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Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (BR)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 9, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Tanisha, and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Broadridge Financial Solutions Fourth Quarter and the Fiscal Year 2016 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to inform you that this call is being recorded and that all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. There will be a question-and-answer period after the speakers' remarks. Please try to limit your questions to one per participant. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Edings Thibault, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. W. Edings Thibault - Vice President & Head-Investor Relations: Thank you very much, Tanisha. Good morning everyone and welcome to Broadridge's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2016 earnings call. Joining me on the call this morning are Rich Daly, our President and CEO and Jim Young, our Chief Financial Officer. Please note that the earnings release announcing our fourth quarter results and slides that accompany this call may be found on the Investor Relations tab of broadridge.com. During today's conference call, we will be making forward-looking statements regarding Broadridge that involve risks. A summary of these risks can be found on the second page of the slides. We encourage participants to refer to our SEC filings including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for a complete discussion of forward-looking statements and the risk factors faced by our business. We will also be referring to several non-GAAP financial results, including adjusted operating income which is adjusted to exclude the impact of the amortization of acquiring tangibles, as well as other transaction costs and certain integration expenses associated with the company's acquisition activities, and diluted adjusted EPS, which is adjusted to exclude the after-tax per share amount of those same…

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of David Togut of Evercore ISI.

David Mark Togut - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning, nice to see the 46% growth in closed sales during the fourth quarter. I'm wondering if you could comment on the thought process behind the closed sales target for FY2017? It looks like it's a big range, at the bottom of the range down 7% from what you achieved in FY2016, and at the top 19. Can you walk us through your thought process and maybe give us a sense for what you see in terms of the new business pipeline? Richard J. Daly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. So David, you've heard me jokingly say in the past that my cardiologist appreciates that I'll come in sooner rather than later. We had a great year, Dave, so when we look at the range, this is range where there's always a bit of art and science because, for example, we had a very strong – well, at the core we had a very strong June. From my point of view, if some of the June sales that come in in July, the reality in our ability to create shareholder value is no different. But the reality of having a target out there for the year because of a June 30 date, okay, is something that we want to continue to try to manage, continue to try to grow. So really there's not a lot beyond it other than we want to move that target up. We're always going to look to add to our sales capabilities while we're going to look to drive those long as prior year (44:19), but until we actually get to those numbers, we think modest increase is a prudent way to going forward.

David Mark Togut - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Understood. Is there a certain amount of closed new business you've built into the 140 to 180 for the DST acquisition? Richard J. Daly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. We have added that and so you could say that's probably a good part of the range increase. Well, that took place we're at (44:47)120 to 160 as a target for this year, and what – I hope you heard the confidence I was expressing in the call about the quality of the transactions that actually took place last year. I'm talking about that Tier 1 bank that came in where we're going to seven regions to create a single global post-trade processing platform. I'm talking about adding another mega-wealth manager, okay, to our advisor solutions. All right? And I really wanted to emphasize the excitement that took place when we had our sales kickoff just a couple of weeks ago down at Doral. With 400 people, the excitement in the room was particularly high, one, because of the transactions that took place in 2016, and two because of the momentum that we have going into 2017. So we are pleased the way the year ended, and we're pleased with the momentum going into next year. Like I said now we need to execute.

David Mark Togut - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Understood. Just as a quick follow-up, how much DST acquisition revenue do you have built into the FY2017 revenue guidance? James M. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Vice President: Yeah. Dave, this is Jim. As we mentioned, about $440 million of fees and a little over $700 million of distribution revenue.

David Mark Togut - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Got it. And then just to segue into the fiscal 2017 earnings guidance range, which also is a – is significantly larger than usual 5 point range on EPS growth, can you walk us through why such a large range for FY2017? James M. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Vice President: Yeah, David. This is Jim. Well, what I said is that our – you look at kind of the base Broadridge business excluding the acquisition, we think that earnings would grow 8% to 12%, very similar to what we guided to this year and achieved the upper end of that. So very much we're just layering in the acquisition and what you see is maybe another point of spread in there which is a function of really kind of how you go about integrating the businesses, the types of expenses we'll incur, our ability to achieve synergies. So naturally there's going to a little bit more variability in our numbers. So that doesn't really grow that but think about it as 8% to 12% as the foundation and then adding on top a key integration here.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Peter Heckmann of Avondale Partners.

Peter J. Heckmann - Avondale Partners LLC

Analyst

Good morning, everyone. Rich, I wanted to follow up on your comment. I didn't totally capture the essence of it on position growth. And I've covered the company long enough to know that there's some variation from year-to-year, but I wasn't – didn't understand your comment on the Department of Labor's pending rule on conflict of interest or fiduciary rule and how that might be affecting positions. Are you seeing advisors sell down individual positions and go into mutual funds or consolidate positions? Can you talk about that a little bit more? Richard J. Daly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. So Pete, first of all, about one-third of the accounts out there are IRA accounts, okay, just to put things in a context. And in speaking with one of our largest wealth management firms, and I was asking them is there anything they were aware of as it relates to mutual fund activity? And the look was kind of like you've got to be kidding me. With a Department of Labor ruling out there and the grandfathering impact and you have this whole new BIC concept out there, okay, the idea of moving somebody the way somebody traditionally would into – from one fund into another fund or to diversify the investment into other funds, okay? Until it's understood what that means in terms of the best interest contract, until it's understood in terms of what that means for the FC and to the firm in terms of their responsibility, the reaction of that particular firm was we're going to see less changes in terms of the investment portfolio until we understand what's going on with this DOL rule as it gets implemented. That's exactly what I was trying to talk today. Now, I don t claim…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Darrin Peller of Barclays.

Darrin Peller - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks, guys. Let me just quickly start off on the margin side first. I know your outlook is changing given a lot of mix changes obviously, but can you just give us a little color on your plans around the impacts to the margin from mix versus investments? I mean there's been a pretty big investment cycle going on as we saw in this quarter right now. Where that's going to be in 2017 in terms of a year-over-year investment and where the focus is? James M. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Vice President: Yeah. Darrin, this is Jim. I guess first just to anchor us in, it kind of came in where we thought, 18.5% versus guidance of 18.4% which included, I'd call it pretty normal levels of investment. Maybe a bit elevated for some of the restructuring activities that we talked about. So those are things that we think we'll see the benefits of now in 2017. And then as we said if you kind of remove the acquisition, we're going to expand margins 100 basis points...

Darrin Peller - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Yes. James M. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Vice President: ...so very much in line with the plan. And so the areas of investment continue to be across the company, whether it's investing around new products for asset classes in GTO, data analytics businesses, general infrastructure and technology for cybersecurity and the like. So the usual candidates and then obviously you have the more extraordinary type of investment around integrating the Communications business and as well as associated digital investment.

Darrin Peller - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. All right. Richard J. Daly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And, Darrin, let me add something to this here, because we talk about this Customer Communications business, we talk about digital. And I was really excited to talk about the Evernote agreement today. So understand that as we go digital that will reduce – you're reducing distribution. Okay? That will be adding additional fee revenue and that will definitely be coming in at a higher margin as we go forward. Let me just give you one concept as it relates to Evernote. First of all, the additional access to content of 75% of the mailboxes really enabled us to get that agreement into the end zone, and we have been talking with them for quite some time. The thing that we note about Evernote is that when we look at what content is going to Evernote, about 25% of it is related to financial services. And a very, very high percentage of it is people taking documents, and it could be a will, it could be a statement, but let's use the statement for example. They are taking their own paper statement. They're scanning it at home. They're sending it off to the cloud in Evernote, and then they're shredding it home. Why? Because they're going to control their archival. They're going to control their own content and not be subject to the control of somebody else like their financial firm. We can identify those people who are doing that, and we can then go to them and not say, hey, we know what you're doing, but we can say to them great news. You can now send your statement, your confirm, your proxy or whatever directly to Evernote. We can send your bills that we're now servicing through the customer communications business directly to Evernote. So I just wanted you to know that even though the margins are contracting today, as I look to the longer term, and I'm going out beyond the two to three years for Broadridge, we fully expect margins to improve as the digital conversion takes place and as we add more cloud drives to our capabilities.

Darrin Peller - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. That's helpful, Rich, thanks. Okay. I just want to follow up on the recurring revenue growth guidance. I think you said organic was 6% to 8% for fiscal 2017. Just to be clear, I mean, that obviously backs out the DST side, but is there – the tuck-in deals is that at all material in there? And then further to that, just given the slightly slower growth in the net new positions, you seem to be obviously able to offset that and still grow well. So what do you think are – what are the major drivers in that capability despite the underlying secular trend being a little bit slower? James M. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Vice President: Yeah. It's there on the first one, you've got it right, a 6% to – a 6% to 8% excluding the communications acquisition. That's largely organic. There is about a point that we would expect from fiscal year 2016 acquisitions, of the largest being the 4sight acquisition, but pretty modest contribution from the acquisitions. And Rich, do you want to comment on that? Richard J. Daly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, and Darrin, again, going back for quite some time post the financial crisis, we invested in a fintech company when others were not. We created more capabilities and that momentum, whether it be a buy versus build, a tuck-in versus a create the product, has really served us extraordinarily well. So as we look forward to next year, and again, the confidence that the entire organization has, and that's really why I highlighted the excitement that was in our annual sales kickoff because it was just truly something where if you look across our products, if you look at the quality of dialogue we're…

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from the line of Chris Donat of Sandler O'Neill. Christopher Roy Donat - Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP: Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. Jim, I wanted to follow up on one thing you said about having a backlog from two strong years of sales and just trying to understand the conversion process from sales that happened over the last year or two and when those flow into revenue. Can you help me quantify how much of your revenue growth is coming from, say, sales that were in fiscal 2015 and how much is from 2016 that's embedded in your 2017 guidance? Or if you can't quantify it give me sort of a sense? James M. Young - Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Vice President: Sure. Chris, we obviously have had two good sales years. We do think these deals are skewing towards longer implementation cycles, which is fine. We've got good revenue visibility and certainty, but it's kind of delayed recognition of that revenue. So as we look at the plan this year and if you take that 6 to 8 points of kind of organic revenue growth and you back out a point for the tuck-in, almost all of that is coming from closed sales, maybe a point or so from internal growth. So and the majority of that is business that had been closed this past year. So we're starting to see a real uptick in that closed sales contribution that then there's a meaningful backlog that we'd anticipate coming on, not only just in 2017 but 2018, if you look at kind of that big fourth quarter we just had. There's a lot of that we may not see until fiscal 2018. So again, I think the takeaway is healthy…

Operator

Operator

And I'm showing that we have no further questions at this time. Richard J. Daly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: All right. Well, thank you all for your participation. Our year-end call is always particularly longer in terms of all that we need to cover both closing out the quarter, closing out the year, and then of course talking about the excitement going into the next year. So we really do appreciate your attention and participation. There will be an investor luncheon next week on – Edings? W. Edings Thibault - Vice President & Head-Investor Relations: The 16th. Richard J. Daly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sixteen? So that's a week from today. And hopefully we'll see many of you there. It's a beautiful sunny day in Lake Success, both inside and outside of the building, so we're going to choose to have a great day. We suggest you do the same. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. fourth quarter and fiscal year 2016 earnings conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.