Mark Eubanks
Analyst · 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
All right. Thanks Doug. And good morning, everyone. Our non-GAAP results include first quarter revenue growth of 10%, operating profit growth of 24%, adjusted EBITDA growth of 21% and EPS growth of 46%. The operating profit margin for the quarter was up 10.4%, up 120 basis points over last year. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 15.4% up 140 basis points over last year. Excluding the prior year gain of $0.05 related to our equity investment in MoneyGram, EPS grew 55% to a $1.15 per share. Ron would cover more details on our record quarter in a few minutes, but these results put us squarely back on track to deliver our 2022 guidance. Now turning to the next slide. Slide 7 shows the steady revenue recovery we saw in each quarter of 2021 through the first quarter of 2022, by segment and in aggregate versus pre-COVID 2019 levels. It includes comparisons on both the U.S. dollar and local currency basis. The strong local currency recovery rates demonstrate the underlying resiliency of our business, while the U.S. dollar recovery rates factor in the impact of foreign currency translation, which is how we ultimately report our results. On the right hand side of the slide, you can see that the first quarter revenue of the total company recovered to 95% of 2019 pre-COVID levels, a continuation of the improvement we saw in 2021. Looking over on the left hand side of the slide with North America, you can see the sequential improvement last year from 93% to a 100% from the first to the fourth quarter and an increase in the current quarter to a 102%. Moving to the right, Latin America local currency recovery has been significantly stronger in other regions – than other regions. Excluding Argentina Q1 local currency recovery was at 102% of pre-pandemic levels, largely on the strength of our business in Mexico. This was a sequential improvement of 4% versus Q4 of 2021, even with a significant impact of Omicron on January and February volumes in Brazil, Columbia and Chile. In Europe, sequential improvement this quarter versus Q4 of 2021 was flat on a local currency basis at 95%. Many European countries are continuing to relax their restrictions and we expect consumer spending and retail markets there to continue to improve throughout 2022. After nearing full recovery in Q4 of 2021, revenue recovery in our Rest of World segment, jumped above the full recovery this quarter, at 101%. This was driven by growth in our global services business. Reopenings still remain delayed in a few of our key markets, primarily in Asia-Pacific. In aggregate, our U.S. dollar revenue versus pre-pandemic levels recovered to 95% in the first quarter of 2022, which was flat versus the prior quarter, despite the lingering impact of the pandemic in the first half of the quarter. Now let's look at more detail in the next slide. Slide 8 shows 2022 revenue for the total company versus pre-OVID 2019 levels on a U.S. dollar basis. Starting on the left hand side of the graph, January U.S. dollar recovery was at 92%, followed by 96% in February and 97% in March, which averaged out to 95% in the quarter. The 95% first quarter USD recovery was sequentially flat with a seasonally strong fourth quarter of 2021, but even higher on a local currency basis, which was at a hundred percent excluding the inflationary impact of Argentina, two percentage points higher than the fourth quarter of 2021. Given the impact of Omicron in many of our markets, especially in Latin America and Asia-Pacific, the first quarter of recovery trend was more favorable than we expected. This acceleration demonstrates the resiliency of our business and supports our guidance, which is based on the recovery to at least pre-pandemic levels for the full year. The middle of the right side of the graph shows quarterly revenue recovery in 2021 represented by the blue outlines. Our first quarter recovery last year was 89%, 92% in the second quarter, 93% in the third quarter and fourth quarter recovery was at 96%. We are forecasting a similar acceleration of improvement as we progress through 2022 with each quarter higher than the prior year and a run rate in the second half of the year that exceeds 100% recovery and gets us back to our full year guidance of approximately $4.6 billion at the midpoint or 100% of 2019 pro perform levels. Now turning to Slide 9. This slide summarizes some of the macro factors currently affecting operations in many of our global markets, including inflation, the pandemic and rising interest rates. One topic that we all continue to hear about is supply chain disruptions. As a service business with locally sourced assets and people, we are not subject to the same global supply chain disruptions that many industrial service businesses are. Our exposure to these pressures is fairly minimal, but where necessary we've secured strong partnerships with global suppliers and made early purchases to avoid any potential disruptions related to our 2.0 digital solutions pipeline. Labor is by far our largest cost component followed by fuel and freight costs. Most of the other cost components in our business are generally not subjected to these global inflationary pressures. It's important to note that rising fuel costs generally have not had a material impact on our profitability, as most of our customer agreements have fuel surcharge clauses as a cost recovery mechanism, which enables us to recover these inflationary increases in fuel. To address our main cost input, labor, we are continuing to take a discipline and in many cases higher than historical pricing actions to offset the rising wage costs we've seen globally. In addition to pricing, we continue to drive our lean cost productivity programs to maintain our profit improvement trajectory. We implemented several price increases in our U.S. business that went into effect in 2021 and the beginning of 2022, both of which were well above our historical annual averages. As we move through the year, we expect further pricing actions to continue to offset any inflationary pressures. Our businesses have not been significantly impacted by the Ukrainian-Russian conflict as we don't have any operations in the Ukraine and less than 1% of our revenue was generated in Russia in 2021. Throughout our Eastern European markets, though, we saw a significant increase in demand for cash through increased ATM usage. This shows the cash continues to play a crucial role in society that consumers turn to in times of uncertainty. As the world's largest cash management company, we have a critical role in protecting cash and facilitating the global cash ecosystem, especially in times of crisis. As I mentioned on the prior slide, our global business was impacted by the pandemic more than we expected in January with revenue growth trending up as we move through February and March. As Doug mentioned, we are already seeing this continued trend in April. Despite the operating challenges presented by the delayed reopenings and lockdowns in several markets, we saw steady improvement in each segment during the quarter. And as revenue continues to recover throughout the year, we are well positioned to capture additional margin leverage with the sustainable productivity improvements we've been implementing. History has also shown that during periods of recession and economic stimulus, whether caused by the financial crisis or pandemic, the percent of payments in cash and cash in circulation actually increase. Cash payments, as a percent of all payments, grew significantly during the 2008 recession by almost 50% from the pre-recession cash usage levels, driven by government stimulus, higher unemployment, and the drop in consumer credit. With rising interest rates, people begin to lose access to their credit, which causes them to rely even more on cash. It's also important to note, even during times of an economic slowdown or recession, our services are critical to individuals as well as national and global economies. The cash management services we provide are not only essential to the functioning of financial institutions and retailers. They also enable global economic inclusion for the world's unbanked and underbanked population who are heavily reliant on cash as a primary payment method. Slide 10 summarizes our first quarter results at the segment level. While the recovery's been uneven around the world, we saw continued revenue and profit growth in all segments. I'm encouraged by the performance of our global leadership team as they continue to successfully navigate today's challenging macro environment. I'm happy to announce that we recently strengthened our executive leadership team with the addition of Daniel Castillo, who will join Brink's as the North American Segment President. In North America first quarter revenue – reported revenue grew 16%, which includes 6% organic growth and 10% from the impact of the PAI acquisition that we did last April. As disclosed in the first quarter of 2021, an accrual adjustment was made that resulted in a $12.3 million positive for the North American segment with a corresponding offset to corporate expense resulted in no impact to our consolidated operating profit for the quarter. Excluding this adjustment 2021 first quarter operating profit in the North America segment would've been $20 million reflecting a 6.3% profit margin. On this adjusted basis current year operating profit was up 22% with a margin improvement of 30 basis points. Now to Latin America, where reported revenue was up 8% driven by organic growth of 12% partially offset by 4% unfavorable impact from currency primarily the devaluation of the Argentine peso. Operating profit was up 14% on an organic basis and the margin was down slightly versus the prior year at 21.6%. Double-digit organic revenue growth and profit growth in the segment was driven by price increases and volume growth in Mexico, as well as inflation based price increases in Argentina revenue. Revenue recovery has been slower in several South American countries including: Brazil, Columbia and Chile with January and February volumes in these countries below the pre-pandemic level due to the omicron variant. However, we saw strong recovery across these economies in March, which helped offset the difficult start to the year. In Europe we saw strong revenue growth, operating profit, and a significant margin improvement of 180 basis points. The result of higher volumes as a result of the progression in the revenue recovery throughout the quarter, the continued strong cost management and the rollout of BPCE ATM managed services project in France. France was a bright spot again in the quarter with their fifth consecutive quarter of year-on-year margin expansion. For the rest of the world segment revenue increased 9% driven by organic growth in our global services business, which offset the lagging recovery of our local cash businesses we saw in Asia Pacific as a result of government mandated lockdowns. Operating profit was up 9% also with a slight margin improvement of 10 basis points. I'll now turn the call over to Ron for his detailed financial review. Ron?