Earnings Labs

BGSF, Inc. (BGSF)

Q2 2020 Earnings Call· Sun, Aug 9, 2020

$5.70

-5.63%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the BG Staffing Second Quarter 2020 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Terri MacInnis, Vice President of Investor Relations at Bibicoff + MacInnis, Inc. Please go ahead.

Q - Terri MacInnis

Analyst

Thank you, Operator. It’s been a pleasure to welcome you to the BG Staffing conference call to discuss Q2 and six-month financial and operating results and an update on operations in the COVID-19 environment. With me today on our call is Beth Garvey, President and CEO; and Dan Hollenbach, Chief Financial Officer. A question-and-answer session will follow their prepared remarks. This morning’s news release announcing the company’s financial results is available in the Investor Relations section on BGSF website at bgstaffing.com. Our call today is being webcast live and recorded. A replay will be available later today on the company’s website and will remain available for at least 90 days following the call. Discussions today include forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions made by BGSF based on and are made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The company’s actual results could differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements because of various risks and uncertainties, including those listed in Item 1A of the company’s annual report on Form 10-K and the quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and in the company’s other filings and reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All risks and uncertainties are beyond the ability of the company to control, and in many cases, the company cannot predict the risks and uncertainties that could cause its actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call and BGSF assumes no obligation to update these statements publicly even if new information becomes available in the future. This broadcast is covered by U.S. copyright laws and any use or rebroadcast of all or any portion of this conference call may only be done with the company’s express written permission. During our call, we will discuss some non-GAAP measures, which we use for internal evaluation and to report the results of the business as useful information to management, our Board of Directors and investors of our operating activities and business trends related to our financial condition and results of operations. These non-GAAP measures are intended to supplement GAAP financial information and should not be considered in isolation as a substitute for or superior to financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please see today’s news release posted on the company’s website. It’s now my pleasure to turn the call over to Dan Hollenbach, Chief Financial Officer. Dan?

Dan Hollenbach

Analyst

Hey. Thank you, Terri. Good afternoon, everyone, and we appreciate your interest in BGSF. First of all, I’d like to say, we normally would have filed our 10-Q this morning. The additional review disclosures required for the impairment and swap accounting were new to us and we wanted to ensure that they were complete and useful to the reader. We are planning on filing tomorrow. As I did last quarter when this COVID pandemic descended upon us all, I’d like to start today’s call by acknowledging our exceptional team. It’s due in large part to their agility, responsiveness and hard work that we were able to continue to keep everyone safe while working remotely, all while consistently providing the highest level of service and support to all of our stakeholders and shareholders. The actions taken earlier this year in response to the growing impact of the COVID-19 outbreak has served us well. Organic selling costs decreased to 12.4% and recurring home office costs decreased to 16.7% sequentially from Q1. We are closely scrutinizing all facets of the current environment and are ready to take further actions that alter our business operations as the federal, state and local authorities may require. While returning capital to shareholders remains an important part of our capital allocation framework, maintaining a strong balance sheet is primary. Remaining cautious the Board has approved a $0.05 quarterly dividend for Q2. We are encouraged by the consistent week-over-week sequential growth in our business segments. For the last week of June, overall revenue was at 91% of pre-COVID levels. That’s three weeks of March -- first three weeks of March is what we measure by, up from 71% at our low point in mid-April. Light Industrial is back to pre-COVID revenue numbers, and in fact, in July was over…

Beth Garvey

Analyst

Thank you, Dan. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you and your loved ones are staying healthy and safe. As Dan said, since the very beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, our first priorities have been the health and safety of our teams, while continuing to support our clients who are also navigating these uncertain waters. I too want to take a minute to welcome our new Board member, Cynt Marshall. We are a workforce solutions provider, finding 28,000 people jobs a year and I feel like Cynt’s business acumen based on her 36-year career at AT&T, including her final role as Senior VP of Human Resources and Chief Diversity Officer will help strengthen the BGSF foundation for years to come. I am very grateful to have such a dynamic woman and business leader join our team. As we have navigated our business operations during this economic disruption over the past several months, I have to commend our team, as well as our client partners for their resilience and fortitude. The dedication of the business community to come together to support each other and share lessons learned has made us all better leaders. Our team has kept their finger on the pulse of the community and the business as it evolves and I believe that that has helped position ourselves to offer new services, provide thought leadership and relevant content through webinars, social media education and outreach. It’s too early to have reliable visibility in the potential impacts from the disruptions to the labor market and business operations and we can’t know what the full impact of the financial conditions or results of operations will be. This gives us yet another reason to remain in close regular contact with our team members and client partners while carefully monitoring and managing this fluid situation.…

Operator

Operator

Thank you.

Beth Garvey

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Jeff Martin of Roth Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

Hi. This is Sarra Schuster calling in on behalf of Jeff. Beth, congratulations for the Board appointment and being named to the SIA 2020 staffing 100 list and for being a finalist in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2020 Award for the Southwest Region. That’s a lot of accomplishments.

Beth Garvey

Analyst

Thanks.

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

Congratulations.

Beth Garvey

Analyst

Thank you so much.

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

With the recent acquisition of EdgeRock and L.J. Kushner, could you provide a sense of how those businesses are performing?

Beth Garvey

Analyst

Absolutely. EdgeRock, they both we still believe are very good acquisitions for us. EdgeRock Technologies has really kind of maintained where they were. We didn’t really see a dip in what they were doing. They had projects that didn’t end when COVID hit. They have had a dynamic sales team that has lots of things in the pipeline, so they remain strong. L.J. Kushner took a bigger hit. The heat -- a lot of his contacts were in the New York region and so some of the orders that he was working on and his Routine Search business were put on hold. So he has now started to see activity rebound on that and we feel good about where he’s going to fall in August and September for the rest of the year.

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

Thank you. Could you please characterize each of the three segments in terms of the monthly progression from April through July and have you experienced restarts and new pauses with these segments?

Dan Hollenbach

Analyst

Yeah. So I will give you the progression. As mentioned earlier, we are tracking revenues against the first 3 weeks of March. So what I am going to give you is a percent for April, May, June and July of each of our three segments in order. So our Light Industrial segment in April was 74%, went to 80% to 95% to 105% in July, our Real Estate 46% in April to 48% to 72%, to 86% in July, and our Professional was 89% in April, 90%, 91%, so it went up a hair in July to 86%, pretty consistent in the result.

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

Thank you. Let’s see, to the extent that you are seeing client orders come back, have you faced challenges in workers’ motivation to return to work in the environment where unemployment benefits have kind of been a disincentive to return to work?

Beth Garvey

Analyst

We have, but only in the Real Estate and Light Industrial sectors. It really hasn’t played a part in the Professional brands. But we are struggling with the extra unemployment benefits that are being paid right now. So we are just having to be creative, companies are being creative. I believe they are going now and raising their rates -- their pay rates. We are seeing some of our customers do $2, $3, $4 an hour pay rates to try to overcome it, but we are seeing a bit but only in those divisions.

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

Okay. Got it. Thank you on that.

Beth Garvey

Analyst

Okay.

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

Thank you. You historically have had very high client retention of over 90%. How much of that has shifted in the current environment and what is your outlook on how client retention could permanently shift as a result of this recession?

Dan Hollenbach

Analyst

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So as of June, our Light Industrial had a 96% retention and our Professional Group had an 85% retention. We don’t track Real Estate because of the nature of the 8,000 customers that we serve at every community in America and those numbers are consistent with prior periods. Other than one of our offices, we are not seeing the decline in retention, so…

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

Okay. And…

Dan Hollenbach

Analyst

And we don’t expect…

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

No. I understand.

Dan Hollenbach

Analyst

We don’t expect that -- those percentages to change because of this, sorry for that.

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

Okay. Got it. Thank you. And then, lastly, could you provide detail on what factors triggered the impairment of intangible assets in the period?

Dan Hollenbach

Analyst

Yeah. So we do this test every quarter. It’s normally just a qualitative test, and in the past, we have been able because of either where we were historically or where we were forecasting or where we were from a client retention standpoint able to support the intangible values. At the end of June, it became apparent from the last 18 months in our Finance & Accounting Group and based on the retention factors for our Smart acquisitions that the numbers needed to be tested. And given the forecasted over the next six months to 18 months on those two divisions, we calculated it based on various fair value factors and determined the write-off from that. So Smart…

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

Okay. Got it.

Dan Hollenbach

Analyst

…there was a -- and I will give you the history on Smart. So since we bought Smart three years ago, yeah, four, yeah, we have tried to change the direction of that business to make it a little bit more of an upper end, which has driven a lot of the client change. So when we bought them they had a 90% retention factor and so we expected that client base to last a while, as we have now transitioned that business, we are moving to a different client base, higher gross margins, better business, so.

Sarra Schuster

Analyst

Well, thank you for that explanation. Thank you very much.

Beth Garvey

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ms. Garvey for any closing remarks.

Beth Garvey

Analyst

Thank you, Anna. And thanks to all of you for joining our call today. I will close with the thought that our people and our business are resilient and we are leaning on the valuable experience earned by navigating through prior downturns and we remain grateful for the lessons learned that guide us today. We appreciate your continued support of BGSF and we look forward to updating you in the near future. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.