Earnings Labs

DHI Group, Inc. (DHX)

Q1 2018 Earnings Call· Tue, May 8, 2018

$2.58

+0.19%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the DHI Group, Inc. First Quarter 2018 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Rachel Ceccarelli. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Rachel Ceccarelli

Analyst

Thanks Keith, and good morning everyone. With me on the call today is Art Zeile, President and CEO of DHI Group Inc.; and Luc Grégoire, Chief Financial Officer. This morning, we issued a press release describing the company's results for the first quarter of 2018. A copy of that release can be reviewed on the company's website at dhigroupinc.com. Before I turn the call over to Art, I'd like to note that today's call includes certain forward-looking statements, particularly statements regarding future financial and operating results of the company and its businesses. These statements are based on management's current expectations or beliefs and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied in the statements here due to changes in economics, business, competitive, technological, and/or regulatory factors, and the planned divestitures of our non-core businesses, and the possibility that any such divestiture do not occur. The principal risks that could cause our results to differ materially from our current expectations are detailed in the company's SEC filings, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q in the sections entitled Risk Factors, Forward-looking Statements, and Management's Discussion, Analysis of Financial Conditions and Results of Operations. The company is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except what it is required by the federal securities laws. Today's call also include certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA margins. For details on those measures, including why we use them, and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings release has been furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K which is available on our website. And now with that, I'll turn the call over to Art.

Art Zeile

Analyst

Welcome everyone and thanks for joining us this morning. I am just hitting the one month mark as the CEO of DHI. Because of this, I thought I would spend some time today talking about how and why I took this position how I view DHI in the marketplace, and what my expectations are for the business going forward. Since I'm relatively new to the company, I'll let Luc take a deeper dive into the key financial and business metrics for the first quarter. Then we’ll open it up for your questions. I’ll start with how I came to DHI and what motivates me to be here. I am here because our core value proposition truly resonates for me. DHI create solutions that connect employers to professionals to propel the businesses forward. Prior to joining DHI, I was the cofounder of Hosting, a company which delivered advanced cloud solutions. A decade back we were one of the first private cloud service providers in the United States developing and delivering a full suite of solutions for clients that could see the potential of cloud computing. The company upgraded its product catalog continuously hundreds of times adjusting constantly to the shifting demands of the market. A deep pool of engineering talent drove the success of that company. In fact, every company I have founded has basically been an army of technology professionals bringing new solutions to a fast moving market. I know all too well the headaches and difficulty of recruiting highly skilled tech professionals and have been a customer of Dice to source the best and brightest. This starts to answer why I'm here. Throughout my career I've always created or run a business that saw the pinpoint I personally experienced myself. Building high-performance teams is the core challenge I have…

Art Zeile

Analyst

Thanks Luc. I want to thank all of our 550 employees worldwide for their hard work in this past quarter. I look forward to learning from all of you in the weeks ahead. With that, I'll turn it over to your questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And this morning's first question comes from Kara Anderson with B. Riley FBR.

Kara Anderson

Analyst

So this question is for Art. Can you speak to your specific goals this year and next and can you talk about where you expect to focus your efforts first. And then second to that perhaps, it's too soon to say, but is there anything that you have identified initially that you think you need to more focus or needs to be rethought in terms of the strategy.

Art Zeile

Analyst

I really appreciate that question Kara. I have committed to the board that I would spend the next 90 days really having a thorough review of all of the functional areas of our business, our brands, and talking as much as I can to customers and prospects. And so I am going to be doing that and very deeply involved with all those different communities that are relevant to DHI. As I look at the rest of this year, the two main drivers for me are going to be a real deep focus on the sales program. How to make sure that that is really an efficient engine for forward growth, as well as where we are with product development. As I have kind of explained at the very beginning of the call, we really do have this innovation test bed in ClearanceJobs that allows us to essentially put innovation into a community that is very receptive to new ideas. We want to take those innovations that we believe that we can bring out to other brands and make sure that we are fast followers with those brands. So I am going to be spending a lot of time really understanding the context of where we stand competitively in the market for product innovation and using clearance jobs as a launching point for making sure that we are best in breed across all of our brands.

Kara Anderson

Analyst

And then maybe this one is for Luc. So you guys have made a fairly consistent ARPU for the Dice customers for the last 12 months. Can you talk at all about your pricing strategy, how it's evolved over the past year, I guess couple of years to sort of maintain that I guess level? Luc Grégoire: I'd say our pricing has been relatively consistent. We have introduced pricing performance, performance base pricing, but still within - that performance tends to be within the customers expected use and it's kind of held steady on that basis. We've also met some competitive just to be more competitive and to get customers a try. We will play with billing terms, but in terms of the pricing itself we still price according to our main recruiting package and that's still very much consistent.

Kara Anderson

Analyst

And then can you talk at all and maybe you can't, but I will try anyway - how long you have been engaged with the potential buyer as Hcareers and sort of how that’s progressing. Luc Grégoire: I can tell you it's progressing - it's progressing well. We had strong interest in it and I can tell it's been long enough that we are basically working with a particular potential buyer, but more than that I can't give you more detail than that.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Okay, as there is nothing else at the present time, we would like to turn the call over to Rachel Ceccarelli for any closing comments.

Rachel Ceccarelli

Analyst

Thank you, Keith. We appreciate your interest in the DHI Group. If you have follow up questions you can call the Investor Relations line at 212-448-4181 or email ir@dhigroupinc.com. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.