Earnings Labs

Aon plc (AON)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Fri, Jul 29, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. Thank you for holding. Welcome to Aon Plc's Second Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all parties will be in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer portion of today's call. If anyone has any objection, you may disconnect your line at this time. I would also like to remind all parties that this call is being recorded. And it is important to note that some of the comments in today's call may constitute certain statements that are forward-looking in nature as defined by the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated. Information concerning risk factors that could cause such differences are described in the press release covering our second quarter 2016 results as well as having been posted on our website. I would now like to hand the call over to Greg Case. Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Thank you. And good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2016 conference call. Joining me here today is our CFO, Christa Davies. I would note that there are slides available on our website for you to follow along with our commentary today. Consistent with previous quarters, I'd like to cover two areas before turning the call over to Christa for further financial review. First is our performance against key metrics we communicate to shareholders. Second is overall organic growth performance, including continued areas of strategic investment across Aon. On the first topic, our performance versus key metrics. Each quarter, we measure our performance against the key metrics we focus on achieving over the course of the year: grow organically, expand margins, increase earnings per share, and deliver free…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, ma'am. Our first question comes from Sarah DeWitt with JPMorgan. Please go ahead with your question.

Sarah E. DeWitt - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Hi, Sarah. Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning.

Sarah E. DeWitt - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

First on the Starbucks announcement, how should we think about the benefit of that opportunity to the top and bottom line? Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Well, first of all, Sarah, let me just start with overall. We're just really pleased, we're excited, we're proud to partner with Starbucks. This firm obviously, as you know, has got a long history of providing industry-leading benefits to its partners or employees, and it's really who they are as a company. They've been doing this for a long time. But they're also an industry leader on the healthcare side, committed not only to providing partners with access to healthcare, but also, candidly, shaping the role of the future employer based healths across the entire country. So, this for us is a very – and an innovative company in multiple ways who we partnered with to provide better choice, better transparency for their employees. So we're very excited about doing that. And this for us is just a continuation with a host of other companies who've joined the exchange who want to make a difference on behalf of their employees. And it's one option as part of our overall health platform, which, as we said before, we really love. We love the set of opportunities here to support and help clients and this is just a continuation of that. So, as we've said before, we're going to continue to drive performance in HR Solutions. You'll see that for the year. Starbucks will be included in that, and that will just be a continuation.

Sarah E. DeWitt - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks. And then, given the decline in interest rates year-to-date, should we anticipate any higher pension contributions than what's outlined on page 11 of the slides, given that's as of year-end 2015? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No. And the reason for that is we've really taken substantial efforts over the last 10 years to close our plans, freeze them and de-risk them. And so, because of that, we're in a position where the pension contributions will not change.

Sarah E. DeWitt - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Great. Thanks for the answer.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dave Styblo with Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.

David Anthony Styblo - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi there. Good morning. Thanks for the questions. Let me start out just on the inferred (24:50) organic growth in the second half and make sure I understand. So it sounds like it's mostly related to the HR Solutions side. And if that's really the case, can you again walk us through some of the components? I know there is a little bit of timing and it sounded like the typical seasonality that you have, but is there other visibility that you have on project-based work that maybe wasn't there this quarter that you expect to come in later on? Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Dave, the commentary really is applicable to both the risk side of the business and the HR Solutions side of the business. And what you're seeing in HR Solutions is just the natural continuation as this business trends to more of a second half set of engagements, particularly around the fourth quarter set of engagements. So that's really what you're seeing trending here. That's amplified a little bit by some timing that Christa highlighted, but this is just, for us, a natural evolution. The real piece here is our expectation that the year stays exactly the same, there's absolutely no change in terms of what we were thinking about and have been thinking about for the first six months, and in fact, feel good about the trends against that. We see what the pipeline looks like. We see how it's going to evolve and, as I said before, it's really just – if you think about some of the work we've done in HR BPO and in cloud, it's just more of a fourth quarter business than we've seen historically. And then on the risk side, same piece: we expect a stronger second half than we saw in the first half and continued growth in the overall business, so no change to the year.

David Anthony Styblo - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.

Okay, got it. And then on the margin – sorry, there was some background noise. But on the margin, Risk Solutions up 20 basis points. I know I think you said it was up 40 basis points excluding constant currency. Is that sort of in line with what you were looking for or – some of the peers have reported some larger margin expansions with organic growth that hasn't been as robust as yours. So, curious just to hear your thoughts on that. And then can you help us triangulate a little bit on HR Solutions? I know the portfolio repositioning changed a little bit of perhaps the base. And so margins down 30 basis points year-over-year, but I think last quarter, you guys started to give us some facts and figures about how much the portfolio repositioning changed the underlying margin base. So, if you could help give color on that so we understand the down pressure on margins year-over-year, that would be helpful. Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. So, let's start with risk. I think the first thing I'd say about risk is, I wouldn't over rotate on any one quarter. We do expect a stronger second half to the year in both Risk Solutions and HR Solutions, as Greg said, as we are becoming a more Q4 orientated company just in terms of the patterning of our revenue and operating income. And therefore, we expect for Risk Solutions strong organic revenue growth, margin expansion and operating income growth for the full year 2016. In terms of HR Solutions, I would note, as you said, there is an impact if you look at the first half of the year in terms of the divestitures. And that's having an impact of about $6 million in terms of lost operating income in the first half of the year. And obviously there is some stranded costs associated with those divestitures, which is really why we originally gave guidance in HR Solutions which is down in the first half, up in the second half. And what you're really seeing in the second half is we're working through exiting those stranded costs in Q3 and that's why Q4 will be stronger than Q3.

David Anthony Styblo - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.

Okay. So about $6 million of costs you said, right? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: $6 million of operating income.

David Anthony Styblo - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.

Of income, right. Okay. And then just lastly just on free cash flow, obviously a strong start. I know there were some easier comps in the first half but as we look into the second half, I can't imagine we keep up with that pace. Yeah, there were some timing events that got pulled forward in the first half here or – maybe just help us bridge to what you might define as double digit growth a little bit more precisely. Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So we obviously expect very strong free cash flow growth for the full year, double digit free cash flow growth for full year 2016, which will put us well on track for our $2.4 billion free cash flow in 2017. Obviously, the 51% growth in free cash flow won't continue at exactly that pace, because we did have in Q2 2015 the $137 million cash outflow related to legal settlements. But we do expect very strong free cash flow growth and much stronger cash flow in absolute dollars in the second half of the year aligned with the revenue and operating income growth for the company. Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: We are really seeing, as we've talked before, is our intention is to grow organically, improve margins and improve earnings per share, but to continue to work to translate our operating income and revenue performance into free cash flow. So that engine, that translation is continuing to become disproportionally stronger and that's exactly what you are seeing here, which is why we have been able to achieve the free cash flow performance in the first half, which is on top of record free cash flow performance in 2015.

David Anthony Styblo - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.

Okay. Thanks for the questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question from Adam Klauber with William Blair. Please go ahead. Adam Klauber - William Blair & Co. LLC: Good morning. Thanks. Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Hey, Adam. Adam Klauber - William Blair & Co. LLC: Couple of questions around the HR BPO. One, have you continued to have some major wins there? Two, any success moving over to the financials? And then three, I think I heard that and I thought that business is a little tilted towards the fourth quarter, is that right? Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: That's exactly right on the trend line in terms of the disproportionally skewed more toward the fourth quarter, and this is exactly what we're trying to highlight on the call today. We love the progress though here. The team has just done a terrific job, not only in the translation of what we do with our cloud-based businesses on the HR side, but also what we're doing on the finance side. And you can see that evolution starting in HR, moving to finance and eventually connecting the two back which is really where the opportunity is. And from our standpoint, our pipeline is literally sold out in this category. The team has just done a terrific job. Adam Klauber - William Blair & Co. LLC: Great. So you have had some wins on the finance side? Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: We have actually made real progress on the finance side. And I would say that the speakers on the phone today are quite engaged in that and are excited about that for Aon as well. So we're putting our money where our mouth is as we…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kai Pan with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Kai Pan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Yeah. Thank you and good morning. Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Hi, Kai. Kai Pan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: So the first question is on Brexit. Can you elaborate a little bit on that, what's the near-term as well as what's the long-term impact? Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Kai, I would say – maybe I'll divide the Brexit question into two parts. One is just for our clients, and that's really the lens, as you know, that we look through – we look through everything out in the world through the lens of our clients. And obviously, there's a lot of uncertainty, our clients are going through a lot of questions, both in the region, but also globally, in terms of what the impact is going to be, and we're very vigilant. We spend a great deal of time with our clients on the tradeoffs and issues and areas that they are trying to address in the context of it. And you watch that evolve like we do. And we think there will continue to be uncertainty. As it relates to Aon, the second part, for us, Brexit, like all things that involve client uncertainty, it's an opportunity to help clients understand the situation and take actions to improve their positions. And Brexit has proven to be just that for us, both on the HR Solutions side as well as on the risk side. So from a financial impact from our standpoint, this is really an opportunity to help and support clients. And as I said before, they are facing a lot…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question from Charles Sebaski with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Charles Joseph Sebaski - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you. I guess the first question, Greg, I was hoping you could help me understand a little bit on the Americas organic growth and reconciling your commentary that U.S. has had record new business. I guess, when I think of record new business in the U.S., it would seem that's the larger portion of that and I would have thought that that would be higher, just given that commentary. Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Yeah. What I was really talking about – first of all, just to be clear, the U.S. did have record new business, actually it was a $100 million-plus quarter, the first time we've ever done $100 million in Q2. So, it was really a terrific testament to the team with very strong retention. A lot of things go into that, rollover, et cetera. But remember, Q2 is one quarter and it tends to be among our smallest quarters, Q2 and Q3. And from our standpoint, as we look at the overall trend line for the year, what I was describing is really the opportunities for the year, and that's really how we look at those, and highlighted what we see in the pipeline for the opportunities in the second half for U.S. Retail and really for risk overall. And then we skew, as Christa just described, I think very well, why the fourth quarter is higher or stronger than the rest of our quarters.

Charles Joseph Sebaski - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Okay. And Aon Inpoint, could you give us some idea on what the size or scale of this business is currently and what the expectation of that business could be going forward? Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Yeah, well, we've talked about – Aon Inpoint is just a great example. When you think about growth for Aon overall, as we've highlighted on previous calls, we've got all the work we do on the traditional side of the business and putting in place things like Aon Client Promise and really substantially increasing our ability to acquire clients, retain clients, and do more with clients. We've also talked about some of the other areas of investment outside of the traditional areas, and we highlighted a couple on the last call. There are $1 billion-plus businesses in Affinity and Health & Benefits that are growing substantially. And then Aon Inpoint is another example really outside the core in which we've made substantial investment. And Aon Inpoint really is bringing together what is a very unique and the single biggest repository of insurance information that exists in the world today and pulling it together on behalf of our clients. And in this case, they happen to be insurance carriers. We've got 45-plus carriers who are involved right now, and we're helping them think about how they improve their business, grow their business overall. We haven't talked about the size, but what I would say is, this is a very – been very positive for us in terms of supporting carriers, strengthening overall position. And it's another example of how we've used data and analytics as a core and cornerstone piece of what we do. And so, for us, it's just another example of where we're investing to grow the business. By the way, not only do we have Aon Inpoint, now we also have something called Aon Review, which is doing the same thing on the reinsurance side. We've actually taken the data and analytics approach that really underpins Aon Inpoint and used it as part of our U.S. mortgage effort, that's, by the way, reached $5 billion-plus in premium since its inception, which is a great accomplishment. And then things like Aon Client Treaty. These are fundamentally data-driven, analytic-driven businesses that we see a lot of promise for.

Charles Joseph Sebaski - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Right. And lastly, I guess, Christa, could you help me out with one thing on the cash flow, and I'm trying to work through understanding the improvement from cash flow from improvements in working capital on the accounts receivable and payable that you've mentioned and how this is net new cash flow, as opposed to accounting timing, if I think pulling receivables from calendar year 2018 into 2017 or 2017 into 2016, or is it actually net new in some manner and how would that be actual net new dollars? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So I guess one way to think about it on the receivables side is if you've got a dollar of revenue today and it takes you 100 days to collect it, then you're tying up a lot of cash on your balance sheet in the form of receivables. And if we get the 100 days, for argument's sake, down to 50 days, then you've halved the amount of cash that you're tying up on your balance sheet in the form of receivables. And what you can see if you divide receivables by revenue on our balance sheet, is that days' sales outstanding has come down substantially. And so it's taking us less time to collect cash from customers. And so we are getting more in line with what we think a professional services firm should be, which is working capital neutral. And today if you looked at our days payables and our days sales outstanding, there is a 15-day negative gap, and we believe that should be neutral. And the difference between that is the extra $500 million of free cash flow I mentioned. So we think there is a substantial opportunity to continue to improve working capital and generate substantial free cash flow over the coming years.

Charles Joseph Sebaski - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Is there a cost to that 15-day net? I mean, in a low interest rate environment like we're in today, what's the cost of that spread? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No, it's not. There is no cost.

Charles Joseph Sebaski - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: It's just processing.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Quentin McMillan with KBW. Please go ahead. Quentin McMillan - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Hi. Good morning. Thanks very much, guys. I just wanted to talk about the divestitures really quickly. You had a decrease in expenses for the divestitures, but the overall kind of divestiture strategy, particularly as it relates to HR Solutions, as you drive towards your 22% long-term margin target, do you need to divest some of the lower return businesses in order to achieve that in HR, or are you happy with the current portfolio and it's just improvement in those businesses? Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Yeah. There's no divestiture strategy. There's a return on invested capital strategy and a client strategy that drives everything we do. And we continue – we've made unprecedented investments back into the HR Solutions business and the risk business. We're going to continue to do that, look for us to do that, with the organic investments we've made and then acquisitions that strengthen our position to serve clients more effectively. And then from time to time as we look at that overall portfolio, we will make calls and decision that will help us both improve client serving capability, absolutely fundamental, and then also improve return on invested capital. And you'll see us do that just in the natural course. And if you think about over the last 10 years, it hasn't just been in HR Solutions, it's across Risk Solutions, probably even more pronounced in Risk Solutions, where we have transitioned out assets that weren't strengthening our client serving capability as much and brought new assets and it helps us do that. Quentin McMillan - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Great. And just a quick numbers question,…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jay Cohen with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Jay Arman Cohen - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Just a quick one on the benefits administration business. I guess there's been some revenue pressure there. I'm wondering what's happening there, and should we expect that to improve or is this going to be permanently relatively subdued? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: We love the benefits administration business. We serve 22 million Americans across our retirement and health portfolios there, and we continue to invest in the technology to serve clients and develop unique solutions. So, we expect to continue to grow in that business. We did have some anticipated losses coming into the year. Clients were in a sort of M&A (44:51) environment and were acquired, and we do expect to grow overall.

Jay Arman Cohen - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, there are no additional questions in queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Greg Case for closing remarks. Gregory C. Case - President, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Just want to say thanks very much, everybody, for joining the call, and look forward to the next quarter. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the conference call for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.