Earnings Labs

Ziff Davis, Inc. (ZD)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 6, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to j2 Global's Fourth Quarter and 2017 Year-End Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Leading the call today will be Vivek Shah, CEO; and Scott Turicchi, President and CFO. Thank you, Mr. Turicchi. You may now begin.

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the j2 Global investor conference call for Q4 2017. As the operator mentioned, I'm Scott Turicchi, President and CFO of j2 Global. Joining me today is our new CEO, Vivek Shah. Q4 2017 was another strong quarter, producing a variety of record financial results, which I will detail later. The board has increased the quarterly dividend by $0.01 to $0.405 per share. We will use the presentation as a roadmap for today's call. A copy of the presentation is available at our website. When you launch the webcast, there is a button on the viewer on the right-hand side, which will allow you to expand the slides. If you've not received a copy of the press release, you may access it through our corporate website at www.j2global.com/press. In addition, you'll be able to access the webcast from this site. After we complete the formal presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. The operator will instruct you at that time regarding the procedures for asking a question. In addition, you may email us questions at any time at investor@j2global.com. Before we begin our prepared remarks, allow me to read the Safe Harbor language. As you know, this call and the webcast will include forward-looking statements. Such statements may involve risks and uncertainties that would cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results. Some of those risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risk factors that we have disclosed in our SEC filings, including our 10-K filings, recent 10-Q filings, various proxy statements and 8-K filings, as well as additional risk factors that we have included as part of the slide show for the webcast. We refer you to discussions in those documents regarding Safe Harbor language as well as forward-looking statements. Now, let me turn the call over to Vivek for his remarks.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Thank you, Scott, and good afternoon, everyone. So, it's been a little over a month since I took on the CEO role and four months since we started the transition. But as many of you know, I'm certainly not new. I've been here at j2 for over five years, working closely with Scott and the rest of the leadership team, as we've pursued a strategy and operating model that have produced terrific results, and we believe that that model will continue to fuel j2's growth well into the future. So, I thought I'd spend a few minutes today, since this is my first earnings call, to share a bit more about that strategy and our approach to the business. So, let's start on slide 5. Our mission from the very beginnings of this company has been about monetizing the shift from analog to digital. Digital fax was invented as an alternative to fax machines and servers. Our email marketing platform is designed to replace direct mail. Our digital publications are heir to the magazines that preceded them. Our digital video brands are driving the shift from television to digital video. Our product reviews and buying guides are generating a significant amount of e-commerce transactions. Unless you think that this shift is nearing its conclusion, there is ample evidence that it's still in its early stages. Analog fax still represents 80% to 85% of all faxing. Direct mail is still a $10 billion industry in the United States. Print publishing generates $14 billion a year. The e-commerce represents only 16% of all retail sales. I could go on, but it's clear that in each of the categories in which we operate, there's plenty of runway left. It's because shifts of this nature take place over many decades. They don't happen overnight.…

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Vivek. As I mentioned at the beginning of the call, Q4 2017 set a variety of financial records for j2, including revenue, adjusted EBITDA and non-GAAP EPS. The same was the case for fiscal year 2017 with revenues of $1.118 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $463 million and non-GAAP EPS of $5.64 per share. During the year, we completed 15 acquisitions, 11 for the Cloud business and four the Digital Media business and spent approximately $175 million. We ended the year with more than $400 million of cash and investments including our (00:16:09) preferred securities valued at $57.5 million. For Q4 2017, the Cloud segment grew approximately 3% to $147 million of revenues and an EBITDA margin of 52%. Digital Media had an expectedly strong quarter with revenues of $169.5 million and EBITDA of $67.3 million or an approximate 40% EBITDA margin. The parent had somewhat lower expenses due to timing. Consolidated results were $316.4 million of revenue for Q4 2017, or a growth of 26% versus Q4 2016. Adjusted EBITDA of $142 million or 22% growth and a 45% adjusted EBITDA margin, and non-GAAP EPS of $1.79 per share, an increase of 20% versus Q4 2016. Now let me turn to the results for each of the two segments. The Media businesses strength is driven by diversity of content verticals, strong brands as well as different modes of monetization. Key to this is multi-platform visits, which increased 22% from Q4 2016. As we have discussed in previous presentations, commerce revenue which is part of our performance-based marketing has become an increasingly important part of our overall mix. In Q4 of this year, we saw revenue growth of 46% driven by a record high 69 million clicks to our merchant partners through content at IGN and PCMag, coupons and promo…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting the question-and-answer session. One moment please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Shyam Patil of Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question.

Shyam Patil - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Hi, guys. Thank you. Congrats Vivek on the new role.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Thanks.

Shyam Patil - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

And thank you for the strategy overview. I wanted to ask just when you look at the stock like you said, you've been there already for a while for about five years, what do you view as the key levers to drive shareholder value over the long term?

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Well, I go back to the list of growth opportunities that I went through. I think executing well against that set is very important, right, to the overall growth of the company and to creating shareholder value. At the same time, continuing to execute on our M&A program. And I think in the three areas – and I think all three areas are important. They do different things, but the totality of it I think is important in terms of value creation. And then I think making sure people understand the story and I think that's why we spent the time we did at the beginning of this call. That's the start of the process so that people understand what j2 Global is, all of the pieces of j2, right. We've evolved a great deal in the last five years or six years. And so just making sure that people understand who we are today and where we're looking to go, I think that's important. And I think we do those three things. I think we unlock a tremendous amount of value.

Shyam Patil - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Great. And maybe just on M&A. Can you talk just a little bit about what you've seen with Everyday Health EBITDA margins after a year and kind of how you see that progressing this year?

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Yeah, yeah. So things are going really well at Everyday Health. We've completed the shrink to grow efforts which we've talked a lot about in the past. We've right-sized the organization. We've exited non-core and unprofitable businesses. We've got new General Managers in place at our consumer and pro-business units. We made a great acquisition with Health eCareers, which makes us even more useful to doctors which are an important target market within that business. And we added hospitals as a key advertising category through that acquisition. What To Expect business continues to perform really well. We see lots of performance marketing potential there. Look, there are some near-term challenges in pharma with some of the administration's talk of drug prices being too high, but I think over the medium to long-term, we see so much opportunities in the shift from television and print to digital. If TechADS (00:28:05) were the first shift over right from analog to digital, then I could argue that pharma ads have been the last and so in many ways, what we've seen in some of our other verticals, we're going to see over the next little bit. So, continue to be very excited for it. I'll also add that Health eCareers hopefully is the first of a number of tuck-in acquisitions and traffic acquisitions that we can do within Everyday Health. We view it as a platform and we think the health vertical is just a great vertical to be in. We've seen other assets as I'm sure you're aware trade at significant premiums to where we transacted, so we feel very good about it.

Shyam Patil - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Great. And then just my last question more on the modeling. Scott, thanks for the detailed guide by segment. Just wanted to ask – I know you don't give quarterly EBITDA on EPS, but it seems like at least in the Corporate level, those tend to be mis-modeled sometimes in consensus. Maybe at a high level, any color you can help just – color you can provide to help with modeling those on a quarterly basis, and then just on free cash flow for the year, how we should think about that? Thank you.

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Sure. So if we go back to slide 17, the real driver of the seasonality in our business is what happens in Digital Media. And so if you go to the middle of that slide and I think this is important now reemphasize it. The Digital Media revenues, which you can calculate of the 15% growth off of 2017, we expect because it's the seasonally weakest quarter at 20% of the revenues to occur in Q1 and because of the high fixed cost nature of the business, we have the lowest EBITDA margins of any of the four quarters, generally around 20% or in the low 20s. Conversely, the quarter we've just exited, the fourth fiscal quarter is the strongest. We anticipate that will be 30% of Digital Media's revenues and the leverage off of that cost structure will produce somewhere between a high-30s and 40s percent EBITDA margin. The Cloud business given it's both slower growth and generally is not much affected by seasonality is a lot more evenly distributed over the four quarters, so hopefully those two pieces will allow you to put the four quarters together in a manner that is consistent with our own budgeting. I think you had asked one other question? Free cash...

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Free cash flow.

Shyam Patil - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Free cash flow, yes.

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Yeah. So we would expect at the midpoint of this range, slightly under $500 million of EBITDA and a slightly in excess of say, 62%, 63% conversion to free cash flow. As you see in the fourth fiscal quarter just ended and this is always a little bit of the rub because of the timing of collections of in Media side and its proportionality of the whole business, sometimes some of that free cash flow generated moves over into Q1. So the EBITDA and the earnings are earned in Q4, but because of the timing of collections, the cash comes in, in Q1. So there can be a little bit of a timing offset, and we saw that in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2017. I'm just going to assume that the businesses continue to grow and stay in the relative proportions they are, so that on a marginal basis, we're likely to see that again in Q4 of 2018, Q1 of 2019.

Shyam Patil - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Great. Thank you, guys.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of James Breen of William Blair. Please proceed with your question. James Breen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Thanks for taking the question. Just a couple. One in the class that Scott you talked about sort of particular sequential strength you saw from the third and fourth quarter, cancel rates were down. Anything in particular there that will allow that to happen, was it industry driven or is it something you guys are doing specifically internally to do that? And then just on the M&A side, last year was a bit of a strange year you had, large acquisitions of Everyday Health, you had the divestitures. So, it wasn't sort of a typical j2 M&A year where you had five or six or four or five acquisitions a quarter and sort of spread throughout the year? Are we moving back toward that sort of more flat trend in terms of the M&A this year as you look at some of the deals that are on the books right now? Thanks.

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

I guess I'll start with that question on the M&A front. So, as you know, we've talked about before with you and the Street, M&A doesn't have always a consistent heartbeat quarter-to-quarter. As we look at 2017, you're correct, we had a couple of different anomalies. One was that the Digital Media business was essentially put on hold from doing acquisitions the first eight months of the year because what was most important was the integration and digestion of Everyday Health including figuring out what to do and openly disposing of Cambridge and Tea Leaves. As you saw the ones that occurred, Digital Media went back into high gear mode and actually closed four deals by year-end. So, there is some vagaries based up on just what is going on in various business units, the readiness to take on additional M&A, and then also what is going in each business unit from a valuation perspective. And that ebbs and flows in some market environments, certain of our portfolio businesses are in the sweet spot from an acquisition standpoint as it relates to valuation and others are not, it is one of the values of having a portfolio of these assets. So, I think as we look into 2018, I don't want to promise because – look, not all deals are of equal importance, that's the other thing I want to emphasize. The VIPRE, even though it's the first deal we have done in 2018, I think it's very important for our Cloud business and specifically, for the Security piece of that business. It not only brings customers, but it expands the breadth of Services. It moves in the direction of being a more complete service provider. It also combined with some organic growth this year is going to take that business probably to the high 60s to maybe $70 million of revenues. So it becomes a significant piece of not only the Cloud business but the overall j2 portfolio. So I think it's more important that we do important deals and we just post deals for the sake of saying we closed five this quarter or six this quarter or four this quarter. Having said that, it is a playbook of combinations meaning smaller tuck-in deals that are more readily done in season and out of season, generally without respect to what's going on in the market in terms of stock prices, the valuations and volatility and then deals that are more impactful to the specific business unit.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

The only thing I might add and I mentioned this in my prepared remarks is our General Manager structure which I think is really important because it's going to drive a fair amount of deal volume. We've got about a dozen GMs who are competing for capital for deals for their units. And I think what that's going to do is – I think we have far more capacity today, management capacity than we've ever had I think in j2's history in terms of our ability to source, evaluate, integrate, and make acquisition successful. So I think we'll see the outcome of that on a go-forward basis.

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

And now going back to your first question, you know, what sort of is the underpinning, and I'd say it was not only for the Fax business, as you can see the cancel rate was down for the Cloud business as a whole, very near all-time record lows. And I think you've got a couple of things going on there. One is that, on a relative basis, there's been near-term strength in the economy and I think if you look back over the last say 15 quarters to 20 quarters really post the recession, as you know the SMBs were the slowest to participate in the benefit of an improving economy. So, I think we're seeing that on a couple of different levels, usage. But those small businesses that become more stable, not only have the ability as they grow to add additional gigs (00:36:27) or numbers and drive additional traffic, which is good from an ARPU perspective, but they're also less at risk of ceasing to be in business. And that's always the biggest risk in the SMB market is that these small companies can be fragile, and so if the economy is weak, they suffer. And I think that a strong and strengthened economy is probably the biggest. I would say the second piece which is not unique to the fourth fiscal quarter, it's been building over time. As I mentioned in the remarks, is the emphasis on these businesses that cannot live without fax because they are in compliance oriented regulated businesses. The only question for them is how they are going to deploy this fax infrastructure or service to their customers and to their clients. And we want to be the provider of choice to do that. We think there's a tremendous value proposition to move away from embedded hardware solutions which as Vivek pointed out still are the predominant ways of which faxes are sent and received. So focusing intensely on healthcare, legal and finance as core verticals, also has an effect over time of dampening your cancel rate. James Breen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Great. And just two follow-ups really quickly, on the vertical side, you started in tech gaming, you moved to healthcare, do you feel like there is a need to go somewhere else from a vertical perspective as they are enough to do currently in those verticals at year end from an M&A perspective and growth? And then secondly, does any of the tax changes and repatriation change the way you think about the balance sheet going forward? Thanks.

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

You like compound questions. Don't you? Do you want to...

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

So you – I'll take the first question. So I – look I think there's plenty of runway within the verticals in which we operate healthcare and tech and retail and entertainment across both Cloud and Media. Opportunities in each of the respective segments and opportunities between the two, so I think there's a lot there. Having said that, there are other verticals that share characteristically many of the elements that we like right, markets where you can find audiences that are further down in the purchase funnel that can be monetized in multiple different ways, multiple different (00:38:46) and lead-gen, digital video, and subscriptions. And I'll underscore the subscription piece because one of the great things that's I think emerging and you're starting to see it in our numbers and I think you'll continue to see it in our numbers is the ability to build ad scale subscription revenues within Media, right. The Media business really historically has been forms of advertising whether that advertising was CPM or CPC or CPA or CPL. There're still forms of advertising where the customer is a marketer. We're very eager to build our subscription businesses and I think the Cloud side has been very instrumental to the Media side in developing best practices and approaches to pricing and to marketing and to retention, and I think you're going to start to see that play out. But, yeah, look other verticals, finance would be an interesting verticals given the position that we have on the Fax side from a compliance point of view, we like the travel vertical, we like the auto vertical. So those are verticals that would be natural extensions and if the opportunities present themselves, you'll see us move there. But again, if they don't, there's plenty for us to do in the existing four.

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

And as it relates to the tax elements and where cash resides around the world, as you know historically, based on our tax structure, we would have a certain amount of so-called trapped cash. From our perspective, it was not truly trapped, because we do M&A globally and that money would be used for the non-U.S. acquisitions, although there was generally always a meaningful positive balance overseas above the working capital necessary. As part of the Tax Reform Act at the end of last year, as I noted, the way, the repatriation formula works it's a combination of tax on your earnings and profit from the cash balances you have at 12/31/2017. So we have a $48 million liability. Good news is, it's spread over a years. It's interest free and it starts off at a very low rate the first five years, we pay only 8% of that amount, so about $4 million (00:40:47) a year. The benefit though is that we have the ability to bring back about $600 million of cash. Now we don't have to kind of move into cash today, but effectively, our cash today and for many years into the future is going to be fungible for use anywhere in the world. So our primary focus of course is to do deals that are the best for our portfolio companies, whether they'd be in the United States or in a foreign jurisdiction. But it has been the case that are larger transactions in the company's history have been U.S. domicile. We no longer have that friction of, well, might we have to go raise some money because we have enough cash, but unfortunately, a certain amount of it is in the wrong jurisdiction and it's difficult or a hassle to bring it back or to bring it back is a high 35% marginal tax rate, so that's basically behind us. To say, it'll drive the use of that cash will really be the deals irrespective of their domicile. But from a U.S. perspective, which I would say is still likely to be where most of the intermediate and larger deals are done, we don't have that restriction. James Breen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Great, thanks. No more questions from me.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Will Power of Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question. Will V. Power - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Great, yeah, thank you very much. A couple of questions. Vivek, if I could start with you, you all are guiding to a Digital Media revenue growth (00:42:19) 15%-plus. I think it'd be great if you could help us just kind unpack how to think about the organic growth component of that versus the divestitures and M&A that occurred over the course of 2017. And then just more broadly, you know, if you think about the key metrics, KPIs and investors should be focused on to get comfortable with the ongoing organic trends, what shall we be looking at to understand that the looking forward?

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Yeah. So, a few things in terms of 2018. So from an organic point of view, we're growing at about high-single digits, right. So that is the existing set of properties that exist on the Digital Media side. Now, we've got a couple of other things happening right, so we've got the divestitures which are Tea Leaves and Cambridge. We've got the Section 606 change which is reasonably meaningful on the Media side, and then we've got the acquisitions of some of the properties that took place in the fourth quarter, most notably Mashable, but also Health eCareers and a couple of others. So all of those together generates the 15% growth that we're guiding towards and I think when you think about metrics, look, I mean, I think your conventional metrics which still apply but are imperfect or are traffic metrics, site visits and page views and what does the audience look like and is their audience and inventory growth and then monetization metrics, which would really be calculating your revenue per unique visitor or your revenue per visit or your revenue per page views. And then often we think about monetization more than traffic because we're looking for multiple ways to extract rent from the same visit from the same visitor from the same page view. Obviously, look, we're doing a fair amount of work also on the subscription side, so as we look to I think you would want to start to see us grow our subscription revenues, it was one of the reasons the Humble Bundle acquisition was interesting to us which is how do we take these 180 million people we see every month, across all of these properties and sell them a service that we provide, whether that – by the way that service…

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

2 points, yeah.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Of about 2 points in margin. So, that didn't help us in 2018, but we are starting to improve. And then, we've got assets like Mashable that aren't yet fully optimized from a margin point of view. Scott, anything to add?

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

No, go ahead. I think that was fairly complete.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Okay. Will V. Power - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Yeah, guys. That's great (00:46:19).

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

And then... Will V. Power - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Go ahead.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Go ahead. Will V. Power - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Well, I was just going to say, just the second question, I guess, on the other side of the business, as you've had several months here to kind of look under the hood so to speak on the Cloud Services side maybe a bit more than you had in the past. Any positive, negative surprises and what are the thoughts about cross-selling opportunities and taking learnings from one side to the other? How are you thinking about that?

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

So, look, I have spent the last four months diving in to all the Cloud Services businesses, and I have been at the company, so a lot of it wasn't new. But what was interesting is I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the compliance opportunity hasn't really played out yet. I was under the inception (00:47:09) that we were deep into that transition, and it couldn't be further from the truth. I was – I'm shocked by how much of healthcare and financial services, legal, manufacturing, even government still rely on analog fax, whether it'd be fax machines or fax servers. We all know that won't sustain and we all know that you still need what fax brings, which is secured document delivery. So, I do think you get a transition from analog to digital. I think what we're trying to focus on now is how do we accelerate that, how do we as the market leader not sit back and wait, how do we put ourselves in the position that we can move that along a bit faster. I also think Scott mentioned, in the security business, security is probably the single most important issue facing companies of all sizes. But I think a lot of the security market attention and activity have been around larger enterprises. Within the SMB space, no one has really done it in the way that we think it needs to be done. And so, we have early success with FuseMail, which provides a very specific kind of security, which is email security, securing your employees' use of their email. Obviously, endpoint, which is the device themselves, is critical, as is web security, which we're not in. So, our ability to offer a broader security offering to SMB, we think, is an interesting…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jon Tanwanteng of CJS Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Jon E Tanwanteng - CJS Securities, Inc.

Analyst · your question.

Hey, Scott and Vivek. Thanks for taking my questions. First thing, any update on the OCV commitment and how you expect to report developments in that investment as we go forward?

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Sure. So, we've actually just recently in the last couple of weeks signed the final documentation. At this point though, there have been no capital call commitments. And we will be getting quarterly updates from OCV as to their activity, and that will be available – or at least some of that will be available directly on their website, which you can access. I think in the scheme of j2, it's actually a relatively small investment. So, if you've heard us talk about these 12 business units, the revenue they're driving and the EBITDA, that's where our focus and attention is going to be as it relates to updates. But there will be information available from time-to-time on the various investments that they are making.

Jon E Tanwanteng - CJS Securities, Inc.

Analyst · your question.

Okay, great. And then...

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

And then, just to be clear, from an accounting standpoint and what we expect this year, the management fees and some associated expenses will be expensed through other income and expense below the line, below EBITDA. So, it will be amalgamated in there with interest expense and interest income, and that's where the OCV management fee will be reflected. And at this point, we're not expecting, given that they're in their early stages, that there would be any monetization events this year or any revenue that would be generated from the investment.

Jon E Tanwanteng - CJS Securities, Inc.

Analyst · your question.

Got it. That's very helpful. Can you also provide more details on the Humble Bundle and Mashable transactions, either the price you paid as well as trailing performance, and how quickly you expect those to be integrated into the j2 playbook and how you like to run things?

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Well, I'll talk about the integration piece and what we liked about the assets and where we're looking to take. And to start with Mashable, I touched on a little bit earlier, but again it's a great tech brand, has meaningful traffic that is primarily monetized today through display advertising, which we are going to expand and are expanding into a variety of other monetization sources, including affiliate commerce. They do have a digital video business that's in development. We are architecting it to resemble more of how we do digital video, and so we're working through that, and then just really managing the cost base and getting out of some activities or some initiatives that broaden beyond tech, right. There were – I think Mashable is a standalone, venture-backed, highly valued company. I think the last round and (00:54:06) they raised $250 million necessitated that they become more than just what they were and to try to go in and be horizontal and compete with BuzzFeed and other players. We don't need it to do that, right. We need it to do what it has always done and what it was always known for, so focusing it back on the core. So, this is very much like what we did with IGN a few years ago and PC Mag before then, focusing the business, building revenue streams, disciplined approach to expenditure and margin. And we feel very good about the brand. It's an incredible brand and it's one that we think has halo effect across a lot of our properties. To be able to go to market and have that within the portfolio was really, really great for our tech properties. The Humble Bundle piece is more along the lines of what I've talked about, which is how do…

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

And as it relates to the purchase prices, as you know, we don't disaggregate the purchase prices. But you know for the four transactions that were done in Q4, which were Digital Media, two of which Vivek has just talked about, we spent $130 million. It was rumored that Mashable was $50 million. I can tell you we paid less than that. But you can kind of use that as a benchmark, and the other three transactions obviously took up the remainder.

Jon E Tanwanteng - CJS Securities, Inc.

Analyst · your question.

Got it. And how soon should we expect those to kind of reach the target margins that you have for those kinds of businesses?

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

The Humble acquisition, I think, will reach its target margins this year. The question for us on Humble though is a function of where we want to take the margins. We were big believers in this business is in not even the first at that (00:57:26) in the first inning. And so, in order to maximize the potential, I think there is going to be a question as to how much we want to reinvest back into the business for its future growth and future margin opportunities. Having said that, we believe that within this calendar year, it will meet the margin criteria both that we budget and are (00:57:45) consistent with what we expect. Mashable on the other hand, as you know, started from a money-losing position last year. We've been able to staunch the bleeding. So, it's not going to cost anything this year. But I think we're looking more towards full margin potential in 2019...

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Yeah.

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Where 2018 is the year of transition.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

That's right.

Jon E Tanwanteng - CJS Securities, Inc.

Analyst · your question.

Got it. Final one, Vivek, just you mentioned pharma and the risk from drug prices coming down. Have you quantified that at all and how much have you accounted for in your guidance for Everyday?

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Yeah. No. So, we – embedded in our guidance is modest growth in the pharma category. If for no other (00:58:26) reason, we felt it was prudent to be conservative. If we can improve upon that, great. But I think right now, that's the prudent thing to do (00:58:35). It's hard to tell, right, because a lot of this is – even if there isn't regulation, there's still self-regulation. And what can happen is sort of a self-imposed de facto drug price cap, and the outcome of that is that, if you look at the pharma industry today just with the state of pipeline, most of its revenue growth is a function of price increase. So, if you can't take up price and the pipelines right now are in a certain position where new drugs aren't necessarily coming to market at the pace at which they have in the past – they will going forward, you can see the pipeline – then there's pressure on expenses. And if there's pressure on expenses, often advertising is a variable expense that one can look to. Countervailing all of that is you still have a lot of money being – the majority, the vast majority of money in pharma, an overwhelming majority of money in pharma is in television and print, the efficacy of which has been questioned, will continue to be questioned. And it may be that in this exercise of, well, wait a minute, if I've got less to spend, where should I spend, that might be the silver lining for us, which is you see this shift from print to digital or from analog to digital. So, we'll see, right. I think that's a – it's a long answer to say, we were conservative I think in our guidance development.

Jon E Tanwanteng - CJS Securities, Inc.

Analyst · your question.

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Greg McDowell of JMP Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Greg R. McDowell - JMP Securities LLC

Analyst · your question.

Great. Thank you so much. Just one question for you, Vivek. I noticed an announcement about some enhancements or changes to your leadership team. So, now that you've been at the helm for almost 40 days, I was just wondering if you could expand a little bit on what additional changes you need to make to your team or any other changes you're contemplating in terms of the executive leadership surrounding you. Thanks.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Yeah. No. So, I'd be happy to. And so, let me talk a little bit about what we've done. So, the first thing we did was we integrated some core functions such as finance, HR, legal and corp IT. In the past, those functions existed independently at Cloud and Media. And so, our goal here really wasn't about cost savings, though there were those. It was more about efficacy, performing better as combined departments, leveraging respective expertise and resources. So, we've brought those functions together, and so obviously finance under Scott. Our Global Head of HR, Patty Brunton, now oversees HR for the entire company. Jeremy Rossen, our General Counsel, does the same on the legal function. And Joey Fortuna has been established as the CTO of the corporation. That is a new role. And so, establishing a corporate CTO we thought was very important. And then, as you saw in the announcements that I think you're referencing, we've elevated Harmeet Singh, who's been outstanding, as the President of our Cloud Services; and Steve Horowitz, who's been by my side for the last seven years and is just the greatest operator in the Media business that I've ever known as the President of Ziff Davis. So, we've done, I think, all of the leadership changes and structure that we're looking to do. And then, as I've pointed out, we have general managers who have been either newly recruited or are being recruited to manage the various P&Ls in both of our segments. Then, I think beyond that, what we're really looking to do is facilitate dialogue. Between our different business units and our employee bases, we're spread out in over 40 offices around the world and we have put in place Workplace, which is done by Facebook, which is a workplace collaboration tool, where we're able to see a lot of knowledge sharing and a lot of connections being made. And what we're finding is that there are these common challenges around search engine marketing and search engine optimization and sales force structure and category opportunities, and so now connecting people across the organization, which I think the organization really enjoys. I think they welcome and I think it's created a great esprit de corps within the company. So, that's at the top level and then across the board set of dynamics in play.

Greg R. McDowell - JMP Securities LLC

Analyst · your question.

That's helpful color. Thank you very much.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Greg Burns of Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question. Greg J. Burns - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Good afternoon. When we look at where the full-year shook out in terms of revenue and EPS is towards the lower end of your guidance range. Was there anything in particular in the fourth quarter that was lighter than you expected going in?

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

No. As you remember, on the EPS side, we did not revise the range. And so, what took us lower in the range from the midpoint were loss contribution from the sale of the sold assets, the three of them at various points in the year and the excess costs from the 6% notes because we took $150 million more than we needed and that capital still sits on our balance sheet. So, those were the primary deltas between the midpoint of the range and sort of where we ended up. I think there's a couple of pennies here and there that probably flowed through to some other categories. But the bulk of it were the disposal of the assets and the excess interest expense. Greg J. Burns - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Okay, thanks. And when we look at the cumulative investment capital slides in the deck, can you just talk about the kind of the trajectory of the returns? Over the last few years, they've been declining. Just what's driving that? Is it just generally lower returns on the more recent acquisitions? Is it the majority of the acquisitions? Just gives us maybe a little bit more color on why those returns have been declining over the last few years.

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Well, if you go to slide 23, which I think is what you're referencing, I would say they're really in a band, 22% to 27%. Or you could flip that around, which is probably easier to talk about, which is cumulative investment to EBITDA. Now, first of all, I want to draw your attention, the cumulative investment is not solely the M&A done within the given segment. It's all the investment that j2 has made including regular capital investment. So, this is not purely correlative to try to demonstrate the returns on the M&A. It is – does have a degree of correlation, because it is the vast majority of the spend, but it's not 100% of the spend. So, you do have CapEx and other things that are flowing through to get to cumulative investments. But I would say it's actually fairly consistent. I'd say in the last two years, as you know, Everyday Health, right at the end of 2016, the largest acquisition we ever did, because it was big, it took a while to digest it and to get it into its synergistic shape, which we believe will bear itself out in 2018. So, that has a little bit of a drag. But we look at these – and we look at a slightly different metric, which is we look at by deal and then we look at it by year the actual ROIC, which takes into account things like taxes, additional costs that may occur in right-sizing a business, and it's been incredibly consistent, albeit there is variability across certain deals. Some do better than others. But it's been very consistent in about the 17.5%, 18% return range, which is within the tolerance of what we target. So, I don't think we're seeing a lot – obviously, when you do deals at the end of the year, it does create a negative dynamic for that calendar year, because you're booking the investment and you're only getting a fraction of the year of the benefit. That occurred both in 2016 in a big way with Everyday Health. It occurred in a more modest way in 2017 with the four acquisitions. Greg J. Burns - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions over the audio portion of the conference. I would now like to turn the conference back over to management for concluding remarks.

Scott Turicchi - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Thank you very much. Vivek and I appreciate your time and attention today on this, I think, very important call to get to hear a little bit more about how the business is being thought of at j2. We will have several conferences between now and our next earnings call, which will be targeted for early May. At that point, we will give you an update on the business, as well as discuss Q1 results. So, we look forward to seeing you on the road and then talking to you again in early May. Thank you.

Vivek Shah - j2 Global, Inc.

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful rest of your day.