Harsha Agadi
Analyst · Greg Peters with Raymond James
Good morning, and welcome to our second quarter 2019 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.
Turning to our second quarter results. We delivered GAAP revenue before reimbursements of $256.9 million. On a constant currency basis and excluding GCG in the prior year quarter, we delivered revenue before reimbursements of $264.2 million, which remained flat as compared to revenue of $265.1 million in the year ago second quarter.
Despite the fact that our revenues were flat in the quarter, we had a significant amount of new client momentum that demonstrates that our sales efforts are taking shape. I will touch on that in a moment. We achieved adjusted operating earnings on a non-GAAP basis of $22.9 million, rising 6% from the $21.7 million that we achieved in the 2018 second quarter, which represents a sequential improvement of approximately $8 million from the $14.6 million that we delivered in the first quarter of this year.
As discussed on our first quarter call, the strategic investments that we have made in our sales functions to drive market share and in new product development to access large untapped market opportunities are driving real momentum in our business. This can be clearly seen in our new business development, where we have seen a sharp acceleration in new client wins, which provide strong visibility to future revenue growth.
Through the second quarter, we have signed $47 million in annual revenue value from our customers, which compares to $30 million year-to-date in 2018. We have also signed 38 more new customers in our GTS business compared to the same time last year. These GTS clients generate revenue when large losses occur and are another sign of the momentum in our new business activity. Over the next year, these wins will continue to ramp up and translate to revenues and provide confidence in our ability to deliver our full year 2019 guidance. Additionally, we remain firmly on track to deliver our long-term goal of achieving 5% revenue growth and 15% earnings growth annually.
Looking forward, our new business pipelines remain at high levels, which speaks to the momentum that we continue to have across our sales offices globally. This strong activity is a direct result of the investments in technology and innovation that we have made over the last 2 years. Through growth driven by the traction that we're seeing in our industry solutions we have reduced our weather-related volatility. As we continue to grow the recurring segments of our business, we expect our weather-related business to be an important but a less material component of our overall business.
Today, Crawford remains the preeminent independent provider of outsourced claims management solutions with an unparalleled competitive position and market-leading brands that are well recognized around the globe. To deliver value to our shareholders, we're moving Crawford to sustainable growth. Simply put, we are transitioning our business model towards more predictable recurring revenue while still maintaining our competitive position in the weather-driven market segments.
The advantage that Crawford has is our sole focus on outsourced claims management. We have the scale and resources to invest in R&D and the financial flexibility enabled by our low leverage levels to deliver industry-leading solutions that solve our clients' most complex challenges. As innovation continues to disrupt our industry, we're meeting it head on. This innovation can be seen in the many solutions that we have introduced, including our industry vertical solutions focused on construction, hospitality and the transportation industries. Client adoption has been strong as we have secured more than 40 new clients across the 3 verticals with a new business pipeline that is currently tracking more than 170 client opportunities.
Looking ahead, we expect to launch solutions targeting the real estate and retail verticals. We have also introduced the industry's first smart water detection and mitigation solution to address water damage claims, which we are very proud to say was just announced as a winner in the 2019 Business Insurance Innovation awards.
An essential element of our strategy is putting innovation into action with our clients. This enables us to become the outsourced provider of choice for both large and small insurers claims departments. This will give us a more predictable and steady flow of claims, and as a result more predictable and recurring revenues. Along these lines, I'm very pleased to announce that we won a marquee client in the second quarter that brings our strategy to life. The new client is a top 15 P&C carrier in the United States who will be outsourcing to Crawford 100% of the claims administration for their small business program, where we expect to handle claims for workers' compensation, liability, auto and property. This client will be led by our Broadspire TPA global service line, but the work will benefit all of our business lines, including contractor connection and GTS. We expect annual claims to be in excess of 10,000 in the first full year. This business launched with us on July 1.
We also see and have started a pilot program with a small and medium carrier who writes homeowners policies. U.S. Crawford claims solutions will utilize our innovative TruLook triage model to help the carrier place claims in the correct channels while accelerating claim closures and lowering their loss adjusting expense. This will enable the insurer to focus on product development and growth.
Since mid-June, we have received over 2,500 claims consisting of both new daily claims and takeover claims. This is a prime example of the type of carrier account we want as it touches on all parts of our Crawford claims solutions capabilities and allows the client to benefit from our integrated solution that addresses the entire continuum of claims. These 2 wins are based on a pilot that we did with another top 15 insurer in the United States where we reduced their loss adjusting cost by 63% and cycle time by 27%. Importantly, these new programs are validations of our value proposition and clearly demonstrate the value that we can deliver as insurers work to improve their profitability. The outsourced market for internally run claims department is significant and our ongoing client discussions are very encouraging.
Beyond the large-scale outsourcing agreements that we're pursuing, our innovation is also driving increased client engagement and discussion. This is driving the very strong new client activity and new business pipelines that we have experienced year-to-date. That said, when I meet with our clients, I continue to find opportunities to better leverage the full breadth and depth of Crawford's portfolio of industry-leading solutions. To drive better penetration, we have identified global accounts of strategic importance and have assigned an executive sponsor and a global relationship leader. The goal is to ensure that we are delivering Crawford's full suite of solutions to our largest clients and deepening relationships at the most strategic level. This represents a very large untapped market opportunity and our scale and innovation have us poised for success. We will continue to add to our sales force where our Crawford Specialty Solutions business has been actively adding high-performing sales talent in California, Texas and Chicago. We also anticipate adding external candidates with brokering carrier experience in New York City and Atlanta by the end of the third quarter. While the primary focus is growing GTS, we have confidence this team will uncover opportunities for all of our service lines as we work to maintain the strong momentum that we have delivered through the first half of this year.
Crawford Specialty Solutions is our vanguard in a changing claims industry. We will continue to bring in disruptive and specialized practices together under the CSS umbrella. An example is Crawford compliance, which is a mobile technology-based vendor risk management platform that we have launched in Canada and have just had our first large win with a big box retailer there. Forensic accounting and forensic engineering are also examples of businesses we will continue to bring under this umbrella. While our growth initiatives are firmly taking hold, I am also very pleased with the customer validation that we're receiving as our Net Promoter Score for our entire business reached 47 this year, which shows continued improvement.
Beyond our strategic initiatives designed to drive growth, our management team has also been focused on improving cash generation while delivering value to shareholders through a disciplined capital allocation strategy. Notably, we generated a $27.4 million year-over-year increase in operating cash flow through the second quarter, and our free cash flow improved by $37.1 million over the prior year period. We will continue to be disciplined and use our capital to drive value for shareholders focused on investment in the business, accretive M&A and returning capital to shareholders through a consistent quarterly dividend and share repurchases. Of note, we have bought back over 700,000 shares of CRD-A and approximately 1.4 million shares of CRD-B year-to-date, representing 4% of our outstanding shares.
I would now like to turn the call over to Bruce to review the financial results of the second quarter in more detail.