Herb Mueller
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open
Thank you, Kate and good afternoon everyone. I will start by giving detail on our fiscal fourth quarter financial results and then we will discuss the early trends we are seeing in the first quarter of fiscal 2019. I will also give further detail on the progress of our strategic growth initiatives and the financial impact of our recent acquisitions. Starting with an overview of our fourth quarter results, total revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 was $183.8 million, a 23.7% increase from the comparable quarter a year ago, including our acquisitions. Revenue includes approximately $22 million from our recent acquisitions of taskforce and Accretive. Organic revenue increased 8.8% over the prior year fourth quarter, 7.3% in constant currency. Sequentially, revenue was up 6.6%. Our fourth quarter gross margin was 38.3%, down 80 basis points compared to the prior year fourth quarter due to the bill pay ratio. SG&A expenses were $58.9 million or 32% of revenue compared to $48.4 million or 32.6% of revenue in the fiscal fourth quarter a year ago. I will provide more color on SG&A shortly. Our net income was $4 million or $0.12 per diluted share. In Q4, adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million or 7.1% of revenue compared to $12.5 million or 7.4% of revenue in the year ago quarter. Now, let me discuss some of the highlights of our revenues geographically. As Kate mentioned, we have seen substantial growth across all regions. For the fourth quarter, total revenues internationally were approximately $39.8 million versus $29 million in the fourth quarter a year ago, an increase of 37.2% year-over-year, 27.7% constant currency and an increase of 4.4% sequentially, 4% constant currency. These results were bolstered by our strong performance in both Europe and Asia-Pacific. Europe showed improvement for the tenth successive quarter reporting organic revenue growth of 22.1% year-over-year, 11.1% constant currency. Asia-Pacific reported strong revenue, up 12.8% year-over-year, 8.4% constant currency. Our U.S. performance also strengthened in the quarter, with organic revenue increasing 5.2% year-over-year. These results reflect increased activity overall, higher bill rates in several of the company’s largest markets and also our continued progress on our strategic initiatives and the integration of Accretive. Sequentially, revenue in the U.S. increased approximately 7.6%, including our acquisitions as a result of fewer holidays in the U.S. and some growth. Turning to the early revenue trends for the first quarter of fiscal 2019, weekly revenues in Q1 are trending approximately 24% ahead of last year, including taskforce and Accretive. With the current trend continues, revenue will be in the range of $172 million to $175 million overall compared to $141.2 million a year ago. The high end of the range is based on the current trend. However, August has more variability due to vacation schedules during that month. As I previewed on our last earnings call, now we have completed the integration of Accretive operations, we will no longer breakout the performance of our acquisition from overall RGP results. Turning to gross margins, gross margin for the fourth quarter was 38.3%, down 80 basis points compared the prior year fourth quarter and increasing 200 basis points sequentially. The increase is related primarily to no paid holidays in the fourth quarter, while the third quarter has the Christmas and New Year holidays and decreased payroll taxes in the fourth quarter as the calendar year progresses. Excluding reimbursable expenses, our fourth quarter gross margin was 39% which compares to 39.8% in the fourth quarter a year ago. For the fourth quarter, our gross margin in the U.S. was 39.7% compared to 40.1% in the equivalent period last year and our international gross margin was 33.2% compared to 34.9% a year ago. For the first quarter of 2019, we expect our gross margin to be in the 36.8% to 37.2% range compared to 38% a year ago. The year-over-year decrease is primarily a result of the pressure on pay rates, the growth of our international business as well as the two acquisitions having slightly lower gross margins. The average hourly bill rate for the quarter including acquisitions was approximately $124, which compares to $123 in the third quarter and $120 in the year ago quarter. The average pay rate for the fourth quarter was approximately $64 compared to $63 last quarter and $60 last year. As a reminder, these hourly rates are derived based on prevailing exchange rates during each given period. The total headcount of the company, including Accretive and taskforce, was over 4,100 at quarter end versus 3,300 a year ago. Now, looking at other components of our fourth quarter financial results. SG&A expenses were $58.9 million or 32% of revenue. This compares to SG&A of $48.4 million or 32.6% of revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017 and $55.3 million or 32.1% of revenue in the third quarter of fiscal 2018. Our SG&A included $3.8 million, approximately $0.05 per diluted share of severance acquisition transformation, integration costs and $7.2 million of Accretive and taskforce SG&A. These costs account for virtually all of the year-over-year increase in SG&A. The prior year fourth quarter included $2.5 million related to severance costs. After adjusting for nonrecurring costs in last year’s fourth quarter and this year’s fourth quarter, SG&A was up just over 7%, whereas revenue was up just under 9%. As we said during our last earnings call, we expect some temporary SG&A costs to continue into the fourth quarter. We view these costs as necessary short-term investments in the growth of the business on our client base. We anticipate that bulk of these integration transformation costs will taper off beginning in fiscal year 2019. In the first quarter of 2019, we expect SG&A to be in the range of $56.5 million to $58 million. We remain committed to the successful integration of our acquisitions and the investments in technology in the business. Results in growth we are currently achieving, supports our decisions to invest. At the end of the fourth quarter, our office count was 74, 48 domestic and 26 international. Turning to the other components of our financial statements, depreciation was just over $1.1 million, slightly up from the third quarter. Amortization expense was just under $1 million as a result of intangibles related to the acquisitions and largely flat compared to the third quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA or cash flow margin, which we define as EBITDA before stock compensation, was 7.1% in the fourth quarter, down slightly from 7.4% a year ago, but up from 5% in the third quarter of fiscal 2018. Our pre-tax income was $8.9 million in the fourth quarter. During the quarter, we reported a provision for income taxes of $4.9 million, representing an effective tax rate of 55% compared to 47% in the prior year period. The increase in tax rate for quarter four was primarily due to $800,000 of tax expense on stock option expirations and $300,000 taxes related to foreign dividend distributions. Also note that our GAAP tax rate for each of the upcoming quarters is difficult to predict and could be volatile as the rate will be dependent on several factors, including the operating results of our U.S. and foreign locations, each of which are tax or benefited different statutory rates and the offset of the tax benefit of foreign losses in certain locations by valuation allowances. On a cash basis, our tax rate was about 37% and we expect that rate to decrease going forward. We do not expect any material charges on our accumulated offshore earnings. Finally, our GAAP net income was approximately $4 million or $0.12 per share during the fourth quarter. Now, let me turn to the balance sheet. Cash and investments at the end of the fourth quarter were $56.5 million, a $13.3 million increase from the third quarter of fiscal 2018. This was primarily a result when quarter end fell relative to our payroll cycle. Receivables at quarter end were approximately $130 million compared to approximately $126 million of the end of the third quarter. The increase reflects the growth in our core business during April and May. Days of revenue outstanding were approximately 63 days compared to 65 days in the third quarter fiscal 2018. Dividends for the quarter totaled approximately $3.8 billion. Capital expenditures were $600,000 during the quarter, net of landlord reimbursements. In the fourth quarter, we did not repurchase any stocks, so our stock buyback program has $120 million remaining. We will continue to return cash to shareholders through our quarterly dividend, while balancing debt repayment, the capital requirements of the growing business organically and inorganically and fiscal prudence. Our shares outstanding at the end of the fourth quarter were approximately $31.6 million. Now, turning to the financial impacts of our Accretive and taskforce acquisitions. As Kate mentioned, the integration of both our taskforce and Accretive acquisitions are substantially complete. The acquisitions are continuing to having a positive impact on the results contributing $22 million to revenue in the quarter. We have already achieved over $4 million of annualized cost savings with Accretive and additional $1.5 million of back office annualized cost was reduced in the beginning of July and an additional $1 million in real estate annual cost will be eliminated this year. We are on track to complete the balance of our cost reductions in the first quarter of FY ‘19. We are decided about our acquisitions of Accretive and taskforce and both businesses are now driving significant new opportunities for revenue growth in their respective markets as well as RGP’s core business with the company’s existing clients. We are also continuing to work to identify additional growth opportunities both inorganic and organic. And finally, I would like to discuss the financial impacts of the strategic initiatives that Kate covered earlier. As a reminder, we first outlined these three initiatives over a year ago with specific goals to reduce cost over time, enhance our revenue and improve our operating model. We said we expected to take 18 months to achieve this and we have been able to accelerate that timeline. Though with that, we increased our costs in the short-term. However, this has allowed us to see the overall benefits earlier than expected. We continue to successfully implement these initiatives and are pleased with the progress we have made in the fourth quarter, in particular with the sales transformation initiative, which is in the final stages. The redesign of our business model in North America has already delivered improved revenue growth as we have shown today with our Q4 performance and the rollout of the model will continue in Europe and Asia-Pacific into fiscal 2019. These efforts have already delivered improved revenue growth and we expect this upward performance trend to continue throughout fiscal year 2019. On the cost containment initiative, I want to reiterate that we remain focused on managing SG&A to drive growth and improve profitability. As I mentioned earlier, we accelerated the timeline of our initiatives, which is increase our costs in the short-term. As Kate discussed earlier, we are very pleased to see our acquisitions and strategic initiatives beginning to bear fruit. We expect the momentum to continue and anticipate seeing improvement throughout fiscal 2019. In summary, we are very excited that our transformation and acquisition initiatives are ahead of schedule and believe we are set for an exciting FY ‘19. Now I would like to turn the call back to Kate for some closing comments.