Earnings Labs

ADT Inc. (ADT)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 2, 2016

$7.18

-0.55%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to The ADT Corp. First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference call may be recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Tim Perrott, Vice President-Investor Relations. You may begin.

Timothy J. Perrott - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, and good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining us for our call to discuss ADT's first quarter results for fiscal year 2016. With me on the call today are Naren Gursahaney, ADT's CEO, and Mike Geltzeiler, ADT's CFO. Let me begin by reminding everyone that the discussion today contains certain forward-looking statements about the company's future performance, which are subject to the risks and uncertainties and speak only as of today. Factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements are set forth within today's earnings release, which was furnished to the SEC in an 8-K report, and in our Form 10-Q for the year ended December 31, 2015, which we expect to file with the SEC later today. In our first quarter 2016 earnings release and slides, which are now posted on our website at adt.com and on our Investor Relations app, we have provided a reconciliation of the company's non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP. We urge you to review that information in conjunction with today's discussion. For those of you following on the webcast, we will be using this slide deck to supplement our commentary this morning. Please note that unless otherwise mentioned, references to our operating results exclude special items and these metrics are non-GAAP measures. Now, let me turn the call over to Naren. Naren? Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Tim, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. I hope you had a chance to review our earnings press release we issued earlier this morning that highlights our results for the first quarter of 2016. This morning, I'll discuss our key performance highlights and accomplishments for the quarter. Then Mike Geltzeiler will provide additional details on our financial and…

Operator

Operator

Yes. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Jason Bazinet of Citi. Your line is now open.

Jason Boisvert Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks so much. Just on slide 18 of your deck, regarding the outlook for 2016, I know you said you're confident you can still hit those metrics. But when I go through the Q1 results, it seems like on every – on almost everyone, if not all of them, you're sort of off to a pretty slow start. So, can you just provide as much color as you can in terms of what are the various puts and takes that will allow you to hit the full year numbers? Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure, Jason. It's Naren. Why don't I go ahead and start with that. From a revenue perspective, again, the short fall in gross adds and the net customer loss does provide a little bit of challenge. But, clearly, we had planned on a ramp as we go through the year. The ramp-up in our commercial business, the ramp-up in our health business, the launch of all of the new services around ADT Canopy, and the LG Smart Security product are in the back half of the year. And clearly, we do see some opportunities for some good high-quality bulk account purchases that were part of our strategy. We didn't see much in Q1, but we have some things that we're evaluating that we feel very good about.

Jason Boisvert Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: From an EBITDA perspective, I think we're – we got very good momentum. We're tracking ahead of our plan through the first quarter. Free cash flow, again, when you take out some of the unusuals on the year-over-year comparison, again, we're tracking favorably to where we expected to be in the quarter and that will ramp up as we go through the year. Attrition, again, we're 70 basis points improved from last year, while we're flat sequentially. All of the changes that we're making relative to quality growth will have a back half of the year impact, and I feel very confident about being sub-12%. And again, finally, the total subscriber base with the ramp-up in health, the ramp-up in commercial, some quite high-quality bulks and then the new additions that we see and the better retention in the back half of the year should still put us in a good position to deliver on a net subscriber add for the year in 2016.

Jason Boisvert Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Great. Thanks, Jason.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Saliq Khan from Imperial Capital. Your line is now open.

Saliq Jamil Khan - Imperial Capital LLC

Analyst

Great. Thank you. Hi, Naren. Hi, Mike. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey, Saliq.

Saliq Jamil Khan - Imperial Capital LLC

Analyst

Hey, guys. Could you talk a little bit about what your strategy is with ADT Canopy over the next 12 months and how you view the current partnership with LG and how that could potentially evolve as well? Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, again, the LG Smart Security product will be the first kind of the launch product associated with ADT Canopy. At CES, we had the opportunity in our booth and in the LG booth to demonstrate some of the functionality that it can use as a stand-alone security device as well as a home automation hub, and we were able to demonstrate that. The current plan is for that product to be launched in the spring. LG is kind of controlling the launch schedule based on the retail cycles that they support. So, as soon as that's launched that will be, in essence, the launch of Canopy. We announced a lot of new development partnerships at CES for a variety of different products, including life safety products. You saw on the slide Kidde and Roost, two of the premier partnerships we've got there, as well as wearables, looking at smart watches, where you'd be able to have to a panic button type of application on the device as well as a lot of different smart home hubs that have the ability to send a signal to notify you about an event and those signals would be sent to our monitoring centers. So, again, back half of the year, we expect to be launching more Canopy partnerships and launch that service offering to a variety of customers in that 80% of residences that we don't support today. I think, the LG partnership, they're already talking about what the Gen 2 and Gen 3 product will be as follow-ups to the Smart Security device.

Saliq Jamil Khan - Imperial Capital LLC

Analyst

Got it. I believe that the ADT Canopy solution is a very good way to continue to penetrate the overall marketplace. That obviously continues to expand as well. But what do you believe could be a competitive response to ADT Canopy? Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Like you said, I look at it and see more partnerships than I see competitors there. Most people are looking at what we bring to the table as an enhancement of their current offering. So, at this stage, I'm looking more on partnerships and how we take really good products and make them even better by adding professional monitoring services to those products.

Saliq Jamil Khan - Imperial Capital LLC

Analyst

And lastly, could you talk a little bit about your view and actions on implementing labor-saving technologies that could further reduce the overall cost profile? Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Again, the big one that we're still rolling out is on the TS panel, which is a complete wireless device. So it adds the peripherals wirelessly. We've got some new apps that make the installation process better. We're rolling out new tools. This past year was really focused on our sales force with the order management platform as well as the year before, the Salesforce.com to make us more efficient in our marketing and how we push leads down to our sales force. This year, you'll see more going to our service and installed techs, where we're giving them more capabilities and requiring them to call back into the centers much less frequently. So, again, I think we're looking at every aspect of our processes either in our centers and in the field and looking at where there are opportunities to automate, but then also enhance the customer experience. We don't want to automate at the expense of our customers.

Saliq Jamil Khan - Imperial Capital LLC

Analyst

Mike – Naren, I'll just get one more in, then I'll hop back in the queue. Given ADT Canopy, how will you ensure that you can not only retain those customers but also transition them to the larger ADT Pulse platform, which potentially comes with a much higher ARPU? Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Well, that's exactly the strategy. So, we want to engage with customers much earlier than we would have before they buy that house that would logically be a candidate for Pulse. So, we're really – the way we want to do that is through that user experience. While the look and feel is different from Pulse, there are many similarities and we engage with that customer, we build that relationship, so it should be a natural migration as they go from renter to owner as they go from apartment to house.

Saliq Jamil Khan - Imperial Capital LLC

Analyst

Great. Thank you, guys. And I know that Jeff wishes that he could've been on the call today also. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Great. Thanks, Saliq. Michael S. Geltzeiler - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Thanks, Saliq.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Ronnie Weiss of Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Ronnie Weiss - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hey. Good morning, guys. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning. Ronnie Weiss - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): I just want to touch on the net subscriber growth for the year. With the additional screening requirements you guys just did – have been doing, it kind of hurt the adds in Q1, I'm just wondering why this wouldn't continue to kind of depress those numbers throughout the year as the tightening kind of continues. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, again, within the residential – we got to isolate that. If you look at our gross adds by business, by channel, U.S. dealer was up 10%, Canada, as Mike mentioned, was up 22%, business was 11%, health, over 30%. So, it's really just our U.S. direct residential channel and that's where we're implementing all of these changes. You got to understand, it is a... Michael S. Geltzeiler - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: [Resales] were up 13%. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Right. So, it's really just... Michael S. Geltzeiler - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Resi direct new is where the changes are. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. This is a change for our sale force. Clearly, our sales force has adopted and adapted to changes in the past. They understand now exactly the kind of customer that we're looking for. And with their self-gen activity, they'll be pursuing that. Our leads will be more focused on those type of customers. And…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Shlomo Rosenbaum of Stifel. Your line is now open. Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Could you just comment a little bit about the LG product launch? I know it's supposed to be launched last year and then got pushed out to early first quarter, and now pushed out again to the springtime. Can you talk a little bit about what's going on with LG over there? And how much of your plan to achieve a subscriber growth for the year is contingent on the LG product rollout? Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, two things, Shlomo. One is, we had originally talked about a holiday season launch and when we worked with LG, they identified some opportunities to further enhance the product that we have designed. We've been working with them on some enhancements to the software platform. So, when we decided not to pursue the holiday season, the plan was to launch in the spring. When you look at retail, which is – this will be a retail product, it's either the holiday season or the next logical season for a product like this is dads and grads, which is in the springtime. So, we said we would announce the program and have that present in CES, both ADT have that as well as LG in their booth, and we're very – we feel very good about how we showed and the feedback that we got at CES. As far as the customer growth and how that contributes to our net customer growth, that is not in our plan for net customer growth. We have that and we're going to report those separately, but we…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jane Zhou of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Jane Zhou - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question. So, I guess, quickly on the enhanced credit screening, I think it was rolled out in early 2015. So, can you maybe quantify some of the benefits you see from this program up to today? And do you have any plan to roll it out to the dealer channel as well? Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, again, two things, Jane. One is, what we implemented in 2015 was a major contributor to our ability to reduce our customer attrition by 100 basis points last year. Even in Q1, we're 70 basis points better on a year-over-year basis. What we're doing now is further tightening up the screen, not necessarily just looking at credit, but looking at other characteristics of the sale, looking at renters versus owners, looking at how much money they're investing upfront, so it's a variety of – the screening we're doing now has a... Michael S. Geltzeiler - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Before there was an initial screen and determine whether there was a check or not. Now, we're doing full check. The dealer historically has had a higher credit score than accounts we'd like to deal with. The dealers, because of the chargeback program, already go through full credit scores before they present an account to us. And I think what we're doing is sort of bringing the direct channel up to the standard of what we historically have purchased from the dealers, so... Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, they – so, Jane, to clarify…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our last question from the line of Jeffrey Sprague of Vertical Research. Your line is now open.

Jeffrey T. Sprague - Vertical Research Partners LLC

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Jeff.

Jeffrey T. Sprague - Vertical Research Partners LLC

Analyst

Hey. A couple of loose ends, a lot of ground covered. On the credit screening, I'm wondering if you've been able to kind of step back and look at kind of the potential population of customers, whether it be U.S. household, et cetera, and determine kind of the size of that potential customer pool and where your penetration is relative to that. Kind of all gets around this question of with the tighter screening can you actually grow net accounts with that approach. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Jeff, that's going into a lot of data. We feel that there is still a very large market out there of customers who own their homes with a very attractive credit score. And again, the incremental screening we're doing this year is not just around credit scores. It is the broad characteristics of the sale. Again, we think – again, when you look at the industry at only 20% penetrated in total and you look at the quality of credit scores and homeowners, there's still a big market out there for us to pursue. So, I'm not worried that we're overly limiting the market opportunity by being that selective. I think when you look at the analysis that Mike and I now have been able to see from our teams, you see a portfolio that performs very well, and we've talked a lot about that, but we see specific tranches of customers that weren't as attractive returns. And if we can screen those out and impact the overall quality of that customer base, the returns get significantly better as that quality improves. Michael S. Geltzeiler - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: And I think one thing I'd add is, so we're not really –…

Jeffrey T. Sprague - Vertical Research Partners LLC

Analyst

Okay. That makes sense. That's a good distinction. On the LG related rollout, can you give us just a little color on how you see the revenue model actually playing out? Is there a little bit of revenue to ADT on the LG hardware sale? And any early expectations of what might be kind of a normalized monitoring fee associated with that offering? Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So, Jeff, for the product itself, that is a – it is an LG sale and LG will make the money, whatever profit there is on that along with the retailer and the retail channel that we're using. ADT makes all their money on the service on the back-end. Our plan is to offer a free period to get customers familiar with our services and see the benefit of the services. And then, we have a very affordable rate that's really, I'd say, in the area of about half of what we charge a traditional customer. Again, we're able to do that because our SAC is very low on this. Really, the SAC that we're talking about is the investment we made in developing the software, plus the free trial period that we're offering, as well as possibly some permitting and licensing depending on what jurisdiction that they're in. So, we're going to make all our money on the back-end.

Jeffrey T. Sprague - Vertical Research Partners LLC

Analyst

Great. Thank you very much. Naren K. Gursahaney - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Jeff.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And I'm showing no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's program. You may all disconnect. Have a great day, everyone.