TBI
#Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's call.
I'm here with our Chief Executive Officer, Steve <UNK>; and our Chief Operating Officer, <UNK> <UNK>.
Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that today's call and slide presentation will contain several forward-looking statements, all of which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and we assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.
These risks and uncertainties, some of which are described in today's press release and in our SEC filings, could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements.
We use non-GAAP measures when presenting our financial results.
Included as adjustments to net income are the gain from the sale of PlaneTechs, amortization of intangible assets, cloud-based software implementation costs and adjustment of the effective income tax rate to the ongoing expected rate of 16%.
Adjustments to EBITDA include Work Opportunity Tax Credit processing fees and cloud-based software implementation costs.
Please refer to the non-GAAP reconciliations in today's earnings release and on our website at trueblue.com under the Investor Relations section.
Any comparisons made today are based on a comparison to the same period in the prior year, unless otherwise stated.
We made one change this quarter with respect to our segment disclosures.
We are now using the term segment profit in reference to the profitability of our segments, which aligns with the terminology we are now using within our internal management reporting.
Segment profit is comparable to segment adjusted EBITDA numbers reported in the past.
Finally, as we did last quarter, we will be providing a copy of our prepared remarks on our website at the conclusion of today's call.
And a full transcript and audio replay will also be available soon after the call.
I'll now turn the call over to Steve.
Thank you, <UNK>.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.
I'm pleased to report we made great progress across multiple fronts to improve our business this past quarter, which resulted in delivering higher levels of profitability across all reported measurements this quarter.
Net income per share grew 100% to $0.22 for Q1.
While revenue of $554 million was down 2% overall, organic growth in our PeopleScout business accelerated to 22% for the quarter.
PeopleReady had 5% declines related mainly to our solar industry clients, along with softness in certain U.S. regional areas.
And our PeopleManagement segment revenue performed as expected.
We continue to make progress in reducing our cost of services mainly associated with workers' compensation and recruiting expense, which has resulted in our ninth consecutive quarter of gross margin expansion and a 3% increase in gross profit for the quarter.
We believe these management practices position us for strong operating leverage in the future.
The pace of change in connecting people to work is rapidly evolving, particularly when it comes to talent acquisition and workforce management.
Widespread skill shortages, the need for just-in-time workforce adjustments and a tight labor market in which workers can choose from many offers are making it increasingly challenging to get the right worker in the right position at the right time.
Job candidates are also increasingly turning to technology to find the work they want when they want it.
We are leading the way in digitally transforming how people find work and how businesses find people.
JobStack is our digital platform in our PeopleReady business that matches workers with jobs and allows customers to initiate orders.
We're making nice progress with consistent improvement in utilization.
The recent launch of our proprietary talent acquisition technology, Affinix, in our PeopleScout business is receiving high levels of praise from customers and a great deal of interest from prospective customers.
We have the right strategy to meet the challenges in connecting people with work.
Our services are differentiated, and we are positioned for impressive long-term growth.
Today, we announced the divestiture of PlaneTechs, a provider of skilled mechanics and technicians, to the aviation sector.
PlaneTechs was part of our PeopleManagement segment with $40 million of annual revenue and 3% operating income margins.
Over our 10 years of ownership, we accomplished many things, and the asset provided good returns for our shareholders.
However, today, our focus remains on larger markets with higher growth and higher profit margin opportunities.
Now I'd like to turn the call over to <UNK>, who'll provide further discussion on our results and our growth strategies.
Thanks, Steve.
I'll start with PeopleReady, our largest segment, representing 60% of trailing 12 months total company revenue and 53% of combined segment profit.
PeopleReady's local relationships, national footprint of physical branch locations and growing use of technology are helping clients find contingent industrial labor quickly and efficiently.
PeopleReady posted a revenue decline of 5% in Q1, a deceleration from the comparable decline of 1% we saw in Q4 of 2017.
This deceleration was largely driven by 2 items that created 4 percentage points of headwind.
The first item relates to delays in solar-related construction projects in part due to the new tariffs on imported solar panels.
We're working to fill the gap with a focus on growing local accounts.
The second item is softer revenue trends in the Southeast associated with turnover of sales professionals.
In the back half of 2017, we had much higher than usual turnover on our sales team in the Southeast territory, particularly in our construction practice.
We've since filled the majority of those open positions, but there has been a drag on revenue growth as the new sales team is ramping up.
We're excited about the future for PeopleReady, given the fact that client adoption of JobStack is just starting to become a reality.
JobStack is a next-generation mobile app that algorithmically matches workers with jobs.
We successfully completed the rollout of the worker app in 2017, and we now have associate adoption rates of nearly 75%.
Our goal is to hit 70% adoption in 2018, so we've already met that goal.
As workers have adopted the app, we've also seen steady progress in the percentage of jobs being filled via the JobStack app.
Across our entire network, we're announcing digital fill rates of approximately 30%.
At this pace, we'll easily step over our 35% year-end goal ahead of schedule.
Client adoption is the next big goal, since real synergies can only be achieved once both the worker and the client sides of the digital exchange are up and running.
By the end of the first quarter, we had 4,300 unique clients on JobStack.
We're currently on track to meet our goal of 10,000 clients by the end of 2018.
While it's too soon to expect significant across-the-board lift from JobStack, we are encouraged by early results.
Our best-performing branches, which are posting digital fill rates in excess of 50%, had sequential growth between Q4 and Q1 that were approximately 3 percentage points better than their peer branches.
We hope to have more good news to report in the future as we see this segment leveraging our digital strategy for years to come.
Next, let's turn to PeopleManagement, which represents 32% of revenue and 18% of combined segment profit.
PeopleManagement provides on-site workforce solutions in the North American industrial staffing market.
Revenue for PeopleManagement declined by 4% in Q1.
PlaneTechs was part of this segment and since we sold this business 3 weeks before quarter end, the divested revenue created a 2% growth headwind.
Excluding PlaneTechs, PeopleManagement declined by 2%.
We are optimistic about the growth opportunity for this business.
We have a solid pipeline that reflects the attractive solutions we offer for on-premise staffing and see increasing opportunity in the labor-intensive world of e-commerce.
Our third business unit is PeopleScout, the global leader in filling permanent positions through our recruitment process outsourcing and managed service provider offerings.
PeopleScout represents only 8% of revenue but represents 29% of combined segment profit, given its attractive margin.
This business is performing very well, growing 22% and now has exhibited double-digit top line growth for 3 straight quarters.
We are increasingly optimistic about the future, given the recent deployment of Affinix.
Affinix is a next-generation talent acquisition technology that streamlines the recruiting process and creates a consumer-like experience for the candidate.
Clients are particularly excited about the enhanced candidate experience and world-class candidate attraction that Affinix delivers.
With that, I'll hand the call to <UNK> for a more in-depth review of our financial results.
Thank you, <UNK>.
Total revenue was $554 million, which is below our expectation of $557 million to $572 million.
The sale of PlaneTechs created $3 million of the revenue shortfall from the midpoint expectation with the rest coming from softer revenue trends at PeopleReady.
Net income per share was $0.22, which included a $1.4 million pretax gain from the sale of PlaneTechs or $0.03 of benefit.
Adjusted net income per share was $0.31 or $0.10 above the midpoint of our $0.18 to $0.24 expectation.
$0.07 of the adjusted net income outperformance primarily came from lower cost of services in our staffing and PeopleScout businesses with the remaining $0.03 from lower interest expense, higher investment returns and lower depreciation.
Compared to the first quarter of 2017, adjusted net income per share increased by 48% from $0.21 to $0.31.
Out of this $0.10 increase, roughly $0.04 was from a lower effective income tax rate; $0.03 from higher adjusted pretax income, primarily driven by higher gross profit; and $0.03 spread across lower depreciation, a lower share count and higher net interest income.
Gross margin of 25.8% was up 130 basis points, representing our ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year gross margin expansion.
70 basis points of that improvement is from lower workers' compensation expense in our staffing business.
We have implemented a variety of claim management practices, and the cost of claims is coming in less than expected.
The remaining 60 basis points of improvement is from recruiting process efficiencies and the addition of new higher-margin business within PeopleScout.
SG&A expense was up $4 million with $2 million of the increase from the cloud-based software implementation costs discussed in my opening remarks, and the remainder from higher operating costs associated with the growth in the PeopleScout business.
Total adjusted EBITDA grew 9% to $19.4 million, and the margin expanded by 40 basis points to 3.5%.
Our effective income tax rate came in at 9%, benefiting from tax reform legislation and stronger performance on prior year Work Opportunity Tax Credits.
Turning to our segments.
PeopleReady revenue declined by 5%.
While revenue was down in the quarter, it's important to note that half of the branches had revenue growth during the quarter.
As <UNK> mentioned, the revenue deceleration is primarily isolated to challenges in the solar industry, which makes up about 2.5% of total company revenue, and soft trends in the Southeast.
Despite the revenue headwinds, effective management of workers' compensation expense and operating expense limited the drop in segment profit to 5% and kept segment profit margin even with Q1 last year.
PeopleManagement revenue declined by 4% overall, or a decline of 2% excluding the divested PlaneTechs business, right in line with our expectation.
Segment profit of 2% and related margin was up 20 basis points from cost management results in both cost of services and operating expense.
We like the look of our new client pipeline and the opportunity to improve revenue trends in the back half of the year.
PeopleScout revenue was up 22% from a combination of new logo wins and scope expansions.
Segment profit was up 37%, driven by revenue growth and a continued focus on recruiting process efficiency as well as the addition of higher margin business, all of which helped increase segment profit margin 250 basis points.
The strength of our balance sheet and liquidity continue to improve.
During the first quarter, cash flow from operations totaled $45 million and capital expenditures were $2 million, netting to free cash flow of $43 million.
We ended the quarter with total debt of $72 million and a debt-to-capital ratio of 11%, which was an improvement from 18% in Q4 2017.
On a trailing 12-month basis, our total debt to adjusted EBITDA multiple stands at 0.6.
We did not purchase any shares during Q1 due to the pending PlaneTechs divestiture, but expect to return to the market on an opportunistic basis now that the transaction is complete.
We have $93 million available under our share repurchase authorization.
I'd like to provide some additional detail on the PlaneTechs divestiture before I discuss our outlook.
The business was sold effective <UNK>h 12 for about $11 million, representing a multiple of 7.7x 2017 segment profit.
The divestiture will create a drag on revenue growth of about 2% over the next 4 quarters with a negligible impact on operating income due to the small revenue base and 3% segment profit margin.
Additional details on the transaction are contained in today's earnings release presentation.
Turning to our outlook for the second quarter of 2018, we expect a year-over-year revenue trend of minus 2% to minus 4%, or minus 2% to flat excluding the divested PlaneTechs business.
We expect net income per share of $0.32 to $0.38 or $0.47 to $0.53 on an adjusted basis, which assumes a share count of 40.7 million and an effective income tax rate of 16%.
Additional details on our outlook are contained in today's earnings release presentation.
We are focused on 3 simple principles to increase shareholder value.
Our primary focus is centered on increasing organic revenue to drive higher adjusted EBITDA margins.
While we were disappointed with the recent revenue results at PeopleReady, the challenges are being addressed while we continue to advance our digital strategy to further differentiate our services and capture market share.
Our PeopleManagement business is stable, is performing in line with expectation and has a promising revenue pipeline.
And our PeopleScout business is performing exceptionally well with double-digit growth, strong segment profit margin expansion and new technology that is garnering strong interest from prospective clients.
Our second area of focus is effectively managing our cost of services and operating expenses to further improve our ability to generate strong operating leverage over a larger organic revenue base.
The attention to this area has produced 9 consecutive quarters of gross margin expansion and kept operating expense in check.
Third is effective management of capital.
Total debt to trailing adjusted EBITDA is at a multiyear low, and we expect to continue returning excess capital back to shareholders through share repurchase.
These items, combined with a significantly lower effective income tax rate from tax reform, bode well for future earnings per share growth.
With that, we can now open the call for questions.
This is <UNK>.
Thanks for that question.
Nothing really new.
But we didn't do as good job as we could have in the Southeast of addressing the situation, where a handful of competitors were aggressively targeting some of our top sales producers in local markets.
We've since righted the ship.
We've filled the vast majority of those open positions.
But it's taken some time to refill the pipeline from the folks that we had lost.
So the situation, we had competitors that were aggressively targeting our top producers, particularly in the Southeast and particularly in the area of construction.
When we lost those folks, it set us back.
But as I said, we've since filled those positions, and we've got the right people in the right seats.
Well, it was about $6 million of revenue in the quarter.
Shortfall.
Jeff, this is <UNK>.
I'll give a little bit more color.
Just so you know, the Southeast region, that's one of 3 regions for PeopleReady.
That makes up roughly about 1/3 of the revenue.
The decline that we're talking about, if we want to just bridge it in points of impact on revenue.
We finished the fourth quarter on a comparable basis for PeopleReady at minus 1%.
As we talked about today, we finished at minus 5%.
That 4 points is equally split between the impact that we're talking about from solar and from the Southeast.
So in direct answer to your question, the Southeast cost us ---+ in comparison to what we were trending in the fourth quarter, that cost us about 2 points of consolidated revenue growth for the total company in Q1.
Yes, there were.
There was about 100 basis points of credit, so that was up a little bit from where it was in Q1 of last year but pretty comparable where we were with the fourth quarter.
We're really pleased with the progress that we're making on the workers' compensation side.
For those of you that have followed us for a while, we made a lot of progress in reducing that cost, primarily through safety programs and reducing the accident rate pretty significantly over the last decade.
That's still our #1 focus, but where we've gotten a lot of additional traction is in some claim management practices that we put in place over the last 3, 4 years, some as recently as a couple of years, that's bringing down the average cost of a claim in comparison with our ---+ what actuaries expected.
So it's both providing some benefit to reserves posted in prior years, but it's also making a difference in the current year run rate that we're posting for work comp as a percentage of revenue.
Well, it's something we always look at.
We haven't done a lot of divestitures.
We've been an acquirer, but we have our portfolio right in these 3 segments that we're operating in.
And the value proposition that they each bring to the market, from PeopleReady being short-term projects, to PeopleManagement managing a longer-term workforce for our clients and then obviously PeopleScout doing the full-time recruiting.
So things that fit into those 3 categories remain important to us.
And we are obviously trying to get the highest return we can for our shareholders.
So something that we would evaluate, but we're really looking to align around those 3 things.
Jeff, this is <UNK>.
Really the main thing there was the size of PlaneTechs, the size of the market which they operated in, and then to a certain degree, too, the margin that existed with that business.
So as we ---+ just taking a look at the overall portfolio Steve mentioned, we like what we have here.
But PlaneTechs only made up 2.5% of the revenue, but it consumed significantly more than that as far as additional resources from shared resources that support these businesses, management time, et cetera.
So this was really a move to concentrate on our larger market, higher-growth, higher-margin opportunities and that's the bottom line.
The impact from the gain on sale on adjusted EPS was 0, so that's excluded.
The impact of the gain on sale on GAAP earnings per share was $0.03.
So in our adjusted numbers, the spirit of those is to really exclude any items that aren't about fundamental year-over-year performance enhancement or decline.
And so that's been excluded from adjusted EPS.
Thanks, <UNK>.
This is <UNK>.
So we saw some delays and slowdowns related to solar.
Clients were retooling their financial models, looking to buy, in some cases, stockpiled materials that are already here to avoid tariffs.
We're likely to see some continued headwinds in Q2 related to solar, but clients are telling us that their needs for our services should be back closer to normal in the back half of 2018.
So clearly saw some effects in Q1, expecting to see some effects in Q2.
And then what clients are telling us is closer to normal back in Q3 and Q4.
Just to give you a sense of the type of positions we're filling, about 80% of the positions we fill are installers.
About another 10% are electrical positions, and about another 10% are operations.
So it's a lot of installation and project-based business.
Related to the Southeast, as I mentioned earlier, we think we've righted the ship there.
We've filled those positions with very talented sales professionals and sales managers.
And so we're expecting that in the back half of 2018, that we'll have seen the full impact of having those folks ramped up.
But it does take some time to get folks ramped up and get their pipeline going and build those relationships.
And so that clearly had a drag on Q1.
And as <UNK> mentioned in our outlook, we've sort of taken the run rate of the business into Q2, but I expect Q3 and Q4 we'll see those folks contributing in a big way.
Hey <UNK>, this is <UNK>.
Just a little bit more color on solar.
We ran about $12 million to $15 million a quarter last year with the exception of the fourth quarter.
That was a bigger quarter for us.
That was $25 million.
We were excited about the year ahead.
We were building some momentum in that, and then we saw a drop down this quarter from that $25 million.
So there's a little bit of headwind in here in Q2 in our guidance.
But really, for the most part, that headwind doesn't really hit that hard until the fourth quarter when we face that $25 million anniversary.
So we might have a little bit here in Q2, but it's more about a Q4 headwind where there will be the biggest piece of it.
<UNK>, a little more color on what <UNK> said about the Southeast also is, although we're disappointed and it's caused the overall PeopleReady numbers to be lower than expected, the nice part is, given it's regional, we have our hands around what those reasons are.
Versus a year ago when it was more related to branding changes and system changes, and it impacted a wider variety of regions and was more broad spread.
So the fact that we've got it narrowed down and it's really related to the competition now in the Southeast, not only they take some ---+ we lost some good salespeople.
There's a little bit of price war going on down there that we're not participating in.
And we could get our volumes up a bit if we were willing, but we just think it's short term in nature with the talent supply shortage down there.
That why this is happened is a little bit baffling to us, but at least we've got it regionalized, and we understand it.
Yes, it's very regional focused.
Well, I think that's right.
<UNK>'s given us some confidence here on this call here today, and I think it's spot on.
What can't be assured is the competitive front, and where they are in the pricing war that we're unwilling to participate in.
Yes, I don't think it can continue.
I think that we're fine there.
And we've got great clients, great team in play, adding these additional sales force in, we'll be fine.
It's just that we're not willing to play here early in the season at the level that some are.
Well, as I mentioned on the ---+ earlier on the call, when we look at the branches that have been heavy adopters of JobStack, <UNK>, we've seen about 3 points better revenue lift in Q1 than the branches that have not been as successful in terms of filling positions with JobStack.
So there's clearly some lift that's happening with JobStack, but it's still early days.
I don't think we should be attributing specific revenue lift at this point in Q2 to JobStack.
We've got some isolated incidents.
An example, we've had 192 companies that have given us skills that we believe they otherwise wouldn't have given us in Q1.
JobStack's been a good prompt for us and a good sales tool in expanding with our existing client base.
And as I said, we've seen some lift in those branches.
They're the heaviest adopters.
<UNK>, I don't know if you have anything to add to that, but I don't think we're ascribing specific lift in Q2 to JobStack at this point.
No, that's right.
As far as our guidance for Q2, we're just making an assumption here based off of our ---+ everything that we look at, from revenue trends, to supply of workers, where we're doing on bringing on new customer accounts and reactivating existing customers.
We're considering that, that trend is just going to play itself out as it would ramp up seasonally based on the trends that we've got.
So we don't have anything extra put into our Q2 guidance for more lift that would come incrementally from JobStack in that quarter based on improved metrics in the second quarter versus what we have in the first quarter.
Well, satisfaction is a qualitative term.
We've got about 1/5 of the branches that are over 50% of jobs being filled through JobStack.
So we're really pleased with that top 20%.
So we've got a lot of upside on JobStack.
We believe it's a game changer.
So I'd like to get those other branches, those other 80%, to north of 50% as well.
We put out some targets late last year that we could get to 35% by the end of the year.
I think we're going to step over that number.
We're already at 30% today.
So we're pushing as hard as we can, <UNK>, to get all of the branches to get north of 50%.
So it's just a matter of time before that happens.
Yes, we're really pleased with PeopleScout.
One of the things that's most exciting about PeopleScout, when you look at the wins that we had in Q4 and in Q1, a lot of them were first-time RPO buyers in the aviation sector, in the government sector, in the telecommunications sector.
And so these are multiyear, multimillion-dollar client engagements, first-time buyers.
So that's particularly exciting.
And the nice thing about RPO engagements is oftentimes clients don't outsource their entire recruitment function.
They outsource pieces of it.
And then as the RPO engagement proceeds and is successful, then you see more scope and more revenue and more partnership.
And so a lot of the clients that we signed in Q4 and Q1 were for pieces of their recruitment functions.
So there's a lot of upside, a lot of white space and running room on the deals that we signed that are new.
And so that was the biggest driver of our growth.
We also saw a number of scope expansions, particularly in hospitality.
We do a lot in the hotel space.
And so we saw some nice expansion in our hospitality clients in Q1.
And so the growth was across the board, by the way.
Asia Pacific was up double digits.
Our legacy PeopleScout business, sort of pre-Aon acquisition, was up double digits.
The Aon portion of PeopleScout that was acquired was up double digits.
And so it was an across-the-board increase in PeopleScout, and so we're bringing on higher-margin clients.
And it's creating some leverage, as you saw in our earnings with PeopleScout.
And I think that there's more upside to be had within our existing client base.
Yes.
<UNK>, yes, so we were down 2 points for the PeopleManagement group, excluding the PlaneTechs business, right in line with what we had expected.
We're expecting that to pick up a little bit as we move into Q2.
Our guidance is flat to plus 2%.
Most of that pickup that we're looking at we're actually thinking about that more in the Staff Management side of things.
And the pipeline at Staff Management is ---+ we got a nice pipeline building there.
The SIMOS business, we're really pleased with that acquisition.
What we're talking about here, for everyone listening, is our productivity-based solutions at SIMOS.
That business runs us about a 7% to 9% EBITDA margin, so it runs higher.
The blended average, both for PeopleManagement and for the company as a whole.
To give you some perspective on how big those 2 are, of the PeopleManagement business, from a revenue perspective, SIMOS makes up about 25% of the revenue there, a little bit more on the profit, almost half of the profit margin.
We think there's good growth potential for SIMOS right now.
It's just these are big customer engagements when we do the wins here.
So it's not like PeopleReady, a little bit here or there.
So nothing impending that's going to be hitting in Q2, but we're optimistic about the future for SIMOS.
Yes.
Just here for 30 seconds or so.
Okay.
That's fine.
We'll go ahead and close the call.
We were excited about the opportunities ahead here.
Thank you for joining us today.
The economic backdrop continues to be constructive.
We're working to capture the near-term market opportunities while staying focused on our strategies to drive long-term growth.
I'll remind you of the 4 strategies that we're working on.
First, invest in market-disruptive technology of JobStack for our PeopleReady business, which will strengthen our market leadership role as one of the largest U.S. staffing providers; two, deliver attractive on-premise and outsourced solutions for larger strategic clients in our PeopleManagement segment; three, invest in opportunities to grow our #1 global leadership position of PeopleScout.
These investments will continue to include technologies to improve the quality and the quantity of the candidates that we're able to deliver on a global scale with a high degree of efficiency on our part.
We will also continue to seek M&A opportunities to broaden our geographical footprint at PeopleScout.
And fourth, manage our capital efficiency.
We're operating with 3% less shares then we were a year ago, and we believe that continues to be an effective method to improve our returns for shareholders.
We appreciate you being on the call with us today and look forward to updating you as the quarter progresses.
Thank you.
