Bob Whitman
Analyst · Roth Capital. Your line is open
Thanks so much, Derek. Good afternoon, everyone. We really appreciate you joining today. We’re really pleased to report that our Q4 and full fiscal year 2019 results were strong – really, very strong and even better than expected. We have strong momentum in our business and we fully expect to build on that momentum going forward. The results for the fourth quarter and for the year are really what we expected when we made the business model change several years ago – high-single-digit revenue growth in constant currency; high gross margins; high revenue retention; SG&A that was reduced for high flow-through; and really accelerated growth in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow. As you know, our goal and expectation is to consistently achieve these very high rates of growth in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow, and to do it for years to come. Consistent with this objective, we had very high expectations for growth and adjusted EBITDA and cash flow in fiscal 2019, specifically as you can see in Slide 3. We expected that in fiscal 2019 in constant currency our reported adjusted EBITDA would increase from $11.9 million in fiscal 2018 to between $18 million and $22 million in 2019. We also expect that our adjusted EBITDA plus the change in our deferred revenue balance would increase to between $30 million and $34 million in constant currency and that our net cash generated would increase between $18 million and $22 million. We’re pleased that the strength of our results in fiscal 2019 allowed us to meet or exceed each of these expectations. Again, as you can see in Slide 3, in constant currency which was the basis for our guidance, our adjusted EBITDA increased from $11.9 million in fiscal 2018 to $21.6 million in fiscal 2019, a growth of $9.7 million or 82%. Before adjusting for changes in foreign exchange and as reported, adjusted EBITDA increased from $11.9 million to $20.6 million, a growth of $8.7 million or 73%. You can also see the combination of adjusted EBITDA plus the change in deferred revenue in constant currency increased to $31.3 million, and importantly, our net cash generated increased to $22.2 million. In addition, our cash flow from operating activities increased 81% or $13.6 million from $16.9 million fiscal 2018 to $30.5 million in fiscal 2019. So we’re pleased with the performance. It was strong on all the fronts that we expected it to be strong on, and feel that we’re really well-positioned to continue this kind of growth moving forward. As we’ll discuss in more detail in a moment, this was also – we’re really pleased that this great performance was broad-based across both the enterprise and education divisions. As you can see in Slide 4, the high growth in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow is being driven by the combined impact of three factors that we’ve talked about for the last several many quarters. Factor 1 is that a high percentage of every dollar of sales is flowing through to increases in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow. We’ll talk about the reasons for that. Factor 2 is that our high gross margin subscription revenue is growing rapidly, is sticky, and we’re retaining substantially all of it, and it’s creating high lifetime customer value. It’s also establishing strategic and structural durability which we’ll talk about, and increasing the trajectory, predictability and visibility of our future revenue. The third factor is that we are aggressively taking advantage of a compelling sales force expansion opportunity which is expected to further accelerate our growth, and we’ll detail how that can work. The combination of these factors is driving high rates of growth as we said in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow. It has put us on a great trajectory, we think, for an accelerated march up the mountain to achieving significant continued growth in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow in fiscal 2020, 2021, 2022 and beyond. As indicated in Slide 5, and as we’ll discuss in more detail in the guidance section, in fiscal 2020 again in constant currency, we expect to grow adjusted EBITDA from $20.6 million in fiscal 2019 which was what we achieved before adjustment for FX, to between $27 million and $32 million in fiscal 2020. So we’ve raised that a bit from what we said last year. That represents growth between 31% and 55%. We also, as shown, expect to increase our net cash generated between $25 million and $30 million. As also shown, our target and expectation thereafter is to grow adjusted EBITDA to between $36 million and $41 million in fiscal 2021, again, an increase over what we said last year and to between $45 million and $50 million in fiscal 2022, also a bit of an increase from what we thought last year. Also to grow net cash generated to between $35 million and $39 million in fiscal 2021 and then to between $44 million and $49 million fiscal 2022. These expected and targeted results represent very strong growth, as you would note, in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow, and as a team we are all both committed to and aligned to achieve it. I’d now like to provide you a more detailed look at how these factors, these three factors I just talked about, combine to generate high growth in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow in 2019 and why we expect them to continue to do so in the future. So the bullet point on Slide 6 just shows that the thing that’s driving this high flow-through of incremental revenue to incremental EBITDA is the combination of high-single-digit revenue growth, high gross margins, SG&A that is declining as a percentage of sales reflecting the stickiness of our revenue, and driving this accelerated growth in adjusted EBITDA. More detail that you can see on Slide 7, our revenue before adjustment for changes in foreign exchange grew $15.6 million or 7.4% from $209.8 million in fiscal 2018 to $225.4 million in fiscal 2019. In constant currency, our revenue grew $17.6 million or 8.4% to $227.3 million which really just slightly exceeded the 8% in constant currency that we expected. This growth was broad-based across both divisions, with the enterprise division’s revenue growing 8.2%, or 8.4% in constant currency, and the education division’s revenue growing 8%, also 8.4% in constant currency. As you see here, our subscription and related revenue grew 23.1% or $22.4 million for the year, from $96.9 million the previous year to $119.2 million in 2019. Our invoice sales grew $12.5 million to $233.7 million. In the fourth quarter invoiced revenue grew 5.9% or $6.3 million in constant currency. And because the subscription revenue made up substantially all of that increase and hardly any of that was recognized in the quarter because it’s subscription sales, almost all of that was added to the balance sheet. So the actual reported growth was small because it was all subscription, but we added a lot to the balance sheet. Our balance of billed and unbilled deferred all related to subscription sales, grew 21% or $15.1 million to $88.1 million at the end of fiscal 2019 up from $73 million last year. And just breaking this out, the deferred revenue broken out between two groups – the billed deferred revenue and unbilled. Our balance of billed deferred revenue increased 20% to $58.2 million, an increase of $11.6 million. And our balance of unbilled deferred revenue increased 22% to $29.9 million, an increase of $5.4 million. Importantly, substantially all of this very high margin deferred revenue will be recognized evenly throughout fiscal 2020. That’ll help smooth out increases in revenue and profit throughout the year. In addition to this large and increasing balance of deferred revenue, the contractual annual minimum royalty payments from our significant licensee business now totaled – the minimum royalty payments total $11.6 million. The actual royalty payments were more in the range of $15 million to $16 million, but $11.6 million of that is contractual, adding further to our large and growing balance of annually-recurring revenue. Our total contracted revenue grew 4.6% during fiscal 2019. We had a high flow-through of revenue to adjusted EBITDA. As you can see in Slide 8, the business model we have now resulted in approximately 56% of every dollar of increased revenue to flow through to increases in adjusted EBITDA. This resulted in $8.7 million or 73% growth in adjusted EBITDA as reported and $9.7 million or 82% growth in adjusted EBITDA in constant currency which was the basis for our guidance. There were a couple of things that drove that. First, our gross margin percentage remained at the high level we achieved last year of 70.7% and this despite the fact that we continued to grow our All Access Pass add-on services which have a little lower margin but the blend still allowed us to maintain the 70.7%. Gross margin dollars increased $11 million or 7.4% for the year and in constant currency was even higher. In the fourth quarter again because substantially all of the growth in invoiced revenue was in subscription sales, almost none of that was recognized in the fourth quarter but is on the balance sheet and will be recognized. The second thing driving it, besides high gross margin, was that our relatively-fixed operating SG&A expenses again helped drive the decline in operating SG&A as a percentage of sales in fiscal 2019. For the year, operating SG&A as a percentage of sales was 61.6%. That’s a level 348 basis points lower than last year’s 65% of sales. And in the fourth quarter, that figure improved 384 basis points, coming in at 52.3% compared to 56.2% in last year’s fourth quarter. So the combination of strong revenue growth, high gross margins, reduced operating expense, resulted in as you can see, very strong growth in adjusted EBITDA. As noted previously, the adjusted EBITDA before adjustments for foreign exchange increased $8.7 million or 73% to $20.6 million with 56% of the increase in revenue flowing through to EBITDA. And in common currency it was even higher. Adjusted EBITDA grew $9.7 million or 82% to $21.6 million, close to the top of our range. In the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA increased 18% to $13.4 million. Finally, our growth in cash flow was also very significant. Our net cash generated increased $7.2 million or 48% to $22.2 million. As you can see in Slide 31 in the appendix, you’re going to see the detail which exceeded the high end of our expected range. And net cash flow provided by operating activities, which you can see in Slide 36 in the appendix, increased $13.6 million or 81% to $30.5 million compared to $16.9 million last year. So we were very pleased with the strength of the country’s performance overall, and for the fourth quarter, and especially pleased that the performance was broad-based with strong results in both the enterprise and education divisions which had that same strong result of strong revenue growth, high gross margins, high flow-through, declining SG&A as a percentage of sales. So we expect to be able to continue to achieve strong revenue growth in the future, and expect that again a high percentage of this revenue for the same reasons will flow through to increases in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow resulting in very high rates of growth in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow in fiscal 2020 and beyond. Here, I could just say – and probably mercifully to you – it would be good if I said, just said the same strong results occurred in enterprise and education and just move on. But inasmuch as we have taken you through the detail in each of the prior three quarters this year and because some of you have let us know that you appreciated this detail we’d like to just take a few minutes to walk through the detailed results from enterprise and education, highlight some nuances in a couple of those things, and then in the future I think we can just go ahead and put these results in the back in future quarters and you’ll be able to track them yourselves. So I hope you’ll be okay that we go through the detail. In the enterprise division, which accounted for 76% of the company’s total revenue in fiscal 2019, adjusted EBITDA grew 39% or $7.2 million to $25.5 million. Again, represents the combination of the same factors, high-single-digit revenue growth, very high flow-through of this incremental revenue to adjusted EBITDA driven by high gross margins and lowering SG&A as a percentage of revenue. As you can see in Slide 9, the enterprise division’s revenue for the year as reported grew 7.2% or $11.5 million to $170.6 million compared to $159 million last year. In constant currency the enterprise division’s revenue grew $13.3 million or 8.4% to $172.4, meeting or just a little exceeding our expectation. All Access Pass and related sales grew 29.4% for the year and 20% in the fourth quarter. Invoiced sales pre-adjustment for FX increased 6.5% for the year and again, as already noted, the increases in invoiced sales in the fourth quarter almost all went onto the balance sheet as reflected in the – because they were subscription sales and they’ll be recognized throughout the year. So that meant the reported revenue grew only 1% in the fourth quarter, but that’s because it all went onto the balance sheet. Our balance of billed and unbilled deferred revenue grew 23% or $12.7 million to $68.5 million at year-end from $55.7 million at the end of 2018. That was broken down between billed deferred increasing 19.1% to $39.3 million and the unbilled deferred increasing 28% to $29.1 million. So the combination of these provides a really strong foundation for our future growth, and contract revenue again grew 5.8% but declined a little in the fourth quarter, reflecting that whereas in the last few years multi-year sales have occurred primarily in the fourth quarter we now have a process where multi-year sales are spread pretty much evenly throughout the year. As to the flow-through to adjusted EBITDA as you can see in Slide 10, approximately 62% of this increase in revenue in the enterprise division flowed through to adjusted EBITDA resulting in adjusted EBITDA growth of $7.2 million or 39% for the year, or $8 million and 44% in constant currency. The same two factors were behind this high flow-through. Strong gross margins, these enterprise division stayed at the high level of 74.4% that it achieved last year despite growing its service revenues. And as a result, gross margin dollars increased $8.8 million or 7.5% pre-FX adjustment, a little over 8% adjusted for that. The second operating SG&A as a percentage of sales, also continued to improve. You can see that operating SG&A as a percentage of sales was 59.5% this year. That was 329 basis points lower than last year’s 62.7%, and improved actually significantly in the fourth quarter again. So as noted, adjusted EBITDA as you can see was for the enterprise increase 39.2% or $7.2 million to $25.5 million before adjusting for changes in foreign exchange, with 62% of increased sales flowing through to increase in EBITDA. And in constant currency the growth was 44% or $8 million to $26.3 million. In the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA increased 31% or $2.5 million to $10.7 million from $8.2 in last year’s fourth quarter. So the momentum in the enterprise division continues to be very strong. It’s across all the parts of the operation, international direct offices, international operations generally as well as domestic. If you’ll have patience we’ll just go through quickly also, so you get the detail of the education division. Same idea. These same factors were at play in the education division, which accounted for approximately 22% of our total revenue in fiscal 2019. Education division’s adjusted EBITDA grew 31.1% or $800,000 to $3.6 million, and in constant currency grew even faster, 37% or $1 million, again, reflecting those same factors. As you can see in Slide 11, education division’s revenue grew 8% to $48.9 million in constant currency grew 8.4%. As with enterprise, reported education division revenues in the fourth quarter were flat to last year as strong growth in subscription sales put more deferred revenue on the balance sheet and the transition to 606 accounting which benefited the education division’s top and bottom lines in the first quarter, reduced top and bottom lines by approximately the same amounts in the fourth quarter. Under last year’s accounting standard, revenue in the education division would have grown 7% in the fourth quarter. And just of note, the education division’s deferred revenue balance increased 22% at year-end to $19.7 million and grew $11.3 million or 149% over the balance of the end of the third quarter, reflecting the large amount of sales and subscription sales which the education division makes in the last quarter. There was a high flow-through with high gross margins of 62%, again, really good improvement in the operating SG&A as a percentage of sales which came in 244 basis points better than last year. And in the fourth quarter, came in 465 basis points better. This again resulted in 31% growth in adjusted EBITDA and 37% growth in the fourth quarter. So again we’re really excited about the breadth, the strength of both operations and the ability that was broad-based within each of the divisions. So now, having gone through the financials, let me just touch on the other two points. Factor 2 which you’re going to see in Slide 13, indicates – is that our high margin subscription-related sales are driving the strength of our results. This revenue is growing rapidly, it’s very sticky. We’re retaining substantially all of it and it’s creating significant and durable lifetime customer value in both the enterprise and education divisions. As you can see in Slide 14, the company’s total subscription and related revenue grew 23% for the year. All Access Pass and related sales grew 29.4% and our number of paying All Access Pass subscribers grew more than 20% compared to last year. As we reported in the past, All Access Pass is not only growing rapidly but it’s achieving key subscription metrics that are putting us in the company of some of the top subscription companies. As shown in Slide 15, these metrics include an annual revenue retention rate which again exceeded 90%, an add-on services rate that increased to 45% – this is highly correlated with high customer retention because they’re hiring us to do things that really – that are must-win games for them and they’re willing to hire services to help make sure they get done. They’re building new leaders, driving high levels of guest satisfaction or sales performance, building trust throughout a whole organization. We also have a relatively large initial purchase price which reflects the relatively large size of the population for which All Access Pass is typically purchased. It also establishes the foundation for strong unit level economics, and we have a customer acquisition cost which is less than 1-to-1. We are also with All Access Pass, as you can see on the next slide, 16, creating high lifetime customer value. This combination of a strong purchase price, high gross margins, add-on services and sticky annual revenue retention on all of the revenue, both subscription and services, is giving – is really creating a high lifetime customer value – solutions at addressing our customers’ most intractable performance challenges, challenges which require significant and lasting change in human behavior at scale. Where they want it across their entire organization. Helping organizations successfully address these important challenges creates strategic durability and means they’re with us. They’re on problems that are worth solving. That’s why they’re increasingly entering into multi-year contracts and adding services. As indicated in Slide 17, just one example, a large financial services company partners with us to provide leadership development to their leaders all over the world. In 2019 they expanded their All Access Pass to a 1,000-leader, multi-year pass and also purchased more than $100,000 in additional add-on services. Recently we launched our new Unconscious Bias offering and while that was something they wanted not only for their leaders, but they wanted to add to pretty much their whole population. And so in addition to their All Access Pass 1,000-leader pass, they added a special single content pass called the Unconscious Bias offering which they can add onto an All Access Pass to go to over 10,000 employees. They also extended the term of both their All Access Pass and their Unconscious Bias pass for another three years. Maybe I’d just make a note that because there are a number of All Access Pass holders who are considering significant single-content additions to their passes to reach their front-line employees, and this happens let’s say where they’re training all the leaders in sales performance but they want to take the solution to every salesperson, or they’re training all their leaders with an All Access Pass to drive customer loyalty but they decide they want to take our leading customer loyalty pass to every front line employee our Unconscious Bias, our clients are increasingly adding on populations in specific content areas. Because of this, it will tend over time to skew the year-over-year comparability of our number of paid subscribers because you’ll have some of these people who are buying large populations for a specific content area at a relatively lower price. And so for that reason in the future we will continue to report our total All Access Pass and related revenues but will not be giving it the exact number of add-ons, of subscribers, just because it’s going to skew it and make it look like we’re doing better than we – you know, I mean, we think we’re doing great on All Access Pass but it will skew that number. We want to keep it clean on what we’re really selling which is the All Access Pass. In addition to generating highlights on customer value, All Access Pass has two elements that create structural durability. First, All Access Pass purchasers contract and pay for their subscription at least a full year in advance. And second, as you can see on Slide 18, an increasing percentage of passholders are entering into multi-year contracts. For fiscal 2019, 32% of passholder organizations entered into multi-year contracts up from 21% a year ago. There is an even larger number that has some extended-term contract that might be 18 months or whatever, but we’re just going to be reporting here on actual multi-year contracts. Just one last thing, the education division enjoys a similar virtuous cycle of lifetime customer value, and is achieving similar quality metrics with our Leader in Me subscription model which is our primary K through 12 offering in our education division. In fiscal 2019, our number of paid Leader in Me schools around the globe increased 20% from 3,500 last year to 4,200 this year. And we enjoy a very high retention rate of our Leader in Me schools. For fiscal 2019 we finished the year with a retention rate of 88% on a global basis, up from 86% last year. Our licensee partners also enjoy a high retention rate of their Leader in Me schools and finished the school with a retention rate of 91%. Similar to how the All Access Pass is able to continue to expand within an enterprise, Leader in Me is able to expand within a school district. Even with the strong growth we’ve had in education, Leader in Me is only in 850 of the approximately 15,000 school districts in North America and given that on average where we are in a district we only had two Leader in Me schools per district, it provides a really great beachhead but a tremendous upside in headroom for growth. The example that we share how the district can handle this, in Slide 19, you can just see in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, in an effort to reinvent the former steel-based economy, the business community and the United Way partnered together with the school district to bring Leader in Me to all of its schools for workforce development and even to improve literacy. It began with a single Leader in Me school with 450 students eight years ago. Over the past eight years it has expanded to 33 schools with 24,600 students, with a stated plan to bring the Leader in Me to all 50 of its schools with 74,000 schools. When they get that done they then plan to expand it to other neighboring districts. The community is thrilled with the results, as are the parents, the teachers, and they are achieving – what they are achieving is evidenced by their desire to bring Leader in Me to all of the schools and the expand it to other districts. Slide 20 is just illustrative of the idea that bringing a combination of top-tier growth in subscription-related sales with top-tier subscription economics and customer metrics and at the same time generating high rates of growth in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow is really rare to get all three. For us achieving the intersection of these three factors accelerates our opportunity to create significant increases in value for our shareholders. Finally, factor number three, is that we’re aggressively taking advantage of the compelling sales force expansion opportunity which is created by the enormous size of our total addressable market and by the strong unit expansion economics that are created by our business model. So as you can see in Slide 21 as we’ve discussed in prior quarters, we have a lot of headroom for growth with an approximately one-year payback period on our investment in new client partner. Our sales force growth economics are very compelling. As you can see, in Slide 22, we have been and are aggressively taking advantage of this opportunity. Last year at this time we said that we expect to add at least 20 new client partners in fiscal 2019 and the total of 75 net new client partners by the end of fiscal 2021. That would bring our total base of client partners from 214 at the start of fiscal 2019 to 234 by the end of fiscal 2019 and to 289 by the end of fiscal 2021. We made a lot of progress toward these objectives in fiscal 2019 where we added 31 net new client partners and at the end of the year, a bit ahead of where we thought with 245. Importantly our various cohorts of sales hires are also benefiting from the high lifetime customer value being generated by our subscription offerings and we’re achieving a ramp rate above that shown in Slide 22 also on the right-hand side. So in conclusion, Slide 23, three factors are driving our accelerated growth. Again, the idea of very high flow-through; rapidly growing subscription revenue that’s sticky, and strategically and structurally durable; and third, that we’re taking advantage of the ability to grow our sales force very rapidly going forward. So we believe that the combination of these factors has put us on a great trajectory for achieving significant continued high growth of adjusted EBITDA and cash flow in fiscal 2020, 2021, 2022 and beyond, and that these three key factors will continue to drive significant shareholder value. Before I turn the time over to Steve to talk about our guidance, I just want to mention that both the enterprise division and education divisions have achieved and are expected to continue to achieve significant growth. And they’re becoming more and more like each other. Both have subscription business models with add-on services. Both have similar key performance indicators including generating new subscription sales, adding new local schools, achieving high annual recurring subscription revenue and successfully hiring and ramping up new client partners. Both divisions also have direct office and licensee operations, both are making significant technology investments in portals, and otherwise both draw on our strong central services operations, IT, human resources and other capabilities. And again, both are doing really well. As well as they’re doing, we believe that there are some exciting opportunities to further accelerate the growth of both divisions by establishing more uniform best practices across divisions and by better leveraging our central innovations, IT and support functions. We believe that this kind of coordination can both accelerate growth and further increase profitability for both divisions and for the company overall. To facilitate this progress in addition to Paul Walker’s responsibilities as president of the enterprise division, we’ve asked him to serve as president and chief operating officer for the company overall to help us take advantage of these opportunities for leveraging capabilities and resources across divisions. As you know, the enterprise division accounts for approximately 80% of Franklin Covey’s overall revenues and also utilizes the vast majority of the company’s innovation and central services. Paul will continue to serve as president of the enterprise division and Sean Covey, who’s done a phenomenal job rebuilding our education division, will continue to serve as president of the education division and is the key member of our innovations and book strategy committees where he has made huge contributions over many years. Both Paul and Sean will continue to serve as key members of our executive team. I want to recognize the tremendous job both Sean and Paul have done and are doing in running their respective divisions and congratulate Paul on his appointment as president and chief operating officer for the company overall. So we appreciate your support and the efforts of our approximately 1,000 associates and 80 licensee partners throughout the world, and are really excited about our opportunities and the trajectory we’re on. We had our kickoff meeting not long ago and everybody agreed that this is a great time to be at Franklin Covey. And we really feel that. Steve, I’ll turn it to you for guidance. Thank you very much.