that more recently has been a lower growth outlook and not having to add capacity. I wouldn't relate that, Ashwin, to destructions that really isn’t a material factor in terms of – it's more that as we look at our growth outlook and it's moderated, we look at the timing of when we need to add new buildings, add new racking, and we – we are not doing that at the same pace that we were before. So there is a benefit to that. I would say, however, though our outlook for 2010, if you take out real estate, our capital spending as a percentage of revenues will be about 9% thereabouts. That's consistent with our five-year goal. We may have some variation in this year-to-year, but we are building the capability we think to sustain our capital spending at those levels. So we don't think this is one-time and think we can sustain lower spending as a percentage of sales. That's our intent and hopefully we can continue to demonstrate through that through our good management and good performance. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citi: Okay. Is it still a sort of 85-15 split, if you will, between growth and maintenance CapEx?

Brian McKeon

CFO

We – it's – we've moved away from percentage of total, because our total has come down, we've enhanced our disclosures around this a bit in our 10-K, we look forward to you seeing that. We estimate that maintenance capital is about 2% of our – 2% of revenues and that – we think that's the right way to look at it. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citi: Okay. And buyback, that's a good announcement there. But any thoughts on pace of buyback, guidelines around that? When do you intend to finish it?

Brian McKeon

CFO

We are not going to be giving any specifics on the details of the buyback program, but we do want to reinforce that this gives us a flexibility to advance shareholder payouts and buybacks should that make sense and we certainly have plenty of financial flexibility to support a buyback program. So – but we won't be disclosing specifics of the program. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citi: Okay. And last question on M&A. What should we expect going forward? Obviously, Mimosa seems to fit. But is there going to be a focus on specific verticals like public sector or maybe international markets or more digital, is it going to be more opportunistic? Can you – any – some thoughts on that would be great. Thank you.

Bob Brennan

Management

Yes. Ashwin, it's – we focused on this from a strategic perspective and if you look at our strategy, it is about select international expansion and expanding our services specifically around Digital and DMS. And I think the past acts as a math, more than a compass as to what we will be doing, but the – Mimosa fits very well into our strategy and our M&A approach, to give you an example of the types of acquisitions that we think are appropriate from a Digital perspective. From a core Physical perspective in our North American markets, we feel that we have the footprint to execute.

Brian McKeon

CFO

And we will obviously be focused on making sure we integrate this acquisition well and demonstrate good performance to build confidence on continuing to deploy capital on that front.

Bob Brennan

Management

And we are very excited to have the Mimosa team on Iron Mountain. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citi: Okay, great. Thank you.

Bob Brennan

Management

Thanks, Ashwin.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Operator, we have time for one more question.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from the line of Justin Hawk [ph] of Robert W. Baird. Justin Hawk – Robert W. Baird: Good morning, guys.

Bob Brennan

Management

Good morning.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Good morning. Justin Hawk – Robert W. Baird: A quick question on the EBITDA guidance for 2010 and it looks like it's about $30 million higher at the midpoint. I guess – I was wondering if you could quantify how much of that is from scrap paper benefit and how much of this just from margin benefit.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Yes, it's actually about $35 million higher and roughly, the net effect of the recycled paper improvement is – it's – I'm just doing on a percentage basis, probably in the $15 million-ish type range. Just want to highlight a couple of things on recycled paper. Keep in mind, we did see some – when we gave the guidance, we had seen some improvement on paper pricing, it's obviously improved since then. The – it is – part of the reason that paper pricing is up is because recycled paper volumes are down. So there are some offsets to the revenue gains that we've seen just given – it’s a supply-demand imbalance, because recycled paper volumes are down, it is a key factor driving this, so there will be some offsets from the volumes being down. We do expect some pressure on service pricing that goes along with higher paper pricing competitively. Net-net, it is a positive factor, but it's – it's about 2 percentage points of a favorable benefit on the growth rate from where we were before. Keep in mind, on the OIBDA guidance, we did have an offset with Mimosa. There is some dilutive effect next year. So that was moving the other direction. But to your point, we did raise it about $35 million and raised the growth rate about 1%. So we feel positive about that development. Justin Hawk – Robert W. Baird: Great. Thank you.

Brian McKeon

CFO

Thank you.

Bob Brennan

Management

Thank you, Justin and thank you, everyone. We will talk to you next quarter.

Operator

Operator

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