Earnings Labs

Deluxe Corporation (DLX)

Q4 2010 Earnings Call· Thu, Jan 27, 2011

$30.10

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2010 Deluxe Corporation Earnings Conference Call. My name is Angela, and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participates are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. And now, I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today’s call, Jeff Johnson, Treasurer, Vice President and Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Jeff Johnson

Management

Thank you Angela. Welcome to Deluxe Corporation's 2010 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. I'm Jeff Johnson, Deluxe's Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Joining me on the call today are Lee Schram, Deluxe's Chief Executive Officer; and Terry Peterson, Deluxe's Chief Financial Officer. Lee, Terry, and I will take questions from analysts after the prepared comments. At that time, the operator will instruct you how to ask a question. In accordance with Regulation FD, this call is open to all interested parties. A replay of the call will be available via telephone and Deluxe's website. I will provide instructions for accessing the replay at the conclusion of our teleconference. Before I begin, let me make this brief cautionary statement. Comments made today regarding financial estimates and projections and any other statements addressing management's intentions and expectations regarding the company's future performance are forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. As such, these comments are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Additional information about various factors that could cause actual results to differ from those projected are contained in the news release that we issued this morning, and in the company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st 2009. In addition, the financial and statistical information that will be reviewed during this call is addressed in greater detail in today's press release, which is posted in the News and Investor Relations section of our website, www.deluxe.com, and was furnished to the SEC on the Form 8-K filed this morning. In particular, any non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled to the comparable GAAP financial measures in the press release. Now, I'll turn the call over to Lee.

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. Deluxe delivered another very strong quarter. We reported revenue towards the high-end of our expected range while adjusted earnings per share was well above the high-end of our range. All three segments delivered strong revenue. Checks and Forms both performed well against our expectations, and new business services revenue grew 17% over the prior year. We also continue with strong execution against our cost reduction program and spending controls and reported a favorable effective tax rate, all of which drove better than expected adjusted earnings per share. Adjusted diluted earnings per share from continuing operations grew 11% over the prior year’s quarter and we generated $213 million in operating cash flow for the year. In the quarter, we continued our test-and-learn brand awareness and direct-response advertizing, as well as organic technology initiatives to help better position our new business services offerings and generate future revenue growth. At the same time, we continued our process improvements and cost reduction all driving strong operating cash flow as we continue our transformation. In few minutes, I’ll discuss more details around our recent progress, and next steps but first, Terry will cover our financial performance.

Terry Peterson

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Lee. Earlier today, we reported diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter of $0.68, which included restructuring and related costs of $0.10. Excluding these costs, adjusted EPS from continuing operations of $0.78 was six times favorable to the upper end of our previous outlook and 11% higher than the $0.70 we reported in the fourth quarter of 2009. Favorable product mix and lower costs drove better than expected EPS performance. Results for the quarter also included a $0.03 per share benefit from a lower effective tax rate. The restructuring costs are primarily driven by infrastructure consolidations, fulfillment operational efficiencies, continued custom direct integrations, and sales and marketing capability improvements. Revenue for the quarter came in at $351.5 million, which is towards the upper end of the range of our previous outlook. All three of our business segments performed well. Revenue was up 3% from 2009 and grew on a sequential quarterly basis excluding the third quarter contract settlement revenue. Small business services revenue up $204.2 million was nearly flat versus 2009. While we continue to operate in a weak economic environment, we did deliver growth in new business services, a Safeguard distributor channel in Canada which mostly offset ongoing declines in our core printed products. Financial services revenue up $88 million was down 7% versus the fourth quarter of last year. The impact of lower check orders was only partially offset by higher non-check services revenue. Direct checks revenue totaled $59.3 million, up 51% on a year-over-year basis due to the custom direct acquisition. Excluding the impact of the acquisitions, direct checks revenue was down only 4% due to continued strong reorder performance. Gross margin for the quarter was 64% of revenue, up 1.2 percentage points from 2009. Benefits from improvements in manufacturing productivity, plant consolidation, delivery…

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Terry. I’ll continue my comments with an update on what we accomplished in 2010 overall, and then where we are headed in 2011. I will then highlight the progress in each of our three segments including our perspective on what we plan to accomplish in 2011. Deluxe emerged stronger from the continued challenging economic environment in 2010, by growing revenues for the first time in five years and significantly increasing operating earnings. We stabilized our core check and product businesses and invested in future revenue growth areas as we continued our transformation. These investments included organic initiatives like e-commerce, web services, customer acquisition, regulatory, and fraud and security offence. We acquired Custom Direct and Cornerstone to solidify our core check offerings and to expand opportunities and higher growth business services. We also continue to reposition our brand through investments and advertising including radio, online, television, mobile event tours, and our project reps, small business, marketing labs sponsorships. In addition to our strong print leadership, we invested in our employment brand and created stronger technology and digital expertise by adding sales and technology leaders from our business services acquisitions plus several proven key leaders in the e-commerce, search engine marketing, and web to print spaces. , : In shared services infrastructure, we significantly reduced cost and improved the effectiveness of information technology, finance, human resources, real estate, and legal functions. Our intense focus on cost reductions has now delivered savings of $325 million. We exited the year with more robust product and services, solidified processes, a better infrastructure, and improved financial results. We recognize that there are still a tremendous amount of work to do. So we made great strides in 2010. As we enter 2011, our primary focus is on revenue growth, as we now have what we…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. (Operator Instructions) Gentlemen, your first question will come from the line of Charles Strauzer with CJS Securities. Please proceed. Charles Strauzer – CJS Securities: Hi, good morning. Can we just dive into the segments margin just a little bit, just to kind a get a little bit more granularity there? When you look at Small Business Services, it had a very strong margin there, first is historical and financial services is probably had weaker than I was expecting there. Can you just give me a little bit more colors as to kind of what’s driving the pluses and minuses there?

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

Obviously we are very pleased with the performance essentially in both of the two segments. We’ve seen an accelerating improvement through the year as you know on the Small Business Services margins and we expected that as the cost reductions actually kick in and have been stronger. We also mentioned in Terry’s part of the script that, we had better performance overall in cost reductions in the fourth quarter, so we got little extra list there. And it also actually helped in financial service as well. We know there was some disappointment coming out of the third quarter, we weren’t disappointed, because as we said on the call last time, we’re always making investments in each of the segments and could probably invest a little bit more in financial services in third quarter, that people expected and then we got that popped back up and we didn’t do as much in that space in the fourth quarter adjusted cost and expense savings that we expected and therefore the performance improved. So, I would say we are very pleased with Small Business and the margins that we had in Financial Services, I think that’s the way. And again if this is going to happen quarter-to-quarter, sometimes we have timing of when we invest in certain areas and we are as you know fully allocating. We don’t leave anything at corporate unallocated pocket. So that consents sometimes despite things around some of the segments, but again Charlie I am very, very pleased with the results.

Terry Peterson

Chief Financial Officer

Yes price increases in financial services especially are another dynamic and we haven’t had a price increase for several quarters now. As Lee mentioned in his prior comments that we do have a price increase that led into effect in January now. So that will be into benefit in first quarter next year. Charles Strauzer – CJS Securities: Especially help margins a little bit, I would think this year as though – that the margins grew progressive along the year?

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

The price increase will absolutely. Charles Strauzer – CJS Securities: Got you. And just in general, just when you look at the three segments in terms of, you guidance, in terms of the – how should we look at the margins and how should they progress as the year goes on. Any thoughts you can share with us there?

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

Yes I think again, we haven’t got in, I think we didn’t make the comments about cost reductions being lumpy Charlie because, we are getting a lot tired of saying that all the time. I mean the way – we are – not everybody likes to be exactly linear as they go throughout the year. So, I would expect you are going to see a pattern similar to that this year where there will be some cores, will get more out than others, but by the way we are very pleased that we’ve been able to come up with $65 million and what it’s allowing us to do is to reinvest back in to help the future revenue growth potential to company and I am just, the work that Terry and the whole team had done here to come up with these numbers and again I am just very, very pleased with that number. It’s going to help as we work through the year.

Terry Peterson

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, we don’t see any significant anomalies throughout the year, in our (inaudible) if we do see something odd that will – really at that particular quarter, we’d provide some information about that, but nothing abnormal at this point that would really one particular quarter. Charles Strauzer – CJS Securities: Great and then just sort of looking at the Q1 guidance there, can you give us a little bit more granularity on your margin expectations on some other segment.

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

No, we are not going to do that Charlie. Again I wouldn’t expect they are going to move substantially and what we put out as overall, and in the comments that we made for kind of the year and we are trending, we are going to stick to that right now. Charles Strauzer – CJS Securities: Okay, very good, thank you very much.

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

You are welcome Charlie.

Operator

Operator

And gentlemen your next question comes from the line of John Kraft with D.A. Davidson, please proceed. John Kraft – D.A. Davidson:

Terry Peterson

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you John.

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you John. John Kraft – D.A. Davidson: I just wanted to ask a little bit more about the business advantage program, to me that seems like a pretty important referral avenue. Is there a way to put a metric on penetration, I guess either, what percent of your financial institution customers are participating in that program or what percent of your customers are buying more than simply business checks.

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

John we don’t. I don’t have and I know Terry doesn’t have sitting here any specific statistics on it. Here is though some couple of things that might be helpful for you. Its broad based and that it’s national and community banks that are participating. And we also are very pleased that the community bank market is actually being contributing more in the space. So think of it as we are getting more community banks lined in the program and more of the community banks are getting their small businesses locked into the program as well. All I can say is, I don’t have the statistics off the top of my head or what are only check only customers versus, customers that buy two or more products three or more products and so on and so forth. But what I’d tell you is that the pace of DBA or Deluxe Business Advantage customers buying more than checks is increasing and continuous to increase. And I think – again either Terry or I have those stats in front of us, but that’s the way I think you should think about.

Terry Peterson

Chief Financial Officer

And now I think I would add to that John is that, the DBA program continues to be a single largest source of new customers coming into Small Business Services and that’s the way it’s always been since we had, really since (inaudible) season. John Kraft – D.A. Davidson: Okay, thanks. That is helpful. And I guess, just a couple of follow ups here. The price increase you mentioned Lee, is that all customers across the Board?

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

It, again the way – the challenge as always addressing this is, it’s never the same rate everywhere because of the contracts we have and then what we can raise price in terms of the types of things that we are doing. But do we try to get it out there everywhere we can possibly get it consistently, the answer is absolutely yes. John Kraft – D.A. Davidson: Okay. And then lastly, in the past you’ve done some segmentation of course we have sort of broken out not by your official segments but just by check printing versus non-check printing. Can you give us those updated numbers?

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

That will be in the 10-K John, like it’s filed. You’ll see us with a – we’ll do the same split again, that’s our intent to be, we’ll give you that, check mix versus the other – kind of business products mix and then the services mix. So, if you can hold till we issue the 10-K here in a few weeks, that you’ll see that information. John Kraft – D.A. Davidson: That’s fair. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your next question will come from the line of Jamie Clement with Sidoti. Please proceed. Jamie Clement – Sidoti: Lee, Terry, Jeff, good morning.

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Jamie.

Jeff Johnson

Management

Good morning Jamie.

Terry Peterson

Chief Financial Officer

Hi, Jamie. Jamie Clement – Sidoti: We actually had a similar question to one of the previous ones but kind of just I guess coming from a little bit of different direction. Can you talk a little bit about Small Business customer acquisitions and the channels that those customers have come through, let’s say, three years ago versus where you think they’re coming from three years from now given the additional services that you guys have added along with a different way of accessing the marketing pools.

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

I think what we – Jamie, we relied basically on the DBA program and then the basic brands that came with NEBS probably looking for the years back. And then, where we are now as we are very – we’re still working that DBA program hard. But we are seeing a significant increase in non-DBA customers and are coming from our online work that we’re doing, our call center work, our email work that we do, they’re coming from proactive reaching out through our outbound call center work that we’re doing, and they’re also coming through the work that are both – that’s happening with our Safeguard distributor channel and then what we call our dealer channel and then also we’re starting to see Small Business come through, national accounts that we’re working through and that’s basically a sell through to the end Small Business Customer end. I think as we get into this year we’ll probably start to feature some of those names as we’re allowed to release them. What we see as we go forward is more of an online extension which is why we’re putting the brand and the direct response advertising out there, but they’ll come back through all medias, they will come back through our call centers, they will come back through their our distributer channels, they’ll come back through our dealer channels and national com. We expect those areas all to actually increase over the next, I will use your words, three years if you kind of look forward. So again in my comments we were reaching broader areas and partnering better and clearly what it’s doing is it’s allowing us to reach, get the breath of our products and services offers out in the more parts of the market Jamie. Jamie Clement – Sidoti: Lee switching gears a little bit, looking at the eventual Small Business Recovery, for a business like yours and I know it includes a lot of different products and service lines, from your perspective do you think new hiring is relatively more important than new business formation or vice versa, because I could imagine a scenario where one of those things improve today had it replaced [ph] than the other going forward.

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

They are both important, I mean if we get, what we find is, we get more new formulations of businesses Jamie, you get more opportunities right upfront to put the – start with the branding and the logo process, so then carry it into, they need to get themselves found online and. So if that’s an important one, but as small businesses hire more people obviously they are probably going to be reaching more customers and therefore having more money to spend on initiatives and therefore they are more likely to look at other products and services that we have to help them get key customers. So, I would argue both of them are important to us. Jamie Clement – Sidoti: s:

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

You are welcome Jamie.

Operator

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen that does conclude the question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Lee Schram for the closing comments.

Lee Schram

Chief Executive Officer

Yes, thank you for everybody out there that’s participating and for your question today and again I want to thank everybody at Deluxe here that’s also listening in. Just for again your effort and your great performance in 2010. We are now going to roll up our sleeves, get back to work and again we look forward to, for providing a positive progress report on our next earnings call.

Jeff Johnson

Management

Thank you Lee, this is a reminder that a replay of this call will be available until February 10th, by dialing 888-286-8010. When instructed, provide the access code 10727550. The accompanying slides are archived in the news and investor relations section of Deluxe's website at www.deluxe.com. Again thank you for joining us, have a good afternoon.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the presentation and you may now disconnect. Have a wonderful day.