Earnings Labs

MSCI Inc. (MSCI)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 29, 2015

$596.02

+0.77%

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

+2.26%

1 Week

+4.73%

1 Month

+7.69%

vs S&P

+6.81%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MSCI Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Stephen Davidson, Head of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Stephen C. Davidson - Head of Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Shaniez. Good day and welcome to the MSCI third quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our results for third quarter 2015. A copy of the release and a slide presentation that we have prepared for this call may be viewed at msci.com under the Investor Relations tab. These documents include our new segment reporting and activity costs and disclosures. Let me remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made. For a discussion of additional risks and uncertainties, please see the risk factors and forward-looking statements in our most recent Form 10-K and our other filings with the SEC. During today's call, in addition to GAAP results, we also refer to non-GAAP measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA expenses, adjusted EPS and free cash flow. We believe our non-GAAP measures associate meaningful period-to-period comparisons and provide a baseline for the evolution of results. You'll find a reconciliation of the equivalent GAAP term in the earnings materials and an explanation of why we deem this information to be meaningful, as well as how management uses these measures on pages 32 to 40 of the earnings presentation. We have provided you with a lot of new disclosures this quarter. So to allow for more time for the Q&A, we'll try to limit the prepared remarks to incremental information not already included in our earnings release. On the call today are Henry Fernandez, Chief Executive Officer; and Bob Qutub, Chief Financial Officer. With that, let me now turn the call over to Mr. Henry Fernandez. Henry? Henry A. Fernandez - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you for joining us…

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, Henry. And good morning to all of you on the phone. Now please turn to slide 10 where we'll begin my overview of our financial results. Our results this quarter were strong with a 7% increase in revenue and a 7% decline in adjusted EBITDA expenses. This drove a 26% increase in adjusted EBITDA and a 740 basis points increase in our adjusted EBITDA margins to 47.9%, including the impact of foreign exchange fluctuations. Just a couple of quick comments on the results. Our results include higher interest cost from our bond offerings in the fourth quarter of last year and August of this year. In our GAAP numbers, we recorded a $6.3 million gain on the sale of an investment, which is excluded from our adjusted EPS. The 7% decline in weighted shares outstanding over the year added about $0.04 to our adjusted EPS. We anniversaried GMI in August and, as of the third quarter, it is considered part of our organic revenue stream in ESG. And lastly, just a comment regarding our tax rate. We are now in the process of aligning our tax profile with our global operating footprint. We believe this project will reduce our effective tax rate by a number of percentage points over the coming years. As we move forward, we will update you on our progress. And with slides that follow, we adjust our reported results for foreign currency fluctuations on our subscription revenue and cost, but we do not provide the impact on foreign currency fluctuations on our asset-based fees tied to assets under management, of which approximately two-thirds are invested in securities denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. Before I get into the results, let me talk for a moment on the changes in our disclosures. The disclosures…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instruction] Our first question comes from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Toni M. Kaplan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thank you. And thanks for providing the additional disclosure, especially on the margins of the segments. I am going to skip over Index just because that was a really strong number and in line with the target anyway. Just on Analytics, just the run rate in the quarter ticked down a little bit on a constant currency basis, so I just wanted to know, if you could remind us of some of the initiatives that will drive you to the higher growth rate that you're looking for? Henry A. Fernandez - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Toni, it's Henry. We had a slightly soft quarter in Analytics sales, but it is just a quarter – there was clearly a lot of volatility in the market. And when that happens, clients are focused intensely on the volatility and so transform our decisions about budget and closure of contracts and the like slow down a little bit. Our pipeline of Analytics is actually pretty extensive. And therefore that gives us optimistic caution or cautiously optimistic that what our sales pace will pick up. In terms of what are we doing to drive that even higher structurally, not just with the existing product line, there is a slew of new product development that has taken place in Analytics from the launch of a lot of new models in the equity risk model area to particularly the revamping of our applications with a new interface and new layer of application on top of some of our other applications. We are hoping that we can launch that in a selective basis in the…

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

In the Other side, when we have ESG and Real Estate, and the Real Estate tends to dominate the one-times, and we've spent a lot of time trying to move those more into recurring and we have seen some tapering off, but with the platform we're expecting us to be able to generate more product capabilities across the regions that are out there, but most of those are coming out of the Real Estate segment. And they tend to be one-time sales, one-time subscriptions that are out there. Toni M. Kaplan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay, great. And just lastly, just wanted to see if you have any updated thoughts on capital deployment, now that you have almost $1 billion cash on hand, so is there any areas of M&A that you are more focused on? Thanks.

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

We look at – we try to bring it down to where our cash is now. Obviously, we continue to deploy cash. All the way past through the quarter end, we used the rest of our $800 million authorization. We got about $600 million cash on our balance sheet that's available. Acquisitions are obviously a good deployment of capital that can be done either synergistically or they can be done to filling gaps or they can be done to excel capabilities like most recently we have had a few. But we still – we're looking for the highest return and we have been deploying capital through buyback. With the $1 billion authorization, as I indicated earlier, we intend to continue to buy that back until opportunities come up our way that are different, but the highest and best deals is what we're focused on. Toni M. Kaplan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thanks a lot, guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Chris Shutler with William Blair. Your line is now open. Chris C. Shutler - William Blair & Co. LLC: Hey, guys. Good morning. On the new $1 billion buyback plan, what are your thoughts on timeline there? Is there a date that you have to complete a buy or just what – how fast do you think that that will get deployed?

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

We're going to – we kept it open and we're committed to returning. It's just we're going to basically face ourselves over the course of the next few periods. As I said, Chris, we're way ahead of our original commitment of returning the $1 billion. We are 96% on that initial $1 billion and we remain committed to returning that and using our recently issued debt to the highest and best use. Chris C. Shutler - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. I mean, I'm just thinking through this bottoming. If it was going to be longer-term in terms of the timeline for usage, why would you raise $800 million of debt, given that you could buy back that $1 billion over a period of year or a little bit over a year with free cash and revolver, which probably would be a lot cheaper?

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Well, it goes back to when you look at our balance sheet, and when we talked about at the second quarter working with the board, we felt the more appropriate level of leverage was 3 times to 3.5 times was better matched our cash flows. And we had a great opportunity to raise $800 million, as Henry mentioned, extremely efficiently in the first part of August before the volatility struck. And we've always remain committed, Chris, that we are not here to store cash. We are here to deploy it as efficiently and effectively as we can. And I think our record in the third quarter here shows that we did deploy a lot of capital as the market moved and the volatility enhanced, we were able to efficiently buyback a lot of shares, 8 million shares to be specific since the beginning of the third quarter. Henry A. Fernandez - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: And also look as Bob indicated – our plan is to try to be in a market with lower levels of share price and be in the market that did less with higher levels of share price. So I think the pace which we affect our program will depend quite a lot on where things turn out. Chris C. Shutler - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay, thanks. And then, just a couple more quick ones, on – Bob, did you give the ETF yield in the asset base fees?

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah, 3.4 basis points which was down and 3.43 basis points and 3.51 basis points year before on a linked and year-over-year basis. Chris C. Shutler - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay.

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

It's on the slides too, Chris. Chris C. Shutler - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay, perfect. Thank you. And then, on Index, just what kind of investments do you guys need to make there to enhance and expand, as you said, margin targets there just given where you are at seem relatively conservative, so just want to understand the incremental investments. Henry A. Fernandez - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: I don't know, I mean, 70-plus% EBITDA margins don't seem conservative to me. I think that – if you look – I think that we have a phenomenal franchise in Index, phenomenal. And honestly, I mean, as management and shareholders, you got two choices, you either melt the franchise and over time you reduce your market leadership or you invest in new franchise and you continue to feel this revenue growth and this level of profitability. We are in the latter camp which is a balance between how much you won and can invest on annual basis. But there is still – if you think about there are three areas where equity indices are – can be very profitable for active management, passive management and derivatives. So in active management, you have to reach out more and more customers, deeper into the market cap areas, so for example into small cap indices, you want to reach into new territories like China and Saudi Arabia and other places like that. As they open up to global investing. On passive management, in addition to the market capital indices, you want to invest in factor indices and thematic, which is a big revolution we are at the forefront of that. You got to put some investments in there. And thirdly, an area that it's been small for us is derivatives, listed futures and options around the world. We feel extremely excited about that area over time from a small base, because we have demonstrated in the last few years that the market for multi-currency Index underlying futures contracts has – it can be very successful. And we did that obviously with our partners at ICE with the emerging market Index futures and the EAFE futures and in Europe with our partners at EUREX with the world futures and the likes of what – we would like to make some investments in there to see if we can build a fairly large third leg of revenue and profitability for our business. Chris C. Shutler - William Blair & Co. LLC: All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from line of Alex Kramm with UBS. Your line is now open.

Alex Kramm - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open.

Yeah, hey, good morning everyone. And again thanks for all the disclosures. I actually want to go back to page 5 and the Analytics long-term target. I think some of this was mentioned already, but maybe you can flush it out a little bit more. First of all, when you talk about long-term target, what are the timelines of some of these buckets here in particular when it comes to the cost savings, I mean, are those very near-term what's a little bit more backward loaded? And then coming back to, I think something that was asked earlier, how confident do you feel about the ability to drive that incremental growth at the same time as you are cutting costs? Thank you. Henry A. Fernandez - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Well, look we purposely left the timeline a bit flexible because clearly nobody has a crystal ball, right, as to what the future can predict and the pace by which we can achieve things. The second important component of this slide is that, it starts with the restructuring of the costs, the efficiencies of the product line and therefore you noticed that the first column on the slide on the left is long-term cost savings, which we are very much on our way to achieve. We already are on an annualized $20 million cost savings. We got $5 million to $10 million to go. And those are the things we have identified for now and clearly but the management team Analytics is also not going to stop there, it's going to keep tightening and tightening in a way that creates further efficiencies. Then on the right-hand side, as you see, we put the incremental revenue target up there which we think are going to take a little longer than the cost savings. But we're confident that at least from today's vantage point that this – as I mentioned earlier that a significant amount of new product development and repositioning of the product and utilization of the use cases and the like can help was achieve these kinds of revenue profiles to get to an EBITDA – to say think about it a steady state from today's vantage point, EBITDA margins in the 30s%. Once we achieve those, it doesn't mean that's where we end. We then will have to reassess. Is that an appropriate margin? Can we do better? Can we not? I don't know, it's clearly too early to tell. Right now what we can give you is what we see in the horizon and then reassess when we get there as to what else can be done.

Alex Kramm - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open.

Great. Maybe just to follow-up quickly on this one as well, you mentioned earlier kind of like the use cases and more focus on that, but I think what's been noted a couple of times is that the sales growth is still lagging in that segment. So maybe just getting beyond some of these use cases, what would you say is like the biggest thing that's missing and if its macro that's fine too, but what do you think is really the one component that you need to accelerate that sales growth? Henry A. Fernandez - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, I think the -- first of all, I honestly want to ensure that I point out again that the softness in any particular quarter should not be a cause for alarm. And it's something that if we have a blow out quarter unless we tell you otherwise should not be a cause for euphoria. And so and we will be guiding you through that given the segment reporting on a quarter-to-quarter basis. So I will not – if I were you, I would not read that much into the softness of this quarter. Remember, we had a huge amount of volatility. In the U.S. Labor Day was a week later and then so September was really three weeks to close a lot of deals. So the distraction by our clients and the late return of people from vacation and all of that may have caused some of the things to slip. And overall, for example, I mean, going into the final week of the quarter, there was like $4 million – this is not just in Analytics, but overall there was like $4 million that could have closed in the quarter. And that slipped into the final end…

Alex Kramm - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open.

All right, great. And I think people have been asking more than two questions, so I'm going to squeeze one more in, if that's cool. But, Bob, real quick on the tax rate, you gave us a little bit of a teaser on looking to reduce that. Can you also talk a little bit about the, A, the timeline and then, B, the kind of things that you're thinking about? Because I think there's been some things thrown around like moving the IP of indices and some things that sound a little bit more complex than other things I have seen in the past. So maybe give us a little bit more color about timeline and what you're actually trying to do here.

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

The timeline is immediate. We have already started to take advantage of our global footprint and realigning where our leadership is, all aligned with what the tax and where we think the value is. In terms of selling IP and moving IP, that's a different conversation. Obviously, you want to explore that. But really, right now, it's really aligning where the value is on our footprint. And that will happen probably you will see it in our operating rate, it is actually pretty strong. We had some discrete items this quarter reflective of state items that could benefit on the sale of our investment to offset that, but we did inside of the tax rate have some benefit in the third quarter and will be continuing ongoing as it becomes more meaningful. When we talk about guidance next year, we will talk more about what we think those rates should be.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Vincent Hung with Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Vincent Hung - Autonomous Research US LP

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Hi. It's Vincent Hung from Autonomous. Few questions. Just first, maybe I've missed this. Can you talk through the path to the higher margins in the All Other segment please?

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

In terms of the margins in the Other segment, the direction of them? Vincent, I am sorry, I just want to make sure – we didn't hear you well, Vincent.

Vincent Hung - Autonomous Research US LP

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

How do you expect to get to the 15% to 20% from where you are now?

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

There's two factors. I will start up and Henry can finish it. You can see that we were actually moving in that direction. You can see – and the best way to look at the Other segment, Vincent, in my view, is look at it on a year-to-date basis. You can see that the revenues on an absolute basis grew about 2.6% or about $1.6 million. But what we saw was efficiencies that I referred to on the Real Estate expenses actually on a year-to-date basis has declined, driving the margin to coming more towards a breakeven and, as I talked about, ESG is growing significantly. Obviously, the reported run rates in ESG are obviously down because now we have annualized GMI, so you're starting to see them in the high-teens, closer to 20%. That's one factor. The other factor that help drive the growth is the platform I referred to on Real Estate and not only will provide a better client experience, it will provide more efficiency as well as a platform to grow on. That's what we see going forward.

Vincent Hung - Autonomous Research US LP

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Okay. Thanks. And then second question. Just curious on the segment reporting methodology you put out today. So you've chosen to allocate shared cost as opposed to splitting them out. How much did you have in terms of these indirect or shared costs?

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

I think – let me – the question is, when we went through all of the cost base, we had several dedicated costs. More than half of our costs tend to be dedicated and aligned around the products, we tend to become more corporate and share a lot of the infrastructure costs, but we see it (54:33) through either time tracking or allocations. Costs that you see here from a contribution margin defined as what I would say is our cost of revenues, inclusive of our selling and our R&D, those are really aligned around the products. The overhead or general and administrative tends to be Henry and Bob and some of the other infrastructure that's out there. And our goal on that is to keep it low. Right now 7.4% was the general and administrative cost of our revenues. We continue to drive that out to be as efficient as we can and continue to maximize the gross profit line and that comes through a combination of specialists within the product as well as being able to allocate the full corporate benefit and the footprint that we have out there.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from line of Keith Housum with Northcoast Research. Your line is now open.

Keith M. Housum - Northcoast Research Partners LLC

Analyst · Northcoast Research. Your line is now open.

Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. As we look at the long-term guidance and long-term target out there, I know you have, well, let's say, a year on that. But should we be thinking about that as a two-year or three-year target or just more of a 10-year target that you guys are thinking of in your heads? Henry A. Fernandez - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, Keith, I mean, 10 year is an eternity for us. So we're for sure not focused on that. So we're growing closer to the first range. But again, we left it totally flexible at this point because we can't tell you how all of this will evolve. We can't tell you how market conditions and how product development efforts and so on and so forth. So again, we – it's not clear if it was that we have a specific set of targets and – I mean we – a timing on the targets. What we have is target that we want to achieve. And if it takes a while, it take a while. If they come sooner, they come sooner. But we don't have a specific timeframe set where we're going to hurry, but we don't want a specific timeframe, so we can't provide that to you.

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

And also, you can see we demonstrated some immediate action on the cost, as Henry referred to about what we've done in Analytics.

Keith M. Housum - Northcoast Research Partners LLC

Analyst · Northcoast Research. Your line is now open.

Yeah. Okay. And then as I think about the All Other segment, I guess, is that the area where you have the most opportunity for improvement? It sounds like your Index and Analytics segments, it's operating as expected or perhaps even better than you're planning on perhaps even a year ago. But in the All Other, especially in the Real Estate area, something you're perhaps lagging there where you're hoping to be? And, I guess, is there any acquisition you're going to make in the area or is that an area you just need some more time and effort be able to get there? Henry A. Fernandez - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: So the way to think about the enterprise is that we are already at a steady state of EBITDA margin in Index. It will go up and down, obviously, within the range and beyond depending on certain conditions. We are ramping up the margin on Analytics and the milestone is in the 30s% at some point and to what happens after that. And then thirdly, this Other area, Other product category that's out where we're putting a lot of our new investments that we think will have a high revenue growth, but we need to have meaningful investments in them and, at the beginning, we will run them out of deficit. But over time, we want to make sure they're breakeven and then contribute to the overall profitability of the firm. So, therefore, where we're focused on in efficiencies and profitability are in Analytics is to get to where we want to be. And within the Other category is the Real Estate because it's an area that we've been investing and restructuring and reengineering the whole product line after the acquisition so we can bring it back to a positive contribution to profitability of the firm. Acquisitions, they can happen in any one of our businesses, and we look at them all the time, for sure, especially smaller acquisition, but I think I want to emphasize that the footprint that we have at MSCI is enough for now to make us focus on organic growth. So the vast majority of our efforts at MSCI are organic growth with selective bolt-on expansion acquisitions. That's where we are right now. Obviously, if anything change, then we will report that.

Keith M. Housum - Northcoast Research Partners LLC

Analyst · Northcoast Research. Your line is now open.

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Joel Jeffrey with KBW. Your line is now open. Joel Jeffrey - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Hi. Good afternoon, guys. Looking at the P&L and the R&D expense line, I mean, it's up about 10% year-to-date, but certainly down meaningfully quarter-to-quarter and year-on-year in the third quarter. Just wondering how to think about that going forward? I mean, was there just an acceleration of development cost in the first half of the year and should we be thinking about sort of the remainder of the year being similar to what we saw in the third quarter?

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

A couple of things. One is R&D is what we're spending on for the future, okay, as opposed to cost of revenues to support the existing book of business, and selling and marketing to grow the existing clients and new clients acquisition. Here, two things. In the first half of the year, recall we talked about the technology project associated with RMA that we decided to spend away from because the benefits that we had initially identified had diminished and we had a write-off of about $3.5 million to $4 million in the first quarter, which would have inflated the first quarter, and you can see that in historical results and also that inflates it on the year-to-date basis. I did talk about the linked quarter decline coming down significantly. And one of the components was deferred software, which is on catch-up basis in the third quarter that would actually have deep – just sort of depress the expense or reduce the expense for the linked quarter. So you would see that come back up slightly in the fourth quarter. One of the contributing factors that we referred to is slightly increasing costs in the fourth quarter. Joel Jeffrey - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay.

Robert Qutub - Chief Financial Officer

Management

When you think about that, it's just under 6% of revenues. I would say on a more normalized basis, that probably would be higher – slightly higher, closer to the 6.5%, 7% that you've seen historically once it gets full up and running. Joel Jeffrey - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Great. That's helpful. And then just looking back a couple or thinking back a couple of years ago, I know you guys talked about the investment that you needed to make in the business to kind of ensure that you saw sustainable revenue growth going forward. And that was one of the reasons that margins had come down at levels that they hadn't. Sort of that in prior year before that, you were less focused on that, and that's the reason you saw the margins are actually at current levels about now. Just wondering how we think about this going forward and in terms of the need for increased spend and the ability to drive those margins up to that 50% level that you talked about longer term? Henry A. Fernandez - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. If you think about the investment plan that we went through in 2013 and 2014, which was very important to us, we needed some investment, catch-up or step-up investments in Index, which we achieve and you noted in the segment and, therefore, the EBITDA margins in Index went down to about 64%, 69% because we needed that. We definitely needed a meaningful amount of investments, particularly on our data centers and our sort of running of the infrastructure of the applications that we provide in Analytics. There were investments there in significantly upgrading the leadership of the technology team in all aspects of that and, obviously, a lot of investment in…

Operator

Operator

And at this time, I am showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Stephen Davidson for closing remarks.

Stephen C. Davidson - Head of Investor Relations

Management

Thank you very much for your time today, your interest in MSCI, and we look forward to speaking with you soon. Have a good day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.