Earnings Labs

IDT Corporation (IDT)

Q3 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Jun 4, 2008

$52.41

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to IDT Corporation’s third quarter 2008 earnings report conference call. (Operator Instructions) I will now turn the call over to the company.

James A. Courter

Management

I am here with IDT’s CFO, Steve Brown, to discuss IDT’s earnings for its third fiscal quarter which ended April 30, 2008. Thank you for joining us. Steve and I will begin by making some general observations on the quarter’s results and then we will take your questions. For those of you on tight schedules, we plan to wrap this call up in about an hour. Before we begin please recall that any forward-looking statements we may make during the course of this call, either in our prepared remarks or in the Q&A period that follows, whether general or specific in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those which we anticipate. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, specific risks and uncertainties discussed in the reports that we file periodically with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements that we have made or may make, or to update you on the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that we forecast. Now let’s get started. During the third quarter of 2008 IDT cut costs and restructured operations at an accelerated pace. Although none of us are pleased with an $82 million loss, we made significant progress during the quarter, executing a comprehensive plan to produce positive cash flow from operations for the corporation during fiscal 2009. The direction of that line is functional with and consists of four basic strategies: one, selling, spinning off, or shutting down nearly all businesses that won’t help us meet our goal; two, reducing our corporate overhead; three, streamlining our core businesses; and four, making modest investments in very limited number of closely managed opportunities. We are selling, spinning off, or shutting down underperforming…

Stephen R. Brown

Management

I will update you on IDT’s financial performance for the third quarter of fiscal 2008 and then we will move on to questions. On a consolidated basis we lost $82.2 million in our third quarter. In light of the size of this loss, and particularly on the heels of last quarter’s $62.5 million loss, I would like to start by discussing our cash position. Our consolidated cash, cash equivalents, cash equivalents multiple securities and investments, were at the end of the quarter $393.9 million, down by %16.7 million compared with the balance at the end of last quarter. Here is an overview of the key sources and uses of cash. Operating cash flow was positive $6 million, including our collection of about $43 million from the previously announced Altese One arbitration award. This was offset by approximately $50 million in expenditures, which included $22 million used to purchase our building at 520 Broad Street, $15 million which was used to pay down capital leases and borrowings, $4 million of CapEx, $4 million for acquisitions, and about $1 million spent on our stock repurchase program, and in addition also about $4 million of combined realized and realized net losses. So offsetting this $50 million of expenditures, our cash balance was enhanced by a $15 million repayment to us of the note receivable and $8 million of positive cash flow from our debt collection business. Now to the income statement. I will go segment by segment, quarter-over-quarter, which is Q3, this quarter, versus Q2, last quarter. Retail telecommunications revenues decreased quarter-by-quarter by 10% to $183 million this quarter from $203 million last quarter, mostly due to a decline in usage revenues in the US prepaid calling card business. This, of course, was the result of our continual lost market share mostly caused…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Hal Weber.

Hal Weber

Analyst

A couple of questions in regards to the cash position. Based on where your stock is, our stock, unfortunately the current cash position appears to be twice the market value of the company. I’m not very convinced about where we’re going with this. After being a long-term shareholder and continuing to be, for myself and for many of my clients, I’m hoping to see some more aggressive, positive behavior here, to help bring credibility back to our situation. I was hoping you could add something to that. And the second question is in regards to previously had these issues about the ocean rate securities, where are you standing with that, have there been adjustments made to that, how much of the stuff has been called out, are you there, where are you in this area, could you elaborate on that as well.

James A. Courter

Management

Yes. I will have Steve go the substance of both those two questions. Liore Alroy who is the new CEO is here to answer questions so if people have questions with regards to telecommunications, he’s here, and he’s the new CEO, we’re happy to have him. So with regard to the cash, that equates to the price share, Steve, and also the second part of the question.

Stephen R. Brown

Management

Well, as you didn’t ask a question I guess you are commenting that some of the pieces of the company seem to be worth a whole lot more than the value of the stock price. I think that’s a fair comment. The company, right now, is extremely focused. I think one of the overhangs on the stock is people, some investors or Wall Street may be afraid that we have been reckless with our money, which I would disagree with. But there is concern that those cash balances will continue to go down. And I will give assurance there’s been several concentrations on bringing this company to hopefully, in the short term, back to a cash-positive situation. But there has been a tremendous emphasis on getting rid of speculative businesses that are unprofitable, that are not bringing shareholders value, and downsizing corporate costs, which we have done significantly. And that has been a major focus, will continue to be a major focus. And I think the financial results we certainly hope that they start showing up starting next quarter. Obviously Rome wasn’t built in one day. But I think the results of what we are doing will show and I think investor confidence will come back and hopefully they will see the same thing that you do, is that the sum of the pieces are worth a whole lot more, that some number of the pieces, the potential of our telecom business, the potential of our oil shale business coming back. And I think Liore would like to add to that.

Liore Alroy

Analyst

The point is well taken and it has occurred to us as well and it’s occurred to third parties as well. A number of which we are talking with about if we can’t get the value at the shareholder level, can we get it in transactions for parts of the businesses, at least the parts that I’m focusing on, and there are a number of those conversations going on as we speak. So we’re clearly aware of the disparity.

Stephen R. Brown

Management

To go to your second question. Are we free to, the balance sheet, cash equivalents and multiple securities, we have a little market risk over there and not subject to the securities. Long term investments of approximately $124 million. We put $43 million of those into current assets so it was a very good cause we invested in but we have to liquidate those funds to lower the amount of long-term investments. The remaining $81 million are all performing funds that we continue to have tremendous confidence in, that have performed even in this market and anything that we considered risky we divested of long ago.

Hal Weber

Analyst

I’m sorry but I’m not really clear on that. You had had a very large amount of ARS before.

Stephen R. Brown

Management

We have pretty much exited those positions.

Hal Weber

Analyst

So this 393 number is a current asset cash value number?

Stephen R. Brown

Management

Correct and liquidable.

Hal Weber

Analyst

Well, when we say marketable it means available for, a marketable, liquidable.

Stephen R. Brown

Management

It depends on exactly what the marketable securities are. But they are in securities that are low risk and protecting our principal is the most important part of our decision.

Hal Weber

Analyst

So let me ask you. The stock is now trading right at the moment at $2.40. I don’t know if you’re aware of that or not. At the very moment we are speaking. Are you guys going to commit some more money to buying back the stock at these ridiculous prices?

James A. Courter

Management

That’s something we always think about and talk about. We have the Board authorization for significant buy back but on the other hand we want to look at the cash situation because we have had two quarters that spent a lot of money. So we’re not in the situation as we were a few years ago with a billion dollars in cash. So we are going to look at it very, very carefully and if in our judgment it’s appropriate to spend some of our cash resources for buy back, we will.

Hal Weber

Analyst

It would seem to me that watching the stock go down 90% that if the cash in hand is double the price of the stock we should be, where can you get 100% return on your money today? Based on previous results of the past years it would seem quite the contrary. I think shareholders, you guys included.

James A. Courter

Management

Yes, we are. Indeed we are significant shareholders.

Hal Weber

Analyst

I’m aware of that. I mean, we’re out here in the trenches dying with this and people say what’s going on.

James A. Courter

Management

We appreciate your patience. We think we have a turn around. These things can’t happen over night. With regards to the buy back, it’s something we discuss almost on a weekly basis.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Clayton Moran - Stanford Group. Clayton Moran – Stanford Group Company: I was hoping you could comment some more on the telecom assets. Steve had mentioned evaluating a bunch of options, none of which included selling any assets, but then Liore seemed to imply that the sale of assets is possible. What are you exploring in regards to the telecom assets? Is there a potential liquidating event?

Liore Alroy

Analyst

I don’t know that I want to go into too much detail, but we have a number of conversations going on. Some of them are fairly narrow with respect to specific initiatives, some of them are significantly broader and they are all things we are working on in tandem with the cost cutting, streamlining.

Stephen R. Brown

Management

IDT has a long history of always looking at opportunities to modify its assets. If we think the money we would receive would be in excess of the long-term cash flow from the business. It has never been a business that IDT is so married to that it doesn’t look at those opportunities and I think that’s pretty much always going to be our strategy. Clayton Moran – Stanford Group Company: One thing I could use some help understanding is some of the recent bonuses, the severance and retention payments. Some seem rather large. For instance, a $3.3 million severance to the former CEO of Telecom. That doesn’t include an extra $400,000 from consulting. Why are these large bonus and severance payments in a situation where you obviously see nothing but deteriorating results?

James A. Courter

Management

A number of months ago, probably about two years ago, we were in conversations between the former CEO of Telecom and myself and Howard Jonas the chairman of the company and what we wanted to do was work out an agreement with the Telecom group and incentivize them similar to a private equity firm. In other words it would be based on their success [inaudible] and the executive management team would receive a percentage of that. Or if they sold assets, and that was primarily put together to do that, they would receive a benefit by the sale. That agreement basically preordained the termination pages when we unwound it. We looked at where we were we realized that there was a greater upside than a down side going forward. Some of our perspective purchasers stock went down and therefore they didn’t want to sell a greater percentage of their company than they anticipated and so that particular sale was not achieved. Then as Howard and I looked at the Telecommunications and where we were, we thought very seriously that this was an undivided asset that the calling card business could only go up. That the carrier business would continue to improve and that we had basically hit the bottom when it came to computations and we were going to be profitable as we went forward, decided to put in a new team that were more operationally oriented. And therefore we made a management change and the packages that were given as I mentioned before, were dictated by the agreements that we entered into about 18 months ago. Clayton Moran – Stanford Group Company: So the old team was more focused on building the asset value and the new team is more focused on operating results?

James A. Courter

Management

No. The new team is certainly focused on profitability. The old team was more focused, in my mind; they were particularly focused on monetization.

Stephen R. Brown

Management

Members of the old team have been very successful in many of our transactions. If you look at their employment history, at least the ones that have been officers, their severance was tied into their prior compensation, as a company policy.

James A. Courter

Management

They’re highly skilled people that contributed a lot to the company. But their skill sets were different than the skill sets we wanted as we go forward.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions.

James A. Courter

Management

Thank you very much. We will talk to you next quarter.