Harsha Agadi
Analyst · William Blair
Good morning, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2017 earnings call. Joining me today are Bruce Swain, our Chief Financial Officer; and Joseph Blanco, our General Counsel. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. 2017 ended solidly. To start, I’d like to frame our recent results in the context of our broader strategy. As you know, over the past 2.5 years, we have been focused on reorganizing Crawford, working to simplify the company and driving a cultural change, all while reducing our expense structure with the goal of delivering financial stability. Our results for the fourth quarter and full year 2017 clearly demonstrate the success we have achieved in streamlining our organization and restoring profitability of the business as our U.S. Services, International and Broadspire segments, all delivered operating margins in excess of 10% for the full year. In addition, we have grown non-GAAP CRD-B diluted earnings per share at a 39% compounded annual rate over the last two years. Crawford is now positioned for a return to revenue growth, which is our number one priority looking forward. Turning to our fourth quarter results in more detail. We delivered fourth quarter operating earnings growth of 19% by strength in our U.S. Services segment, which continued to benefit from the third quarter’s CAT activity, our International segment which experienced strong operating margin expansion, and Broadspire which continued to deliver consistent revenue and earnings growth. On a non-GAAP basis, our diluted earnings per share for our B shares surged by 87% in the fourth quarter of 2017. In addition to our strong results, we have also invested heavily in our business to support our clients through the third and fourth quarters as they manage through an unprecedented level of CAT activity. We believe this investment has differentiated Crawford in the market and positioned the company to increase market share as we strive to become the leading CAT services provider to the industry by delivering unparalleled value to our clients. The one challenge to note was our Garden City Group segment, which posted a loss for the quarter and the year as they continue to experience a difficult market backdrop, combined with the expected wind down of a large project. These challenging market conditions look set to persist through 2018, and will continue to pressure Garden City Group results. As Bruce will discuss in more detail, the difficult outlook for GCG is offsetting some of the growth that we see for our U.S. Services, International and Broadspire segments, which is reflected in our 2018 guidance. Importantly, the financial stability that we have achieved is just Phase 1 of Crawford’s transformation. What is less visible is the cultural change we’re driving through our organization in order to remain a leader in the industry as technology continues to change how business is done. Over the past two years, we have also reassessed our management, our people and our core values. What was clear was that we needed to recruit new senior talent like Rohit Verma, our Chief Operating Officer, as well as experienced solution-based salespeople to improve our sales capabilities as we focus on delivering sustained topline growth. Beyond our people, we have also reviewed our core values and realigned our organization around our refresh corporate mission and vision, which will drive how we go to market, how we serve our clients, and who we hire. Our mission is to restore and enhance lives, businesses and community. This is at the center of what we do every day. Our vision is for profit to be the leading provider and the most trusted source for expert assistance, serving those who insure and self-insure the risks of businesses and communities anywhere in the world. These core values now define Crawford and can, clearly, be seen in our response to the unprecedented hurricane activity that challenged the capabilities of the entire property and casualty insurance industry this past year. To support our clients and they’re insured in their time of great need, we’ve mobilized a multinational force of adjusters from around the globe as well as hired and framed a new generation of adjusters. We viewed these efforts as a significant investment in our business, which we believe demonstrated our strong commitment to our clients and will build the brand loyalty as well as position Crawford as a more valuable partner for the future. In addition to establishing our corporate mission and vision, we also performed an extensive review of the market to assess our clients were organized – how our clients were organized and how to most effectively service them. We determined through our review that our current business structure was not meeting our client needs, not to mention, limiting the growth potential of the company. As a result, we have made the strategic decision to reorganize the company into global service lines that will sharpen our method of delivery to our clients and better enable our sales teams to increase market share and grow the company. These operating segments are known as: first, Crawford Claim Solutions, which comprises our Global Insurance Claims business; second, Crawford TPA Solutions; Broadspire, which includes our global Broadspire business; and finally, Crawford Specialty Solutions which contains Contractor Connection, Garden City Group and our Global Technical Services businesses. The objective of this reorganization is to allow our salespeople to be subject matter experts in every solution they sell, globally. Currently, our capabilities vary greatly by country as we may be strong in high-volume, low value claims, but we can complex claims in one country, while being strong in worker’s compensation, but weak in high-volume, low value claims in another country. Our move to global service lines will solve this challenge as we change our depth of service in the key geographies, where we do business and is an important step to our achievement of long-term goal of delivering 5% revenue growth and 15% earnings growth, annually. Our global service lines will also position Crawford to be a stronger partner to our clients as technology continues to drive the evolution of our industry. We are working to embrace this trend and be innovators. We are also working to better understand our clients’ needs and offer solutions to help them tackle the complex challenges that they face. We are doing this today through Crawford Innovative Ventures and its acquisition of WeGoLook, along with our recently announced partnership with the City of Hartford’s InsurTech Hub. Our goal is to drive innovation in the claim settlement process, in order to not only deliver value to our clients in the form of improved customer satisfaction and service, but also improved market share and profitability for Crawford. Our recently launched TruLook Solution is an important example. TruLook utilizes WeGoLook the initial claims process and determine whether an adjusters actually necessary to handle the claim. TrueLook also utilizes Contractor Connection on the backend, and thereby, providing an integrated solution and elevating the claim settlement process from an art to a science, and ultimately, resulting in improved speed of service, accuracy, and importantly, improved profitability to our clients and Crawford. We want to own the market and represent the complete claim solution through one Crawford & Company. We’re also working to launch new intelligent and integrated solutions for our clients’ focus on specific industry. These solutions are an embodiment of our depth of experience, technology and innovation that we can grow upon to efficiently and effectively solve long-standing industry problems. Our recently launched Total Construction Solution is focused on the construction industry and is the first of many verticals to follow. Crawford’s Total Construction Solution represents the most comprehensive offering available to this industry in an unparalleled approach to fitting the unique needs of our construction clients. Crawford Construction Solution will be driven by our TPA capability in Broadspire with dedicated construction account management, builders risk, jurisdiction-specific worker’s compensation and forensic accounting capabilities, contractor emergency services and large loss with better solutions to handle the entire spectrum of construction industry claims. With this new solution, Crawford has a truly integrated approach to client service that extends worldwide. As you can see, technological innovation continues to drive the markets we serve in our investments and digital solutions, data analytics and intelligent products are differentiating us in the eyes of our clients. We are now leveraging advanced data analytics to drive superior financial outcomes for our clients. For example, we’re applying predictive analytics to accelerate the closing and improve the outcomes of mitigated claims, increase medical billing savings and achieve faster return to work metrics or worker’s compensation claims. Beyond new innovative solutions, we will also explore opportunities to increase the penetration of our industry-leading services across the world as we move to global service lines. A good example of this is our recent expansion of our service offering in Australia to include worker’s compensation, which will be delivered through Broadspire and will complement our existing professional claim solutions, which are already well established in the country. This is, but one example, of the many opportunities that we are identifying as part of our move to global service lines. To conclude, this is an exciting time at Crawford. We have achieved financial stability through our focus and cost control as evidenced by the improved profitability that we have achieved in our U.S. Services, International and Broadspire businesses. Looking forward, our move to global service lines, combined with our investment and innovation, will position Crawford to deliver sustained revenues and earnings growth, which is our team’s number one priority. I would now like to turn the call over to Bruce to review the financial results for the fourth quarter in more detail.