Earnings Labs

The Brink's Company (BCO)

Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 6, 2019

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to The Brink’s Company's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2018 Earnings Call. Brink’s issued a press release on fourth quarter and full year results this morning. The Company also filed an 8-K that includes the release and the slides that will be used in today’s call. For those of you listening by phone, the release and slides are available on the company’s Website at brinks.com. [Operator Instructions] At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Now, for the company’s Safe Harbor statements; this call and the Q&A session will contain forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from projected or estimated results. Information regarding factors that could cause such differences is available in today’s press release and in the company’s most recent SEC filings. Information presented and discussed on this call is representative as of today only. Brink’s assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. The call is copyrighted and may not be used without written permission from Brink’s. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ed Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Mr. Cunningham, you may begin.

Ed Cunningham

Analyst

Thanks Drew. Good morning, everyone. Joining me today are CEO, Doug Pertz; and CFO, Ron Domanico. This morning, we reported fourth quarter and full year results on both the GAAP and non-GAAP basis. The non-GAAP results exclude a number of items including our Venezuela operations, the impact of Argentina’s highly inflationary accounting, reorganization and restructuring costs, items related to acquisitions and dispositions, and costs related to certain accounting compliance matters. We also provided an announcement of our results on a constant currency basis, which eliminates changes in foreign currency exchange rates from the prior year. We believe the non-GAAP results make it easier for investors to assess operating performance between periods. Accordingly, our comments today including those referring to our guidance will focus primarily on non-GAAP results. Reconciliations of non-GAAP to GAAP results are provided in the press release and intended for the slides we are using today and in this morning’s 8-K filing all of which can be found on our website. Finally, page three of the press release provides details behind our 2019 guidance including revenue, operating profit, non-controlling interest, income-taxes and adjusted EBITDA. I'll now turn the call over to Doug.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Thanks, Ed, and good morning, everyone. Today, we reported strong fourth quarter and full year results including our 11th consecutive quarter of earnings growth, reflecting a 27% compounded annual growth rate in operating profits since 2016. These strong reported results included significant unfavorable FX headwinds for the full year that hit us hardest in the fourth quarter. Strong profit growth in Mexico and our U.S. based business was supplemented by $28 million of operating profit from acquisitions, helping us to boost our full year margin rate by 130 basis points to 10.1%. Over the first two years of our strategic plan, we have increased our margin by 270 basis points and the U.S. business margin by over five and a half margin points. Also, during the 2018 year we increased our non-GAAP free cash flow by over $100 million. I’m going to cover our fourth quarter and dull year results in more detail. I’ll also cover our 2019 guidance and briefly discuss the next phase of our strategy and its expected impact on results in 2019. The Ron will provide a more detailed financial review and update our plan amendment to our bank credit agreement and our share repurchases. Turning to slide four, we reported fourth quarter revenue growth of 5%. In constant currency, revenue growth increased by 16% including organic growth of 7% and 9% growth from acquisitions. The unfavorable effects impact in the fourth quarter was greater than the other three quarters in 2018, negatively impacting reported revenue and profit. Further, while the Argentinean Peso exchange rate versus the U.S. dollar during the fourth quarter was favorable versus the updated 2018 guidance that we provided during our third quarter earnings call, this favorability was offset by weakness in our other currencies. Reported operating profit was up 15% reflecting…

Ron Domanico

Analyst

Thanks, Doug and good day everyone. I’m going to provide some additional detail on our full year 2018 results and our guidance for 2019 including free cash flow, net debt and leverage. Looking at our 2018 results. Reported full year 2018 revenue was $3.4 billion versus 2017 organic revenue growth was 7% or $223 million. South America grew 16%, North America grew 5%, and the rest of the world grew 1%. Acquisitions, net of dispositions drove an additional $213 million of growth with approximately $151 million from Dunbar, $61 million for Maco and $42 million from Temis partly offset by negative $50 million from the disposition of our French aviation guarding business. Translation ForEx impacted revenue negatively by $192 million, due primarily to the strengthening of the U.S. dollar versus the Argentine Peso and the Brazilian Real partially offset by a stronger Euro. On the right side of this chart, you can see that full year 2018 non-GAAP operating profit was $347 million, excluding the impact of ForEx constant currency operating profit was up 48% or $135 million versus prior year. The increase was driven by $107 million of organic growth and $28 million from acquisitions, net of dispositions primarily for Maco, Dunbar and Temis. Currency translation for the year was $70 million unfavorable due mostly to the devaluation of the Argentine Peso with some additional negative impact from the Brazilian Real and Mexican Peso, versus our 2018 guidance on October 24, the Argentine Peso was slightly stronger than the Brazilian Real and the Mexican Peso were slightly weaker resulting in negligible ForEx impact. Even with a significant unfavorable ForEx versus 2017, reported full year 2018 non-GAAP operating profit was up 23%. In the United States operating profit excluding Dunbar grew 78% and combined with continued revenue and margin expansion…

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Thanks, Ron. In closing I want to reiterate that despite currency headwinds in 2018 we delivered 23% operating profit growth on a reported basis and 48% growth on a constant currency basis with a margin improvement of 130 basis points In 2019 with the additional operating expense investment of $20 million to $30 million that I cover earlier, and another $7 million hit from the negative currency versus the [Indiscernible] 2019 guidance we provided in the third quarter. We expect to deliver another year of 20 plus percent operating profit growth with a margin improvement of another 100 basis points to around 11% margin. We’re confident that the growing margin improvement and profit momentum in the U.S. and Mexico will continue, demonstrating our resilient inherent in our global business. Mexico has more than double profit in the last two years. And let’s not forget that about three years ago our U.S. business was not making money. In 2018, this last year we made $64 million in the U.S. and we’re on track to make that $100 plus million in 2019. In 2019 and beyond we’ll remain focused on executing our 1.0 and 1.05 strategies to drive additional revenue and margin growth. And we look forward to sharing more about our 2.0 strategies later this year to continue to layer on more growth into the future. Thanks. And now, let's open it up for questions.

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Jamie Clement of Buckingham. Please go ahead.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Hi. Good morning gentlemen.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Good morning, Jamie.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Doug, when you mentioned under Strategy 2.0, new unvended and underserved customers. Are you talking about in your traditional customer base of financial institutions and retail? Or you’re talking about moving into new areas? Can you expand on that a little bit more?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Yes. We specifically talked about it into two different areas. One of those areas is to expand the services into our existing customer base if you will, to penetrate if you will those customers more, but also to expand the offerings and the value that we create with those offerings to offer a broader array of services to really service their complete, what we call the complete cash ecosystem of needs. So that’s the combination with retail customers expanding what we offer them, as well as to FI customers with additional outsourcing and to work with them and say, where are your best source to provide services at the best value for anything related to the cash business. The second piece and that is to take and expand into what we call the unvended portion of the business, as well as the underserved portion of the business to customers that we don’t serve today. And frankly that most of our industry does not serve today. That’s unvended. And do that again through higher value services, unique tech enable services and with better value. And I think you probably heard me say a little bit better in there to really focus on the credit card business and industry and the services they provide. They've outperformed us in those services and us being our industry as well as us and that’s our focus. If we can provide services that are hassle free, equivalent or better to them at better value I think we’ll gain significant new customers and new business through the cash industry.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

And Doug, when you talk – when you -- on the last part of your comments, as it relates to the credit card industry, is your go-to-market focus is the underlying idea here sort of like you want to make cash cheaper to deal with, cheaper to consume or transacting for your customers than credit card companies are charging? Or is there a lot more to this than that?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Well, there’s more to it than that. It's not just about pure cost. Well, I frankly think that generally, depending on the size of the customer that the cost of the services we provide today probably is less than what the cost is for what credit card companies provide. But I think that we need to as an industry and as a company makes sure that we provide similar hassle free services, which means, we need to provide a broader array of services to that cover the whole cash ecosystem for those customers. So, if a customer looks at how they get the services what they pay for and how easy it is so to speak with credit card we need to make sure as an industry that we do the same and we do that at competitive rates and a easy way to do business fashion.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Great. And then one follow-up and then I’ll get back in queue. Guys, you know, typically when companies have plenty of borrowing capacity and then upside their borrowing capacity there’s often an acquisition or several in mind, what are odds that we may see a similar kind of total investments than on acquisition -- acquisitions in 2019 than we saw in 2018?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Well, I think we’re clearly…

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Which would be a big year?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Yes. So I think we clearly have in mind several acquisitions that we want to do. We don't know what they will specifically be at this point in time. But we clearly are continuing to make sure that we have the capacity to do additional acquisitions that we've done in the past. Whether they’re going to be the same size and to the same level that we did in 2018? We don’t know that yet. We don’t -- we’re not ready to announce something or suggest that there is. But we’re certain are preparing to continue to do. We’re done in the past and meet or exceed the investment in acquisitions that we’ve laid out.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Okay. And then, hey, Ron, quick, net sort of pro forma for the upsizing and the interest rate swap. What's going to be your rough percentage mix between fixed and floating once all this is done?

Ron Domanico

Analyst

Well. Right now it would be 70% based on the ability to generate additional cash flow as we’ve laid out in the guidance that will work down and we’ll be right there. But we feel that the current rate at 4.25% locked in for five years was prudent regardless of what the Fed decides to do.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Okay. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Ron Domanico

Analyst

Thanks, Jamie.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Tobey Sommer of SunTrust. Please go ahead.

Tobey Sommer

Analyst

Thank you. Could you comment on -- elaborate your comments on pricing in your major market. You’re already, I think kind of touched on Argentina pretty well. But just curious how you’re doing in your other major markets? Thank you.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Sure. Thanks Tobey. We don’t necessarily disclose specifics on each of the markets, but we've seen price increases as we’ve talked about in the fourth quarter – excuse me, in the third quarter that in the U.S. market we’ve had price increases generally implemented in the early fourth quarter of the year that were similar to the prior year and are in line with, if not better than most of our cost increases. Similar sort of implementation of pricing in Mexico which help support our strong volume gains there as well and it varies beyond that. Generally Brazil is similar to that too.

Tobey Sommer

Analyst

Okay. When you look at the acquisitions how would you characterize the mix of acquisition opportunities between route-based that we’re most familiar with versus the core what you do in non-route based assets?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

I guess, we don’t really look at in terms of route-based versus non-route-based. We look at whether they’re in core businesses, cash management which obviously everyone we've done so far does have some aspect of route-based in them except for the cash piece that in our Brazilian acquisition. But the core businesses really are cash management of global services or high-value transportation and then payments related to our cash business. So those are three core businesses and all of our positions have been in those to-date and all have really been in core geographies to-date as well, so that's really the way that we look at them rather than route-based versus non-route-based. We look at our business particularly in the cash side is moving to high margin, more higher margin than we’d had in the past and more recurring revenue sticky businesses. We think our strategies that we’ve laid out, including CompuSafe, obviously, but our strategies, we’re talking about, laying out and we'll talk more about that later this year will be very much focused on improving margins and stickier long-term contracts with our customers, higher recurring revenue streams, but all that is because we will provide higher value and better services to our customers.

Tobey Sommer

Analyst

Great. You mentioned CompuSafe during your prepared remarks that it kind of I thought of asking a question on that. Is your prior articulation of the total addressable market in the U.S. still holds; because that was a big step function up in orders in 2018? So do you think that’s market share driven or are you seeing effectively kind of bigger opportunities? Thanks.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Well. I think that’s why did point out that we did to receive a sale in the fourth quarter and order in the fourth quarter of 1300 units. So out of our 5300 that we’ve obtained in the year was a single year multiple, obviously, multiple branches and outlet, but that’s indicative I think of what we’re seeing. Those take longer to gestate. But I also think that the -- we’ll see more of those going forward. And the value that can be created for customers will certainly be something that we see tremendous opportunity going forward. So, I think that the opportunity and the penetration is very similar to what was said before, probably around 20% penetration in the marketplace in the U.S. lesson that on a global basis, but the value creation I think for customers is probably more understood now and certainly as we in particular pursue that along with the Loomis and others in the business in the U.S. it will get – it will to gain actually -- this solution will gain greater visibility in the marketplace. And I think we’ll drive more sales as this is -- for this as a solution.

Tobey Sommer

Analyst

If I could just ask one follow-up on the pricing, then I’ll go back in the queue. How would you characterize and assess the risk of kind of bad actors triggering episodes of pricing pressure versus when you took the helm of the company and that specifically have kind of the -- what the market and industry endured in France last year and a half, two years in mind?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Yes. I think in general it’s improved over the last two years or so, that the risk associated with that and you can go by country or region anyway and I think it's improved. I think our acquisitions -- some of our competitive acquisitions in the marketplace have improved that positioning. But there's always the situation like we ended up in France that would not necessarily be expected. But I think in general overall its improved.

Tobey Sommer

Analyst

Do you expect margins to start rebounding in France here this year?

Ron Domanico

Analyst

I think we clearly said that. Yes. We expect margins to improve. We expect our profitability to improve.

Tobey Sommer

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Ron Domanico

Analyst

And key drivers of that as I’ve laid out there is not just about pricing. It's a mix of our business and our solutions that we sell and some mix of our synergies that we’ll be gaining on the cost side from both the Temis acquisition as well as the strategic plan, cost reductions that have already been laid out that are now being implemented this year. So pricing is one piece of those. But the real key piece is it's a combination of things that we think will improve our margins going forward this year.

Tobey Sommer

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Jeff Kessler of Imperial Capital. Please go ahead.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Good morning, Jeff.

Operator

Operator

Mr. Kessler, your line is open. Please go ahead with your question. Is your muted accidentally? Okay. If I may, I’ll go to the next question. The next question comes from Ashish Sinha of Gabelli & Company. Please go ahead.

Ashish Sinha

Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I’ve got a few. Hi. So, I wanted to stick to North American and starting with growth. So could you maybe talk about the breakdown of volume and price within that growth? And then since you talked about that large order for CompuSafe in the fourth quarter. Could you split growth by CompuSafe, CIT and CMS, I mean, the background for asking my question is your peer who reported growth in the U.S., they said, they’re winning share. So I just wanted to understand is that -- is there a quarter nuance related to a quarter? Am I looking at a slightly shorter time frame? Or is there something more behind it i.e., any revenue leakage from Dunbar. Yes. That’s my first question.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Well, that’s a lot, Ashish. But I think, let’s take CompuSafe as a first piece. I think it’s not a question of share. I think it’s a question of market growth and penetration of that market. It’s a huge opportunity of a market as we talked about earlier. I think the fact that we and new orders of 5300 substantial greater that what we’ve had in the past. I think it's very consistent with what you probably heard from our competitor that you’re talking about out there. But it’s also consistent in the way that we pursue. We effectively are pursuing the industry. So we don’t see that as an issue of taking share versus one versus the other and we certainly don't feel that they’ve taken share from us in the CompuSafe side. We’ll win some business. We lose some businesses – business there, specifically in there and that’s the way it goes. But certainly we’re not going to apologize for 5300 unit orders and for a large order for 50 -- for 1300, and we think there is great opportunity there. We don't really report on a CMS. In fact I'm kind of hurt because that's not how we report. That’s our competitive method of reporting. But I think what you generally find is our percent of our business versus the U.S. competitor that you mentioned in our business in the U.S. is very similar to what theirs is in terms of that type of split, in other words, percent of business that is [Indiscernible] related etcetera is very very similar. So, we’re going in a similar fashion. I think part of the differences we’re going to see an acceleration of that for us going forward in this year 2019 because we have a stronger backlog from these orders that will be put into place in CompuSafe. Overall, in terms of pricing, we talked about that a little bit earlier. So, in the U.S. there's a good mix of price and volume which I think, combine will give us organic growth in the 5 plus percent range. Obviously CompuSafe will be stronger than that in 2019 and going forward. I hope that answers your questions?

Ashish Sinha

Analyst

Yes. My second question is on U.S. margins where you talk about exiting 2019 at a 10% rate. You're basically exiting 2018 at 9.7%. So probably there’s a bit of Dunbar in there. But then in 2020…

Ron Domanico

Analyst

No, actually – actually just for clarity on that, I don’t mean to cut you off. But just for clarity on that. One of the things we said and I don’t have a precise numbers off the top of my head, but we're in the 9 plus percent range in the fourth quarter that the U.S. operations without Dunbar or without synergies were actually equal to or above the Dunbar numbers and the Dunbar numbers on margin included synergies that were gain by us. So, if you recall, our trailing LTM Dunbar numbers on op income we’re in the 6.5% to 7% range. And this is for a full year, not without seasonality. So with synergies they were at about the same level as our U.S. operations were in the fourth quarter. I think that’ a very good sign that in fact without the impact of Dunbar or without the impact of synergies our U.S. operations were performing very well and the growth was very nice in margin improvement throughout the year. Now, turning back to your other points, of course, I'll now let you answer – ask the rest of the question. The exit rate in the year has to be a little bit tempered by seasonality. So the 9.8% that we have going out of this year in the fourth quarter is not necessarily we’re going to go into next year and that won't be indicative of what our margin rate should be increasing from. So, we go out and I think we’ve said in the past, next year for our full year margin, that's up with couple hundred basis points from what we were this year for the full year than I think that will give us the basis for the exiting at the type of level we’re talking about for a 10% overall in 2020, if that make a sense.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

2019 I thought 10%?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

No, no. So in other words, if we exit next year to couple hundred basis points higher than we exited this year which will be north of 10%, it will be more then 10% we’re exiting next year, but the seasonality will suggest that throughout the full year next year we’re at least a couple hundred basis points over the full year for this year and we’ll be achieving our target.

Ashish Sinha

Analyst

Yes, understood. So if you are at 2021, you're doing 13%, that’s your target on business of 1.2 billion and within that you've guided to synergies of 40 million, 45 million from Dunbar. So I just wanted to understand the differential piece. So, most of the heavy lifting in efficiency has been done? Or do you think there is a lot more you could do at – within the enlarge business?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Well, they get the 13%. There's a lot of heavy lifting both in terms of the synergies with Dunbar as well as the continuation of the improvements in breakthrough and another initiatives in our core business. And so this suggest that we’re right on track if not a little bit ahead in the core business. We’ve just started the synergy ramp-up. We anticipate that based on everything we see will achieve those $45 million in synergies and more which then if you combine those initiatives which we’re very highly confident that we’ll be able to achieve that we will achieve the 13% margins in 2021. And that will not be on 1.2 million to 1.25 million in revenue.

Ashish Sinha

Analyst

But that will grow?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

It will be on a number that has some growth on top of that which should be closer to 1.3 1.35 plus billion [ph].

Ashish Sinha

Analyst

Yes. That’s why I’m eagerly awaiting your Strategy 2.0 because that’s like nearly doubling margins again, I mean nearly doubling or significantly increasing margin?

Ron Domanico

Analyst

Well, I don’t we’re going hit 26% margins with 2.0.

Ashish Sinha

Analyst

No, no, no.

Ron Domanico

Analyst

I’m getting you, Ashish, but yes, that’s why we’re eagerly excited about rolling it out as well, because the objective of 2.0 simply as we laid out is to provide tech-enabled higher-value services, broad array of services that should help continue to drive our organic growth to higher levels than we've had so far. And then on top of that to increase our margins overall to higher margin business and more recurring revenue streams. So, we put all that together, our op income margins should be improved and our growth of organic should be increased over what 6% or so that we've kind of talked about 5 to 6% as what we’ve projected and our actual results have been closer to 7%.

Ashish Sinha

Analyst

Yes, understood. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Sam England of Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Sam England

Analyst

Good morning, guys, just couple from me, and the first one on the Dunbar integration. You mentioned in the release, it’s ahead of schedule. And I just wonder as you work through the integration whether you're seeing opportunities for increased synergies and whether we could see total increased synergy target on that deal looking ahead?

Ron Domanico

Analyst

I guess, the best answer is yes. We do see those opportunities. We’re not prepared at this stage to change their guidance and numbers that are out there. But clearly review that the opportunities are there to exceed the $45 million that we’ve laid out as synergies over the next several years. And the 13% that we talked about is based on approximate that number.

Sam England

Analyst

Okay. Has that been any surprises that you’ve gone through integration process [ph]? I suppose I was trying to get an idea of it why -- is it ahead of sort of the previous schedule? And where are I suppose the positives that happened during integration process?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Look, there are always positives and negatives and there always a few surprises. But I think the best way to look at this as we see the combination of their 70 plus branches and our 110 plus branches to provide us an opportunity to go to what we would consider the optimal network into the future we think the other than the normal type of synergies that you would expect in this type of combination we will be able to achieve additional synergies above and beyond that because of the potential optimization of a network that really is driven by more of a hub and spoke type of network going forward. So we think there’ll be more synergies that can be driven in the future related to that.

Sam England

Analyst

Okay, great.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

And in terms of being on track, we’re on track. We did close a little bit earlier than we would anticipated that gave us the ability to start the planning and processing, obviously and anything like this with key is integration of systems to support the two businesses then that allows us to combine the businesses sooner if you have the right systems support and therefore that's what we think we’re on track or little schedule based on that.

Sam England

Analyst

Okay, great. And then the second one on the acquisition in Columbia, I think you’ve talked about in the past that there's some additional opportunities for that consolidation in that market. So, should we read into that acquisition that it could be the first sort of number in that market? Or was it just an opportunistic deal that they happen to come up?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Well, so, last year we did an acquisition, really the buyout of our minority partner. That gave us the base to be able to move forward with this acquisition that we have now signed. And it does provide the opportunity. This is to help consolidate the industry within -- with this player who is a competitor in the marketplace. And you can see that’s happening with some of our other competitors as well in the marketplace which we think will help where the overall market goes in Columbia.

Sam England

Analyst

Okay, great. And then, so just looking at the sort of underlying markets in South America stripping away to sort of FX noise, which I suppose seems to be will add on to the focuses on. How is the different market performing from sort of a price and volume perspective across South America, if we sort of ignore what's going on with FX?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Yes. I'm pretty darn well as we said and as you take a look at our constant currency numbers. If you take a look at what our organic growth is. And as we said with Argentina, Argentina on a constant currency basis, on a local currency basis is really the best way to look it. On a local currency business, it’s doing well in terms of growth, profit margins, improvements in their operations etcetera. Columbia is doing well, as well Chile was improved and the integration of the acquisition we had for year and a half ago there is doing well. So, in general all those markets on local basis, local currency basis are performing to our expectations or ahead of those and that’s shown through the improvements in our operating margins which improved. And the leverage that we’ve achieved from both a revenue gains down to our operating margins.

Sam England

Analyst

Okay. Thanks very much. That’s all from me.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Thanks Sam.

Operator

Operator

We have a follow-up from Jamie Clement of Buckingham. Please go ahead.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Hey thanks for taking my additional question. Maybe I’m getting too much into the weeds here, but I, with respect to revenue guidance, organic revenue guidance, coming off the fourth quarter 7% I think full year 2018 organic with 7%. Your guidance is 6%. I would have to assume, I mean, if you’re going to be getting even some of the Argentine devalue back, devaluation back, I mean could 6% prove conservative or?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Obviously you could prove conservative based on what we’ve achieved over the last two years.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Yes.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Okay. Yes. But in terms of Argentina, what we tried to basically say in Argentina is that we’re right on schedule we think, based on the local inflationary price increases in Argentina to see the recovery that we’ve anticipated. This is a recovery of the significant devaluation versus the U.S. dollar over the course of the six date quarters.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Right.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

We’re right on track with that, and maybe even a little bit ahead. So what that means for the 2019 year is that the translation of the improved business even though is improving in local currency will not provide any growth to our Op income on our reported U.S. dollar basis in 2019. In fact, it may slightly negatively impacted, that’s what we’ve said. And that doesn’t mean -- that doesn’t mean that in the second half of the year, we won’t start seeing that turnaround and that the local currency growth in Argentinian Pesos will start translating into U.S. dollar growth going forward in 2020. That’s what we suggested 2020 mid-year we should see the balance go back to that growth coming through in the U.S. reported U.S. dollars.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Okay.

Ron Domanico

Analyst

I think, I think the important message here. And let me just reiterate this is, I think many investors thought that a lot of what was driving our operating profit growth in the past was the Argentinian business.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Right.

Ron Domanico

Analyst

And that was growing. That was driving our growth. What we’re seeing this year, we’re going to achieve 20 plus percent operating income growth. And in fact it’s not going to come from Argentina, Argentina are going to actually pull down some this year. It’s not negative. I’m not saying it’s a bad business there. I’m not saying it’s not growing on a local currency basis. It is. And we’re very pleased with that margins are very good and they’re improving. But what its saying is that for 2019 it won’t be part of what helps drive us. But what they’re saying is the rest of our business is going to grow 20 plus percent which I think is a great fact.

Jamie Clement

Analyst

Absolutely. And let me tell you, I mean, I think we all appreciate the additional disclosure around that, because over many many years prior to you all joining it was very very very hard to figure out what was going on there. So we appreciate it.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Thank you. Any anything else around that?

Jamie Clement

Analyst

No, no, no. All good. Thank you very much.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

All right. Thanks Jamie.

Operator

Operator

And due to time constraints, the last question will be a follow from Ashish Sinha from Gabelli & Company. Please go ahead.

Ashish Sinha

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking up the follow ups. They’re going to be pretty quick. So, firstly on the new acquisitions you made $30 million of revenue, how much did you pay, did you disclose. And what is the associated EBITDA from those acquisitions? That’s my first. And then secondly, you talk about the $20 million to $30 million investment. So I just wanted to get a sense of how much of that is intangible CapEx and you also mentioned you’ll be adding people. So how much is the recurring part of that 20 million to 30 million? And then, lastly in terms of buybacks, what’s -- you mentioned you’ve got 106 million left. Are there any criteria or any triggers you look on before deciding to do more? That’s all. Thank you.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

You want to answer the acquisitions?

Ron Domanico

Analyst

Yes. So the three acquisitions were obviously small situations like that. You could take maybe a multiple of revenue plus or minus. But in all cases, we’re looking at a post synergized EBITDA multiple of sub six, for deals that size. So in this situation, it’s that same model. And we pretty much have the ongoing discipline to do our M&A in that direction.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

But it’s immaterial and we don’t think they’re going -- we don’t know when they are going to close because they are subject to anti-trust approval in those countries.

Ron Domanico

Analyst

And we already have experience in both Brazil and Colombia about how long it takes.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

So in terms of the additional investments that we’re making and clearly what I was trying to lay out here in terms of the investments in the 2.0. Those will be increases in both in OpEx and we will be supporting some headcount and other initiatives that will specifically support our 2020 returns in the 2.0 business, and therefore much of that will be ongoing expenses going forward. But we’re not going to continue to have those, that headcount here, that additional headcount or the expenses if we don’t get strong returns on. And so it’s investment now to get those returns going forward. And as I said before, it’s in place so if you will or in and instead of having CapEx expenditures this is a view, and should be viewed as a relatively minimal investment based on the returns that we anticipate that we’ll get. The other IT portion that is supporting operational systems, upgrades, improvements and new additions. Much of that is more of a onetime expense in order to implement and roll those out and that will then be coming back down and not be necessarily ongoing.

Ashish Sinha

Analyst

All right. Okay. And on the buybacks?

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Yes. We do not have any explicit triggers that we’ve communicated externally. We have agreements with our board on what those triggers might be, but we are not going to disclose them.

Ashish Sinha

Analyst

Thank you.

Doug Pertz

Analyst

Thanks, Ashish

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen that concludes our call for today. Thank you for attending the Brinks. Fourth quarter earnings call. You may now disconnect.