Exela Technologies - Q1 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning. Welcome to the Exela Technologies First Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Vince Kondaveeti, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Vince Kondaveeti (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Kate. Thank you for joining us for our First Quarter 2023 Conference Call. Our earnings release presentation are posted to the IR section of our website. Speakers on today's call are Par Chadha, Executive Chairman, and Shrikant Sortur, our Chief Financial Officer. Today's agenda will be similar to previous calls. Par will provide an overview of our results, and Shrikant will walk you through our financial performance. We expect this call to last under an hour. Some of these matters we will discuss in today's call are forward-looking and involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Such risks and uncertainties are set forth in our press release. Without further ado, I'll turn the call over to our Executive Chairman, Par. Par?

Par Chadha (Executive Chairman)

Hello to everybody, thanks for dialing into our call. We are excited about the progress that Exela has made. I look forward to sharing some of the highlights from our Q1 that will eventually become part of the value chain for all of our shareholders. Kindly look at slide number three, which we've talked about this and walked through this slide before. I'd like to call out one important change. In the bottom, it says approximately 15,000 employees. This number a year ago was about 17,000. The important message here is not the 15,000 employees, it's that we are prepared with a substantial amount of flex capacity because of the business model that we have chosen so that we are prepared for growth as needed. Let's look at slide number 4. We continue to chug along in Europe.

Our business there has been renamed as XBP Europe. It reaches majority of the population in some of the key markets. One highlight from Europe that happened after Q1 was closed, that we won in Europe one of the largest transaction or deal in its history. Let's look at slide number five. If you look at the bottom right-hand, we started our industry coverage by being called Hot Vendor. Look at the top left-hand. We are now being named leader three times. In migration and recognition of our services over time, I look forward to adding one more in very near term recognition as a leader. I look forward to the day where instead of it being Hot Vendor or a major contender or a major player, we'll be leaders in all solutions and services the company offers.

Slide number six, if you would kindly turn to. In this slide, I'll cover some of the highlights from our Q1. Our revenue grew by 2.5% over sequential quarter. Remember, our headcount went down by almost 1,000 people, but yet our revenue grew. Our margin also improved, partly because of the savings. We've talked about savings and the improvement plans, which total between $65 million and $75 million for 2023. The margin improvement is both the quality of revenue, but also partially due to the flow-through that we're beginning to see through. Almost 240 basis points increase of gross profit margins over the full year 2022 margins. Payroll, which is another way to look at this, reduced by $5.5 million.

Year over year, it reduced $3.5 million. That tells us there's still some stagnant costs that we're gonna take out as the year progresses, and our flow-through will rise. The geography of our CapEx is changing. We used to invest primarily in CapEx for both for growth as well as for maintenance. You know, data centers, PCs, servers, software, licenses, things we built. Because we're now on the cloud, and we don't own the cloud, so our operating expense, or OpEx, as we call it, is increasing, and we're estimating that's gonna increase to $10 million. At the same time, our CapEx has gone down from 2% at the year-end to 1.5% in Q1. That's gonna stay this way for all of 2023.

It does have an impact of reducing, on a comparable basis, our income, because OpEx sits in a different part of the geography of our financial profit and loss statement. We did good. We won $64.9 million of TCV, and we won a lot of logos. Let's look at slide number seven. We continue to have stable conversion from pipeline into TCV. We also did okay on renewal rates, 94%. Translates to $43.3 million of TCV. We remain stable on the recurring revenue at 98%. Our digital assets, DMR and SMB, they continue to grow in low 3 digits. All in all, that translates to about 243 logos. Many of them are SMB logos, but they also include some of our enterprise wins.

One call-out is that it's sort of contrarian, but it's worth mentioning that in uncertain macroeconomic environment that we are seeing today, my historical experience is that our business, and businesses like ours, grow because our customers outsource more of their needs to companies like ours. This, in some ways, bodes well for us. We have additional digital assets, solutions in the works, very exciting stuff. I look forward to sharing that in the coming shareholder connect and calls like today. Let's look at slide number eight. Some of the corporate actions, key corporate actions that are underway. As you know, we have the special meeting of the shareholders at 10:00 A.M. today. I promise you it will not be adjourned.

We'll publish the results as early as today, but more likely, with all the compliance and the filings we have to do, more likely it'll be tomorrow. We have been working on the value creation, strengthening of the balance sheet, improvement of our liquidity. These translate to the three projects and some more that are not mentioned here. For example, Project Nia, we have a sale process underway for that. The bankers are working hard to get that process, not only underway, but reach its final destination. Our XBP Europe transaction, we continue to drive it forward, and we hope to share those results when it reaches its final destination.

Also in a very important part of addressing our 2023 and maturities, expanding our liquidity, strengthening our balance sheet initiatives, like the recapitalization of Exela Technologies BPA, is one of our largest subsidiary inside of the public company, Exela Technologies, Inc. We continue to discuss, make progress with a select group of lenders, which we announced on March 30th, 2023. These initiatives are obviously on a total will help create value, also strengthen our balance sheet and expand our liquidity. They are very important and look forward to sharing and speaking to you as some of these initiatives get completed. With this high-level update, I will hand it off to Shrikant, our Chief Financial Officer. Over to you, Shrikant.

Shrikant Sortur (CFO)

Thank you, Par. Good morning, everyone, thanks for joining us on this call. I will cover our consolidated results in segment revenue for the first quarter 2023 performance. As we have done in the past, we're reporting both GAAP and non-GAAP numbers. The reconciliations are in our filings and in the appendix of the presentation. Let's start with slide number 10 to look at select financial performance highlights for Q1 of 2023. In line with our internal projections, revenue for the quarter was $273.6 million, higher by $6.7 million or 2.5% sequentially, and lower by $5.8 million or 2.1% year-over-year. On a constant currency basis, revenue was down 90 basis points or by $2.6 billion year-over-year.

Gross profit was $57.1 million, up $9 million sequentially, and up $1.2 million year-over-year. We also saw the largest improvement in operating income, the best in the preceding four quarters, primarily driven by improved gross profit. SG&A and in turn, EBITDA was negatively impacted by transaction costs of approximately $5 million related to recap XBP Europe and ETI. Adjusted EBITDA was $34.7 million for the quarter, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.7% was down 4% year-over-year. Of the $65 million-$75 million of cost savings from annual improvements estimated in 2023, approximately $30 million of annual run rate savings is beginning to flow through our reported financials. Turning to slide 11, I will cover the broad trends in the income statement.

I'll discuss comparisons that are sequential quarter as well as year-over-year. Let's begin with ITPS. ITPS revenue was down $11.3 million or 5.5% for Q1 year-over-year and higher by $8.9 million or 4.8% sequentially compared to Q4. Revenue on our ITPS segments was impacted by lower volumes and currency translation flux year-over-year. Sequentially, we experienced revenue growth in our Integrated Communication Services and Bills and Payments business. On a year-over-year basis, the gross margin on ITPS segment was impacted by our growth investment for expansion of services and cloud operations and was down approximately 15%. For sequential quarter, Q1 over Q4, gross margin improved by 22.6%, primarily due to the flow-through of savings and it indicates stability.

Healthcare Solutions segment posted solid revenue growth of 11.4% or $6.4 million in Q1 year-over-year. This was primarily driven by continued acceptance of solutions and services and higher volumes from existing customers. Sequentially, the revenue was lower by 3.5% or $2.3 million due to seasonality impact. Gross margins for the Healthcare Solutions experienced growth 65.3% for Q1 year-over-year and 6.8% sequentially. Gross margin was higher as compared to 2022, mainly due to automation-related productivity improvements and workforce due to lower bench costs we incurred during the first quarter of and first half of 2022. Gross margin on our LLPS segment was higher by 22.6% year-over-year and 36.5% sequentially on relatively flat revenue, primarily due to savings and better cost management.

Our growth investments for expansion of services and cloud operations are expected to impact our gross margins and a portion of our adjusted EBITDA. SG&A expenses in Q1 totaled $44.4 million, higher by $1.3 million or 3.1% year-over-year and higher by $5.5 million sequentially. The increase was primarily attributable to higher professional fees related to transactions, as discussed earlier. Year-over-year, employee-related costs, as well as other infrastructure costs, was lower by approximately $3 million. Operating loss for Q1 2023 was $6.9 million, compared with operating loss of $7.3 million in Q1 of 2022. As highlighted on the prior slide, this improvement in operating income as compared to the last four quarters, is primarily driven by savings flow-through and improvements in gross margins and our cost structure.

EBITDA for Q1 of 2023 was $18 million compared to $3.5 million in Q1 of 2022. EBITDA margin for Q1 2023 was 6.6% compared to the 1.3% in Q1 of 2022. Finally, adjusted EBITDA for Q1 of 2023 was $34.7 million, a decrease of 4% compared to $36.1 million in Q1 of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA margin for Q1 2023 was 12.7%, a decrease of 25 basis points from 12.9% in Q1 of 2022. Let's turn to slide 12 and go over our 2023 objectives. We would like to reiterate the three objectives for 2023, which we covered on our Q4 earnings call as well. One, grow revenue in low single digits and improve adjusted EBITDA margin by 200 basis points.

We expect adjusted EBITDA in 2023 to materially benefit from flow-through of savings actions. Second, maintain growth investment, particularly in our cloud operations, while keeping our maintenance CapEx at 1.5%. While we are focused on initiatives to improve gross margins and operating income, we are also investing in growth. In 2022, we invested approximately $11 million to expand our services in FAO, data science, technology and digital solutions, in addition to investments into our strategic shift to cloud operations. We expect to invest approximately $10 million during 2023 as well. These investments will provide improvements to our EBITDA over time. CapEx for Q1 2023 was 1.1% of revenue. Third, we will continue to focus on strategic actions to further reduce debt and interest expense, expand liquidity, and achieve a sustainable balance sheet for the company.

In closing, we are pleased to see actual results in line to better than our internal modeling. Our teams are executing well on both growth and savings initiatives. This concludes our financial review for Q1 2023. With that, Kate, would you please open the line for Q&A?

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. We will pause momentarily to assemble our... The first question comes from Zach Cummins of B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Zach Cummins (Senior Research Analyst)

Yes. Hi, good morning, Par and Shrikant, and thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on the margin improvements here in Q1. Just to that point, with gross margin, nice to see the sequential improvement, especially versus Q4. How do you think about the progression of that metric throughout this year, especially as you continue to stabilize that revenue base and see some of these cost actions flow through the P&L?

Shrikant Sortur (CFO)

Yeah, yeah.

Par Chadha (Executive Chairman)

Good morning.

Shrikant Sortur (CFO)

Par... Yeah. Let me take that first, then Par, you can... Yeah. Go ahead.

Par Chadha (Executive Chairman)

No, please do. Please do. Thank you, sir.

Shrikant Sortur (CFO)

Yeah. Zach, thanks for the question. A couple of pointers, as we have discussed in past calls as well as today, we expect the savings flow through to continue to provide improvements to gross margin. One other relevant point for Q1 potentially is we had discrete items, including impacts from our growth investments as well as, another example is, say, you know, from a Q1 perspective, the revenue mix sometimes tends to have lower margin revenue in Q1. That's encouraging signs for us to know that we can be on a path of furthering our gross margins in the following quarters. Par, you wanna add, feel free to add some business perspective.

Par Chadha (Executive Chairman)

I think the revenue stability, recurring revenue at 98% as well as renewal, and a pipeline that's we're converting stably into TCV. Zach, the fact that we also won in Europe a large transaction that's going to start entering into our revenue in as early as late as third quarter, possibly, maybe we get a month or so of the benefit in Q2, you know, it gives us a more, more clarity on the revenue growth, which is why we are, you know, we're beginning to give guidance about low single digit. Backed by the $40 odd million in flow-through, $30 that we beginning to see in Q1, but we think we can drive that further up towards $40, it's very, you know, it feels, it's very encouraging.

We feel very good about it.

Zach Cummins (Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. That's, that's helpful. Appreciate the additional context. Just my one follow-up question, and not sure how much insight you could provide, but in terms of recapitalizing the balance sheet and addressing near-term maturities, any sort of update you can provide along the sale process or how things are progressing along that front, here to address these maturities here in the coming months?

Shrikant Sortur (CFO)

I think there are two questions there. One is the sale process and one is the recapitalization.

Par Chadha (Executive Chairman)

We, you know, I, as I said in my talk, we are making progress on both the sale of assets. I would say with a small s, assets is progressing. Typically these things take six to nine months. We started in first quarter, and we are, you know, there's a, there's a lot of very hyperactivity across, as you can imagine with the financial sponsors, companies are interested in this particular style of asset. It's, we hope to share more when we get to the finalization, but probably more in third quarter than in second quarter. The recapitalization, we first announced that on March 30th. We continue to chug along.

As we reach the, as it gets converted into what we typically call offering memorandum, we are, we already, you know, we have selected the banks for the offering memorandum. We've got the lawyers. We have lots of people working. You see those expenses hitting our SG&A to the tune of about $5 million in first quarter. I hope one of these days that they become instead of expenses, they result in higher liquidity and a, they address, and strengthen our balance sheet. I look forward to that day. Thank you.

Zach Cummins (Senior Research Analyst)

Understood. Yeah, understood. Well, thanks for taking my questions and, best of luck here with the rest of the quarter.

Par Chadha (Executive Chairman)

Thank you very much, Zach.

Vince Kondaveeti (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Zach.

Operator (participant)

There are no other questions at this time. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Par Chadha for closing remarks.

Par Chadha (Executive Chairman)

Thank you, everybody for joining our call, and I encourage everybody to join us during in quarter in our shareholder, connect, and use our shareholder, platform that we call SpeakUp to send questions so we can remain engaged on items that are important to you. I am very grateful for your support, and thank you for joining today, and wish you a very happy rest of Thursday, and look forward to seeing you soon.

Operator (participant)

The conference has now concluded. Thank You for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.