Anthony Scaglione
Analyst · Justin Hauke with Robert W. Baird. Your line is open
Thank you Scott, and good morning everyone. I too would like to thank our team for their commitment and diligence as we start 2017. Our current results indicate continuation of our employees’ ability to navigate and progress through the varying stages of our 2020 vision while delivering operationally. Last year, we completed our 2020 vision organizational restructuring, but this year truly marks the beginning of our operations as a new ABM. We continue to learn, evolve and adapt as an organization each quarter, not only from an operational perspective, but also from a financial one. The institution of standard operating procedures, centralized procurement effort, and overall market migration requires a new way of looking at our business. I am very pleased by the initial work done by our finance team as we continue to support the business and drive the next phase of our transformation. I will now review our first quarter results from continuing operations which are described in today's earnings presentation. Total revenues for the quarter were $1.3 billion, up 4.6% versus last year driven by organic growth of 3.6%. Excluding the impact of FX, our organic growth would have been 4.5%, a key indicator for the consistent execution in our business. This performance was primarily driven by Aviation and our Business and Industry segment. In addition, acquisitions provided approximately $12 million of incremental revenues in the quarter, which are primarily reflected in our Technical Solutions segment. On a GAAP basis, our income from continuing operations was $16.1 or $0.28 per diluted share versus $13.6 million or $0.24 per diluted share last year. Last year also included the retroactive reinstatement of the calendar 2015 work opportunity tax credit of $5 million or approximately $0.09 per share. The year-over-year increase in EPS was primarily due to higher revenue contribution, the impact of 2020 vision saving initiatives that began in fiscal 2016 and lower items impacting comparability, primarily related to the reimbursement of previously expensed fees associated with a concluded FTPA investigation. These factors offset the impact of one additional working day during this quarter. On an adjusted basis, income from continuing operations for the quarter was $21.5 million or $0.38 per diluted share. During the quarter, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $48.1 million and our adjusted EBITDA margin of 3.6% compared to 3.4% last year. Before speaking to the segment results described on Slide 6 of today's presentation, I'd like to take a moment and build upon Scott earlier discussion regarding our new operating segment. As he alluded to 2017 as a major turning point in our reporting structure given the alignment of our internal view of the business with our external view. Financially, the task to remapping our current year and prior year business allocation has been tremendous, while revenue is more easily reconcilable from a year-over-year perspective, operating profit is a bit more complex. Overhead expenses included but not limited to non-operational management and supplies are not easily comparable on a year-over-year basis. As we transition to the new segment view we needed to go through and exercise of recasting prior year’s overhead costs to the new reporting segment. The methodology used was based on the proportion of the previous janitorial facility services and parking service line revenue that moved to each new segment. For example, 40% of the previously reported parking service line revenue that is aviation related was transferred to our aviation segment. As a result 40% of the then existing overhead parking costs were allocated to our aviation industry group. Since the realignment we have streamlined our processes and gained efficiencies as well. And today we don't require the same infrastructure or overhead to run aviation parking, allowing us to operate our parking services within our aviation group at a lower relative overhead cost. It is also important to note that it is difficult to quantify these aviation parking specific efficiencies under the prior year recast as overhead is an estimate based on the reallocation methodology just discussed. Accordingly, the recast of prior year overhead is not indicative of how we currently operate our parking services within our aviation industry group. Thus the year-over-year result of our remapping versus how we currently operate the business will create comparison challenges throughout the year. This example holds true for almost every industry group from a year-over-year comparison. In order to provide you all with a way to ascertain our performance throughout this transitional year, during our Q4 earnings call last year and in today's presentation we provided the 2017 outlook for operating margin by segment. These outlooks will help drive the conversation on a go forward basis. I will now discuss the new operating segment performance and also provide some additional details for each in order to help guide your perspective. Please keep in mind these operating results reflect savings related to our 2020 vision initiatives, partially offset by one extra working day during the quarter, which predominantly impacted the Business and Industry or B&I segment. For B&I, revenues increased 1.5% to $755 million versus last year, primarily driven by organic growth stemming from expansion of jobs with existing client. Revenues within B&I are roughly comprised of 75% historical janitorial, 15% facility services and 10% parking. Operating profit for the quarter was $32.4 million leading to operating margins of 4.3% and we continue to expect B&I to produce low-to-mid 5% operating margin for the full fiscal year. Aviation saw robust revenue growth of 13.8% at $232 million as a result of higher wheelchair and cabin cleaning revenues, new business for parking services at several metropolitan airports within the US and increased tag work. Revenues within the aviation segment is comprised of approaching 50% of our legacy Air Serv business historically referred to as Other, 30% parking, 10% janitorial and 10% facility services. Operating profit of $5.4 million led to a margin rate of 2.3% and we continue to expect an annual rate within the range of mid-to-high 4%. Emerging industries comprised of healthcare, education and high-tech which are roughly equally weighted, reported revenues of $201 million essentially flat due to the loss of our DOE [ph] work within education. Given the size of each of these businesses and the relatively more concentrated customer base, revenue in this industry group could experience volatility over the short term, but with our 2020 realignment and new management employees, our focus to grow this business more aggressively over the long term. Revenues within emerging industries are roughly comprised of 65% janitorial, 15% building and energy solutions, 10% facility services and 10% parking. Operating profit for the quarter was $12.4 million or 6.2% on a margin basis. We continue to expect the full year to be in the mid to high 6% range. Technical Solutions comprised of our legacy ABES business was approximately $107.7 million for the first quarter demonstrating a 15.3% growth versus last year. This growth is primarily attributable to acquisitions and higher project revenues associated with a strong backlog, continuing their performance over the last few quarters. In addition, while relatively small in scale, we are now the largest EV charging station in solar in the country and we are pleased with our growth since launching this service capability only a few short years ago. We are excited about the future prospects for this industry and the potential expansion within our existing client base. Finally, turning to government, which is a reportable segment as we continue to pursue the scale of this business. The results of operational improvements implemented in the back half of last year are benefiting this quarter’s results. The segment is also benefiting from the absence of depreciation and amortization due to the asset classification as held for sale. Turning to liquidity, we ended the quarter with total debt including standby letters of credit roughly $444 million and our total debt to pro forma adjusted EBITDA with approximately 2.5 times. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 200,000 shares of common stock for roughly 7.9 million and as of January 31, 2017, we had approximately $134 million of availability remaining under our previously announced 200 million share repurchase program. And as announced in today's earnings release, the board has approved ABM’s 204th consecutive dividend of $0.17 per share payable on May 1, 2017 to shareholders of record on April 6, 2017. Turning to our recent Augustus announcement, we have reached a tentative settlement and have amended our credit facilities to accommodate the payments upon its approval by the court. The timing of the payments will have a potential impact on our share repurchase execution in the short term. As a result, the cash outflow and the related interest expense and timing of share buyback due to the settlement could have a $0.01 to $0.03 impact to our current fiscal year. Irrespective of the Augusta settlement, we reiterate our fiscal 2017 GAAP income from continuing operations guidance of $1.40 to $1.50 a share and $1.80 to $1.90 on an adjusted basis. Operator, we are now ready for questions.