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Climb Global Solutions, Inc. (CLMB)

Q3 2013 Earnings Call· Fri, Oct 25, 2013

$21.26

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Wayside Technology Group Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that all callers are limited to one question each. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Melanie Caponigro. Ms. Caponigro, you may begin your conference at this time.

Melanie Caponigro - Investor Relations

Management

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Wayside Technology’s third quarter 2013 earnings call. Before turning the call over to Simon Nynens, the company’s Chairman and CEO, I will dispense with the customary cautionary language and comments about the webcast for this call. We released earnings for the third quarter at approximately 5 PM Eastern Time, Thursday, October 24, 2013. The earnings release is available at the company’s Investor Relations website at waysidetechnology.com. Today’s call including all questions and answers is being webcast live and a rebroadcast will be available at www.waysidetechnology.com/earnings-call. This conference and the associated webcast contain time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, October 25, 2013. A detailed discussion of risks and uncertainties are discussed in our Form 10-Q and also in greater detail in our Form 10-K. Wayside Technology Group Inc. sees no obligation to update and does not intend to update any forward-looking statements. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Simon Nynens.

Simon Nynens - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you, Melanie and good morning to everybody. We are pleased to report solid quarterly results as compared to Q3 2012’s strong quarter. Our Lifeboat Distribution segment delivered solid results as it continued to execute on its strategic plan. Our TechXtend segment revenues were down compared to an exceptionally strong Q3 last year. Regarding our balance sheet and share price, if you add up our cash, marketable securities and long-term receivables, which is basically cash that we have invested in financing our customers and is earning interest, you arrive at a balance of $22.8 million, which is about around 70% of our equity. Looking at our market cap close of business yesterday, this would amount to 35% of our market cap. So if you deduct the cash, marketable securities and long-term receivables from our market cap, you end up with a market cap of around $41.5 million and that for a company that generated income from operations of $8.5 million in 2012 and paid out dividends of $0.64. Due to these large cash balances in profitable results, we have returned over $27 million in dividends in the last 10 years. We value our shareholders as we continue to build our company we feel it’s fair to distribute some of our earnings to our shareholders. And I am therefore glad to report then on October 23, the Board of Directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.17 per share of its common stock payable November 15, 2013 to shareholders of record on November 5, 2013. This represents a $0.01 per share increase in the dividend as compared to Q2, 2013 and prior. We provide easy access to the right IT products. We have the tools in place to add more publishers including a great team and a great IT infrastructure. Although we cannot influence the larger economic forces that are currently at work, we do look forward with great confidence in our team. Now, I would like to hand it over to Dan Jamieson, our Vice President and General Manager of our Lifeboat division. Dan?

Dan Jamieson - Vice President and General Manager, Lifeboat Distribution

Management

Thank you, Simon. Lifeboat’s Q3 2013 results reflect positive year-over-year growth across all cylinders of our business. The key factors in Lifeboat’s Q3 performance, with the successful penetration and expansion of pivotal software lines, within a variety of Lifeboat’s premier reseller accounts, the large account resellers and DMRs, the direct market resellers, along with the successful expansion of our business within targeted solution provider accounts, including VARs, the value-added resellers; SIs, the systems integrators and other consultancy type companies. Lifeboat signed five new distribution agreements in Q3, 2013. These new agreements will strengthen Lifeboat’s portfolio and enhance our focus on our grow to market concentration areas including virtualization, security, application and life cycle management, data base infrastructure, application and network infrastructure, and business productivity. Thanks Simon.

Simon Nynens - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you, Dan. Now I will hand it over to Shawn Giordano, our Vice President of our TechXtend division. Shawn?

Shawn Giordano - Vice President, TechXtend

Management

Thank you, Simon. Although we saw a decrease in revenue and margin for the quarter due primarily to a decrease and extended payment terms transactions, our customers continue to look to TechXtend as a trusted advisor in the areas of virtualization cloud, storage and infrastructure management and business intelligence and information management. Our focus on the providing easy access to the right IT products remains our number one priority. And this is evident in the changes that we have made to the TechXtend website where we have made it easier for our corporate customers to procure via a personalized extra net. Additionally, we held our fall customer event in September where we bring in our corporate customers and partners together for a day of knowledge transfer and business discussion. This event gives us the opportunity to work with existing customers as well as identifying new customers and help them find areas of technology that can help to meet demands of business challenges they face. Once again I would like to thank our back office and support teams for their efforts in the quarter.

Simon Nynens - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you, Shawn. Tom Flaherty, our CFO will now report on the financial numbers. Tom?

Tom Flaherty - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thank you, Simon and good morning to investors, analysts, employees and friends. I will discuss our third quarter financial results both on a consolidated basis as well as by business segment. Net sales for the third quarter of 2013 were $70.5million. This is compared to $75.5 million in Q3 last year representing a 7% decrease on a consolidated basis. Sales for our Lifeboat distribution segment were $56.9 million and represent 81% of our total revenues during Q3. Lifeboat sales reflect a 2% increase compared to Q3 last year. The increase as Dan mentioned in sales in the Lifeboat segment was mainly a result of the strengthening of our account penetrations. Sales for our TechXtend segment were $13.6 million compared to $19.5 million in Q3 last year and represents a 30% decrease. The decrease in sales in the TechXtend segment was primarily due to a decrease in large single sales transactions and a decrease in extended payment term sales transactions as compared to exceptionally strong levels in the prior quarter. On a consolidated basis, our gross profit was $5.3 million compared to $5.7 million for third quarter of 2012, representing 8% decrease. Our gross profit for the third quarter – I am sorry our gross profit margin for the third quarter of 2013 was 7.5%, the same as the last year. Lifeboat distribution’s gross profit for the third quarter was $3.8 million. This compared to $3.7 million in Q3 last year represents a 4% increase. This increase was primarily due to higher sales volume in the current year. Our TechXtend segment’s gross profit was $1.4 million and decreased by 29% as compared to last year. The decrease in gross profit was primarily due to decreased sales volume including a decrease in large single sales transactions and a decrease in extended payment…

Simon Nynens - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you, Tom. We thank our customers and we thank our vendors, the software publishers for their trust and partnership. We are a flexible, proactive and knowledgeable partner who acts like a tour expansion of a vendor sales and marketing team. Thank you. Operator, we can now start the Q&A session.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Chris Parker, a Private Investor.

Chris Parker - Private Investor

Analyst · Chris Parker, a Private Investor

Thank you very much. I just had a little question about well, first thank you for another good quarter of excellent results and thanks very much to the Board of Directors for increasing the dividend.

Simon Nynens

Analyst · Chris Parker, a Private Investor

Thank you, sir.

Chris Parker - Private Investor

Analyst · Chris Parker, a Private Investor

Yes, the second is the question about the tax rate, I noticed unfortunately just after the last conference call that the main reason for the earnings increasing in the last quarter was a lower tax rate. And I noticed that in this quarter if the tax rate had been consistent with what had been over the last six [ph] earnings would actually have been down about $0.04 to $0.25 on a diluted basis. So I am wondering if the roughly 30% or 33% tax rate that we have had for the last two quarters versus the 39% or 40% tax rate that we have historically had for the last six years is the lower tax rate sustainable or is it some…

Simon Nynens

Analyst · Chris Parker, a Private Investor

Yes, good questions Chris. Part of that reduction in our tax rate was due to a prior year’s over accrual of the tax rate, which is being bled into our P&L during 2013. And also included in the Q3 tax expense is a reduction due to a true up to our income tax returns our company files on extension and our returns were filed in September. So during the quarter, we performed a final reconciliation to the tax returns to our tax accruals. So there was an additional pickup for reduction of tax expense in Q3. But going forward, we have taken all over accruals and the lower tax rates will continue to be in effect.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from the line of Steve Emerson from Emerson Investment Group.

Steve Emerson - Emerson Investment Group

Analyst · Steve Emerson from Emerson Investment Group

Congratulations on your management team and your results.

Simon Nynens

Analyst · Steve Emerson from Emerson Investment Group

Thank you, Steve.

Steve Emerson - Emerson Investment Group

Analyst · Steve Emerson from Emerson Investment Group

Please discuss your growth initiatives, you have emphasized in other calls building up of Latin American and European sales teams and I am curious what percent of revenues this is now up to and what your expectations are? And perhaps address how you see us growing both in gross margin dollars and other initiatives?

Tom Flaherty

Analyst · Steve Emerson from Emerson Investment Group

Okay. Let me answer the question first in terms of international sales. International sales as a percentage of overall revenue amounted to 14% in the third quarter of 2013 and it was 15% in the third quarter of 2012. Looking at Europe and Latin America, Latin America having first two great quarters is off to – was little less growth in Q3 as well as Europe. We continue to expand in those markets. We think we have market share to gain. Most importantly, what we try to do is convince our vendors that we currently authorized to sell their products in the U.S. to also start expanding those products on a worldwide basis. And I think that’s something that we look towards as a growth area. So we don’t want to – and again the results are important as we have seen the dividend is important, but growth is also important, but we don’t want to overextend our investments without the agreements being signed up. So in terms of the growth initiatives in the U.S., you look at our competition, Avnet just reported minus 1% in North America, you look at Ingram Micro slightly below 2%, where our 2% of gross margin increased by 4%, but their gross margin percentage was also better. What we are looking forward is towards the software publishers continued investment in signing the software publishers up. That’s the way to our growth. We are looking towards acquisitions. But as I said in previous calls as well, a) there are not that many value-added distributors out there in the U.S. or in Europe and b) we firmly believe that the best way to grow those companies as we have in the last couple of years, we believe that we have to sign up software publishers and…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of (Duff Kagan from Milwaukee Private).

Duff Kagan - Milwaukee Private

Analyst

Good morning. Thanks for taking my call.

Simon Nynens

Analyst · Chris Parker, a Private Investor

You are welcome, thank you.

Duff Kagan - Milwaukee Private

Analyst

I have a few questions. And the first one I’d roll into two parts. Number one, can you talk about the change in your relationship with Dell subsequent to their privatization? And second part of one is how does Wayside remain relevant in a world that’s moving to the cloud?

Simon Nynens

Analyst · Chris Parker, a Private Investor

Okay. So to answer your first question, in terms of Dell, what we have seen is some change in the financial services of Dell while they were going private and going through those battles. What we have seen is it was more or less a direct of internally to use the financial services side of Dell. And we have seen declining FBO sales as a result of that and mostly in Q1and Q2. If you look at Q3, again our process for these larger finance deals which are basically deals you buy now and you pay us back in the next two years. These deals our customer service is outstanding there and our decision process is actually quite fast. And we have actually seen that part of the business come back. On the Lifeboat side in terms of Dell, we continue to grow with Dell. We continued to remain excited about the growth prospects within Dell. And we don’t know what the future holds, but so far we are in close contact with Dell’s management and we remain excited about the partnership. Your other questions was the cloud, so we were actually, we just has authorized in the second quarter of this year to be so fast as anti-fire [ph] security company to be their first authorized software-as-a-service distributor. And we actually look towards the cloud and towards the software-as-a-service model as a way for us to define our value and show our strength within the distribution channel, because it does not change that people will have to require software and they have to know to what the new functionalities are of that software. And how they are basically accessing that software whether that is on the cloud via a line to the internet or not, the procurement systems stay in place to keep their purchasers. It’s mostly a financial change. Our systems are ready for it and we are working hand in hand with software publishers to actually guide them towards the cloud. And Dan, if you want to expand on that?

Dan Jamieson

Analyst

I was just going to augment that Simon by saying that we don’t – where our role is as a trusted advisor we see that transforming into the cloud. One other things that values we add with our vendor partnerships is that we introduced the right resellers into the mix, that will continue. We feel as a relationship driven company that the cloud represents extraordinary opportunity for us because it really matches well with our value proposition.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And thank you. At this time there no further questions. Please continue with any closing remarks.

Simon Nynens - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you. We appreciate everybody’s support for our company, our interest in our company and we look forward to reporting on our fourth quarter results in January 2014. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect at this time and thank you for your participation.