John Roberts
Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead
Great. Thanks, Mike. I will review the details of our Q2 financial performance and then we will open the call up to questions. As mentioned in our press release, we have initiated a process to sell the Slashdot Media business given that it is non-core to our strategic operations going forward. Where appropriate, I will speak to our financials excluding Slashdot Media. We believe it is important to present our financial results and expected financial performance excluding Slashdot Media operations in order to portray a more accurate picture of the ongoing operations of DHI. Overall, we are pleased with the continued progress we made on our operations during the second quarter despite ongoing headwinds from currency effects and the continued negative impacts of lower oil prices on our energy business. Recruitment activity in the second quarter was fairly consistent across our brands with the exception of energy where the recruitment market is gotten worse compared to what we saw in Q1 and at the beginning of Q2. For the second quarter I want to highlight a few areas important to our results. First, year-over-year growth in revenues of 1% in constant currency including growth in most of our operating segments. Two, higher year-over-year revenue per recruitment package customer at Dice, reflecting the positive impact of Open Web and increased service levels by customers. Three, significant year-over-year revenue growth in our healthcare and hospitality segments which were largely acquired in 2013. And fourth, solid free cash flow. While we continue to invest in innovation for future revenue growth, we also continue to reduce net debt and return cash to shareholders with the repurchase of approximately 1.4 million shares of our common stock during the quarter. Second quarter revenues excluding Slashdot Media increased 2% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. This reflects growth in most of our operating segments, largely offset by the decline in the energy segment. Now for some more detail on the specific segments. I will compare Q2 revenues on a segment basis to adjusted revenues in Q2 2014 where appropriate. Adjusted revenues adds back the deferred revenue adjustment to Q2 2014 which effectively has the impact of lowering the year-over-year growth rates. We feel it's appropriate to give this comparison in order to provide a more fair perspective of our relative performance, especially in the healthcare, hospitality and energy verticals, given the size of the deferred revenue adjustment in those segments. For tech and clearance, revenues increased 4% year-over-year. The tech and clearance segment is comprised of a few brands. Within that segment, Dice revenues increased 2% year-over-year. At June 30, Dice recruitment package customers were roughly 7,750, which is slightly lower than the count at the end of the first quarter. Within the Dice recruitment package customer base, there were minimal shifts quarter-over-quarter between shorter term and annual customers with about 93% or nearly 7200 of our customers under annual contract at quarter end. The renewal rate on the annual contracts was 67% in the quarter with about 1700 customers up for renewal during the quarter. In Q2, recruitment package customers spent on average $1084 per month, up 5% year-over-year. Thus customers continue to increase their levels of service including Open Web, which contributed more than half of the year-over-year increase. Finally, within the tech and clearance segment, clearance jobs while only accounting for 4% of our overall revenues, achieved year-over-year growth of 22% in revenues. Growth in this segment was driven primarily by increased demand for cleared technology professionals due to favorable market conditions in the government sector combined with tightened supply with the government continuing to take much longer to process clearances. Additionally, growth was aided by the clearance jobs product launch of pay-per-view job postings which has created additional value for our customers by helping to drive the job count for clearance jobs to 13,250 from 5,600 last year. Moving on to our finance segment. Revenues decreased 3% year-over-year to $8.9 million, translation from foreign currencies negatively impacted revenues by $700,000 compared to the second quarter a year ago. So on a constant currency basis, revenues increased 5% year-over-year. I will discuss the regions in their respective functional currency to give perspective on the underlying business trends. Overall, the trend is positive in the major financial centers. In the U.K., Continental Europe and Middle East, revenues increased 3% year-over-year in Sterling and accounted for about 60% of the segment's revenues in the quarter. Broadly, the environment continues to be better than last year. In the Asia Pacific region which is 26% of overall segment revenues, revenues were up 8% in Singapore Dollars with stronger performance in Asia, which is up 15% year-over-year including Hong Kong and Singapore. In the U.S. which is 14% of segment revenues, was up 2% year-over-year. In our energy segment, Q2 revenues were $5.7 million, down 35% year-over-year compared to Q4 2014 adjusted revenues, which again adds back to deferred revenue purchase accounting adjustment. In the quarter we saw more disruption in the energy market caused by the volatility and falling oil prices resulting in a deterioration of the recruitment market. We expect the impacts to continue as we move forward further into 2015, give layoffs at several large energy companies and the impact on hiring plans. While we remain committed to our long term position in the energy market, we have also used this as an opportunity to reorganize the two energy businesses which has resulted in lower overall costs. In our healthcare segment, revenues were $7.8 million, up 13% year-over-year compared to Q2 2014 adjusted revenues due to increased usage by customers at both HEALTHeCAREERS and BioSpace. The hospitality segment contributed $4.3 million in revenues in the quarter, up approximately $500,000 or 14% year-over-year compared to Q2 2014 adjusted revenues. Again due to increased usage by customers which has resulted in early renewals and up sells of service. Finally, corporate and other. This segment contains Slashdot Media and WorkDigital. Slashdot Media revenues decreased 17% year-over-year primarily due to declines or delays in advertising campaigns for a number of large advertising clients. This segment also continues our corporate related costs which were $4.5 million in the quarter. On a year-over-year basis for our segments, Q2 billings for tech and clearance were up 7% including an increase of 4% year-over-year at Dice. Financial billings were down 8%, down 1% on a constant currency basis. And energy billings decreased 48%. For healthcare, Q2 billings increased 20% year-over-year and hospitality billings were up 13%. Deferred revenue which totaled $88.1 million at the end of Q2, including $1.7 million for Slashdot Media, was up 3% or $2.4 million from the end of Q2 2014. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by our tech and clearance segment which grew by 6%, partially offset by a decrease in our energy segment. On the expense side, operating expenses increased 3% year-over-year to $55.3 million, primarily driven by additional headcount, increased stock-based compensation expense and increased bad debt expense of $600,000 in the quarter related to one customer of Slashdot Media. These increases were partially offset by lower depreciation and amortization expenses. Depreciation and amortization was $1.3 million lower than last year at roughly $6 million for Q2 2015, primarily due to fewer depreciable assets and certain intangible assets becoming fully amortized. Adjusted EBITDA totaled $19.1 million during the second quarter, down $4.1 million from last year after adding back the deferred revenue adjustment of $1 million to Q2 2014. Adjusted EBITDA excluding Slashdot Media for the second quarter totaled $19 million or 31% of adjusted revenues excluding Slashdot media. Reconciliations of net income to adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA excluding Slashdot Media and of operating cash flows to adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA excluding Slashdot Media are provided in our press release. The company posted net income in Q2 of $5.7 million resulting in diluted earnings per share of $0.11. Cash flow from operations totaled $17.9 million in the second quarter, compared to $21.3 million last year. On a year-to-date basis, cash flow from operations is up $3.6 million or 11% from last year. Some of this increase is driven by lower tax payments in the first half of 2015 and the tax payments will increase by approximately $4 million in each of Q3 and Q4 2015. We generated free cash flow in the quarter of $15.4 million in addition to the stock buyback during the quarter of $12 million. We also reduced net debt by approximately $5 million. Now I would like to turn to our outlook for the remainder of the year which will exclude Slashdot Media for the reasons I outlined earlier. We have provided a full reconciliation of our estimate in the press release in order to provide clarity on the different basis. The reconciliation shows our full year 2015 guidance for revenue and adjusted EBITDA that was provided on [indiscernible] '15 and with the full year 2015 guidance on those measures would have been had Slashdot Media been excluded at that time. Please refer to the table provided in the business outlook section in our press release. To clarify again, our estimate we are providing today, which includes ranges for both the upcoming quarter and the full year, does not include any amounts for the Slashdot Media business that we are in the process of selling. For 2015, our outlook is largely in line with the estimate provided in April with some modifications done for energy, offset by modest improvements in other areas. We anticipate revenues in the range of $244 million to $249 million and adjusted EBITDA of $71 million to $75 million. In Q3, we expect revenues of $60.5 million to $62 million and adjusted EBITDA of $17 million to $18 million. With that, we are ready to open the call up for questions.