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Progress Software Corporation (PRGS)

Q1 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 27, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Progress Software Corporation Q1 Investor Relations Conference Call. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. Brian Flanagan. Please go ahead, sir.

Brian Flanagan

Management

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everyone and thanks for joining us for Progress Software’s fiscal first quarter 2014 earnings call. With me today is Phil Pead, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Chris Perkins, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I’d like to remind you that during this call, we may discuss our outlook for future financial and operating performance, corporate strategies, product plans, cost initiatives or other information that might be considered forward-looking. This forward-looking information represents Progress Software’s outlook and guidance only as of today and is subject to risks and uncertainties. Please review our Safe Harbor statement regarding this information, which is available both in today’s press release, as well as in the Investor Relations section of our website at progress.com. Progress Software assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements included in this call, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise. Additionally, on this call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as operating margin and diluted earnings per share. You can find a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP numbers in our earnings release issued today. Today, we published our financial press release on our website and also furnished the information to the SEC in an 8-K filing. These documents contain the full details of our financial results for the fiscal first quarter 2014, and I recommend you reference these documents for specific details. Today’s conference call will be recorded in its entirety and will be available via replay on our website in the Investor Relations section. With that, I’ll now turn it over to Phil.

Phil Pead

Management

Thank you, Brian, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for attending our first quarter earnings call. Over the last year, we have accomplished a great deal in refocusing our company around our core competencies. Everyone at Progress has contributed to this accomplishment and the excitement and energy around our future has never been more positive. Despite all the changes we made in our transition towards becoming a leading application platform as a service company, we kept our focus on the fundamentals. We reenergized our OpenEdge partners and customers; we introduced our Pacific platform as a service; we released more new functionality over the last 12 months in the previous 5 years; and we made our company more efficient, significantly increasing our operating margins. So, it is with disappointment that we had to announce recently that our first quarter results would fall short of our expectations. While the timing of a number of opportunities contributed to the miss, it also exposed for us a need to sharpen our focus on some of those fundamentals. When the timing of opportunities negatively affects revenue expectations, it is almost always due to an insufficient pipeline of opportunities to cover any delays in timing. Reviewing the reasons for this, we noted that the bright news is that we are generating a higher level of interest across all our solutions. But the not so bright news is that we did not see this translate to actionable pipeline. In part, this was due to internal lead routing and follow-up issues and in part due to a poor design in our go-to-market sales coverage. The products most affected were DataDirect and Corticon; and the region most affected was North America as the majority of the revenue derived from these products is from our North American market. We’ve made…

Chris Perkins

Management

Thank you Phil and good afternoon everyone. As a reminder, and consistent with our previous earnings calls, all of the financial metrics I will talk about today are related to our continuing operations and include results from product lines that were divested in 2012 and 2013, which were reflected in the press release as discontinued operations for all periods presented. Total revenue for the quarter was $75 million compared to $84 million in Q1 2013, which represents a decline of 11% at actual exchange rates, and a decline of 10% on a constant currency basis. This was below our guidance range of $80 million to $82 million. The decline was primarily due to license revenue which was $22 million in the first quarter, down 26% from Q1, 2013 at actual exchange rates and down 25% on a constant currency basis. The license decline was in North America and EMEA, primarily related to sales of our DataDirect and Corticon products and to a lesser extent, sales of OpenEdge to direct end users. Also, the first quarter of 2013 included a net impact of $5 million of license revenue related to open orders. Again, we expected our bookings and revenue performance to be better this quarter which would have somewhat offset this Q1, 2013 impact from open software license orders. Maintenance and services revenue was $52 million, down 3% from Q1, 2013 at actual exchange rates and down 2% on a constant currency basis. The decline in maintenance revenue was primarily in Latin America due to the impact of moving to a distributor model in certain markets and in EMEA where we experienced lower renewal rates than in our other region. Overall however, our maintenance renewals were in line with our expectations with renewals rates above 90%. On a constant currency basis,…

Brian Flanagan

Management

Thank you, Chris. That concludes our formal remarks for today. I’d now like to open up the call to your questions. I ask that you keep your remarks to your primary questions and one follow-up. I will now hand over to the operator to conduct the Q&A session.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Flanagan. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Steve Koenig from Wedbush Securities.

Steve Koenig - Wedbush Securities

Analyst

Hi gentlemen thanks for taking my question. One housekeeping question and then one more substantial question. I apologize if I missed this, but did you gave -- do you have multi-year licenses for ending for the Q1 and the open orders number for ending of Q1, this just finished quarter?

Chris Perkins

Management

Multi -- you help me understand the question; do we have multi-year license agreements at the end of Q1?

Steve Koenig - Wedbush Securities

Analyst

Sorry Chris. Do you have the backlog composition including the multi-year licensing arrangement and the software license that was received, but not shipped?

Chris Perkins

Management

Right. We do not have any open orders or unrecognized orders at the end of Q1 2014.

Steve Koenig - Wedbush Securities

Analyst

Okay. And then what about -- so that’s the open orders line, what about the multi-year licensing arrangement backlog which had started ‘13 at $19 million in Q1 and then ended, you ended the year I believe at $13 million?

Chris Perkins

Management

Correct.

Steve Koenig - Wedbush Securities

Analyst

Yes. And what about -- do you have that number for Q1?

Chris Perkins

Management

Yes, it’s approximately $10 million.

Steve Koenig - Wedbush Securities

Analyst

It’s $10 million, okay thank you. I’m sorry if I missed that. Okay. And then I want to ask you guys a question about DataDirect Connect here, it’s all kind of related, so sorry it’s a little bit of a multi-part. But I wanted to verify the weakness, the weakness was more direct, it wasn’t as much OEM. And the OEM deal -- I understand the real chunky, so you can’t have, you can’t draw their conclusions just looking at one quarter. But it seems like for the last several years, gone back several years now the trend in DataDirect connect has been pretty unmistakably down. And I'm wondering if you can -- is there something structural in the business? And in particular I'm wondering are the OEMs more aggressively trying to bundle their own products as well, has the OEM trend been down? So, any comments you can give there would be helpful.

Phil Pead

Management

Yes. Sure Steve, this is Phil. I don't disagree with you that historically as you look at the performance of DataDirect, it definitely exhibits lumpiness in the revenue recognition. I will tell you that on the OEM front that still remains a very strong market for us. Remember that we are always competing with three. And when you mentioned them bundling their own products, that's not what we are seeing. And I think that as more and more data sources are being requested for software applications in order for them to get access to data it's a great opportunity for us. It is an area that clearly the two market drivers for us are in OEMs and direct end users for DataDirect. And by the way, similarly with Corticon our two primary markets would be systems integrators and direct end users. So, our go-to-market sales coverage for both of those products really needed a much more technical bias in our sales approach. When we went off into and executed on the strategy, where we believe that we could do a lot more cross selling over -- since we are existing customers, we found that the technical element of our sales approach got diluted in that effort. And so, as part of our refocus on both of these areas, both of these solutions, as well as the direct end users, we are refocusing those technical resources, so that our go to market sales coverage includes the element that we believe caused this to have lower than appropriate pipelines to support our revenue objectives.

Steve Koenig - Wedbush Securities

Analyst

Okay, thanks. I may jump back in the queue, I appreciate it.

Phil Pead

Management

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mark Schappel from Benchmark. Please go ahead.

Mark Schappel - Benchmark

Analyst

Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my call. Phil just building on the earlier question on DataDirect that business has always been a lumpy business. I was just wondering, what you are doing actually to improve visibility in that business and also maybe split up the lumpiness going forward?

Phil Pead

Management

Yes, I agree. Now clearly the lumpiness comes from doing some substantial OEM deals which of course we get very excited about; it does of course make it hard for comparisons for future periods. But it’s still a very strong area for us to pursue and we are going to continue to do that. Where I think we can somewhat smooth that lumpiness is by being really focused in our direct end user base not only with existing customers, but really a lot of net new customers. And we are excited, refocused on the decisions that we have made with our sales organization, as well as changes that we have made to our internal lead routing systems, we think will certainly improve the pipelines and as we sell more to our direct end users, I think that will accomplish the -- hopefully will accomplish the revenue more even revenue profile for that product going forward.

Mark Schappel - Benchmark

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you. And then on the project Pacific business, now moving over to -- excuse me, move to Progress Pacific, would you be introducing any new metrics around the Pacific any time soon, help us gauge how that business is moving forward?

Phil Pead

Management

Yes. We’re looking forward to doing that. I think that the question for us is going to be that of course as soon as we release metrics, first of all, we want to make sure that they’re meaningful, because it’s still a relatively new platform in the marketplace. I can’t tell you that we’re really excited about the early stages of the release of Progress Pacific. We’re engaging with new segments of the marketplace which we haven’t previously been able to approach because we didn’t have a solution for them and then more specifically talking about solutions providers who are looking to OEM a platform in order for them to create value for their solutions and services, as well as direct end-users who are wishing to modernize their existing applications or create new ones. And when we get to that threshold I think that is meaningful for investors, for us to provide those metrics, we’re looking forward to doing that. I would hope that if we continue to see the traction that it would either be late in this year or early next year before we would release those.

Mark Schappel - Benchmark

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Greg McDowell from JMP Securities.

Greg McDowell - JMP Securities

Analyst

Hi guys. Thanks for taking my questions in time. Phil, one for you first, you mentioned not being organized efficiently in your prepared remarks. And I was just wondering some of the steps you’ve taken to organize the sales force more efficiently to improve on execution? Thanks.

Phil Pead

Management

Yes, sure Greg. It was I kind of gave overview of that previously, but essentially the changes we made related to being more specialty focused, both DataDirect and Corticon require more technical sale and in our effort to increase cross-selling and that technical effort was really diluted from the direct sales effort. Those resources are being refocused to those products and we are increasing our sales efforts in our direct end user base. So we think that those changes in our go-to-market sales coverage will be very focused on both DataDirect and Corticon in a way that I think was diluted in our previous design of our organization. In addition, we had lead routing issues where we -- because we had a much broader sales organization, selling those Pacific products, leads that we generated weren’t necessarily reaching the sales folks to follow-up on them. And this is really blocking and tackling but I think you have to remember that some of the systems that we have implemented at Progress over the years have changed substantially in their functionality, I mean not necessarily the functionality, but the rules necessary for us to route leads appropriately as our strategy changes. Some of those rules became complex and what we found is leads that should have been routed to sales people, weren’t routed to sales people and it was difficult for them to follow-up on. So making those lead routing system enhancements and changing our go-to-market sales coverage, we think is really going to have a strong impact on us in the second half of the year and going into 2015.

Greg McDowell - JMP Securities

Analyst

That’s helpful, thank you. And Chris, maybe one for you, you mentioned lower renewal rates in EMEA and I was just hoping you could give us a little more color on sort of what’s behind the lower renewal rates in that particular region? Thanks.

Chris Perkins

Management

Sure. We, in our EMEA market, we had several customers that were still working through some of the renewals that they had due in the first quarter, we’re continuing to work through those. They had a very moderate impact on revenue in the quarter. But again, we’re still working with those customers. I think we will get those resolved and work through those, so that on an adjusted basis, our renewal rates in EMEA will be back on track. But nothing systemic, it is just working through some of our customers as far as that contracting process.

Greg McDowell - JMP Securities

Analyst

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Aaron Schwartz of Jefferies.

Aaron Schwartz - Jefferies

Analyst

Good afternoon. Thank you. Phil, at the end of your prepared remarks, you sort of acknowledged that it’s going to take a little bit of time to push through some of these go-to-market changes. And if we look at the guidance, it still implies, it seems like pretty healthy sequential growth on the license side here into Q2. And I’m just wondering if you could sort of reconcile it to and talk about some of the things that would bring about that sequential change here. Is it some of the deals that, larger deals that you alluded to that flipped out of the quarter or do you just had better visibility on that or can you just sort of walk through those two comments, one seems like it’s longer term to fee change and the other on the guidance seems like it’s a little sooner?

Chris Perkins

Management

Hey, and just to correct one thing, the guidance for Q2 implies that our license revenues will be down sequentially, but down…

Aaron Schwartz - Jefferies

Analyst

Yes, I was looking, I guess sequentially the change.

Chris Perkins

Management

Correct.

Phil Pead

Management

Yes. So, the -- my view on that Aaron is that our sales organization actually does a really good job generating in quarter pipeline. Some of the sales cycles that we have particularly for DataDirect aren’t very long. And so we expect given the visibility that we have got in pipeline [dues] that we have today, that we will be able to close those deals in order for us to achieve the quarter’s objectives, and also be able to generate new pipeline within the quarter that could close in the quarter.

Aaron Schwartz - Jefferies

Analyst

Okay.

Phil Pead

Management

Does that help?

Aaron Schwartz - Jefferies

Analyst

Yes, it does. And the second question I had is, I know you spent most of your prepared remarks talking about Corticon and DataDirect, but it did sound like OpenEdge was maybe now that not where you wanted it to be either and was there a common denominator on that side of the business? It seemed like you really spent a lot of time last year ensuring the visibility into that business was a little bit better and it seemed like you were quite optimistic about OpenEdge coming into this year, and I am just wondering if you could just spend a minute or two on the OpenEdge business? Thanks.

Phil Pead

Management

Yes. Actually, we are still really happy with the channel performance for OpenEdge. The revenue decline was really in our direct end user base, which again as I said in my prepared remarks, we’ve really got to focus and do a much better job in our direct for our direct end users. They’re just substantial opportunity with our customers. We have some really great marquee marking customers. And I think in our efforts to reenergize and focus on our channel and our partners, add new more functionality to help them resell their products has certainly paid off for us. And that remains vibrant as does of course our renewal rates. But, I think that we could execute better going forward on taking care of our direct end-users and generating new ones. It also by the way gives us validation for ISVs who are selling their products. When you mentioned some of the names like I just did with eBay, when you mentioned some of the direct end users that we have, it’s a very impressive list. And for us to engage better and be able to share with them some of the new solutions we have and to talk about the Pacific platform which is a story we’ve only recently been able to share with them, gives us I think a great opportunity in the balance of this year to generate the revenue for us to drive the growth that we’re looking for.

Aaron Schwartz - Jefferies

Analyst

Terrific. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Eugene Fox of Cardinal Capital Management.

Eugene Fox - Cardinal Capital Management

Analyst

Thanks. As it relates to your growth by product, could you repeat those numbers again, want to make sure I heard them, OpenEdge et cetera?

Chris Perkins

Management

Sure. On a constant currency basis, OpenEdge declined, from a revenue perspective, declined 5.5% in the first quarter; DataDirect declined 18%; and Corticon down 66%.

Eugene Fox - Cardinal Capital Management

Analyst

Do you have those same numbers for the first quarter of last year, so we could at least see what the comparisons you’re up against were?

Chris Perkins

Management

Sure. Yes, I am just looking for the percentages. Yes. First quarter last year, Brian, do you have those handy with, the growth by product? I’m sorry; I will follow-up in a moment. Just let me grab those for first quarter of last year.

Eugene Fox - Cardinal Capital Management

Analyst

Sure. No problem, couple of other questions. The $5 million of incremental license that you booked last year, could you tell us which products those were recognized against last year?

Chris Perkins

Management

Sure. It was primarily related to OpenEdge and Corticon that was in our open orders that affected the first quarter of 2013.

Eugene Fox - Cardinal Capital Management

Analyst

So those two products; any idea of order of magnitude?

Chris Perkins

Management

It was probably about two-thirds OpenEdge and about a third Corticon.

Eugene Fox - Cardinal Capital Management

Analyst

In the $4 million number that you’ve given us for the second quarter last year, would it be similar, sort of similar to say what we experienced in the first quarter?

Chris Perkins

Management

It’s about -- as you implied, it’s about $4 million and it is split out, about $3 million OpenEdge and a $1 million DataDirect.

Eugene Fox - Cardinal Capital Management

Analyst

Okay.

Chris Perkins

Management

And back to your question on the product line trends for Q1, I apologize, in the first quarter OpenEdge was up 4%, Corticon 10% and DataDirect down 18%.

Eugene Fox - Cardinal Capital Management

Analyst

Okay. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Steve Koenig of Wedbush Securities.

Steve Koenig - Wedbush Securities

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking my follow-up here. Look, here I just wanted to expand on your explanation as you guys were talking about Aaron’s question there on OpenEdge and doing a better job in direct channel. I’m wondering thoughts here, what specifically you could do to execute better in the direct channel. And more specifically, what do you guys need to do, not so much from a product perspective, but more on go to market and sales perspective to be able to compete with the license Salesforce and Force.com as their platform business, is it more and more important part of their strategy for getting growth here?

Phil Pead

Management

So, if you take the direct end users, Steve, that have purchased OpenEdge for an application, many of those direct end users would benefit from the new technologies that we’ve released over the last 12 months. For example, we’re in conversations right now with direct end users who would benefit from the business process management, the work flow functionality that we’ve integrated now within OpenEdge. They are also benefiting from the mobility application development platform that we added to OpenEdge. Similarly, we integrated Corticon now with OpenEdge. So, that many of our customers who bought the -- built the application using OpenEdge, many years ago didn’t have that opportunity to externalize their rules. So, there is a lot that we can engage our existing OpenEdge direct end users with that we couldn’t have that conversation 12 months. So…

Steve Koenig - Wedbush Securities

Analyst

But.

Phil Pead

Management

Go ahead.

Steve Koenig - Wedbush Securities

Analyst

I’m sorry to interrupt, Phil. So just to put a point on my question now. Products, I understand that you have got new capabilities, but the products don’t sell themselves. I am wondering what you need to do with the sales force to enable them to achieve better results and selling these capabilities.

Phil Pead

Management

Yes. So we have a direct sales organization that has been focused on managing that direct end user base, but a lot of it I will tell you has been more of a relationship build because the story that I just gave you with the integration of the functionality that we have released, has only been relatively recent since we put all that together on in a single platform and all that together for OpenEdge as a product. And our opportunity to go back to our existing users with our direct end user sales force, I think is a really positive one. And we have got a really strong plan for us to engage with our direct end users, not just obviously adding the functionality to OpenEdge but because we now have an opportunity to have a conversation about Progress Pacific, which was your follow up question regarding our ability to compete with Force and so on. We believe that our platform as a service is equal to if not better than any of the competition that we have in the marketplace today. There are lots of different positives that we can address with any direct end user. And if they do the comparisons and if they are really looking for a platform as a service which many of these direct end users are, they will find that the Progress Pacific platform is very competitive. If they pull the Gartner Magic Quadrant, they will see us as a visionary above many of the established players that you just mentioned. Obviously, Force is --Salesforce.com is a great competitor. But nevertheless, there is a huge opportunity for us to market our Pacific platform to our direct end users. I think that overall, the refocus that we have with our direct end user base, the story that we can now give with regards to the solutions that we sell and how competitive they are and the functionality that we have in our products, gives me great comfort that I think -- I am very optimistic that we can generate the kind of revenue opportunities that we need to generate for the growth in the second half of this year.

Steve Koenig - Wedbush Securities

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Matt Sullivan from Fiduciary Management.

Matt Sullivan - Fiduciary Management

Analyst

Hey guys, can you hear me?

Phil Pead

Management

We can Matt.

Matt Sullivan - Fiduciary Management

Analyst

Hey. Phil, I wanted to ask you quick question. You’ve talked in the past about your belief that there will be a hybrid on-premise and cloud environment sort of have the patience for many years to come. And I guess I am curious as to what leads you to believe that? And what happens if that transition to cloud applications is faster than you anticipate? I mean doest that put your legacy business, your legacy OpenEdge at risk if people are kind of transitioning to cloud solutions faster than anticipated?

Phil Pead

Management

Well, I think that if you just think about the large number of applications that are out there that have been built to manage on-premise solutions that have been written, I think that it’s very unlikely that the changeover to cloud development is going to occur at a pace that would seriously negatively affect frankly anyone’s business. I think that there is a definite movement and I think everyone can see that to adopting cloud solutions. But I think that there are large numbers of systems of record for example that will remain an on-premise application for many years to come. As far as our OpenEdge ISVs, remember that they have built a lot of those on-premise applications that they resell in the marketplace. And they are going to continue to nurture, maintain and grow those on-premise applications, because they generate frankly a lot of good maintenance revenue and those -- and a lot of them are systems of record like CRM or ERP systems or many different industries like manufacturing, retailing and so on. But they are also seeing competition from cloud vendors coming in to pick-up certain elements of their functionality particularly with ERP, but that will be additive to them. They will maintain and support and grow their on-premise business and at the same time they will take advantage of our Pacific platform, which enables them to build new applications to compete with cloud vendors who are offering those similar solutions to the market. So we see an opportunity to maintain our on-premise business for many years to come. We are supporting and maintaining the channel activities for ISVs, who also have a vested interest in maintaining that on-premise business. But at the same time, we recognize that we have an opportunity to take advantage of cloud development. So, there will be a combination of pure on-premise, there will be a combination of those on-premise applications that will take advantage of cloud development adding for example, HR functionality to ERP, or there maybe some back end financials or expenses that they will add or time management systems, there will be slices of functionality that will be offered on a cloud basis. And then there will be just pure cloud applications out there that are growing very rapidly today. But, if you look at those cloud applications, they tend to be very specific kinds of functionality versus a large integrated transaction processing based system of record. So, we are excited about all the various permutations of this. And the good news is for us that we’ve got, I think an answer for almost every part of that.

Matt Sullivan - Fiduciary Management

Analyst

Great. Thanks very much.

Phil Pead

Management

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Our next question comes from Eugene Fox from Cardinal Capital Management.

Eugene Fox - Cardinal Capital Management

Analyst

Just a couple of follow ups. You don’t have an estimate for what your CapEx is going to be for the year?

Chris Perkins

Management

We’ve given details on our free cash flow in total but we haven’t provided details on our specific CapEx estimate.

Eugene Fox - Cardinal Capital Management

Analyst

Okay. Second question, you guys were not particularly active on share repurchase in the first quarter; given the decline in the share price, should we assume you will be somewhat more active in the second?

Chris Perkins

Management

Well, what -- the way that we’ll address that is again, we’re always evaluating our capital deployment opportunities. We have looked at share repurchase as a clear positive contribution of value to our shareholders. So that will continue to be part of our active evaluation process. Again, we will report each quarter the level of repurchases that we achieve. But that’s the way that we’ll continue communicating going forward.

Eugene Fox - Cardinal Capital Management

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

At this time, we have no additional questions.

Brian Flanagan

Management

Thank you all for joining the call today. As a reminder, we plan on releasing financial results for our fiscal second quarter of 2014 on Thursday, June 26, 2014 after the financial markets close, and holding the conference call the same day at 5:00 pm Eastern Time We look forward to speaking with you again soon. Have a good day.