Diego Anthony Scaglione
Analyst · Sidoti. You may begin
Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. As Scott described, we have now created the organizational design that will enable us to fully realize our 2020 Vision strategy. We are all excited to begin operating under this new structure and I look forward to sharing our progress with all of you moving forward. Today, I will review our performance for the second quarter and discuss our revised guidance. I would like to remind everyone that I will be referring to the results from continuing operations which exclude the sale of our security business. Now for a review of the second quarter, which is described in today's earnings presentation that I will refer to periodically. Revenues for the quarter were up 6.9% versus last year, driven by organic growth of 4% and roughly $34 million of revenues from acquisitions, which are primarily reflected in our building and energy solutions segment. We ended the quarter with adjusted EBITDA of $46 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 3.7%, which we believe was a strong end to the first half of the fiscal year, given the expected impact of insurance and one extra working day during the quarter. Higher margin tag revenue and janitorial and higher revenue contribution from the ABES business, partially offset these additional expenses. The quarter also benefitted from the 2020 Vision savings which Scott referred to earlier. Adjusted income from continuing operations was $17.7 million, or $0.31 per diluted share compared to $19 million or $0.33 per diluted share last year. While I will discuss the revised guidance outlook shortly, I would like to note that we remain on track to achieve a run rate of $40 million to $50 million and operational efficiencies related to our 2020 Vision by the end of 2017. However, we are currently benefitting from savings related to phase one and other strategic project investments that have not yet occurred. Therefore, while our long-term projections remain intact, we expect to realize greater in-year savings in 2016. Before I discuss our segments results for the quarter, I would like to note that the results of our operations were negatively impacted by insurance and additionally for janitorial we had one extra working day. As we have discussed extensively in the past, we have made structural improvements to our approach to risk and safety, which is now under one common leadership. We also created an executive risk and safety committee and risk and safety metrics are now a component of our incentive compensation plan. We are fully committed to managing insurance cost going forward. Now turning to Slide 5 of today's presentation. To note, 2020 savings positively contributed to segment operating results. For janitorial, revenues increased 4.1% versus last year and operating margins were 5.1%. Margins benefitted from the increased scope of work at some of our top clients including additional tag revenue. Facilities services revenues decreased 1.9% or $2.8 million and operating margins were 4.8% versus last year, benefitting from an improved contract mix. Parking continues to demonstrate good top line growth generating over 7% increase in revenues versus last year. Similar to last quarter, this segment continues to experience some challenges. Operating margins decreased 3.8% versus last year due to higher cost associated with certain clients and contract conversions for managed to lease location arrangement. Before I dive into the greater detail of BESG, I want to remind everyone that BESG is comprised of ABES, our technical service business, healthcare and government. Much of the momentum in BESG is being driven by our ABES business, which continued to perform well in Q2. I do want to point out though that this business experienced certain challenges during the first half of last year and ramped up to a very strong second half of 2015. Therefore, while on a full year basis we continue to expect growth in ABES based on a strong pipeline of project related work, we expect growth rates to normalize in the back half of this year. Building and energy solutions revenues increased 25.9% versus last year which included $32.1 million of revenues related to acquisition. Operating margins were impacted by specific reserves established for client receivable that is no longer considerable probable of collection and lower equity earnings from unconsolidated affiliates, which are both related to our government business. Finally, revenues for our Air Serv increased by $13.9 million or 14.5%, driven by strength in our U.S. operations related to passenger assist and cabin clean service. Operating margins increased 10 basis points to 3.2% versus last year primarily due to lower amortization expense. Turning to liquidity. For the quarter, our cash from continuing operations increased $20 million. The improvement in cash flow was primarily due to timing of collection and taxes paid. We ended the quarter with total debt including standby letters of credit of $336.5 million and our total debt to pro forma adjusted EBITDA was roughly 1.65. During the quarter we repurchased approximately 300,000 shares of common stock for $10 million and as of April 30, 2016, there was approximately $167 million of availability remaining under our $200 million share repurchase program. And finally, the board has approved ABM's 201st consecutive dividend of 16.5 cents per share, payable on August 1, 2016 to stockholders of record on July 7, 2016. Now I will turn to our guidance outlook. As I referenced earlier, due to the timing of actions which also assumed a said amount of expected attrition and investments related to our 2020 Vision and other strategic enterprise-wide projects, for the remainder of the year we expect to realize savings in excess of what was originally planned. While we anticipate these expenses to materialize in the future, it is difficult to determine exactly when these expenses will be incurred. Operationally, we are pleased to have delivered solid results for the second consecutive quarter during which we designed our new organizational structure. There was an immense amount of transition as we all prepared to operate under this new design in 2017. We are pleased to be closing the first half of the year in a continued position of strength and we look forward to demonstrating additional progress in the coming months. As Scott highlighted earlier, we are raising our full year 2016 guidance range for adjusted income from continuing operations to $1.55 per share, compared to our previous guidance range of $1.50 to $1.60 per share. Operator, we are now ready for questions.