Edward J. Ryan
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead
Great, thanks Scott, good morning everyone, and thanks for joining the call. I hope everyone enjoyed their summer and had a chance to spend some time with their family. Things here at Descartes were busy as ever and we produced another great quarter and we acquired two very exciting companies. I'll talk about that in a little bit. The business continues to grow as network volumes pick up on the Global Logistics Network and we're seeing continued strong demand for our home delivery routing solutions that help retailers cope with the new omni-channel home delivery environment. On today's call, I'm looking forward to discussing these trends in more detail as well as providing some updates on our business. I'm going to hand the call over then to Allan who will talk through some of the financial details and then I'll finish off the call by talking about our business calibration and the landscape that we see in front of us. So with that, let's start by going over some of the financial highlights for the past quarter and the first half of the year. Our primary focus continues to be on growing our adjusted EBITDA. This quarter we had generated $14.6 million in adjusted EBITDA, which is a record for us and an increase of 15% over last year, and for the first half of the year we were up 16% generating $28.8 million of adjusted EBITDA. As we've discussed before, we have a natural FX hedge in our business, so the continuing FX volatility hasn't really impacted our bottom line. On the other hand, FX rates have had a large impact on our revenues on a year-over-year basis. Revenue for the quarter was $45.2 million, which was up 6% from last year. The FX impact on the revenues for the quarter was negative $3.3 million, meaning that using last year's FX rates our revenues would have been $48.5 million, which would have meant growth of about 14%. Revenue for the first half of the year was $89.6 million, which was up 7% from last year. The FX impact on revenues from the first half of last year was negative $7.7 million, meaning that using last year's FX rates revenues would have been $97.3 million, which would've meant growth of about 17%. FX is of course difficult to predict but our business and expense mix allows us to manage through these volatile FX periods with continued growth, consistent with our plans. From a cash flow perspective, we continue to see strong cash conversion metrics. We converted 88% of adjusted EBITDA into cash and ended up generating $12.8 million in cash from operations for the quarter. For the first half of the year, we generated $24.6 million in cash, which represents cash flow conversion rate of 85%. As we generate that cash, we're reinvesting it in our business not only through acquisitions but also on our operations. We do this because we believe that the market for our solutions will continue to grow, and powered by our Global Logistics Network we believe we're in a very strong position to capture an increasing share of that market. So moving on, there's three things that we believe are driving momentum in our business and I'll just take a minute to describe them for everyone on the call. The first is the omni-channel retailing and home delivery business which is driving demand for our routing and scheduling products. We've talked before about how we believe we have the premier scheduling and delivery route optimization technology in the world and we've been doing very well helping our customers navigate the ever-increasing expectations of consumers around how things are bought and delivered. We've also talked about how our investments in mobile technologies are helping us address this opportunity. This quarter we had another big win with the leading electronics retailer in the U.S. who was looking to up their game even more to compete with the Amazons of the world. This retailer is going to be using our state-of-the-art home delivery solutions to enhance their customer experience right from the online delivery, appointment scheduling through to mobile monitoring and delivery through to the customer's door. To understand why we win in circumstances like this and support and understand that we take a unique approach to home delivery, which is why we feel we're the best option out there for retailers. Unlike traditional route optimization systems, our solutions allow customers to look at each and every order incrementally in real-time. This is versus our competitors who make decisions in batches and don't really know if they can fulfil a slot when a customer makes a reservation. We're constantly optimizing the schedule to create the best results for the retailer and their customer, all while using the least amount of resources and trucks. From there, our advanced mobile capabilities allow us to collect and deliver information in real-time, keep the customer notified of any changes in the schedule and automate processes in the delivery location. We think we really have something different here and we expect to keep doing well helping retailers around the world doing this. Basically when our sales guys are walking into a retailer today to talk about home delivery opportunity, just about every major retailer is in some phase of doing that. We think we've got a very good chance of winning every time. I'm not saying we win them all, but we win an awful lot of them. Second opportunity for us is integrate related regulations driving demand for our network and compliance solutions. We've talked about this regulatory environment a lot before. It's constantly changing and we see that continuing for some time to come, and the governments look to secure their borders without slowing down trade, and it gives us an opportunity to add value for our customers. So let's take a couple of minutes to walk through some of the key initiatives we'll see around the corner from various countries. Starting off in the U.S., there is a bunch of stuff going on here. So the U.S. is leading the international chart for creating electronic data sharing framework to secure borders and monitor trade. The two key initiatives that are going on right now are around ACAS, which is Air Cargo Advance Screening. This is a new filing [indiscernible] will make in the U.S. on air shipments. It's now on even broader pilot. It's been going on for about a year in pilot and they just expanded it a few months back, has more participants now, and that pilot is scheduled to wrap up by next summer, and hopefully at that point go into full enforcement. Second area, and this is a big one because it changes the whole dynamic in this trade regulation security filing business, and I've mentioned this in the last call, the U.S. is now starting with export filings. Every initiative we have been involved in up until now has been for import filings, and there are just as many import filings in the world as there are export filings in the U.S., and a bunch of other countries just announced they are getting into exports. The U.S. is kind of kicking this off first and it's called a Vessel Manifest export filing pilot. Right now this information is only gathered on imports today. Now they are expanding it to exports, and the program extended this to understand what cargo is on the vessels that is leaving the U.S. This pilot is going to go on throughout the 2016 calendar year, but we are very excited about it because we think over the next 10 years this creates some big long-term opportunities as the U.S. does it, Canada – you have all announced that they are going to do it as well, and we think this creates a great opportunity for us long-term. We're active technology partners with our customers in each of these pilots. We are actively working on each of these pilots, the U.S. export filing and the ACAS pilots. We're working with those customers to make sure that they understand the proposed regulations, requirements and that they are actually able to fulfil the regulatory requirements using applications that come from Descartes. Moving on from the U.S. to other countries that are also active with new regulations, in Canada there is the eManifest initiative for highway carriers. It's called ACI. It went live in May. Right now there aren't any financial penalties yet, but those are anticipated to start in January 2016. We're already helping customers in this area and are ready to help that might turn their minor solutions as the reality of penalties get closer. Turning to Europe, there is their PRECISE initiative which is a forwarder focused filing like the U.S. ACAS filing, and preparations are beginning right now to start off their pilot phase. And otherwise around the world, other regulations, trade agreements, tariffs, duties and government technology infrastructures are being updated. It's a world of complexity, it's ever-changing and our customers look to us to help them navigate this complexity rather than trying to do it themselves. So this brings me to another hot area for our business which is the network itself. We've felt for some time that we have something special in our Global Logistics Network. We believe shippers and logistics service providers alike should have one place to go, to research, plan and execute their shipments. And to execute them properly and in the compliant but also cost-efficient manner, they need to have all the information and tools at hand in one place, and for us this place is the Global Logistics Network. I've talked before about our network being a little like a Bloomberg Terminal for logistics, a place where customers can make informed decisions about who to do business with, how to classify goads appropriately and submit compliant documentation, how to move goods efficiently and work with a broader ecosystem of parties, and how to do all of that not just cost-effectively but in a way that it can allow our customers to differentiate themselves and give them a competitive advantage in their markets. This is our vision, we get stronger at it every quarter, more customers join us every quarter, and with each new acquisition that network gets bigger and more capable of solving that broader logistics community's needs. We made the network even stronger by partnering with SAP as well. So just to talk a few minutes about that partnership, we recently announced that we have expanded our relationship with SAP. We announced that we're connecting SAP's Transportation Management solutions to our Global Logistics Network. Essentially what this means is that by connecting our network of trading partners, SAP Transportation Management customers will be able to execute and track shipments once they have made a decision about who they are going to move their goods with. This includes helping them with transmissions of customs and security filings, carrier bookings, the status messages and other electronic documents related to executing the logistics move. We've been working together as partners with SAP for a long time and we are thrilled to have them as the main sponsor of our recent User Group Evolution 2015. Our partnership with SAP has grown significantly over the years. It became a lot stronger when we acquired Customs Info which was an existing SAP partner already, and it was strengthened even further a month or two ago when we combined with MK Data as they were also an important SAP partner prior to coming to Descartes. Collectively, Customs Info and MK Data provide key content that helps power SAP's Global Trade Management system. It's great to have this relationship with SAP and we look forward to working together and improve the value that customers can get from our collective solutions, including our recent Denied Party Screening capabilities. So all that brings me to the topic of MK Data. We've been talking a lot recently about making more content available on our network, and on July 20th we made a big step on this front by announcing the acquisition of MK Data, a leading supplier of denied party screening trade data and solutions. So what's denied party screening, just for the people that are new to this. On a basic level, governments around the world maintain a variety of lists of people, organizations and countries that you are restricted or prohibited to do business with. MK Data helps our customers in their efforts to comply with these regulations. They have solutions and content that can be made available in a number of ways, via the Web-site, through their ERP system, global trade management systems, ours or others, and Web-based APIs, or through an assisted screening service. All these solutions are designed to also provide an audit trail of your searches because it's important or show the government that you are trying to comply with these rules, particularly if something goes wrong. And believe me, you don't want to get this wrong. There's big fines, there's potentially criminal convictions for doing business with restricted parties, and the list is changing every day, so customers need a provider that is on top of all this and MK Data is the industry gold standard from our perspective. We have known this company for 10 years. First we became friends with them, then we started reselling their stuff, ultimately culminating us buying them a couple of months ago, but it's a great long-term partner of ours. From the beginning they were a small company that kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and get better and better in terms of data quality. It's very exciting for us to make them part of the Descartes family now. So anyway, in this area of our business, just to finish up on that reselling topic where we resold MK's data content, has been a high-growth area of business for us and a very profitable area of business too as the content is a high-margin business if you get it right. You have a cost to collect the data. That cost is a one-time fairly fixed cost and you sell it as many times as you can. So the business has the ability to get very profitable as you get more and more customers, and that was certainly part of our interest in the business and something that made us very attracted to them. As I said earlier this has been a high-growth area for us and we expect that to continue. MK has been growing for some time now. Anyway, since the announcement, we've had a lot of positive reactions on the MK Data acquisition from both SAP and Oracle who are both MK and Descartes partners alike. In fact, you may have noted that the SAP press release even references this area of the business relationship. When we look ahead to potential growth prospects, it gets really exciting. We think every Descartes customer has the potential to use this service. We already have a number of large customers that use the MK Data solutions, Customs Info solutions and other Descartes solutions and we think that as we roll this service out further and tie it directly into a number of additional complementary solutions, that the growth of MK Data will accelerate. We're very excited about that. Two days later, on July 22nd, we did another acquisition, we announced the acquisition of BearWare. It was a busy month here at Descartes here in July, and while MK will be a key addition to help us address the global regulatory environment, BearWare helps us address the omni-channel challenge in front of our customers, and in particular the importance of visibility at the carton level in the last-mile delivery process to the storefront. Omni-channel is all about having the right goods in the right place at the right time and the storefront is and will remain to be an important part of that picture. The acquisition builds on our mobile capabilities that we strengthened with the Airclic acquisition and adds a community of customers where the focus is on adding value from the technology to every member of the community, consistent with our approach and vision. Some of BearWare's key retail customers include L Brands or Limited Brands, Restoration Hardware and GNC. They also have some common customers with Descartes, both shippers like Restoration Hardware and service provider customers like Argix, which you may have seen our recent press release on yesterday. So anyway, that's a little bit on BearWare and MK Data. We're real excited about it and we'll talk more about it later, I'm sure in the Q&A period, but it's exciting times here at Descartes from an acquisition perspective. Before I hand the call over to Allan to talk a little bit more about the financials, I'd like to thank the people that made another great quarter for Descartes here possible. So thanks to all of our employees for all the hard work that you put in to make sure our customers get results, thanks to our customers who continue to place confidence in Descartes as their network of choice, thanks to our partners for helping us rapidly expand our ecosystem, and finally I'd like to thank our shareholders for continuing to have confidence in Descartes. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Allan. Thanks.