Insight Enterprises - Earnings Call - Q4 2019

Transcript

Speaker 0

Greetings, and welcome to the Insight Enterprises Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty nineteen Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal introduction and presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Glynis Bryan, Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you. You may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Donna. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining the Insight Enterprises earnings conference call. Today, we will be discussing the company's operating results for the quarter and full year ended December 3139. I'm Glynis Bryan, Chief Financial Officer of Incyte, and joining me is Ken Lamnick, President and Chief Executive Officer. If you do not have a copy of the earnings release that was posted this morning and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Form eight ks, you will find it on our website at insight.com under our Investor Relations section.

Today's call, including the question and answer period, is being webcast live and can be accessed via the Investor Relations page of our website at insight.com. An archived copy of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after completion of the call and will remain on our website for a limited time. This conference call and the associated webcast contain time sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, 02/12/2020. This call is the property of Insight Enterprises. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the expressed written consent of Insight Enterprises is strictly prohibited.

In today's conference call, we will refer to non GAAP financial measures as we discuss the fourth quarter and full year twenty nineteen financial results. When referring to non GAAP measures, we will refer to such measures as adjusted. Non GAAP measures to be discussed in today's call include adjusted earnings from operations, adjusted diluted earnings per share and return on invested capital. You will find a reconciliation of these adjusted measures to our actual GAAP results included in the press release and the accompanying slide presentation issued earlier today. Also, please note that unless highlighted in constant currency, all amounts and growth rates discussed are in U.

S. Dollar terms. Additionally, any references to our core business or to the organic change year over year in our performance will exclude PCM's results subsequent to the acquisition on August 3039. Finally, let me remind you about forward looking statements that will be made on today's call. All forward looking statements that are made during this conference call are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially.

These risks are discussed in today's press release and in greater detail in our most recently filed periodic reports and subsequent filings with the SEC. With that, I will now turn the call over to Ken, and if you're following along with the slide presentation, we will begin on Slide four.

Speaker 2

Hello, everyone, thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year twenty nineteen operating results. In the fourth quarter, we continued to execute against our strategy to deliver IT solutions to our clients globally, leading with services and solutions that drive business outcomes for our clients. In addition, we focused on bringing PCM teammates into the Insight organization and completed our integration planning while delivering solid financial results to close out the year. Specifically for the 2019, including the results of PCM for the full quarter, consolidated net sales were $2,300,000,000 up 31% year over year. Consolidated gross profit of $338,000,000 in the fourth quarter was up 33% year over year and up 34% in constant currency.

Gross margin expanded 20 basis points year over year to 14.7%, reflecting a higher mix of sales of Insight delivered services and cloud based and other netted software offerings in our core business. Adjusted earnings from operations were $82,000,000 up 29% year over year. And on a GAAP basis, earnings from operations were up 14% compared to the same period last year. And adjusted diluted earnings per share was $1.57 up 10% year over year. And on a GAAP basis, diluted earnings per share was 1.2 In the fourth quarter, PCM delivered results in line with our expectations, including approximately $560,000,000 in net sales and $8,000,000 in EFO.

In addition, we incurred approximately $6,000,000 in additional interest expense related to the acquisition. Moving on to Slide five. Our fourth quarter results reflect the scale and momentum in our business and closure to another record year for our company. For the full year 2019, we reported record net sales of $7,700,000,000 an increase of 9% over 2018. The addition of PCM combined with our team's focus on our solution strategy and expanding our services offering drove gross profit faster than sales at 15% year over year and improved gross margin by 70 basis points to 14.7%, also a new record for the company.

We also expanded services gross profit 90 basis points year over year to 47% of consolidated gross profit, up from 46% reported last year. Top line growth and gross margin expansion, combined with continued expense discipline, drove adjusted earnings from operations up 11% in 2019 compared to the prior year. Adjusted earnings per share for the full year 2019 was $5.42 an increase of 9% over 2018 results and represents another record for us. On to Slide six. As we look back at our business for the full year of 2019, we are pleased with all that we accomplished.

We completed the acquisition of PCM in the third quarter and are actively working to implement our integration plans. In early December twenty nineteen, we onboarded the Canada business to our IT systems. In January 2020, we completed the systems work for PCM in EMEA. And in early February, we began the migration of PCM's U. Clients over to our SAP platform.

We are on track to meet our previously stated goal to add more than $0.70 of adjusted diluted EPS to our results from PCM business in 2020. Strategically, we continue to be very excited about the opportunity for growth in the combined client base of PCM and Insight. As a reminder, the PCM acquisition expands our share in the mid market, a target market that we believe values our expertise around modern workplace, cloud and data center and digital solutions. We've completed the internal organizational alignment to ensure we bring our solutions to this market with the right technical skills, sales engagement and standardized delivery to grow profitably and at scale and look forward to realizing on the cross sell opportunity beginning in 2020. Next, our focus on culture, teammate benefits and leadership development continue to be recognized with key awards, including placing number 70 on Fortune's 100 Best Workplaces for Diversity and number 23 on Fortune's 50 Best Workplaces in Technology.

In addition to these national placements, were recognized regionally as a best place to work in Chicago, Phoenix, Australia and The United Kingdom. As part of our intermediate term capital planning, we financed our debt facilities in 2019 to be more flexible and less expensive options, including $350,000,000 in convertible notes and a new $1,200,000,000 revolving asset based facility. These facilities will comfortably cover current working capital needs and provide capacity for additional acquisitions in the future. While executing key elements of our long term strategy, we also delivered against our financial commitments for 2019. Moving to Slide seven.

As we head into 2020, we believe the IT market is healthy. Across the markets where we do business, industry analysts expect flat to low single digit growth in hardware sales in 2020 and mid single digit growth in software and services sales. Our plans in 2020 are focused on driving growth in excess of the market across our operating segments. In 2020, we will continue to empower our clients to manage their IT environments more efficiently for today as they continue to drive meaningful business outcomes and transform their own business for the future. To do this, we will leverage our four solution areas to further enhance our value proposition to clients around the world.

As a reminder, our four solution areas are: first, digital innovation, where we leverage emerging technologies to build innovative applications to prove clients' business performance, engage customers and uncover new revenue streams second, cloud and data center transformation, where we help businesses modernize and secure critical platforms to transform IT. Through end to end services from architecture through management, we help leverage the right platforms to increase agility and support innovation. Third, supply chain optimization, where through Insight's core business, we help clients effectively and efficiently acquire all of their information technology leads, leveraging our scale and supply chain expertise. Fourth, connected workforce, where we help clients deliver secure, modern experience to their workforce, driving productivity in the workplace and helping to attract and retain talent in the competitive marketplace. An example of our connected workforce solution area in action includes a project we recently completed with an international airline.

Our client needed to meet a critical deadline to refresh the iPhone and iPad devices used by flight attendants across the globe. Our connected workforce team leveraged insights to manage deployment services to handle global distribution. As part of this service, our dedicated integration labs configured more than 45,000 devices and packaged them with cases, screen protectors and credit card readers to ensure they're ready to use upon receipt. Our solution provided centralized configuration, streamlined deployment with greater visibility for the client and ultimately reduced operating costs by extending the life of these devices. This is just one example of how our Connected Workforce solution area helps clients optimize the workforce productivity and end user experience.

As part of our 2020 plans, we plan to organize our resources, leverage our strategic partner relationships and align our offerings to our clients' needs to ensure we participate in key areas of market opportunity across our geographic footprint. We have deep capabilities, operational scale and wide geographic reach supporting large enterprise clients who are looking to optimize their workforce experience, modernize their data center and drive internal innovation through digital solutions for their business. PCM provides us an expanded but similar opportunity in the mid market. In 2020, we expect to align dedicated solution expertise with our mid market motion to drive additional growth through our solution areas. First, we will work to consolidate our sales and service delivery teams across the business to ensure a common client experience and ability to sell across the Insight portfolio of offerings.

We also see an early cross sell opportunity to bring certain packaged cloud solutions wrapped with Insight managed services to this market segment. To support our go to market strategy globally, we have strong operational platform that includes scalable IT and e commerce systems and processes, robust digital marketing capabilities and a culture of continuous business process transformation and automation. In 2020, we'll continue to invest in these critical areas to deliver a great client experience while also optimizing our infrastructure to scale with future growth. In January, I celebrated my ten year anniversary at Insight. I'm proud of our accomplishments over the past decade and of our team's performance in 2019.

We have made significant progress as a company, transforming our business from an IT reseller to a well respected intelligent technology solutions provider with deep expertise across the multiple technology areas our clients value most. Today, we have a single united global leadership team, integrated and scalable IT systems and operations, a highly engaged workforce and a clearly defined go to market framework around our four solution areas. We believe we are well positioned to compete in the marketplace as we head into 2020 and beyond. I'll now turn the call back over to Glynis.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Ken. As Ken noted earlier, we're pleased with the progress we made in 2019, making strategic investments in our business that will help us to compete in the future while also delivering another year of good financial results for our stakeholders. I will take a few minutes to summarize the fourth quarter and full year results of our geographic operating segments and then cover taxes and cash flow performance. Starting with North America on Slide nine. In North America in the fourth quarter, net sales were $1,900,000,000 up 38% year over year, including PCM and down 2% in the core business due to lower hardware sales to large enterprise clients.

Gross profit in North America was up 44% year over year with PCM and up 4% year over year organically. Gross margins increased 70 basis points year over year for the combined business due to a higher mix of hardware sales to mid market clients in both the Insight Core business and with PCM. As Ken mentioned, mid market clients tend to transact at higher gross margins than other client segments. In addition, we focused on controlling costs, including early integration savings that allowed us to grow adjusted earnings from operations 40% year over year to $69,000,000 including PCM and 14% year over year organically. For the full year on Slide 10, North America sales grew 12% year over year, including PCM for the four months of the year that they were with us, and net sales were down 1% year over year in the core business, reflecting, again, lower volume with large enterprise clients.

Gross profit in North America grew faster than sales, up 19% for the full year, including PCM and 5% organically, while gross margins increased 80 basis points to a new annual record of 14.5%. Expenses grew 22% in the combined business, which led to adjusting earnings from operations growth of 14% for the full year of 2019, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of double digit earnings growth in our North America business. We're on track to deliver our committed synergies of more than $35,000,000 in the North America business in 2020, and we expect to realize the savings at an increased rate over the year, such that more than half will be realized in the back half of the year. We also remain confident that we will deliver on the full $70,000,000 of committed synergies by the 2021. Moving on to EMEA on Slide 11.

Net sales in the fourth quarter grew 11% in constant currency. Gross profit grew 4% in constant currency, slower than sales due to lower hardware margins with public sector clients, and this drove adjusted earnings from operations down about $400,000 year over year to $10,800,000 PCM did not have a material effect on these adjusted results. Moving on to Slide 12. For the full year, in constant currency, our EMEA business reported net sales of $1,500,000,000 up 5% year over year in constant currency. Strong growth with mid market clients across the region was partially offset by lower volume of large clients in our U.

K. Operation. Gross profit grew 8%, faster than sales, including a higher mix of cloud and services sales, which drove adjusted earnings from operations up 10% year over year in constant currency to $41,000,000 While Brexit continues to provide a backdrop of uncertainty for The UK economy, we do not believe it has impacted our results materially to date, and we believe our EMEA business is healthy heading into 2020. Moving on to APAC on Slide 13. Net sales of $34,000,000 and gross profit of $9,000,000 in the fourth quarter decreased 27%, respectively, year over year in constant currency due to lower software sales and related incentives in the region, and this led to adjusted earnings from operations of $2,000,000 in the quarter.

For the full year on Slide 14, in constant currency, our APAC business grew net sales by 2% compared to 2018. Strategically, our team delivered on certain large hardware and software and services offerings to select global clients and expanded digital innovation services sales with growth in new markets. As a result, adjusted earnings from operations to the full year is impacting our business mix and profitability. In 2019, our services sales grew 20% year over year. As Ken noted, our solution area strategy has refined our focus on modern service and solutions that best meet our client needs.

This strategy is also important because of the positive effect on our overall profitability. In 2019, services gross profit was 47% of our consolidated GP, an increase of 90 basis points over 2018. As a result, our services growth was the main driver of our gross margin expansion year over year to new annual record of 14.7%. As we move on to our tax rate on Slide 15, our effective tax rate for 2019 was 24.7% compared to 22.8% in 2018. The increase in the tax rate from 2018 to 2019 was primarily because of nonrecurring benefits recorded in 2018 to true up provisional amounts related to The U.

S. Tax reform that occurred to support the PCM business since closing. As we head into 2020, we will be focused on bringing the PCM accounts receivable aging metrics in line with ours, such that for the full year of 2020, we expect cash flow from operations will be between 180,000,000 and $200,000,000 Also in 2019, we invested approximately $69,000,000 in capital expenditures, including the purchase of a new building for our corporate headquarters for $48,000,000 In 2020, we will invest approximately $35,000,000 in the build out of this facility. In addition, we have been exploring the sale of several properties and have early interest from various parties. Subject to negotiation of all purchase agreements and fulfillment of all closing conditions, we expect to net realize net proceeds of approximately 80,000,000 and we'll update you on our progress in future calls.

The sale of these properties and related cash receipts are not included in the guidance we gave today. We ended the year with a cash balance of $115,000,000 at the end of the fourth quarter, of which $102,000,000 was resident in our foreign subsidiaries, and we had eight fifty nine million dollars outstanding under our financing arrangements. This compares to $143,000,000 of cash and $197,000,000 of debt outstanding at the 2018. Our cash conversion cycle was thirty eight days in the 2019, up five days year over year. This increase resulted from the net effect of a two day increase in DSO and a seven day decrease in DPO due to additional investments in working capital of the PCM business equating to about three days and the relative timing of client receipts and supplier payments during the respective quarters in our core business.

I will now turn the call back to Ken to review our 2020 outlook.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Glynis. Moving on

Speaker 2

to Slide 16. We're pleased with our execution in 2019 and believe our business is healthy across each of the markets in which we compete. With respect to our 2020 outlook, we expect to deliver net sales growth between 2025%. We also expect adjusted diluted earnings per share for the full year of 2020 to be between 6.55 and $6.65 This outlook assumes interest expense between 35,000,000 and $40,000,000 and effective tax rate of 25% to 26% for the full year 2020, capital expenditures of $55,000,000 to $60,000,000 including approximately $35,000,000 for the build out of a new corporate headquarters, and an average share count for the full year of approximately 36,000,000 shares. This outlook excludes acquisition related intangibles amortization expense of approximately $37,000,000 and noncash convertible debt discount issuance website on the Investor Relations page that shows the expected amortization expense and noncash convertible debt discount and issuance costs by quarter for 2020.

Thank you again for joining us today. I want to once again thank our teammates across the world for everything they do for Insight. I'm honored to be part of such a great team. That concludes my comments. I'll now open up your line for questions.

Speaker 0

Our first question is coming from Adam Tindle of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hey, thanks and good morning. I just wanted to start Ken to ask a little bit on organic revenue trends. I think if you were to look at the quarter, it's the second quarter now a little bit lighter revenue trends. I think on an organic basis, it might be still down year over year, and you can correct me if I'm wrong there. You had some easier year over year comparisons in Q3 and Q4.

So I was just trying to understand where that weakness is stemming from, given it's a little bit different than what we're seeing from your largest competitor? There may be something integration with PCM driving that? So that would be the first question. I've got a follow-up.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, Adam, for the question. Yes, it's not PCM related at all. Again, a lot of that, of course, has to do with the netting. And you certainly saw that with the gross margin improvement for the business overall, which certainly benefited their clients drive substantial volumes.

And it depends upon where you're positioned for that sort of cycle as they don't repeat each other every year. So I would say it really has to do solely with that. Again, we're pleased with where PCM came in for the quarter, very pleased with where we are from an integration point of view. As I mentioned, we completed multiple ERP systems into our Canadian operations in December. We converted The UK operation in January, and we're well on our way for The U.

S. Integration as well, where we started that a few weeks ago at this stage. So pleased with how that is coming together.

Speaker 3

Yes. And I think to that point your 2020 guidance suggests some bounce back. And I wanted to ask about that as a follow-up. Maybe just touch on what underlies confidence and improvement in organic revenue growth and trends. I think the pushback that we might get on that from investors is concerned that the PC cycle is ending in 2020 and we're going

Speaker 2

to have

Speaker 0

some