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NICE Ltd. (NICE)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 13, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the NICE-System's conference call discussing fourth quarter and full- year 2012 results, and thank you all for holding. All participants are present in a listen-only mode. Following managements’ formal presentation instructions will be given for the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, February 13, 2013. I would now like to turn this call over to Mr. Marty Cohen, Vice President, Investor Relations, at NICE. Please go ahead.

Marty Cohen

Management

Thank you, Operator. With me on the call today are Zeevi Bregman, President and CEO and Dafna Gruber, CFO. But before we start, I'd like to point out that some of the statements made on this call will constitute forward-looking statements in accordance with the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Please be advised the company's actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Additional information regarding the factors that could cause actual results or proponents of the company to differ materially is contained in the section entitled Risks Factors in item three of company's 2011 annual report on form 20-F as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 29th, 2012. During today's call, we will present a more detailed discussion of fourth quarter and full year 2012 results and the company's guidance for the first quarter and full year of 2013. Following our comments, there will be an opportunity for questions. So let me remind you that unless otherwise noted on the call, we will be commenting on our adjusted results of operations, which differ in certain respects from Generally-Accepted Accounting Principles as reflected mainly in accounting for acquisition-related spreadings and expenses, amortization of intangible assets, and accounting for stock-based compensation. The differences between the GAAP and the non-GAAP adjusted results and the equivalent GAAP figures are detailed in today's press release. Before I turn the call over to Zeevi, I'd like to remind everybody that we are holding our investor and analyst day on March 12th in New York City. If you have received an invitation and do plan on attending, please don’t forget to register. You will need to register to attend. If you have not received an invitation and would like to attend, please send an email with your contact details to IR@nice.com and we'll gladly forward you an invitation. With that, I'll now turn it over to Zeevi.

Zeevi Bregman

Management

Thank you, Marty, and welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and full-year 2012 earnings call. We are pleased to report record results for the quarter and for the year. Non-GAAP total revenues were a record $240 million, up 12% compared to the fourth quarter of 2011. Full-year non-GAAP revenue increased 12% to $892 million. Non-GAAP EPS for Q4 was a record $0.70 representing an increase of 17% compared to the fourth quarter of last year and so passed the high end of our guidance range. Full-year non-GAAP EPS increased 18% to $2.48. As expected, we ended the year strongly with double-digit growth in booking for both the fourth quarter and full year 2012. Book-to-bill for Q4 was much greater than 1 and for the year, it was greater than 1 as well. We had strong booking in advance applications for 2012 and we're pleased to see early adoption of recently-launched new innovative solutions. 2012 was characterized by sales of significant innovation around analytics and advance applications, solutions that support our unique position in helping organization operationalized lead data. Through multi-channel capturing in analytics of mass amounts of structured and non-structured data, our solution delivered a strong return on investment while helping our customers better deal to compliance and regulations, improve operational efficiency, enhance the customer experience, and safeguard people [inaudible]. In 2012, we saw a growing demand for compliance driven solutions. When it comes to compliance, we have a unique asset including domain expertise, a leading industry position, and our ability to grow technologies from all our businesses. This allows us to quickly provide our customers with the broadest and most comprehensive suite of integrated solutions giving us a strong competitive advantage. During 2012, we introduced new products across our business lines to address various new requirements along regulations such…

Dafina Gruber

Management

Thank you, Zeevi. I’m pleased to provide you with an analysis of our financial results and business performance for the fourth quarter and full-year 2012 and our outlook for 2013. Revenues for the fourth quarter reached a record of $240 million, up 12% from $214 million in Q4 last year. Revenues for the full-year 2012 increased 12% to $892 million. Q4 Enterprise business was a total $193 million, up 22% from last year, bringing in full-year revenues to $706 million. Of that, $193 million in total customer interaction revenues were $158 million and financial clients and compliance revenues were $35 million. For the full-year, customer interaction was [inaudible] with $579 million and financial clients compliance revenues were $127 million. Q4 security revenues were $47 million compared with $55 million in the fourth quarter of last year. Full year security revenues were $186 million. Moving to the regional breakdown, revenue in the Americas increased 15% for the fourth quarter of last year to $157 million. Full year of [inaudible] revenues increased 12% to $559 million. Revenues in Europe, Middle East and Africa increased 2% to $53 million compared to the fourth quarter of last year. Full year EMEA region revenues increased 7% to $240 million. Revenue from Asia-Pacific region increased 16% from the fourth quarter of last year to $30 million. Full year APAC revenues increased 22% to $119 million. For the fourth quarter, the Americas accounted for 65% of total revenues, EMEA 22% and APAC 13%. For the full year the Americas region accounted for 63% of total revenue, EMEA 24% and APAC 13%, vastly unchanged from 2011. [Inaudible] revenues in Q4 were founded for 42% of total revenues while maintenance represented 36% of total revenues. Professional services including SaaS and Hosting accounted for the remaining 22%. It’s been, as…

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions). First question is from the line of Shaul Eyal from Oppenheimer & Company. Please go ahead. Shaul Eyal – Oppenheimer & Co.: Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everybody. Zeevi, a big picture question for you kind of. I’ve been brainstorming with myself and wanted to know how you think about it. I think over the past probably two quarters now, we had seen some kind of mixed views – mixed results from all of the companies that kind of operate in the Big Data/kind of Analytic space. In you view, how mission critical is the entire orbit, the whole subject and topic of Analytics to the corporations? Maybe you can say how resilient it is to spending, if I’m the vehicle in the company, or CIO and I’ve got money on security and storage and virtualization of the cloud, where does big analytic – where does Big Data analytics basically rank within the stack? Zeevi Bregman – President and CEO: Well, when we are making our customers – we are hearing from them very clearly that their focus is on areas of application and meaningful structure that is around Big Data. And the thing that is unique about us, since we are less focus on the infrastructure, our main focus of [inaudible] Solutions. Things that the operation lies in Big Data. It’s not reports, this are mostly the Analytics is tied in the focuses that are part of the operations of the organization. So if it’s compliance, if it’s the voice of the customer, if it’s looking at operation efficiency like SVR or [inaudible]. This is part of the operation, this is providing immediate and closed- loop results. This is why we are seeing this is a short-term return on investment. It’s not a major investment in infrastructure. It has some elements of investment in class form or in the infrastructure, but mostly it’s within application and things that the operation lies in Big Data, and we’re seeing a good amount for it. Shaul Eyal – Oppenheimer & Co.: Got it. And follow-up question. You know continued solid [inaudible] of the operating mark is kind of nearly touching the promised 20%. Any chance that we start shifting into fiscal ’13, probably the second half of his year that we’re going to see the biggest two associated with your operating margins? Zeevi Bregman – President and CEO: Yes, we believe that this is the direction that we are heading to. Shaul Eyal – Oppenheimer & Co.: Got it. Okay, thank you very much. Good luck.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Shyam Patil from Raymond James & Associates. Please go ahead. Shyam Patil – Raymond James & Associates: Hi. Thank you. Good afternoon. This is another kind of high level question, kind of regarding the growth outlook for the company. You know, if you look at 2011, you guys put up strong double-digit organic growth. And then in ’12 if you look at the organic growth, it kind of came down into the mid-single digits, and for ’13 you initially guiding to 7% I believe at the mid-point. You know, do you still view NICE as a double-digit grower, or should we be thinking about mid-high single-digits as the right organic growth rate going forward? I’m just curious if you still view it as a double-digit grower, kind of when you think we’ll start to see that, and what the drivers will be? Zeevi Bregman – President and CEO: First, we do feel – when we are running our internal models and the internal targets for the different units, they are all double-digits. And this is the way that we look at ourselves, and this (inaudible) continue with the non-organic goals, and then for sure together you should look at us as a double-digit grower. Shyam Patil – Raymond James & Associates: Okay. And then the large deals that slipped. It looks like this from the second numbers, those were in the Security Space. Can you give more color on, you know, where those to governments, were they in EMEA any more color on those deals. Zeevi Bregman – President and CEO: Yes, sure. We not give the region for competitive reasons, but the [inaudible] with government, and dealing with the government both for sales. And in government offices the prediction…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Next question is from the line of Daniel Meron – RBC Markets. Please go ahead. Daniel Meron – RBC Capital Markets: Thank you. Hi Zeevi and Dafna. First congrats on the dividend – good sign as far as continued shareholder returns. Zeevi, can you apply a little more color on the regional and the divisional dynamics, specifically. You know, on the regional side seems like Americas was healthy, but how should we think about other regions? And then on the divisional side, you mentioned the slippage of two deals. Is there more to read into the dynamics and security, or in enterprise right now? Zeevi Bregman – President and CEO: So, first on the security, we said a couple of things, we didn’t say specifically two. On the – when it goes to the regional dynamics, the fourth quarter was very strong in America indeed, and it was less strong in the second other regions. This is part of [inaudible] also its seasonal phenomena and part of it is the strength within the business. This is something that we anticipated, and something that we forecasted, although the strength of the business in terms of the booking surprised us. When it comes to the product and divisional, as we indicated, this is the first time ever that the advanced applications accounted for more than 50% of our new bookings. And this is for us a milestone. This is the first quarter ever that we reached this milestone, and we are very pleased with it. When we look at the different products, also we are seeing a lot of activity along our cloud, which is a new delivery model for us. And also here we are seeing a lot of value that we can create to our customers, and in…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Next question is from the line of Brian Ruttenbur from CRT Capital. Please go ahead.

Brian Ruttenbur - CRT Capital

Analyst

Thank you very much. A couple questions. First of all, I’m a bit confused on one of your comments. You said that you expect to grow double digit, I think, across the board, but your guidance suggests high single digit growth. Is that just long-term you expect double-digit growth in this year …

Zeevi Bregman

Management

Yes, what we are – we are – what we see and the way we look at the forecast is single-digit is in accordance with our guidance. What we have said is that we are looking at the internal models and the internal [inaudible] are all about double-digit growth.

Brian Ruttenbur - CRT Capital

Analyst

Okay. Then the next question I have, sales and marketing was up dramatically in the fourth quarter. Can you give us some kind of – was there an aberration in the fourth quarter, something that was, you know, that happened kind of one time or should we expect that level of sales and marketing expense going forward?

Zeevi Bregman

Management

A large part of the sales and marketing increase is coming from the result of the strong booking that we had in the quarter and this relayed to additional [inaudible] that we had to do in commissions. Dafina, would you like to give more color? Most of the increase is related to sales commission.

Dafina Gruber

Management

We do expect to see a sales and marketing expense in the fourth quarter at very high – fourth quarter, very high rate, but going to the first quarter, it should go down.

Brian Ruttenbur - CRT Capital

Analyst

Okay, so in the first quarter ending in March, your sales and marketing expense will drop sequentially from fourth quarter. Is that correct?

Zeevi Bregman

Management

That’s our focus.

Brian Ruttenbur - CRT Capital

Analyst

Okay, very good. And then depreciation and amortization, just an understanding. What is it going to be in 2013?

Dafina Gruber

Management

The amount is going to be very similar to what we had in 2012, maybe a few – few – very few millions up.

Brian Ruttenbur - CRT Capital

Analyst

Okay, and then there’s already been one question asked on this, but I just want to understand a little bit better. On your cash deployment strategy, you planned to pay out roughly 30 million in dividends. You plan to generate how much from cash from operations, 130, 150, somewhere in that range? I that correct?

Dafina Gruber

Management

Probably more than we generated this year in terms of operating cash. That’s the target for 2013. And in terms of dividends payment, we actually estimate it to be around $40 million.

Zeevi Bregman

Management

[Inaudible].

Brian Ruttenbur - CRT Capital

Analyst

Okay. So you should have roughly, in 2013, an extra 100 million of cash, is that correct? So if you pay out dividends, you can either deploy that by buying back stock or making acquisitions or putting it on your balance sheet. Is that the right way to think about it?

Zeevi Bregman

Management

Well, in between the – doing both, and we still have the money on the balance sheet which we can also use for acquisitions.

Brian Ruttenbur - CRT Capital

Analyst

Okay, very good. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Next question is from the line of Daniel Ives from FBR Capital Markets. James Moore – FBR Capital Markets: Thanks, guys. This is actually James Moore in for Dan. Just a follow up to that last question. Can you guys maybe talk about what you may target for acquisitions in terms of verticals or areas of interest?

Zeevi Bregman

Management

Well, I think that the things that don’t change much, we are looking at the acquisitions and how to do – to enhance our product offering in application that to add some technologies to our product lines, some analytics capabilities and to add to some market presence in this area of the world. And there are no major changes in the – in our acquisition strategy. James Moore – FBR Capital Markets: Okay, and just a follow up to some of the [inaudible] comments, are the issues from earlier in 2012 largely resolved at this point?

Zeevi Bregman

Management

[Inaudible] in 2011 and they were resolved in 2012 and we are starting to see the benefits of it now. James Moore – FBR Capital Markets: Okay. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Next question is from the line of David Capman from Barclays. Please go ahead. David [Capman] - Barclays: Hi. Good afternoon. If you could talk a little bit the guidance; I think, you know, if we look back at where guidance was for 2012 and now it’s 2013, it seems like you guys are taking it down a notch in terms of what you think your goals are. I understand that part of what Zeevi said had to do with a lot of his more back-ended, so maybe perhaps the visibility into 2013 is not what we’re used to seeing in terms of the guidance you guys are giving. I’m trying to reconcile here the – what appear as very positive backlog and bookings numbers relative to the guidance that you gave, which seems to be slightly on the more conservative side than we’ve gotten used to.

Zeevi Bregman

Management

So thanks for the question. When we are looking at 2013, we are targeting and focusing double digit growth in the booking. We are – when we are looking at how these bookings will convert to revenue and also looking at our current backlog, we expect that they will take longer revenue cycles. This revenue cycle, the engagement of the revenue cycle comes from our application delivery and also to cloud delivery that is the larger part of the business. And also the fact that the business is low Q4 centered. So with this, we – with the visibility that we have now and what we can forecast, we provided the forecast that we provided. David [Capman] – Barclays: Okay. And I guess the second half of the question is then really about the margin profile of the company. For a long time there’s been a mid-term range of operating margins and you guys have talked about a high-teens or even a 20% number. Is that kind of backed into the guidance that you’ve given as well? I know we can all do the math on what the top line and what the bottom line is. Is there a margin goal here that’s baked into the guidance and you guys – that you guys gave or is it kind of not related and it’s not going to be a margin-focused-and-driven company?

Dafina Gruber

Management

No, we’re definitely focused on continuous expansion in margin. We [inaudible] in the company to support growth. We’ve made a subtle improvement in margin this year and we expect to continue to expend possibility going forward as well. [Inaudible] to which deliver the 20% and I don’t think we would reach it for the full year in 2013 but hopefully during the second half we would reach this goal and going forward we would [inaudible] the 20% margin bar in the future. David [Capman] - Barclays: Great. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator instructions). Next question from the line of Michael Kim from Imperial Capital. Please go ahead, Michael.

Michael Kim - Imperial Capital

Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Can you talk a little bit about the contribution from cloud based solutions, any, you know, can you quantify any metrics and total contract value? Also, Zeevi, you talked a little about expanding the partner ecosystem, can you talk a little bit about the channel or go-to-market channel focus?

Zeevi Bregman

Management

So we are – I’ll start with the channel. We are working with the different partners in different spaces to deliver and supporting them while they release the cloud-based solutions. Some of the – one of the deals that actually we discussed in the script is a deal that was driven by such a channel and this is something that we are continued to focus it and looking at our [inaudible] that we can enable [inaudible] cloud solution. On top of this, we are operating and delivering our cloud solution within our own brand and domain and this is something that we [inaudible] ready investment in infrastructure and processes. We are going to continue to invest in this area. It’s still below 10% of all our revenues, but we are not breaking it, but if you see the increase of our professional services expense, they are a large part of the increase in the professional services revenue is coming from the [inaudible] and the open business model and we are pleased with that.

Michael Kim - Imperial Capital

Analyst

Great. And then just turning to security. You know, with the, you know, the closure rates, you know, perhaps increasing, you know, extending a little bit, not what you’d like to see. You know, are the deals becoming more larger and more complex? Is that what’s driving the closure rates or are there other sort of macro factors driving the …

Zeevi Bregman

Management

First, with security, we do see much stronger pipeline than ever before. So the – we have a very, very strong pipeline for the solution. When we – we are dealing with the government budgets and government procurement and the – around the world, and it is very – there tends to be some inherent – they’re very difficult to forecast, although in time [inaudible], this is what they’re creating. They aren’t even part of this business. It’s not – we’re seeing very strong pipeline. [Inaudible] also a fairly large deal.

Michael Kim - Imperial Capital

Analyst

And in that pipeline, are the deals getting significantly larger, you know, relative to…

Zeevi Bregman

Management

I mean, we had the larger deals before. We have the deals that are – all in all, I think that they are larger, but they depend how you really measure it. So we are enjoying a very healthy pipeline of large deals and more than ever before.

Michael Kim - Imperial Capital

Analyst

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That was our last question. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Bregman for closing remarks.

Zeevi Bregman

Management

So, thank you, everyone for joining us today and have a nice day. See you all in our analyst day in New York, March 12th. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your call for today. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.