Operator
Operator
Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer section of today's conference call. Now I will hand the meeting over to your host, Ms. Rachel Stern, Senior Vice President, Strategic Resources and General Counsel. Ms. Stern, you may begin. Rachel R. Stern - Secretary, General Counsel & Senior Vice President-Strategic Resources: Thank you, operator. Good morning and thanks to all of you for participating today. Welcome to FactSet's third quarter 2015 earnings conference call. This conference call is being transcribed in real time by FactSet's CallStreet service and is being broadcast live via the Internet at FactSet.com. A replay of this call will also be available on our website. Our call will contain forward-looking statements reflecting management's expectations based on currently available information. Actual results may differ materially. More information about factors that could affect FactSet's business and financial results can be found in FactSet's filings with the SEC. Annual Subscription Value, or ASV, is a key metric for FactSet. Please recall that ASV is a snapshot view of client subscriptions and represents our forward-looking revenues for the next 12 months. Lastly, FactSet undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Joining me today are: Phil Hadley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Philip Snow, President; and Maurizio Nicolelli, FactSet's Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to turn the discussion over now to Maurizio Nicolelli, Chief Financial Officer. At the end of his remarks, we will have time for questions. Please limit your remarks to only one question and one follow-up so that we will have enough time to address questions effectively. Maurizio Nicolelli - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Thank you, Rachel, and good morning, everyone. Here are the items that we will cover – that we will review for this call. First, I'll review the third quarter results. Second, I'll cover guidance for the upcoming fourth quarter. Lastly, we'll close by addressing your questions. Please note one housekeeping item. Included in our third quarter results was a tax benefit of $1.4 million, or $0.03 per share, from finalizing previous years' tax returns and other discrete income tax items. Amounts I disclose as adjusted exclude this tax benefit in order to present comparable figures with the prior year. A full reconciliation from GAAP to non-GAAP figures can be found in the table on page nine of our earnings release. Let's now proceed with our third quarter results. FactSet performed very well in the third quarter, as organic ASV grew $17 million compared to $12 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2014. With this performance, our organic ASV growth rate rose to 8.9%, up from 6.8% a year ago. In Q3, revenues, client count, user count, and adjusted EPS all grew to new highs. This growth translated into higher operating margins at 33.5% and a 14% increase in adjusted EPS to $1.42. Buy-side clients, who include off-platform data sales and the Market Metrics business, accounted for 82.8% of ASV, while the remaining 17.2% of ASV was generated by our sell-side clients, which include M&A advisory, capital market, and equity research businesses. In terms of geography, our U.S. operations totaled $688 million in ASV, while international operations accounted for $333 million, or 33% of the total. Let's now turn to free cash flow. We define free cash flow as cash generated from operations less capital spending. Over the last three months we generated $99 million in free cash flow, our highest quarterly total ever. Over the last 12 months, free cash flow was $273 million, up 8%. Free cash flow increased during the quarter due to higher levels of net income and an improvement in our working capital, primarily from higher levels of client receivable collection. Our DSOs were 33 days at the end of the third quarter, down from 34 days in the prior-year period. Our cash and investment balance was $183 million, up $36 million during the quarter. We continued our strong commitment to capital return in the third quarter while investing in the growth of our business. This quarter we spent $70 million on share repurchases. As of quarter end, $213 million remained available for future share repurchases. We also paid regular quarterly dividend of $16 million. When aggregating regular quarterly dividends paid and shares repurchased over the last 12 months, we have returned $317 million to stockholders. During the third quarter, we also increased our annual dividend by 13% to $1.76 per share, further increasing future returns to stockholders. Common shares outstanding were 41.5 million at the end of the quarter. Now let me walk you through our P&L. Revenues grew in the third quarter to $254.5 million. Organic revenues accelerated to 8.9%, our highest growth rate in the last three years. Operating income was $85.4 million, an increase of 12% over last year's adjusted operating income. Adjusted net income grew 13% to $60 million and excludes the previously mentioned income tax benefit of $1.4 million. Adjusted diluted EPS grew 13.6% to $1.42. In the current year third quarter, our U.S. revenues rose to $172.1 million. Excluding acquisitions, our U.S. revenue growth was 8.6%. Non-U.S. revenues rose to $82.4 million. Excluding the impact of foreign currency, international revenue growth rate was 10.5%. Revenues in the third quarter from our European and Asia-Pacific regions were $63.2 million and $19.3 million respectively. Excluding foreign currency effects, year-over-year growth rates were 9% in Europe and 15.6% in Asia-Pacific. Let's now review the growth drivers for this quarter. Our Portfolio Analytics suite of products continues to be a strong performer for us. In particular, our clients and prospects have realized the value of these applications and their capabilities in analyzing securities and portfolios based on a variety of asset classes. This quarter, we continue to see growth in our equity attribution and risk products, multi-asset class risk products, and fixed income portfolio analysis. Net user count for FactSet terminals increased by 1,600 users or 3% and totaled 59,000 at quarter end. Our user increase during the just completed quarter was our highest Q3 growth since the third quarter of 2011 (sic) [2010]. FactSet expanded in both its buy and sell side user bases. We also increased users within the corporate marketplace, primarily through partnerships with third parties. Client growth was strong this quarter, as we added 47 net new clients compared to 30 last year. New client growth in our buy-side business drove the majority of the increase. The client retention picture improved in Q3. In terms of number of clients, the retention rate increased to 94%, which is our highest ever retention rate. Consistent with prior quarters, our annual client retention rate was greater than 95% of ASV. Our wealth management products continue also to gain traction in our client base and thus are delivering positive returns for FactSet. Our clients operating in both large and small groups continue to find that our workstation effectively meets their needs in servicing their clients on a daily basis. Lastly, our sell-side business continued to expand due to growth in sales to middle market firms. Overall ASV from our sell-side clients grew at a rate of over 10%, reflecting a healthy M&A backdrop and the strength of our banking workstation and incremental value-added products. Now let's take a look at the expense side. Total operating expenses were $169.2 million, up $10 million from last year, while our operating margin increased to 33.5% from 31.5% in the prior-year period. Cost of services, expressed as a percentage of revenues, increased by 50 basis points compared to the year-ago period. The increase was driven by higher employee compensation, partly offset by lower third-party data fees and a prior-year stock-based compensation charge of $1.4 million from vesting performance-based stock options. Employee compensation expense grew, as we expanded head count by 9% year-over-year, primarily from new hires and acquired employees in connection with the Code Red acquisition. Lower data costs were the result of refinement and automation of our conference call transcription process. SG&A expenses, expressed as a percentage of revenues, decreased by 250 basis points in the third quarter compared to the year-ago period due to lower compensation expense from employees performing SG&A roles and decreased legal fees due to a $1.6 million legal charge in the prior year resulting from a claim settlement. Our head count at quarter end was 6,951, down 27 employees in the past three months but up 9% over last year. Q3 is traditionally not a heavy hiring quarter because many new consultants and engineers start in Q4 after college graduation. Consistent with previous years, we anticipate that our upcoming fourth quarter will be a strong quarter for new hires. We are also proud to point out that FactSet was recognized as one of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For, marking our seventh appearance on the list in the last eight years. The third quarter effective tax rate was 28.5%, down from 29.8% a year ago due to $1.4 million in income tax benefits related to the finalization of previous years' tax returns and other discrete tax items. Excluding discrete income tax benefits from both periods, our current year annual effective tax rate was 30.1% compared to 30.5% in the year-ago period. Now let's turn to our guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015. We expect revenues will range between $259 million and $263 million. Operating margin should range between 33% and 34%. We expect our annual effective tax rate to range between 30% and 31%. Diluted EPS is expected to range between $1.46 and $1.48. The midpoint of the range suggests 12% year-over-year growth. In conclusion, we had another very healthy quarter. Our ASV growth rate continued to accelerate. We delivered at the upper end of all the metrics in our guidance, and adjusted EPS rose 14%. Adjusted EPS has expanded by double-digit percentages in every quarter over the last five years. This strong record has resulted in a high level of free cash flow and, in turn, increases our capital returned to shareholders. Our dividend increased this quarter by 13%. And including share repurchases, $317 million has been returned to shareholders over the last 12 months. More importantly, our business model has proved to be very strong and is supported by future investment and a seasoned management team. We like our position. We're excited about the prospects to continue to accelerate share gains over the long term. Thank you, and we are now ready for your questions.