CRD.B (CRD.B) Q3 2012 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary
CRD.B (CRD.B)
Q3 2012 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 5, 2012
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CRD.B Q3 2012 Earnings Call Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good afternoon. My name is Maya, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Crawford & Company Third Quarter 2012 Earnings Release Conference Call. In conjunction with this call, a supplementary financial presentation is available on our website, at www.crawfordandcompany.com, under the Investor Relations section. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded today, Monday, November 5, 2012.
Some of the matters to be discussed in the conference call and in the supplementary financial presentation may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, these statements may include but are not limited to statements regarding the funded status of our defined benefit pension plan, our expectations related to future revenues and expenses, our long-term liquidity requirements and our ability to pay dividends in the future. The company’s actual results achieved in future quarters could differ materially from results that may imply by such forward-looking statements.
The company undertakes no obligation to publicly release revisions to any forward-looking statements made in the conference call to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of the call or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. In addition, you are reminded that operating results for any historical period are not necessarily indicated of result to be expected for any future period.
For a complete discussion regarding factors, which could affect the company’s financial performance, please refer to the company’s Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012, filed for the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly the information under the headings: business; risk factors; legal proceedings; and managements discussion; and analyze of financial condition and results of operations, as well as the subsequent company filings with the SEC.
This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules. As required, a reconciliation is provided for those measures to the most direct compared GAAP measures.
I would now like to introduce Mr. Jeffrey Bowman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Crawford & Company. Mr. Bowman, you may begin your conference.
JB
Jeffrey T. Bowman
Management
Thank you, Maya. A warm welcome to our investors, clients, and employees this afternoon. I’m Jeffrey Bowman, President and CEO of Crawford & Company. Joining me from the global executive management team this afternoon are Bruce Swain, our CFO; and Allen Nelson, our General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer.
Let me start by saying that our thoughts and prayers, and sympathy and condolences are with our employees class and their families affected by the devastation that has taken place through Superstorm Sandy in the northeast part of the U.S. particularly in New Jersey and in the Metropolitan New York area, as well as in Caribbean in Jamaica and the Bahamas.
We have employees who have experienced significant damage to their homes. And as a cooperation we have mobilized our Crawford Cares program to assist them financially. By all accounts from the first time reports from our staff along with the televised images we are seeing, this is an unprecedented event with far-reaching consequences and challenges. Our Crawford role is to support our clients in responding to the insurance claims made and assist businesses and individuals get back to some sense of normality as quickly as possible.
So getting back to the third quarter results, I will begin with some opening comments on our third quarter results. Bruce will then review the third quarter financials in more detail and which will be followed by a review of our business performance, comments on our strategic initiatives and conclude with our corporate focus, and an update on our increased 2012 guidance.
There is no doubt that 2012 is shaping up as the strong year for Crawford & Company. We talk about our business model being a portfolio of companies that have different dynamics. 50% to 60% of our base business is driven by natural weather and man-made events.
Therefore, following remainder of that business is program driven, which indeed provides balance, in a stable and a growing base of operations. Large events such as Superstorm Sandy can be hard to predict. However, we have to be ready to manage these events when they occur.
At this moment, we are seeing some of those dynamics play out in the form of Sandy, which we project will have a meaningful impact on claims in our Americas operation in the near-term. While the full scope of the recovery process is still evolving, we are mobilizing significant resources to assist our clients.
Our consolidated results for the third quarter were very encouraging. We saw record quarterly revenues, net income, and earnings per share primarily based on very strong results in 2 of our 4 segments and improving results in the other 2 segments. Our EMEA/AP operations reflected ongoing handling of catastrophic flood losses in Thailand. And we are still involved in handling assignments in Australia.
As we reported in the second quarter, Crawford’s GCG subsidiary was awarded a role to provide administration services in the class actions surrounding the Deepwater Horizon settlement. The results of our Legal Settlement Administration segment reflect this very important special project, which deeply engage GCG’s resources over the third quarter. Through the remainder of the year, we expect activity in this area to continue although at a reduced rate.
In the Broadspire segment, we saw a substantial year-over-year improvement as we have reduced losses by $8.8 million for the year-to-date period. Our goal continues to be bringing Broadspire back to a sustained acceptable level of profitability. The turnaround of Broadspire continues as our key objective and we are optimistic that Broadspire will be profitable in the fourth quarter and we will end the year profitably, which is an encouraging achievement in itself.
The Americas segment benefited from claims activity during the 2012 third quarter resulting from Hurricane Isaac in the U.S. and catastrophe related events in Canada. Together with ongoing cost control measures this helped generate sequential improvement over the 2012 second quarter despite relatively weak industry wide claims volumes, which have persisted throughout 2012.
That concludes my initial remarks, and I would discuss the business unit operations and a brief update on Sandy after Bruce has reviewed the financials.
BS
Bruce W. Swain
Management
Companywide revenues before reimbursements in the 2012 third quarter were $302.1 million, up 7% from the $283 million in the prior year’s third quarter. Strong results in our Legal Settlement Administration and EMEA/AP segments drove this improvement. Our net income attributable to Crawford & Company totaled $18.2 million in the 2012 third quarter, up 19% over the $15.3 million in the 2011 period. Third quarter 2012 diluted earnings per share were $0.33 per CRDA and CRDB compared to earnings per share of each class of $0.28 in the 2011 period. The Company selling, general and administrative expenses or SG&A totaled $59.2 million or 19.6% of revenues in the 2012 third quarter increasing 10% over $53.6 million or 18.9% of revenues in the prior year quarter. This increase in costs is primarily due to higher professional indemnity, self insurance expense and professional fees.
During the 2012 third quarter, the Company incurred a pretax charge of $333,000 related to the completion of a project to outsource certain aspects of our U.S. Technology Infrastructure. This special charge decreased earnings per share by less than $0.01 in the 2012 third quarter. During the 2011 third quarter the Company recorded a special credit of $7 million or $0.11 per share of CRDA and CRDB after related income taxes resulting from an arbitration award.
During 2012 the Company paid a higher dividend on its CRDA common stock and then on CRDB shares. This dividend differential can sometimes result in different earnings per share for each class of stock, due to the 2 class method of computing EPS as required by current accounting guidance. Reference to EPS in this call will generally be only for CRDB as that it’s the more diluted measure.
Compared to the 2011 period revenues net income attributable to Crawford & Company in earnings per share in the 2012 third quarter were not materially impacted by foreign exchange movements. The net change between the third quarter 2011 arbitration award and this year’s special charge in the 2012 third quarter produced earnings per share by $0.11 in the 2012 third quarter. The Company continues to benefit from lower interest expense under its new credit facility, which contributed $0.02 per share in the 2012 third quarter.
As a result of changes in the mix of income we received from our various operations and related income tax rates, our effective tax rate in 2012 is higher, which reduced earnings per share by $0.03 for the third quarter. Compared to the prior year, the Company’s operations generated incremental earnings of $0.17 per share in the 2012 third quarter driven largely by Legal Settlement Administration in EMEA/AP.
Revenues from the Americas segment totaled $85.9 million in the 2012 third quarter, down 9% from the $94.7 million reported in last year’s quarter reflecting weak industry-wide claim volumes in the U.S. and Canada as a result of relatively mild weather when compared to the 2011 period.
Operating earnings in our Americas segment were $6.5 million in the 2012 third quarter or 8% of revenues. This is compared to operating earnings of $6.8 million or 7% of revenues in the prior-year quarter. Revenues generated by our catastrophe adjusters in the U.S. totaled $9.6 million in the 2012 third quarter, decreasing from $12.9 million in the 2011 quarter. The decrease in revenues was in line with the decline in catastrophe cases.
EMEA/AP revenues increased 10% in the 2012 third quarter to $95.9 million from $87 million in the 2011 period. Our revenue improvement reflects catastrophe related increases in our Asia Pacific regions. EMEA/AP operating earnings increased to $13 million during the current quarter more than doubling last year’s third quarter operating earnings of $5.7 million. The operating margin in this segment was 14% in the 2012 quarter, increasing from 7% in the 2011 third quarter.
Revenues from our Broadspire segment increased to $59.8 million in the 2012 third quarter, up 2% from $58.9 million in the prior year quarter, reflecting an increased in workers’ compensation claims, and strong medical management revenues.
Broadspire’s operating loss in the 2012 quarter totaled $216,000 or less than negative 1% of revenues, improving from the operating loss of $2.9 million or negative 5% of revenues in the 2011 third quarter. We continue to focus on strategies to drive profitability in this segment’s operating results.
Legal Settlement Administration revenues comprised of class action and bankruptcy claims administration services, as well as significant special project revenues totaled $60.6 million in the 2012 third quarter, increasing 43% from the $42.5 million in the prior-year quarter. This revenue increase was largely related to our work on the Deepwater Horizon class action settlement. Operating earnings totaled $15.6 million in the 2012 third quarter or 26% of revenues as compared to $10.8 million or 25% of revenues in the prior year period.
Legal Settlement Administration continues to have a strong backlog of projects awarded, totaling $118 million at September 30, 2012 as compared to $72.5 million at September 30, 2011.
Our cash and cash equivalent position at September 30, 2012 totaled $66.4 million as compared to $77.6 million at December 31, 2011. Our investment in unbilled and billed receivables have increased by $42.8 million during 2012 primarily as a result of growth in Asia Pacific and Legal Settlement Administration. Our pension liabilities declined by $21.2 million through the 2012 third quarter. Our total debt has increased in 2012 by $11.2 million reflecting our seasonal pattern of borrowings that typically occur early in the year.
Cash provided by operations totaled $10.3 million for year-to-date 2012 compared to $17.6 million used in operations in the prior year period. This $27.9 million improvement was primarily due to lower cash payments or accounts payable on accrued expenses in 2012 as well as reductions in pension contributions and taxes paid. Free cash flow improved during 2012 at $28.2 million over the 2011 period.
Back to you Jeff.
JB
Jeffrey T. Bowman
Management
Thanks, Bruce. As I stated earlier our consolidated revenue on cases increased sequentially for the Group versus the second quarter of 2012. The case volume decreased slightly against the third 2011, reflecting continued mild weather and a benign event environments in the U.S. and Canada. For the quarter, group case volume decreased less than 1% from a year ago.
Our EMEA/AP segment results were driven primarily by the ongoing handling of catastrophic flood losses in Thailand. Also during the quarter our Legal Settlement Administration segment was heavily involved in Deepwater Horizon class action settlement.
The Americas segment saw a sequential increase in claims activity in the 2012 third quarter resulting from Hurricane Isaac in the U.S. and catastrophe related claims in Canada. Given recent events we are mobilizing our resources to assist our clients, with claims from Superstorm Sandy, and currently have 320 catastrophe adjusters deployed. These adjusters are handling household claims, which engage our field force and Contractor Connection resources through to the Global Technical Services claims involving the infrastructure of New York and New Jersey.
We also had small operations in Jamaica and Bahamas working Sandy claims as well. We have also seen an improvement in the Broadspire segment where workers’ compensation claims increased 9.2% in the quarter and 11.8% year-to-date. In the quarter our client retention rate was extremely high and we are pleased with these developments.
During the third quarter we also added new members to the global executive management team. With our continual goal to improve global client and business development we have added Emanuel Lauria, he brings 25 years in the broker community and he is now responsible for deploying our consolidated sales capacity throughout our business units. We also added Vince Cole as our Global Strategy and Business Performance Director, tasked ensuring alignment of our corporate business unit strategies with improved business performance. I’m convinced that both of these individuals will help move the organization forward.
Let me now turn to the outlook for each of our business units. Starting with the Americas segment, which represented 28% of our consolidated revenues year-to-date. Compared against high frequency claims in 2011, the U.S. P&C business saw claims frequency fall short of the prior year in the third 2012, due to the benign weather we experienced during the first 3 quarters. Nonetheless frequency increased from the second quarter levels primarily due to Hurricane Isaac.
Financial performance by the U.S. Property & Casualty division was stronger in the 2012 third quarter than the previous 2 quarters in 2012 demonstrating the operating leverage we enjoy from incremental revenue guidance. The U.S. Property & Casualty group has also invested in resources for our casualty services business especially in the U.S. transportation area. And we are growing in this part of our business through new client wins.
While Calgary and Quebec saw weather events in quarter 3 like the U.S. Canada experienced an overall negative impact from weather with a decline in case volume and revenue in the third quarter, when needed the U.S. was able to support Canada with catastrophe adjusters and we continue to actively manage cost in this area as well reflecting the overall claims volumes conditions.
In Latin America we had seen a downside in revenue from weakness in our largest market Brazil. We anticipate improvement in the fourth quarter with new client wins. Our industry leading Contractor Connection business in the U.S. continues to build momentum as we add more contractors and clients to the program. The ongoing expansion of Contractor Connection in the U.S. as well as Canada as a result of insurance carriers moving higher frequency most of already property claims directly to repair networks. We expect this trend to continue in the future and we are positioned as the market leaders in this important area. In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy Contractor Connection is proving to be an important resource for our client.
The EMEA/AP operations represent 31% of our consolidated revenues year-to-date. Our focus on sustainable client revenue was in very successful in this business unit. In the third quarter our revenue grew in the Asia Pacific region primarily due to our ongoing response to the Thailand floods.
As previously reported the U.K. market continues to be undergoing change with increased focus on price and a shift to in-sourcing for the volume property business. In the UK we saw our continuing drop in revenue against the prior year since benign weather and a lack of volume in the market depressed that claims volume. The significant actions taking in reducing headcount and restructuring our sales and marketing, will pay dividends in the fourth quarter and into 2013.
As we’ve been very successful in winning new business in the U.K. In this market we continue to emphasize the broad range of Crawford services including GTS and Broadspire. And later these efforts are marking meaningful progress.
We also continue to expand our Broadspire TPA services beyond the UK and Europe with U.S. multinational clients, supporting our global initiative of cross selling our services worldwide. We are now providing these services from 21 of our international locations.
In this EMEA region we are seeing encouraging developments and positive changes. Our management team is driving a new performance culture into this region to improve operational and financial improvement.
In the Asia Pacific region, the significant weather events have took place during 2011 and 2012 in Australia and Thailand have increased our revenue for the quarter by 58% over 2011. We have significantly improved margin and overall financial performance of this division. But I’m pleased to report that our Thailand performance is regarded as a showcasing catastrophe response by our clients. We currently have teams working in Thailand and in Australia responding to both local and international instructions on the catastrophic events that affected those countries last year. We expect to see related revenues continue through the remainder of 2012 and into the first 6 months of 2013.
Broadspire operation, which represents 21% of our consolidated revenues year-to-date reported a very small loss for the third quarter, without that goal continues to be sequential improvement and thus profitability, this business unit has shown very distinct progress and recovery within a weak economic environment.
In this market environment, our workers’ compensation claims volume is up 11.8% year-to-date. And we saw our incremental volume from new customer wins. We expect to see continued improvement in Broadspire’s performance through the fourth quarter and into 2013. We believe strongly the Broadspire’s solid market position, integrated service model, and quality of service offer the market, a truly competitive product, and should be profitable as we move through 2013.
We see the increased use of medical management services is an opportunity growing out of increased medical costs in the industry. Broadspire’s internal ability to fully integrate all of our services claims management, medical management and medical bill review, give us market leading capabilities to provide innovative solutions and improve the bottom line for our customers.
This is critical to Crawford’s strategic development, as we take every opportunity to cross-sell our services, and work on improving results in these operations. Broadspire is an important contributor to the Crawford product line, and global strategy.
We continue to be focused on our major improvement strategies as previously laid out. Sales force effectiveness and executing on plan analytics, customer retention. Our quarter 3 retention rate was very strong, technology investments and global sourcing of non-customer facing back-office operations.
Broadspire’s sales run rate improved again in the third quarter. We continued to receive a significant number of new RFPs, which confirms that the prospects in our pipeline are very encouraging. We are emphasizing the development of new business opportunities with an enhanced value proposition and target market approach, executed by the cross selling of additional services and balancing our cost base over this period. The trend to outsourcing medical management is a positive for Broadspire.
In summary, we remain encouraged by Broadspire’s progress in 2012 to-date and are excited about the 2013 prospects. We continue to be very pleased with the Legal Settlement Administration or LSA segment revenue and operating earnings this quarter. LSA represented 20% of our 2012 revenue to-date.
The quarterly results were ahead of our expectations, as GCG has been heavily involved in providing administration services in the Deepwater Horizon class action surrounding the Gulf Oil settlement. We expect to see solid performance from LSA for the remainder of the year, due to this important project.
Turning to the other LSA business areas; the class action market remains challenging overall. However, we have been successfully retaining new class actions of bankruptcy assignments. Our backlog at the end of 2012 third quarter was very strong $118 million, a record for GCG.
That concludes my comments on our business segments. Let me turn to our guidance and 2012 focus. On balance, we are seeing positive trends in our businesses and remain optimistic about the final quarter of 2012 and beyond. We are increasing our guidance for 2012 as follows.
Consolidated revenues before reimbursements between $1.13 billion and $1.14 billion. Consolidated operating earnings between $85 million and $90 million. Consolidated cash provided by operating activities between $45 million and $50 million. Net income attributable to Crawford & Company on a GAAP basis between $37.5 million and $40.8 million or $0.68 to $0.74 diluted earnings per profit based share.
As stated in our press release, we remain focused on our core strategic and operational goals, and expect to expand market share, drive efficiencies, and capitalize on emerging opportunities as we enter 2013. Additionally, in order to improve to the Company’s financial performance in 2013, we anticipate taking a restructuring charge in the 2012 fourth quarter of approximately $5 million before tax or $0.06 per share.
We expect the cost efficiencies gained by this charge to reduce annualized operating savings of approximately $4.2 million in our North American operations, helping to improve future operating margins in our Americas and Broadspire segments. This charge is included in the updated 2012 guidance, I provided a moment ago.
Before reflecting the fourth quarter charge just discussed, our guidance cost for 2012 net income attributable to shareholders of Crawford & Company on a non-GAAP basis of between $40.7 and $44 million or $0.74 to $0.80 diluted earnings per CRDB share.
I want to emphasize that the foregoing 2012 guidance does not include any estimated impact from the Company’s response to claims resulting from Superstorm Sandy, while we are at the very early stages for responding to this event. as of this morning, we have deployed 320 adjusters from our catastrophe division and have received in excess of 17,000 claims.
Our third quarter performance reflects a number of encouraging results and trends. We continue to be very encouraged by the performance of GCG and EMEA/AP and are very positive on the directional trend of Broadspire. As always weather-driven claims volumes can provide both positive and negative swings in our operations, which we saw in the third quarter in the U.S. and Canada. While we are in the early days of response to our claims, we anticipate the Superstorm Sandy will generate significant claims volume for Crawford in the 2012 fourth quarter.
So as we look at the remainder of 2012 and 2013, we remain focused on 5 areas. First, bringing Broadspire in the Americas to an acceptable earnings profile, secondly, we have improved our balance sheet and financial flexibility during the year and we intend to reduce our debt further as we close the year by managing accounts receivable and work in progress to drive improved cash flows. Thirdly, we are continuing to grow our core revenue and improve our operating earnings. Fourth, capitalizing on the global network opportunities we have with clients. And fifth and lastly, enhancing returns to our shareholders.
We are very focused on delivering operating improvement in our Broadspire business both domestically and globally. We will continue to push performance improvement in the Americas, EMEA/AP and LSA business segments for the remainder of 2012 and for 2013 and our worldwide management team is aggressively executing on our strategies as laid out.
Given the market strength and reputation of our business segments, the balance of earnings power of our corporation, we continue to remain very optimistic and confident about our growth opportunities, as we execute on our corporate strategies for our shareholders.
Thank you for your time. And we look forward to your questions. Operator, will you please explain the process for asking questions to our audience?
OP
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Mark Hughes from SunTrust.
MH
Mark Hughes
Analyst · SunTrust
On the Sandy claims volume, how did that 320 adjusters compare to other storms? What do you feel like the feedbacks you’re getting from your clients are about sustainability of these sort of assignments? I’ll ask also the, in times past, it seems like may be some of these disaster events, have that a little more compressed in time? How long do you think this will extend? I know it’s early, but what do you think?
JB
Jeffrey T. Bowman
Management
Thanks for that, Mark. And its’ still very early in the process, I mean we literally are just a week into the events. There is no doubt that with the Sandy Superstorm, the actual number of people impacted was far greater than say the Irene situation that we handled last year in the Northeast. This one is also affected, we think with more commercial losses. And I think we can report to my carriers that there’s still significant claims to come in from the prior year. I’ll give you a reference claim. I mean, we handled in Irene 14,000 claims, and we’re already at 17,000 this year with the Sandy. So I think each event is different. I could take you back over several years, but in terms of resourcing, we are working very hard at that, and our induction centers are open, and we are processing individuals through those induction centers as we speak.
MH
Mark Hughes
Analyst · SunTrust
But Thailand and Australia, it seems like you continue to generate meaningful revenue from those catastrophes. What should we assume about the pace of that in the fourth quarter into 2013?
JB
Jeffrey T. Bowman
Management
Thailand has probably another minimum of 9 months to run through the end of the second quarter probably next year. There is a great deal of difference; all the claims were handling in Thailand are commercial. And we have a lot of adjusters working on those claims and most of it is around business interruption and continuous business interruption. And that will be an extended period going through to the half-year, next year. Australia, we’ve significantly worked on all of those files and that will be coming back to a normality in terms of events have taken place in Australia.
MH
Mark Hughes
Analyst · SunTrust
In the Broadspire business, the workers’ comp claims, what has been the underlying trend, if you take aside new customers, look at your same clients you’ve been serving, what’s your feeling about that claims frequency there?
JB
Jeffrey T. Bowman
Management
The plans that we’ve been working with so many years, I think there is a stabilization that’s taken place, and we’re seeing a slight uptick in a number of different industries, especially in temporary employment companies and healthcare companies. But our main increase has come from winning new accounts, and that’s the best way, to have that.
MH
Mark Hughes
Analyst · SunTrust
You’re going to break out how much of the backlog is the Deepwater Horizon versus traditional Legal Settlement business?
BS
Bruce W. Swain
Management
Yes. We don’t break the backlog out. in that manner, we don’t want to think about any claims or programs in that disclosure, but in our 10-Q, we did talk about where we think that revenue comes in, in the future and we’ve got, of that backlog $48 million of it, we believe will be recognized in the fourth quarter of ‘12 with $70 million of it related to 2013.
MH
Mark Hughes
Analyst · SunTrust
Right. And then one final question, the cash flow for this year, the $45 million to $50 million cash from Ops. Bruce, could you give me a quick snapshot of the uses of that cash this year, and then as we look at next year, those requirements for cash maybe the same or different?
BS
Bruce W. Swain
Management
Yes. I think to get down to the free cash flow number, or CapEx this year, we’re projecting to be at about the $32 million level, and I think that that’s probably a number that is safe to assume for ‘13 as well. Once we get passed that, we look at obviously providing return to our shareholders through our dividend and investments back in the business to foster future growth. We’ll also look at paying down some debt de-levering, as we’ve been doing over the past few years as well to strengthen the Company’s balance sheet position.
MH
Mark Hughes
Analyst · SunTrust
Are there any pension liabilities at this point or pension payments that are required?
BS
Bruce W. Swain
Management
In 2012, we’ve made our required or we’ve made most of our required contribution that we have in ‘12 or requirement in the U.S. is $13 million. We do have future contributions that will be due in the U.S. and we have updated our future contributions in the 10-Q that we filed today. One thing that we’re getting a benefit from in terms of future pension contributions is the beneficial impact of this law, so-called MAP-21, which was a transportation bill that had some pension funding relief in it. And so we’ll be taking advantage of that, and our pension contributions while not low by any stretch of the imagination are much lower based upon market conditions that exist today, and again, we’ll have to re-measure this at the end of the year. but given the beneficial impact of MAP-21, our pension contributions in next 5 years will be much lower than those that we disclosed in our 2011 10-K. So if you look at our Q that we filed and line it up with a 10-K from last year, you’ll see the difference in it, I think significant decline which is good news.
OP
Operator
Operator
And your next question comes from Chris Leikhim of William Blair.
CL
Chris Leikhim
Analyst · William Blair
I just wanted to follow-up quickly on the $5 million charge in the fourth quarter, if you guys could give us a couple more details on that, and also sort of what kind of profit initiatives you’re thinking about for 2013.
BS
Bruce W. Swain
Management
Okay. The restructuring charge is effectively a North American event, because this is the opportunity to take out some inefficiencies that we have in the organization, and create a high profit level for 2013. We’ve been working on this for a couple of weeks since the strategy plan was produced, so that that came through in the fourth quarter, in terms of initiatives for 2013, I mean our strategic plan has us very much focused on obviously developments within our Broadspire operations, our international expansion of their operations, looking at U.S. multinationals and how we can offer a completely one-stop shopping approach to claims overseas in the U.S. We’re looking at a number of developments in our European operations, in terms of volume based businesses and the same in our Asia Pacific. So it’s a mix of technology and new products being brought to the marketplace.
CL
Chris Leikhim
Analyst · William Blair
Okay, great. And those cost saves for 2013 are going to be both North America and Broadspire, is that right?
JB
Jeffrey T. Bowman
Management
Right.
CL
Chris Leikhim
Analyst · William Blair
Okay. And then, as far as the legal settlement business ex-Deepwater, could you just talk a little bit about underlying trends that you see, and sort of where you’ve seen new wins, what sort of segments that you guys are seeing progress in.
JB
Jeffrey T. Bowman
Management
Yes, I mean The Garden City Group obviously is a very well positioned in both class actions, bankruptcy and employee, employer, class actions as well. We don’t talk about individual clients or business sectors, but we see pricing as an issue at the moment in the organization that is obviously a decrease at the moment in the number of class actions filed, although we feel we’re well positioned to provide the quality of service to our clients on that basis. It’s going to be an interesting year in balance of 2012 and 2013 for the year class action industry.
OP
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions. I’ll turn the call back over to Mr. Bowman for his closing remarks.
JB
Jeffrey T. Bowman
Management
Thank you. Thank you very much everyone for your time and questions this afternoon. I’d like to thank everyone for joining us, and wish you a great rest of the week. Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you for participating in today’s Crawford & Company conference call. This call will be available for replay beginning at 6:00 p.m. today through 11:59 p.m. on November 26, 2012. The conference ID number for the replay is 53763973. The number to dial for the replay is 1 (855) 859-2056 or (404) 537-3406.
Thank you. You may now disconnect.