Earnings Labs

Iron Mountain Incorporated (IRM)

Q2 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 1, 2013

$112.62

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Lashanda, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Iron Mountain Q2 2013 Earnings Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to turn today's call over to Ms. Melissa Marsden. Ms. Marsden, you may begin your conference.

Melissa Marsden

Analyst

Thank you, and welcome, everyone, to our second quarter 2013 earnings conference call. I'm Melissa Marsden, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. And this morning, we'll hear from Bill Meaney, our CEO, who will discuss highlights and strategic initiatives; followed by Brian McKeon, our CFO, who will cover financial results and guidance. Stephen Golden, VP, IR, is also with us today. After prepared remarks, we'll open up the phones for Q&A. Per our custom, we have a user-controlled slide presentation available at the Investor Relations page of our website at www.ironmountain.com. Referring now to Slide 2. Today's earnings call and slide presentation will contain a number of forward-looking statements, most notably our outlook for 2013 financial performance. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to today's press release, the Safe Harbor language on this slide and our most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and 10-Q for a discussion of the major risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ from those in our forward-looking statements. In addition, we use several non-GAAP measures when presenting our financial results. The reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures, as required by Reg G, can be found at the Investor Relations page of our website, as well as in today's press release. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Bill Meaney.

William L. Meaney

Analyst

Thank you, Melissa, and many -- and my thanks to everyone joining us today, and good morning. Our second quarter results reflect our focus on sustaining the durability of the business in supporting our future growth. Total revenues were $755 million, adjusted OIBDA was $233 million and adjusted earnings per share was $0.29 per share. These amounts include a $5 million legal accrual noted in our press release. Prior to this accrual, our financial performance was in line with our expectations for both the quarter and the year-to-date. Operating performance is also tracking in line with our expectations, with consistent storage rental constant dollar growth of 3% and storage rental internal growth of 2.3% for the quarter. As we've indicated in recent quarters, the trend towards lower levels of retrieval and refile activity and related transportation services in developed markets continues. But also as expected, service declines moderated somewhat during the second quarter, and our solid storage rental revenue growth continued to offset service declines and support our consistent profit results. Overall, our full year outlook for operating performance remains the same, aside from the impact of foreign currency exchange rates. Before Brian reviews our financial performance, I'd like to discuss our initiatives to continue to support the durability of our core business and the growth opportunities we're seeing in both our developed and emerging markets and progress on our plans to convert to a REIT. As a reminder, when I refer to developed markets for Iron Mountain, that includes not only our North American markets of Canada and the United States, but Australia and the U.K. as well. It also includes Western Europe, where our team continues to deliver solid results, with good volume growth and improved profitability. This is despite a lackluster macroeconomic environment across Europe. As I…

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

Thanks, Bill. Let's turn now to Slide 3, which highlights the key messages from today's review. We delivered good operating results in Q2, in line with our expectations, reflecting consistent storage rental growth and solid profit performance, supported by international margin gains. Overall, our growth trends were consistent. Storage rental grew 3% on a constant dollar basis in the quarter, supported by consistent gains in North America and 7% growth in International, including benefits from recent acquisitions in Brazil, France and North America. Durable storage gains continue to be partially offset by declines in query-based core service activity. Core service growth declines improved relative to Q1, as expected, reflecting more favorable comparisons in international markets but remain a headwind to our overall growth. Underlying adjusted OIBDA performance was solid in Q2, supported by continued international margin gains and sustained cost controls. Our Q2 and year-to-date adjusted OIBDA and adjusted EPS results were impacted by a legal accrual recorded in the quarter of $5 million or $0.02 per share. Excluding the legal accrual impact, adjusted OIBDA is up 1% year-to-date, in line with our full year goals. Today, we're updating our full year 2013 performance outlook to reflect changes in FX exchange rates since the beginning of the year. The strengthening of the dollar since the beginning of the year is projected to reduce full-year reported revenues between 1% and 1.5%, with relatively similar impacts in adjusted OIBDA. I'll speak more to these updates later in my remarks. Let's move on to Slide 4 to review our financial results in more detail. Slide 4 compares our results for this quarter to the second quarter of 2012. As noted, Q2 results were as expected. Enterprise revenues grew 1.3% on a constant dollar basis, as our International segment continued to produce strong revenue…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of George Tong with Piper Jaffray.

George K. Tong - Piper Jaffray Companies, Research Division

Analyst

Storage volumes growth this quarter, it appears decelerated from the prior several quarters. How much of this was driven by reduced growth benefits from your acquisition of Grupo Store in Brazil versus a fundamental change in volume trends that you're seeing?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

The acquisition impact was the primary driver. We completed the Grupo Store acquisition in Q2 of last year, and so we're completing the benefit that we got from that relatively larger acquisition. The fundamental trends in the rest of the business, very similar. The -- as we noted actually, the service growth rate improved a bit on a comparable basis. We knew we had some unfavorable lapping last quarter that we worked through. And basically, our storage growth rates were consistent. I did note that the North America pricing number was a little bit lower than we've been, and that's more of a year-on-year comparison. We're expecting kind of 1.5% net pricing gains in records management in North America for the full year and for the back half.

George K. Tong - Piper Jaffray Companies, Research Division

Analyst

Great. That's helpful. And as a follow-up, you're seeing improving trends in the services business. Do you expect to see services revenue declines to continue to moderate throughout the year? And any chance services growth can turn positive on a constant currency basis?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

Yes, it's a good question. I would say the trends are similar. I think we -- it's a relatively better growth. It was down 1% constant dollar and that's more -- better than Q1, largely because Q1 had some comparison issues. We are seeing benefits from our growth in things like DMS and project-related revenue and continued expansion in the International business. We did note that the paper pricing has moved lower, so it was -- the SOP market price is now down to $138 a ton. And that will be a headwind back half of the year. So I'd be cautious about signaling an improvement because we're facing that dynamic. But overall, relatively similar trends and we're hoping that we can move this in a relatively more positive direction over time, as we continue to build out these other service lines and grow our international presence.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin McVeigh with Macquarie.

Kevin D. McVeigh - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Macquarie.

Hey, Brian, can you give us a little more background on the $5 million legal accrual that we got in the quarter?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · Macquarie.

Yes, we tend to not want to get into specifics on legal accruals, but we had a customer dispute that's been going on for a number of years, goes back a number of years, I should say, in terms of the time period we're looking at. And we're booking accrual related to that. It's not anything that is operationally oriented. And just given the size of it, Kevin, that's sort of a cumulative effect of something that's kind of impacted a number of years, it was large enough for us to highlight that so that we don't give you a distorted view of what our underlying operational trends are. But it's relatively unusual and just it's related more to a customer agreement.

Kevin D. McVeigh - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Macquarie.

Got it. And then I just want to make sure, and I think I heard you right, but the incremental step up in the E&P, that was all International? Because it -- in terms of the step up, because I think the range, if I had it right, was kind of $300 million to $800 million, now it's an incremental $500 million to $1 billion. That was kind of all International true up? Or it had nothing to do with potentially going out to 2015 on the REIT conversion, right?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · Macquarie.

Just to clarify the numbers, we originally had $1 billion to $1.5 billion, and we're taking it to $1.2 billion to $1.7 billion, so it's a $200 million increase. And it reflects -- just more detailed. As you might imagine, it's a complicated exercise trying to go back in time and calculate the exact kind of cumulative earnings and profits by country of what we've earned over time, and the increase reflects updated estimates for the International business. There isn't a change in terms of the time frame we're looking at. This is related to the countries that we anticipate converting in 2014 with our initial wave one, if you will, and assuming we're successful with the REIT process.

Kevin D. McVeigh - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Macquarie.

Got it. And then just any sense of timing from when you'll hear back from the IRS, just given the decision to move the investor day? Is that kind of a reasonable proxy that we should hear before the investor day, or around that, any sense of timing on when we'll get some type of clarity?

William L. Meaney

Analyst · Macquarie.

Kevin, we can't really say anything more than we've already said in the 8-K. So we just moved the investor day because we felt that doing it in October, if we haven't got clarity one way or the other, it would be a bit early to do that. So -- but I wouldn't read anything into it because we can't say more than we've already told you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Shui with Stifel Nicolaus. Steven Shui - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Can you guys give us the North America...

William L. Meaney

Analyst

Steven, can you speak up? Because we can't hear you. Steven Shui - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Can you guys give us the North America volume growth number and talk about how that's been trending versus expectations?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

Sure, the volume growth was down 0.2%, so relatively flat, consistent with recent trends and consistent with expectations and where we are. We're advancing a number of initiatives, including the vertical initiatives that Bill can talk to, that our goal is to improve that rate over time. But I would say the underlying trend is consistent with where we've been.

William L. Meaney

Analyst

Yes, there has -- it's almost dead on where we were for the year in 2012. But I think one of the reasons why we're talking about the verticals, and we highlighted 2 verticals where -- which are ones that we had stood up before we had made the major change, where we're actually showing positive storage growth, is because I think now, I think I've said on a previous call, is in the mature markets is that getting after the volume now is much more kind of underground mining, whereas before, maybe it was more like opencast. So we have to be much more precise and much more diligent. That being said, I will highlight that in every Western European country, we are in positive storage growth, on an internal basis. So it's -- the trend hasn't changed in North America, but we're making some changes along the vertical line to try to improve that performance. Steven Shui - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Okay, got it. And assuming there's no word on the PLR by the beginning of 2014, how will that affect how you manage the business going into the year in terms of your IT and legal systems? And maybe you can also give us some color on if there's a plan B if the PLR comes back negative.

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

So on your first question, I think we are, as noted, continue to advance work to do -- to be ready for our Jan 1, 2014 goal, and the systems that we're putting in place in terms of financial systems, things of that nature, will have benefit for our business regardless, in terms of kind of standard platforms and kind of standardized ways of looking at information. It's actually accelerated investments that we would've made as a company over time. So we'll see benefits from that going forward. As Bill noted, we can't really speculate at this point on timing of a process, but we think it's prudent to continue to move forward with those investments, and we'll get benefit in our business overall. In terms of a plan B, if you will, so if we were in a position that we weren't moving forward with converting to a REIT, just to reinforce some things that we've said in the past, we would be pursuing, as a company, the same business and capital allocation strategy. We expect to generate -- continue to generate substantial cash flow. We've indicated that we estimate we'd have about 70% of our free cash flow, x real estate the way that we defined it publicly, available for distribution to shareholders. That's a longer-term kind of an average, assuming a moderate level of M&A investment, $100 million to $150 million a year. And obviously, we don't convert, we wouldn't have the benefit of some of the tax savings that come from that, the discipline associated with the REIT structure. But we'd still have substantial flexibility to support financial payouts. And we'd expect to do that through a combination of a growing dividend, which right now is about 60% of our free cash flow, and likely, some level of share repurchases. So we haven't defined that plan specifically. But directionally, it's the same business and capital allocation strategy, we continue to generate substantial cash flow and we'd be continuing to drive payouts to shareholders, including a growing dividend.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan. Andrew C. Steinerman - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Brian, correct me if I'm right about this in kind of footnote #1 of your 2013 outlook, which is now 0% to 2% internal growth. That is a little bit of a bump up from the last estimate we had, which included a negative 1 at the low end. What's caused this kind of lean forwards?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

It's really rounding, Andrew. I think it's fundamentally the same outlook. We took the opportunity given the FX changes to kind of like fold through kind of relook overall. But I would say it's fundamentally the same outlook. We have -- we do have some incremental benefit from acquisition kind of flowing through. It's small, but it's nothing -- there isn't -- fundamentally, there isn't a change in sort of our operating outlook from where we were. It's consistent, excluding the FX changes. Andrew C. Steinerman - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Right, and what would be a D&A estimate for the year?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

I think we have that in the slides for you. It's... Andrew C. Steinerman - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: I missed that.

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

It's in the final appendix numbers. Right now, it's... Andrew C. Steinerman - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Okay, I didn't get up to the appendix, yet. And then just to make sure we model the FX correctly. Because that's what you're calling out here. You called it $40 million for the year. How much will FX have as a drag on third and fourth quarter in terms of growth rates?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

I believe it's about 1.5 points, 1 point to 1.5 points.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Justin Hauke with Robert W. Baird. Justin P. Hauke - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: I was wondering, so Brambles obviously announced that they're going to be spinning off Recall, as its own publicly traded entity. I guess my question is have you seen any change in strategy as they start to think about themselves as an independent entity? And also how does that maybe change the dynamic on the M&A opportunities that are out there, considering that they'll be infused with maybe a little bit more capital going forward?

William L. Meaney

Analyst

Well, I think it's too early to tell. I mean they've just made their announcement, although the company, you can say, has been in play or under discussion for a while. I think that net-net, from our standpoint, it's a good thing because I think having a company that is not in the dressing up stage for sale but rather operating in the public markets like we are, then I think we would expect them to be competing on a purely rational basis, not looking towards a transaction. So I think that's always a good thing from our standpoint. I think -- it's the -- so I think net-net for us, it's a positive. Whether or not they will be more aggressive in terms of acquisitions, I mean, they've been aggressive in terms of acquisitions before. They've always been competing with us in the past, and there's other people that compete with us in acquisitions. So I think overall, we welcome them to the forum of being a public company. Justin P. Hauke - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: Okay. And then Brian, just a quick one. What was the EBITDA contribution from the acquisitions that you completed this quarter? Do you have a number for this year or maybe a full year run rate?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

It's small for the full year. Acquisitions year-to-date, it's about $2 million additive. So it's -- and that's net of the initial integration cost. Obviously, those get more accretive over time.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer. Scott A. Schneeberger - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Brian, in the press release, it calls out the declines in service revenue moderating, one of the reasons being increased special records management project volume. Could you take us a level deeper on that, and if it's a trend that could persist?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst

Well, it's been a focus area for us for a while, but I think as we've -- it's early on, but as we increase the focus around serving vertical segments and having our sales organization aligned with them, I think we're identifying opportunities to customers, not just through storage, but through some transitions that they work in terms of how they're managing their organization. So it is something that we're hopeful to be a continued positive trend. And it's consistent with our business focus. So I think the -- I do want to reinforce, the kind of the main change from Q1 to Q2 is kind of get working through some tough lapping. We had some customer losses that we worked, in shredding in International, we worked through some of those things. But look, we're encouraged with their progress on their front, and we do have some ongoing headwinds that are -- kind of constrain growth. The query-based service activity continues to be a challenge, and right now, paper will be a bit of a challenge. But overall, we feel good that we're on the right track with the strategy. Scott A. Schneeberger - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: And then just looking across your major verticals, legal, health care, could you give us a feel -- and others, could you give us a feeling as to just trends within them, and in particular, health care?

William L. Meaney

Analyst

Well, I think in health care, I highlighted in the remarks that we're seeing about a 3% year-on-year growth in storage. But I think that if you look at the services, we continue to feel the headwinds. Because the service mainly, historically, in health care has been about active file or in terms of retrieving -- when hospitals need to retrieve people's medical files. And of course, that's going electronic. So what we've done now with the vertical is we've gone into new areas and mined deeper within the health care client -- customers, helping them make themselves paperless in their operations and get the paper out of there and stored properly. So much more of an archival trend. But as you see, it's -- we're getting significant year-on-year improvement in terms of the amount of storage volume we're getting. And I think I highlighted in the last call, bear in mind also that margin for us on storage is about 2x what it is on the service. So we continue to see a trend towards the electronic medical record, which takes away some of the service revenue that we had before on active file. But at the same time, we're getting into new areas, and helping our customers store even more offsite, and we like those trends. Scott A. Schneeberger - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Anything notably outstanding in legal or financial services, or has that been fairly consistent with the past?

William L. Meaney

Analyst

That's been pretty much consistent in the past. Those are 2 areas where the vertical -- we've stood up the verticals this year, so they're relatively new in those areas. So it's too early to really say how that is progressing. But I think, right now, it's trending pretty much consistent with the past.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Berg with Post Advisory Group.

Andrew Berg - Post Advisory Group, LLC

Analyst · Post Advisory Group.

Two questions, just housekeeping. Going back to the legal accrual, that goes back over how many years?

Brian P. McKeon

Analyst · Post Advisory Group.

It's over a decade.

Andrew Berg - Post Advisory Group, LLC

Analyst · Post Advisory Group.

Okay. And with respect to realigning the sales force in the different verticals, is that completed now across all verticals or are you still rolling that out among some?

William L. Meaney

Analyst · Post Advisory Group.

It's pretty much completed, but the one thing I just want to highlight is it's work in progress. Because as we stood them up, we look at making sure that we've picked the right verticals and we're getting the benefits that we want. So yes, we have done the realignment and we've set the organization up, but it's one of these things where we have clear metrics around each of those and we continue to evaluate them.

Andrew Berg - Post Advisory Group, LLC

Analyst · Post Advisory Group.

And from the ones you did earlier to the ones you did most recently, how much of a differential in performance are you seeing?

William L. Meaney

Analyst · Post Advisory Group.

Well, I think the 2 that I've highlighted, the ones that's been up the longest, which is both life sciences and health care, and we're seeing, as I said 3%, roughly 3% to 3.5% year-on-year storage growth in those 2. Overall in North America, as Brian highlighted earlier, we're down about 0.2% in terms of physical storage growth year-on-year. So you can see the difference that we're getting in those 2. But I'm not going to try to -- I think it would be dangerous to extrapolate across the board. But that's -- we are -- it is one, and it's not the only thing we're doing, but it is one of the things that we're doing to try to mimic similar performance that we're getting out of mature markets in Europe in terms of physical storage growth. As I said, this is much more like going from opencast mining to underground mining. Part of the tools and the drills that we're deploying to get at the -- get at the storage revenue is this verticalization of the sales and marketing groups.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn today's call back over to your presenters for closing remarks.

William L. Meaney

Analyst

Thank you, operator. To wrap up, our 2013 performance is on track. It's driven by the consistent growth in our storage rental business. And we believe we have numerous opportunities to sustain that growth in both developed and emerging markets through our vertical market focus, our innovative tools and services that drive incremental opportunities and attractive acquisitions. And we continue to make progress on preparations for our planned conversion to a REIT. As we move forward through the year and sharpen our focus on the key drivers of value for our business, we will, as always, continue to focus on prudent capital allocation, maximizing total returns and delivering sustainable value to our shareholders. Thank you for joining us this morning and have a good day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.