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TTEC Holdings, Inc. (TTEC)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, May 10, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to TeleTech’s First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to remind all parties that you will be in a listen-only mode until the question and answer of today’s conference call. This call is being recorded at the request of TeleTech. I would like to turn the call over to Paul Miller, TeleTech Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations. Thank you sir, you may begin.

Paul Miller

Management

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. TeleTech is hosting this call to discuss its first quarter 2016 results ended March 31. Participating on today’s call are Ken Tuchman, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Regina Paolillo, our Chief Financial and Administrative Officer. Yesterday, TeleTech issued a press release announcing its financial results for the first quarter 2016. While this call will reflect items discussed within those documents we encourage all listener’s to read our first quarter report on Form 10-Q. Before we begin I want to remind you that matters discussed today on this call may include forward-looking statements related to our operating performance, financial goals and business outlook, which are based on Management’s current beliefs and assumptions. Please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions as of the date of this call and we undertake no obligation to revise this information as a result of new information that may become available. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those described. Such factors include, but are not limited to, reliance on several large clients, the risks associate with lower profitability from or the loss of one or more significant clients, execution risks associated with ramping new business or integrating acquired businesses, the possibility of asset impairment and/or restructuring charges, and the potential impact to the financial results due to foreign exchange rate fluctuations. For a more detailed description of our risk factors please review our most recent annual report on Form 10-K. A replay of this conference call will be available on our website under the Investor Relations section. I’ll now turn the call over to Ken Tuchman, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Ken Tuchman

Management

Thank you, Paul and good morning everyone. While we had a decline in our first quarter 2016 results relative to the prior year quarter, it should not be interpreted as an indicator of the year ahead. We remain confident in our strategy, we are on target with our internal plan, and we expect to achieve our full year guidance communicated earlier in the year. In a few moments, Regina will provide greater detail into our performance as well as outline the key factors that will bridge our first quarter results to the full year guidance. In the meantime, I want to provide some context around our transformational journey and share some positive indicators of our progress. When we set out to revolutionize our business several years ago, we created a bold strategy, and designed a road map to move our business from a labor intensive commodity to a technology enabled managed services company. Today, we have diversified well beyond our heritage customer care competencies to include more integrated outcome based capabilities, inclusive of consulting, technology, data analytics and digital solutions. In the midst of an economic and technological revolution. We have been building a strategically relevant value proposition that will enable our company to thrive for decades to come. While our first quarter results bring to light some anticipated headwinds which Regina will describe shortly, we remain resolute in the path forward. Over the years, we have intentionally invested in our business by diversifying our product and service mix. Today, we have built strong foundation and an ample flexible to work through variability in the businesses while achieving our medium and long term goals. Here are the trends we are experiencing that give us continues confidence. Our integrated value proposition is a competitive differentiator. Over the past year, we have…

Regina Paolillo

Management

Thank you Ken, and good morning everyone. Let me start with some context on the first quarter year-over-year comparison as it relates to bookings revenue and operating income. I will then provide details on each of our segments and conclude by bridging our first quarter results to our full year guidance. Our bookings were $100 million down 16.7%, after record quarterly bookings in 2015, CGS grew bookings another 10% year-over-year, exceeding $20 million, a good indicator that CGS is 30% revenue growth remains intact. Our CSS business has record bookings in the quarter at $29 million, supporting the quarterly sequential growth expected throughout 2016. While the CMS bookings were lower than expected in the first quarter, early signings in the second quarter and a growing pipeline support the revenue ramp required to return to quarterly year-over-year growth, which we estimate will begin in the third quarter. TTS bookings were also lower than expected due to avia’s product refresh, including delays in their enterprise cloud platform. The CTS, Cisco platform continues to deliver bookings that support our double-digit Cisco revenue growth expectations. While our contract signings temporarily dipped in the first quarter of 2016, and were lower than we anticipated, we saw solid growth in CJS and CSS and had over $30 million in bookings with new client relationships. The decline in bookings and the first quarter is simply a matter of timing. As Ken articulated earlier we expect a sequential increase in bookings into the second quarter and approximately 10% year-over-year growth at the half. Moving on to our financial performance, our GAAP revenue was $312.4 million on a constant currency basis it was $322.4 million, a 1% decline from the same period last year. Our GAAP operating income was $17.8 million, and $16.7 million on a constant currency basis…

Paul Miller

Management

Thanks, Regina. As we open the call we ask that you limit your questions to one or two at a time, operator, you may now open the line.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mike Malouf with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead with your question.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Great, thank you for taking my questions.

Paul Miller

Management

Hi, Mike.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Hi, if we can just start with the CGS side. I know you are ramping up a lot of as you said seven programs right now, and obviously showing really great growth on the topline, but I am just wondering if you can give us a little bit of color on the bottom line, and how that would ramp up to the double-digit operating margins from pretty low operating margins, of about 2%, in the last quarter, because on a outcomes basis, I am just wondering how you actually get the leverage there that you weren’t getting in the first quarter.

Regina Paolillo

Management

Yes, so number one, I would further – kind of highlight the fact that seven accounts combination of existing and new, represent about 45% of the client basis. So it is a bit of a tug on the operating income of those other clients. The second thing is that if this business is going to get to that 30% growth, which means it is $165 million, $166 million for the full year, you can see that it needs to ramp up another $11 million, and I would say it’s very simply the fact that as I go back to the number of ramps, we have in many of our clients we have a fixed cost for a period of time. We then convert to variables. That fix cost protects our operating income to some extent during the ramp, but it is the step up in the variable component when we go to 100% outcome that gives us that premium operating income margin off the premium results. But the second thing, back to my point on getting the $11 million of additional revenue, that $11 million is essentially SG&A free. It is not only SG&A free, there are overheads within the business in terms of the leadership RVPs, RSVPs and so on. So it is simply a matter of getting those clients to their outcome based pricing which gives us premium, and secondly, the fact that for the balance of the year we have layered into Q1 the step up in any of that SG&A that will happen in this year, and we get those – that ramp revenue what I would say overhead free.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Okay, so the cost to provide the revenue really on the gross margin side for CGS is not running ahead of your expectations sort of.

Paul Miller

Management

Not at all.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Okay.

Regina Paolillo

Management

No, simply the volume of ramp verses the percentage of ramp verses the existing business.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Got it, and then just as a follow-up, with regards to CSS, do you need a rebound in the Middle East business to sort of reach your goals in the second half? You said that you’d hoped that would get behind you, can you give us.

Regina Paolillo

Management

No, so I want to – what I would say is I will reiterate the fact that the avia headwind, the Middle East headwind, and the capacity utilization headwind, are in our guidance. They always have been. We don’t give quarterly guidance, part of what happened here is we don’t give quarterly guidance, and so while a little bit challenging to potentially help our analyst get to a point where we would have understood the degree of the down in the first half, but also the degree of confidence in the second half. Largely because of those backlogs, those backlogs are exactly where we need them to be. And we consider the balance of what we need to book and convert to revenue in year, very doable and reasonable based on the talent we have, based on the pipeline that we have, and based on the historical bookings that we have been able to deliver.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Okay, thanks a lot.

Regina Paolillo

Management

So on the CSS, it is in there and you know the guidance in terms of where we think CSS will be which is kind of flat to last year, with the margins slightly down, and getting back in Q4 reasonable quarter-over-quarter growth, we are confident that we have got the ability to do that.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Okay, great, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Steve McManus with Sidoti & Company LLC. Please go ahead with your question.

Steve McManus

Analyst · Sidoti & Company LLC. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, guys and thank you for taking my questions.

Paul Miller

Management

Pleasure.

Steve McManus

Analyst · Sidoti & Company LLC. Please go ahead with your question.

So first question I wanted to get a little bit more detail as to the time line for capacity utilization recovery. I know you mentioned by the end of the year 78%, should we expect somewhat of a gradual recovery, or a real big improvement in third and fourth quarter how should we look at that moving forward?

Regina Paolillo

Management

So as always, history will repeat itself in CMS and we will have a tick down in the revenue as we move through all of our seasonal work. So you will see a slight decline into Q2, and then you will see a very nice ramp, pretty even ramp, going from slight decline from the 73% and then pretty even ramp up to 78% between Q3 and Q4.

Steve McManus

Analyst · Sidoti & Company LLC. Please go ahead with your question.

Okay, great, thanks a lot. And then it looks like you guys took on some debt during the quarter, I just wanted to see what you guys are using that for, and any plans to pay that down over the year? Are you comfortable with the levels right now?

Regina Paolillo

Management

Yes, you are correct in the second quarter, we amended our credit agreement, and expanded the line of credit to $1 billion with an accordion beyond that. And we – look, we continue to expect to deploy our capital for organic growth for executing against our committed dividends, and for buybacks as well as acquisitions. While we haven’t had an acquisition in over a year, other than a minority interest we made, we are still working hard every day working with our team, to identify and move forward those opportunities and for a variety of reasons, whether it’s price, or ultimately wasn’t a strategic priority, we haven’t closed anything. But we have high hopes of continuing our acquisition strategy into the future.

Steve McManus

Analyst · Sidoti & Company LLC. Please go ahead with your question.

Okay, great, thank as lot guys I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, and our next question comes from Frank Atkins with SunTrust. Please go ahead with your question.

Frank Atkins

Analyst · SunTrust. Please go ahead with your question.

Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the pipeline, has it changed relative to your expectations going into last quarter? Is that allowed you to maintain guidance on the revenue side, in terms of maybe it’s coming up better than expected?

Paul Miller

Management

Yes. Our pipeline continues to get better for a myriad of reasons. One, we’re frankly getting better at selling across all the different divisions, and two, what we are seeing is better conversions than what we were seeing previously. And so we feel very good about the pipeline, and we feel very good about the conversions and the prospects that we have. And obviously, when we look at where we are in the year, it matters greatly to us what we have already closed in second quarter, that gives us confidence that we can bridge the gap. Sometimes there’s timing issues where deals get pushed by a day, or five days, and we have very, very strict rules on how we account for closed bookings. And so if they miss it by a day, they get pushed into the next quarter, that is all a there is to it. And so we did have some of that happen in first quarter. But that said, we feel really good about the types of deals that we are working on, and the complexity of how they are working across multiple groups. And then the other thing I would tell you is we are seeing a much higher mix of new logos coming in. So historically, a high percentage of our business typically has only come from our embedded base. Or majority of which has come from our embedded base, and now we are getting the benefit of seeing both, the embedded base is growing and we adding a lot of very significant new logos. And that’s really important to us. It is all part of our diversification strategy. It is all part of making sure that we have coverage across all the various different verticals. Since being in this business as long as we have been in it, we realize that these different industries go through periods of very, very strong positive growth, and then they hit pockets where they are hitting headwinds so to speak. Just as we experienced as an example in our healthcare exchange business, where it was growing at just breakneck speed, and then all of a sudden the healthcare payers have come to realize that exchanges are not all that profitable of a business and so consequently that put pressure on that particular area of our healthcare business. So we are able to overcompensate with all the other industries and verticals that we are focusing on and all the new logos we are bringing in.

Frank Atkins

Analyst · SunTrust. Please go ahead with your question.

Okay, great that’s helpful. And could you just update on where you stand in terms of your capacity, and comfort level with the sales team that you have?

Paul Miller

Management

Well, we – fortunately and unfortunately, we are not lacking capacity. So the good news on that is that will give office little bit of relief going forward on CapEx as we infill to the capacity that we have. So we – and that said, the business that we have already closed and that we have slated for closing we think will do a pretty good job of soaking up some of that capacity. The other thing is that our segments are doing a real good job of feeding opportunities to the various different business units which is great. Because we want to have that constant push pull across all of our segments. Our GMI is out hunting new logos, and our third party channels which is something that we are putting more energy into is definitively yielding new opportunities many of which we have closed and are going back and working with these channel partners to close more deals. And then our pull through from CSS, is also working as well, and we – we think that over time as we get more mature in all these different business units we are going to see even better yield than what we are currently seeing.

Frank Atkins

Analyst · SunTrust. Please go ahead with your question.

Great, thank you very much.

Paul Miller

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for your questions. That is all the time we have today. This concludes the TeleTech first quarter 2016 earnings conference call. You may disconnect at this time.