Scott Behrens
Analyst · Wells Fargo
Thanks, Phil, and good morning, everyone. I first plan to go through our results for 2018 then provide guidance for 2019, as well as financial details of the acquisition of Speedpay that we announced this morning. We'll then open the line for questions. I'll be starting my comments on slide seven, with key takeaways from the year, just as a reminder effective January 1, 2018 we adopted the new revenue recognition standard ASC 606, which replaced ASC 605. For all of my prepared comments I'll be discussing our results on a constant GAAP basis. As Phil discussed, we saw strong bookings growth on the year with new bookings up 22% and total bookings up 15%. We ended the year with 60-months backlog of $4.2 billion and the 12-months backlog of $811 million. 2018 revenue was $1.012 billion, down slightly from 2017 and adjusted EBITDA was $261 million or essentially flat with 2017. As Phil mentioned, our final 2018 revenue and EBITDA was impacted by unforeseen events, which included recent capital markets transaction in the financial services sector that delayed certain revenue producing contracts in the fourth quarter. These deals are now expected to close in 2019 and are reflected in our higher outlook for EBITDA this year, compared to our prior guidance. Turning next to our two P&L, our ACI On Premise segment, which was impacted by the timing of the deals that were delayed around year-end, so our revenues declined 3% in 2018. This segment continues to generate strong EBITDA margins delivering 56% in 2018, down slightly from last year's 58%. Our ACI On Demand segment are grew 2% in 2018 and now represents 43% of our total revenue. We've been saying for some time now that margin expansion will come with scale as we grow into the infrastructure that we've built out over the last several years. In 2018, we started to see that margin expansion with our On Demand segment delivering a 600 basis point improvement on net EBITDA margins. And now to jump ahead, but the acquisition of Speedpay will allow us to accelerate that scale by layering on revenue and EBITDA on top of that scalable infrastructure. We saw strong cash flow growth in 2018 with operating free cash flow of $148 million, up 14% over the last year. We ended the year with $149 million in cash and a debt balance of $685 million. We close out the year with a net debt to EBITDA leverage ratio of roughly 2 times, which is below our targeted leverage 2.5 times. In 2018, we continued our trend of deploying about a third of our cash flow for share repurchases, for the year we repurchased 2.3 million shares for roughly $54 million, which equates to an average price of just over $23 a share. And we currently have $176 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization. Turning next to slide eight, with our guidance. Just a note here the follow guidance does not reflect any contribution from the Speedpay transaction. We plan to update our 2019 guidance for the financial impact of the transaction upon closing. So for 2019, we expect revenue to be in a range of $1.1 billion to $1.125 billion, which represents 9% to 11% growth over 2018. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in a range of $310 million to $325 million, which is up from our prior range of $300 million to $315 million. As we now expect certain revenue and EBITDA producing contracts that were delayed around year-end to come in, in 2019. We expect the 2019 quarterly phasing of revenue and EBITDA to generally be consistent with 2018, new bookings are expected to be in the high single to low double-digits and operating free cash flow in 2019 is expected to be in a range of $165 million to $180 million. For the first quarter, we expect to generate between $205 million and $215 million of revenue. And note that this range does not include the impact of carry over deals from 2018. We expect the most likely timing of these deals to be in Q2 or Q3 of this year. And finally, our 2020 EBITDA target is unchanged at $335 million to $350 million. And to help with your modeling, you'll find additional guidance assumptions on slide nine. Interest expense to be $39 million and cash interest to be $36 million, capital expenditures are expected to approximate $50 million, G&A is expected to approximate $100 million, non-cash compensation expense should approximate $35 million. Pass through interchange revenues are expected to be in a range of $180 million to $185 million. Cash taxes are expected to approximate $40 million and our effective tax rate should be consistent with 2018, which was right around 25%. And lastly, our diluted share count should be around $117 million, which excludes future share buyback activities. Moving - finally slide 10, we're very excited to announce the acquisition of Speedpay, in 2018 Speedpay generated more than $350 million in revenue and over $90 million in EBITDA. Our purchase price of $750 million represents a multiple of approximately 2 times revenue and 8 times EBITDA and that is excluding the value of the tax benefits in any potential synergy. The acquisition will be structured as an asset purchase for U.S. tax purposes pursuant to 338 H10 election. As a result of this election we'll be able to amortize any goodwill and intangible associated with the acquisition. We estimate the net present value of this tax benefit to approximate $100 million. And overall, we expect the transaction to be double-digit accretive in the first full year on an adjusted EPS basis. Speedpay is a 100% recurring revenue model will improve our overall recurring revenue from 65% of total revenue today to 74% on a pro forma basis. And as I mentioned previously, Speedpay will also allow us to accelerate the scale in our On Demand segment by layering on revenue and EBITDA on to our scalable infrastructure. We have 100% committed financing through an incremental term loan and a revolver draw. We expect pro forma net debt to EBITDA ratio to be under 4 times at closing and a significant free cash flow generation from the combined business should allow us to delever quickly. We expect within 24 months of closing that our debt-to-EBITDA ratio to generally be in line with our targeted leverage ratio of 2.5 times. We expect the transaction to close by the end of Q2 against subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. And finally, as I mentioned already, we plan to provide updated 2019 guidance and 2020 outlook upon closing the transaction. So that concludes my prepared remarks. Operator, we're ready to open the line for questions at this time.