Earnings Labs

Iron Mountain Incorporated (IRM)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 23, 2012

$114.36

+1.55%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Anita, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Iron Mountain Q4 2011 Earnings Call Webcast. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to your host today, Stephen Golden, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin, sir.

Stephen P. Golden

Analyst · Robert W

Thank you, and welcome, everyone, to our 2011 fourth quarter earnings conference call. Joining me this morning are Richard Reese, our Chairman and CEO; and Brian McKeon, our CFO. After their prepared remarks, we'll open up the phones for Q&A. Per our custom, we have a user-controlled slide presentation at the Investor Relations page of our website at www.ironmountain.com. Referring now to Slide 2. Today's earnings call and slide presentation will contain a number of forward-looking statements, most notably our outlook for our 2012 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 most recently filed current report on Form 8-K filed on September 19, 2011, 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 and a reconciliation 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. Before turning the call over to Richard, I would like to make a quick housekeeping announcement. As announced in this morning's press release, we have made a decision to sell our Italian business. As a result, the financial position, results of operations and cash flows of the Italian business have been reclassified as discontinued operations. For your convenience, we have included the restated statements of operations for the 4 quarters and full years of both 2010 and 2011 in the appendix to today's presentation. Additional restated information will be posted to the Investor Relations page of our website. With that, I'd like to introduce our Chairman and CEO, Richard Reese.

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Macquarie

Thank you, Stephen. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining us this morning. As always been my prior custom on these Q4 calls, I'm going to focus today on the full year mostly of 2011 and reflect a bit on all the changes and, for that matter, the progress we've made since I've returned as CEO this last April. It's been a lot of change in the company, and it's important that our shareholders understand these changes and, as I said, the progress we've made against them as we've set forth the new strategy and focusing our business. So I'll let Brian cover the details on the quarter, except to say that Q4 was a good operating performance. We had consistent storage growth and great cost controls. I'll also speak a little bit about our outlook for next year. But again, I'll let Brian take care of the details, and he'll go through everything thoroughly. So with that said, let me get started. Looking at the whole year on a performance basis, it was good performance for Iron Mountain. The key themes on an operating basis last year were, first and foremost, solid storage growth of 5% reported or 4% on constant currency. North America storage grew as we expected on a consistent 3% reported, 2% on a current basis -- or current constant currency basis, while International was strong at 14% reported or 9% on constant currency. And sometimes people ask me, and particularly, people haven't been around the company so long, why do we talk about storage so much? Why is it so important? Well, first is it is the major component of our revenue. It is the major driver of margin, and it frankly is the major consumer of capital as we grow. It is where we…

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · JPMorgan

Thanks, Richard. I'll do a review today of the fourth quarter and full year 2011 performance and provide an update on our outlook for 2012. Slide 3 highlights the key messages from today's review. Our business performed well in Q4. We delivered consistent results that capped up a year of strong financial performance. We had results that were, again, supported by solid storage revenue growth and continued profit improvement in our international business. Reported revenue for Q4 was 2%, with consistent trends compared to recent quarters. Storage revenues increased 4% on a constant currency basis, supported by consistent 3% internal growth. Service revenues were flat to last year on a constant currency basis as strong gains in hybrid services and benefits from higher commodity prices were offset by continued softness in North American core service activity levels. Profit performance was in line with our expectations after adjusting for Italy. The results were, again, supported by strong gains in the International segment. Adjusted OIBDA margins for the International segment increased more than 200 basis points compared to 2010 fourth quarter and the year, and that's keeping us clearly on track to achieve our margin improvement goal of 700 basis points in improvement by the end of 2013. Adjusted OIBDA for the quarter of $237 million included an $11 million benefit from the reclassification of our Italian business to discontinued operations. Adjusted EPS was $0.33 in Q4 and $1.31 for the full year. For the full year, we drove 4% revenue growth and continued strong free cash flow. Free cash flow was $458 million in 2011, supported by higher profits, lower interest cost and record capital spending efficiencies. Free cash flow also benefited from low cash tax payments, reflecting prepayments we made in 2010 and benefits from U.S. tax incentives in 2011.…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question will come from the line of Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan. Andrew C. Steinerman - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: I wanted to ask about the 2012 OIBDA growth. I understand from your comments that you're expecting 1% to 5% constant currency growth without the effect of paper. Looking back to October, I believe you were looking for 1% to 5% constant currency growth on OIBDA for 2012, with the paper effect. Could you help bridge that for us?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · JPMorgan

Just normal end-of-year refinements, Andrew. I don't see that as a material change. We're just firming up the plan. And basically, on a year-over-year basis, we're seeing the benefits from the International margin improvement and some of the onetime lapping benefits being offset by the paper declines. So it's relatively consistent with where we were. Andrew C. Steinerman - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Yes. Maybe, Brian, if you could say it in a different way, we're now expecting paper prices to be a 5% drag to OIBDA. Back in October -- at the paper prices, back in October, what would have the drag been for 2012?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · JPMorgan

It would've been about half that.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from the line of Kevin McVeigh with Macquarie.

Kevin D. McVeigh - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Macquarie

I wondered if you could give us a sense, Brian, if I have it right, it looks like the EBITDA impact from paper is about $45 million, but the overall EBIT is only coming down $25 million. I wonder where the offset is there, number one. And then number two, the free cash flow looks like it's declining $40 million versus overall EBITDA of $25 million. Can you just help us reconcile that?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · Macquarie

Yes. On the paper question, we had some of the impact baked into the preliminary guidance, so it's basically the same question Andrew just asked. We had about half of it baked in when we talked to you in October, and it came down another $50 a ton. On free cash flow, I know there's a lot of movement there. One way to think about this is if you look at 2011, we had $458 million. Normalizing that, we're really about $400 million. We had a $20 million of benefit in 2011 from year-end capital accruals, basically the timing in Q4 where the cash didn't go out the door until just after year end. And we also had some benefits from higher cash tax prepayments we made in 2010, which benefited this year. If you reduce the $450 million, you're closer to the $400 million range. When you move forward in 2012, our midpoint is $340 million. That's dampened by that $20 million capital carryover, which is more onetime, and it's also dampened by the paper impact of $45 million. So when you normalize for that, it gets up more into the $400 million range. The one thing we did try to highlight is in 2012, keep in mind, we are going to have some impacts from the higher interest levels. We borrowed money to fund the shareholder payouts, and that's about a $30 million year-on-year pretax impact, so that pulled the number down a bit.

Kevin D. McVeigh - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Macquarie

That's super helpful. Can you just give us the actual assumptions that foresaw the office paper pricing used in 2012 and what the average was in 2011?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · Macquarie

Yes. The market pricing average in 2011 was in the $230 million range, and we're using the current paper price, which is $155 a ton. It was a little below that starting the year. It was $138. So we have a month there of -- our actual realized pricing tends to lag a bit. We contract off of indexes with suppliers that we're not dealing with the spot market, and we didn't really see the negative impact of the decline at the very end of the year, and we're starting to see that flow through in the early part of the year. So when you use that kind of drop of $75 a ton plus some of the carryover impact, that's how we get to the $45 million estimate.

Kevin D. McVeigh - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Macquarie

Super helpful. And then if I could, just a third quick one. In terms of the REIT, I know we'll get a decision by June 9. I just want to get a sense of what the main factors are going to drive, whether we pursue that or not, number one. And then number two, how does that impact the leverage of the company overall on a go-forward basis as you think about it, if you were to pursue it and you're thinking about the capital structure as a result of that?

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Macquarie

Kevin, I'll try to take that. Look, I think your question is how would we think about -- I think your question is how do we think about the REIT, is that correct?

Kevin D. McVeigh - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Macquarie

Yes.

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Macquarie

All right. Look, we could spend all day on that. I'll just say a few things about it. We are at a point where we're getting close to the June 9, and I want to make sure people are not reading anything I say either way because the first thing I'm going to tell you, it's about the most complicated Rubik's cube I've ever seen, and it is one of the most intellectually interesting problems I've ever seen, by the way, too. Having said that, we're working very hard at it and -- with a positive hypothesis to see if it can be made to work or not, but you also have to understand the REIT itself is only valuable if it can be done in a way that doesn't -- as I've used sort of in a colloquial fashion, the phrase is "Don't kill the goose that lays a golden egg." This is a goose with a long duration, and the value of our company is maintaining the duration. And to maintain the duration, you have to have a certain level of flexibility of how you operate and some ability to reinvest the capital to grow the business and so forth. So it's a trade of going for tax savings against balancing that, and it is overlaid with a lot of technical complexities, IRS complexities, operational and so forth and so on. So it's not like you'd go from a to b, make a decision, walk away. It's just not that easy. I wish it were because we'd be done by now. And to be frank with you, it's consumed a lot of our time and energy and a lot of focus of a lot of senior people in the business. In terms of what the REIT would do to leverage, there's all kinds of scenarios because the next question you have to ask yourself would be if your operator is a REIT, what does it do to your strategy? Do you change your strategy? How does that change? And so forth. So it's, again, too early to make a comment on that. We would expect that before June 9 -- or maybe I'd even say before our own June 9 because I don't exactly know when we will actually get it finished. Or said another way, when we do come forth with a decision, we will try to predict an answer as many as the questions that you guys have now. Either if we say we're going to pursue being a REIT, we'll try to be very clear and precise, and if we say we're not, we'll try to do the same thing, so...

Kevin D. McVeigh - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Macquarie

That's helpful. And then in terms of -- at the June 9, is it -- how long after, if you try to pursue, would you ultimately get a decision from the IRS? Is it one year or kind of 2 to 4 quarter?

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Macquarie

It could take up to a year.

Operator

Operator

Your next question will come from the line of Gary Bisbee with Barclays Capital.

Gary E. Bisbee - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays Capital

I guess, Richard, how should we think about the lower activity levels? And is this something that is cyclically driven at this point, or do you see more secular pressure on that than you've seen in the past? And is there any prospects for that getting better, or should we just think about these much lower activity levels being the norm as we go through the next couple of years?

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Barclays Capital

All right. I think, by and large -- and this little bit varies by geography. I mean, if you go to certain parts of the world, we're having very high activity levels, okay? So I think some of you expect it. Clearly, in the health care space, which is a key component that's driving it, as I've said, that is a modality shift and a real shift that's pretty unusual, but -- yes, and that will take some years for that to roll through. In the data protection tape rotation side, again, as customers install more technology to mirror themselves, they continue to use tape as a failsafe against their infrastructure and so forth, as well as archival, but it's less activity, less active kind of pattern and so forth. So I think we're going through some, over quite a bit of time, headwind for quite a few years as some of this does reside itself. And I do think our servicing relationship to storage is going to reside itself. You notice the storage is chugging along really quite well. Customers continue to generate information, and they continue to need to keep it and maintain it regardless of how they access it. So -- but yes, we are planning and assuming we're going to see those service headwinds for quite some time.

Gary E. Bisbee - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays Capital

Okay. And then I was intrigued by the quick commentary on the last 20 years, the move of legacy records offsite in North America, the next 15 or 20 you said, same thing happening in some of these more growthy markets. Is there any evidence, or are you at all fearful that how this trend happens in some of the growth your emerging markets will be different, meaning that they'll maybe use more technology and less physical documents given that that technology is available today as those economies and industry in those economies grows? Or do you think the roadmap is going to look pretty darn similar to what you've seen in the last 20 years...

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Barclays Capital

I think it's going to look pretty darn similar for a couple of reasons. One is a lot of the records that you generate and you bring up our legacy, they've already been created, okay? They've just got to get assembled and moved and organized and so forth and so on. Places like Latin America is growing like a weed both on storage and activity and payments, and they're very technology savvy. We do more technology services in Latin America, more complex things for our customers than we do anywhere else, too. So there's a higher adoption rate of everything. And I think, look, what really happens is when you got great growing economies, you get it all happening, okay? And so it's pretty simplistic stuff to think about. Go where the world is going to be growing, and there's going to be a lot of information created, thrown out, need to be managed, need to be secured. And just like in North America, the real trend that you got to keep in mind is information was junk 25 or 30 years ago that people kept, just like you probably have an attic full or basement full, at least I do, of stuff that you keep because you won't throw it away, information. When I joined the business, that's the way it was looked at by everybody except pretty much financial services, okay? People didn't know why they kept it. They just kept it. And it has shifted to being a scenario where information is an asset. That means the way you think about its security, its chain of custody, its processing, who sees it, yadi-yadi-yada, go up. It has to be managed. It has to be maintained. That's going to happen in the rest of the world. That trend, I know, is absolutely happening already. And yes, there'll be plenty more technology moving around. The net of that -- the issue of plenty more technology moving around is some of our hybrid businesses in some of these emerging markets are booming faster than they are in our mature markets. And as I said, we do more complex work with more part of the chain of process of the business than everything else. So in a lot of respects, it makes it stickier, too.

Gary E. Bisbee - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays Capital

Okay. And then just one follow-up. Brian, I think you made a comment that average OIBDA had an $11 million benefit for moving Italy to discontinued. Can you just run through the math of that or maybe correct me if I heard that wrong?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · Barclays Capital

No, you didn't. It was -- in 2011, there was a few pieces. We have small operating losses in Italy. We had restructuring charges that were related to the overall International improvement plan, and we also had some costs related to the fire that we disclosed and talked about. So the combination of those 3 in terms of the profit results in 2011, moving them to discontinued operations was about $11 million of losses. That's not the run rate of the business. I think going forward, we're targeting basically flattish kind of profit in 2012, so there wasn't a benefit going forward. But there was a fair bit of losses that we're incurring this year.

Gary E. Bisbee - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays Capital

That's for the full year. What was the number for the fourth quarter?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · Barclays Capital

I don't have that right in front of me, but a fair amount of those costs were in the fourth quarter. We can follow up on that for you.

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Barclays Capital

Operator, we're going to take one more call. I have historically tried to promise to keep this to one hour, and I'm already 5 minutes over. And it's my fault because I talked 30 minutes of it. So I apologize now. Plus we look at the queue of who's calling, and we're going to be on the phone with everyone of you throughout the rest of the day, so we'll make sure we catch your calls. But we'll take one more call for the group. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your final question will come from the line of Andrew Wittmann with Robert W. Baird. Andrew J. Wittmann - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: The -- I wanted to dig a little bit more into the previous question and just look at the service trends. I guess outside of health care, we're already seeing some of the structural changes in that industry. What are maybe the next couple of industries that make up a bigger portion of the service revenue? And are you seeing secular challenges there as well?

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Robert W

Financial services is a big player. I think financial services, to be candid with you, it's a different trend. Financial services, early adopter technology. They adopted technology years and years ago of all types, and -- but they're also major creators of information, including paper. The big trend in financial services is they, over the last 5, at least 5 to 7 years, have really gone about organizing their physical programs, making sure they know what they have and getting rid of what they can get rid of. And as you know, they've gone through various cycles of litigation cycles, some of which they're still in. And when they get in these litigation cycles, they basically continue to accumulate documents but don't throw much away. And then if they get a little breathing point between lawsuits and so forth and if the program is organized correctly, and they have to be in most cases, they'll do sort of catch-up destructions. And so financial services, what you've seen over the last few years is a dampening of growth on the storage side related to that trend. It'll build up, and then they'll do a lot of "Let's get rid of it," big destruction process. You also, by the way, see that after we talk about they rightsize their program, they get themselves caught up, then they grow along very nicely off of a lower base and so forth. And so when you deal with as much of them as we do, every year, you get big activities like that. So that's the big trend in financial services. They have been relatively inactive for a long time because they, as I've said, are the extreme early adopters of technology on this front. The health care is just -- in a lot of…

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Robert W

Well, the total health care is bigger, a bit bigger, but the highly active piece is smaller. Yes, it's like in the 5 or less of the storage kind of business. Andrew J. Wittmann - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: As a percentage of service, though, what percentage does health care represents in 2011?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · Robert W

All services for records management, it's probably more in the 20% range, a higher percentage because of the more active nature of some of it. And as part of the overall business, it's somewhat smaller because we don't have the same kind of development, in areas like data protection or also outside of the U.S. So that's a U.S. kind of reference.

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Robert W

Yes. And the other thing I would stress to you, look, anything can change, but we dug pretty deep and looked at individual customer behavior. And what we do tend to see is an adoption curve where a customer will adopt, and their pattern will rapidly decline, and then it'll settle to a new level and then it goes on, all right? And then of course, what happens is every month or whatever, new customers are hitting that adoption cycle. And yes, we probably could do a better job. We just haven't slowed down and think about it, try to precisely guess how many years out this will run. But it will run quite a few years. It's a little bit every year. I mean, there's a low probability this will just -- we'll wake up one day and it'll drop like a rock. I think it'll just keep doing this for a while, unfortunately -- unfortunately, whichever way you look at it. I'm happy to keep it for a long time. We make money at it. On the other hand, we'll be whining about it for some years. Andrew J. Wittmann - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: That's helpful. And if you could, I just want to get a little bit better sense of the International growth rates, clearly, a big driver of the business here. And Richard, you kind of talked about the denominator effect in North America. I'm trying to understand a little bit better the denominator effect of your International markets. Clearly, there's some very mature and some very growthy markets today. If you could separate how much of your International business would be kind of in that mature or slower growth rate versus the faster growth markets, just so we can get a sense of kind of where you are on this long trend line.

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Robert W

Yes. We're scrambling for a document which will tell us that. You actually can find that on our website. If you looked at our April strategy presentation, we broke all that out, and somebody's going to point to me. All right, Stephen, interpret these numbers for me quickly.

Stephen P. Golden

Analyst · Robert W

About half.

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Robert W

It's about half in what we call material leadership markets, which have a little better growth rate than North America, and about half in emerging markets, okay?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · Robert W

It's a little bit higher if you throw in...

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Robert W

No, excuse me. Yes, leadership.

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · Robert W

These numbers throw in -- take basically U.K. and Western Europe, it's probably 60% or more, which looks a lot like the U.S. in terms of the growth profile.

C. Richard Reese

Analyst · Robert W

So as I said, we've run over, which we try not to do, but it's my long-windedness, which I apologize for. It was a good year of financial performance, as I said, and a good year of change. And I think the organization has adapted to the change very well, which we appreciate a lot. We've got a lot of work ahead of us. We are -- this is REIT, no REIT capital allocation work that's ongoing, I'll be candid with you now. We've set a date. It's such a complex Rubik's cube. It is a difficult issue. As you turn over rocks, you find more worms. You turn over more rocks, you find more worms. But we're working it really hard. We're going to make the deadline one way or the other, but we are focused hard on it. And we appreciate your support, and we look forward to seeing you guys as we're out on the road, and many of you, we'll talk to the rest of the day. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.