Earnings Labs

Radiant Logistics, Inc. (RLGT)

Q2 2013 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 13, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello. This afternoon, Bohn Crain, Radiant Logistics Founder and CEO, will discuss financial results for the company's 3 and 6 months ended December 31, 2012, as well as the company's recent restructuring in Los Angeles. Following his comments, we will open the call to questions. This conference is scheduled for 30 minutes. This conference call may include forward-looking statements within the meanings of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations and projections about future events. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about the company that may cause the company's actual results or achievements to be materially different from the results or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. While it is impossible to identify all the factors that may cause the company's actual results or achievements to differ materially from those set forth in our forward-looking statements, such factors include those that have in the past or may in the future be identified in the company's SEC filings and other public announcements, which are available on the Radiant website at www.radiantdelivers.com. In addition, past results are not necessarily an indication of future performance. Now I'd like to pass the call over to Radiant's Founder and CEO, Bohn Crain.

Bohn Crain

Management

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining in on today's call. As you can tell from our earnings release, we made significant progress across a number of different fronts in this most recent quarter, ended December, with the acquisitions of Los Angeles-based Marvir Logistics and Portland, Oregon-based International Freight Systems, or IFS, which we converted to company-owned stores from our agent network. Also, the favorable conclusion of the New Jersey arbitration with the former shareholders of DBA and the recent restructuring in Los Angeles, which we believe to be a very significant development as we head into calendar 2013. We differentiated ourselves in a marketplace with the growth strategy that continues to focus on bringing value to the agent-based forwarding community. We launched Radiant in January of 2006 with the goal of bringing value to Logistics entrepreneurs like Marvir and IFS, who would benefit from our unique value proposition with the immediate opportunity to become a shareholder and share in the value they were helping to create, and the longer-term opportunity to take advantage of the built-in exit strategy available to the entrepreneurs participating in our network. It was September of 2006 when we welcomed Marvir to the network. Marvir was truly the first new station to join the Radiant family. And as it happens, IFS was the third station to join us. From the beginning, they have led the way for many that have followed. And from the beginning, they have participated as shareholders, and we are very proud to able to support them in these transactions and help them reach their own individual goals. We believe that the Marvir and IFS transactions are also indicative of the broader opportunity available to us in the marketplace and that there will be more entrepreneurs, both internal and…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Howard Halpern of Taglich Brothers.

Howard Halpern

Analyst

You gave third quarter financial guidance, and sales appear, in your seasonally slowest quarter, based on your estimate, they appear to be up a little sequentially. Is that going to be driven by just overall operations, or is the LA -- the restructuring of LA operations really seeing new customers and businesses, is a little more robust there than it had been in the past?

Bohn Crain

Management

I think you should look at that revenue guidance of the $80 million with the implied word of "approximately" in front of it. Q1 is our seasonally slowest quarter, and whether we do $76 million or $83 million, it's hard for us to predict where exactly those numbers are going to come in. The -- I think overall, there's, I think, a little bit of positive sentiment in the marketplace in terms of some slow but steady recovery in the marketplace that we hope to see. But for us, I think the reality is, while that's going to be relatively flat and ultimately beyond our control in some respects, there's a lot that we're going to be doing from a productivity standpoint where we should really see kind of more of those gross margin dollars finding their way to the bottom line, and of course, the most obvious is the restructuring that we were just able to achieve in Los Angeles.

Howard Halpern

Analyst

And just to follow up on that. The restructuring, the savings from that, we're going to see that most primarily in the SG&A line off of this current quarter's level, or approximately...

Bohn Crain

Management

Yes, and you'll see a little bit in the personnel line item, because there was a little bit of redundant overlap in the accounts that we were able to address. But certainly, the lion's share of it will come from the avoided future lease payments. When we acquired DBA, we inherited a significant lease obligation in LA tied to their Warehousing & Distribution business. And as we got deeper into our integration and got a deeper understanding of that business and the margin characteristics of that particular piece of business, we discovered it was a real drag on the operation. And so we -- with the kind of the commitment on the lease, we couldn't just roll with our feet and exit that cost. So we'd spend some time trying to find a subtenant to effectively lay off that obligation, which we were happy to have achieved here in December. So I forget the precise numbers, but I want to say that there was plus or minus $4 million, $4.5 million of future lease obligations, and we were able to lay off all but $1.5 million of that, the $1.4 million of that through the sublease.

Howard Halpern

Analyst

And we're going to still see the -- as you continue to onboard, the trend that maybe commissions as a percent of revenue will continue to decline?

Bohn Crain

Management

Well, let's see how it's going to be crisp on the semantics. As we do conversion -- yes, that's absolutely true. As we convert agent stations to company-owned stores, we should see the agent commission line item go down by x amount with personnel and G&A coming up by y amount, and the difference between those 2 numbers effectively being the profitability of the agent station that we tucked in, which should find its way to the bottom line.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Aditya Mehta of Sterne Agee.

Jeffrey Kauffman

Analyst

This is Jeff Kauffman. We spent a lot of time talking about what you've done and just a little bit of time about what you intend to do. Can you tell us how the economy looks like to you just based on what you're seeing in what I understand is a seasonally slow period? And I guess, just in general, as you grow and become more national, are your customers having different kinds of discussions with you?

Bohn Crain

Management

The -- well, I guess, a couple of different questions in there. I'll start, I guess, at the top. I think there is, I guess, a modest, favorable trend in terms of people's view of the economy out there. But we're -- I think we're kind of obligated to be cautiously optimistic in that regard. And ultimately, our crystal ball [ph] just isn't that good in terms of what -- ultimately, what the economy's going to do. Typically, how I respond to kind of what's the economy's going to do question is we've got a sustainable business model in place and positioned to respond to an expanding economy, but also one that we've demonstrated can and has done well in a down economy. So as we went through the kind of this last economic cycle, in a general sense, we certainly didn't lose any customers. And as our customers had additional business, we enjoyed that additional business alongside it. So I think, as we talked about before, we think about our organic growth as really kind of 2 components. Of that, one is kind of the traditional same-store type analysis. I think generally speaking, we're going to see that kind of track with GDP and how that trends in terms of our same-store. But the second, and what has been a bigger contributing factor in our growth to date, has been our ability to onboard additional agent stations. Not stations that we're acquiring but stations that are just leaving their current situations and recognizing value in our platform and coming to join us. And so that always remains an interesting and appealing aspect of growth available to us as we're moving forward. And then before we kind of move over to the acquisition side of the ledger, there's a lot of things -- we reached a size and scale where there's a lot of things that we're going to start to tackle that are really kind of the more traditional productivity-improvement type initiatives that I think will hopefully translate into better EBITDA as a function of gross margins, which is a metric that we pay pretty close attention to, to try to leverage the platform that we have in place. Yes, on the acquisition front, I think it's pretty clear we built up a pretty good pipeline of acquisition opportunities, both indigenously to our network currently, as well as potentially some agent stations in our competitors' network who have -- who have expressed an interest in joining our network. And then we're also constantly out looking for a few bigger fish that we think might complement what we're doing. And as we've discussed, almost without exception, when we do a transaction, it's the culmination of a 3- to 5-year conversation. So at any point in time, we're having a range of conversations with a lot of different folks and -- so we can be there to support folks when they're ready to make that move.

Jeffrey Kauffman

Analyst

Just one final [indiscernible] question, and then I'll -- that's it for now. We've had a lot of weather in the last 3 to 6 months. Sandy affecting your quarter, particularly operations at Newark and JFK might have been affected. You've had some blizzards coming through. Can you discuss, despite the good results, how much revenue do you think may or may not have been lost to weather?

Bohn Crain

Management

Yes, that's a good question. We -- it's hard to really get crisp around that. We know it was meaningful. We would look -- we looked at some of the data, and we were effectively down for what I would call 1.5 to 2 weeks' worth of business in Newark and JFK, specifically, when we just kind of went back to look at the preliminary shipment volumes. Now presumably, we caught up a little bit of that in the following week, but I certainly don't think we recovered fully. So without attempting to dollarize this specifically, it was 1.5 weeks or 2 weeks' worth of work on what was probably, if I had to take it in [ph] our stations, plus or minus $30 million of annual business between the 2 locations.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Jeff Martin of Roth Capital Partners.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

What was the comparable pro forma revenue number from Q2 of 2012?

Bohn Crain

Management

The -- I would have to go back and look at the Q. I think it's down a little bit. Precisely how much, I do not have on the tip of my tongue. And unfortunately, I don't have Todd here with me to punt to, so he isn't going to pass me that number.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

I think, if you don't have the answer, I'll go dig it up. Are you there? [Technical Difficulty] Have we anniversary-ed the impact of the comparisons in terms of quarterly revenue from DBA at this point?

Bohn Crain

Management

I'm sorry. Give me that one more time?

Jeff Martin

Analyst

Has the impact of DBA been longer than 12 months? Basically, is that no longer a headwind for growth?

Bohn Crain

Management

The -- well, certainly, on the top -- on a comparable year-over-year basis, we acquired that -- we partnered [ph] DBA in April of '11. So there'll be a little bit on the top line. So that piece of it on the top line, there shouldn't be any noise. But there is certainly, on a comparable basis, kind of on a profitability basis, given some of the challenges that happened in LA kind of -- the no competes and all and some of that stuff, on a pro forma basis, I think the math would still show that we were behind those levels. But we've obviously got a number of other things to try to restore or kind of get back to something more normalized for the DBA contribution as a result of LA. So I think that's the long -- maybe not an eloquent way of saying it. But at least from my perspective, I think we've taken our lump sum on DBA, and that is largely behind us in terms of going forward and the guidance that we're providing. They're both -- we expect to incur a modest amount of incremental legal expense working through the California matter. But beyond that, they're really kind of transition costs and restructuring costs, and all of that stuff is behind us. So we should see some pretty clean results here for the quarter ended March and going forward. So hopefully, the numbers will get a little less complicated and a little more obvious for us.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

Okay, great. And then on the Marvir restructuring, the lease restructuring, is that $1 million savings going to be $1 million pretax cash savings for you, or is some of that noncash?

Bohn Crain

Management

No, that's all cash dollars. It's a voided rent expense and a voided labor dollars.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

Okay. And then you mentioned there's other markets that are prime candidates for similar things. I mean, obviously, you can't predict what kind of timing you'll bring those in-house, but are there any opportunities that could happen before you bring some of your partners in-house?

Bohn Crain

Management

Well, as I said, never say never. We're constantly talking to a lot of folks. It's hard to predict the absolute timing of any individual transactions. I mean, I think what we can say is over time, we would expect there to be a lot more of the kind of the tuck-in agent conversions in terms of frequency and number of transactions. But how these fall sequentially within the quarters, I wish I knew. But it's just -- you can see it over all the conversation and try to be responsive and respectful to the -- to our business partners to support them in their own goals, and that means different timing for different folks.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

Sure, sure, okay. And then should we be thinking, in terms of modeling, should we model agent commissions down as a percentage of gross revenue in the future? I mean, we haven't quite seen that trend come through yet. I'm wondering if there's a logical reason for that, and if we should start to see it come down in future quarters. And what's a reasonable assumption in terms of basis points to model it down?

Bohn Crain

Management

What -- that's a different way of asking the same question you just asked in terms of kind of the timing and frequency. The...

Jeff Martin

Analyst

You've got Marvir and IFS, right? That should have some impact to it.

Bohn Crain

Management

That's not going to -- Marvir was a substantially larger operation than IFS in total. But you should see it here, at least modestly in the coming quarters as a result of those transitions particularly with Marvir being the driver.

Jeff Martin

Analyst

Okay. And does that come in a step function? Does it all come at once, once those become in-house operations or does that take a couple of quarters to really see an impact?

Bohn Crain

Management

Those are, at least on their face and at least our experience to date, a heck of a lot easier to accomplish. When we're trying to get at kind of productivity gains and cost synergies when we acquire other agent-based networks, we effectively have to run off the tail. It's a term that we use for, before we can exit folks of the back-office infrastructures, they've got to collect all the receivables and process all the tables that were posted in the legacy company's operating system. And that's why we carried transition costs with DBA for as long as we did. We knew that they were leaving, and we communicated to them that was the case, but they had to be there for a period of time to help us work through that process. We simply don't have that dynamic when we're converting agent stations. So they're just a lot easier to capture those synergies. With that said, where we have the opportunity to do further station-level of consolidation depending on the individual facts and circumstances, we could have other lease termination costs to deal with. Not every company out there operates on a month-to-month lease and -- where you can just give the landlord the keys and be done. So although there's nothing immediately on the horizon, it certainly wouldn't surprise me if from time to time when we do these conversions, we end up with redundant facilities costs. And those will have to be dealt with in terms of the integration process.

Operator

Operator

It appears we have no further question at this time. I would now like to pass the floor back for closing comments.

Bohn Crain

Management

Great. Let me close by saying that we remain very excited with our progress and prospects here at Radiant. We continue to make good progress in executing our strategy, leveraging the platform to bring value to the agent forwarding community. We remain very excited about the opportunity for a continued organic growth available through expansion of our network and believe we remain uniquely positioned to bring value to our network participants, leveraging our status as a public company to provide our partners to share in the opportunity that they helped create; providing a robust platform in terms of people, process and technology; and offering a unique opportunity in terms of success in planning and liquidity for station owners. This approach has made us unique in the marketplace and has been key to our ability to grow, even in tough markets. Within this framework, we're fueling our growth through a combination of organic and acquisition initiatives. Organically, we continue to focus on improving the tools available to our existing network, as well as expanding the network itself by on-boarding new agent stations that recognize the benefit of our platform. In addition, we will also continue to opportunistically pursue accretive acquisition opportunities to further accelerate our growth, where we will continue to focus on the agent-based forwarding community. Radiant is a growth platform, and we look forward to providing you with further progress as we continue to move forward. Thanks for listening and for your support of Radiant Logistics.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.