Roderick Day
Analyst · JPMorgan
Thanks, Bill. We continue to be pleased with our operating performance. We had a solid third quarter, anchored by storage rental and improving volume growth as well as benefits from acquisitions in emerging and developed markets. I will begin today with an overview of our third quarter financial performance, followed by an update on our outlook for the remainder of the year, and a preliminary outlook for 2015. I will then address our capital deployment activities and conclude with a discussion of various REIT metrics. As a reminder, we now provide all of our financial disclosures and the earnings commentary in one comprehensive supplemental reporting package. I will be referring to certain pages of this package throughout my remarks. Turning to our financial results for the quarter. Let me direct you to financial highlights on Page 8. Supported by strong storage rental growth, total reported revenues were $783 million for the quarter, up approximately 4% compared with $755 million in 2013. Adjusted OIBDA declined by approximately 2%, reflecting ongoing REIT compliance costs as well as acquisition-related costs when compared to prior year. Year-to-date adjusted OIBDA increased by 1%, which includes $3.5 million of costs associated with our 2013 restructuring and approximately $8 million of REIT compliance costs. For comparison, adjusted OIBDA for the first 9 months of 2013 included $5 million in restructuring charges. Adjusted EPS of $0.35 is consistent with our annual guidance. For the quarter, it would have been $0.40 prior to a $0.02 impact from ongoing REIT compliance costs and $0.03 impact from depreciation and amortization related to REIT CapEx and investments. Additionally, EPS for 2013 was restated to be on a comparable basis using our structural tax rate of roughly 15%. Similarly, our structural tax rate for year-to-date 2014 came out to 16%. We continue to believe our tax rate will be roughly in the same range over the long term. On a GAAP basis, net income was impacted by approximately $40 million tax provision, which represents the revisions or estimates made in the second quarter for the reversal of current and deferred tax assets and liabilities in connection with the REIT conversion and taxes related to foreign repatriation. Also highlighted on this page are investment and capital expenditures. Year-to-date maintenance CapEx of roughly $45 million is on a run rate to be below our $80 million to $100 million full year guidance range. However, we typically see the majority of capital improvement projects undertaken in the latter portion of the year. Other CapEx of $33 million is roughly in line with the $50 million midpoint of our full year guidance, and real estate investment of $145 million, which includes racking, is on track with our full year expectation of around $200 million. As Bill noted, we are accelerating our efforts to own more of our real estate over time, and you can track the changes to our global real estate portfolio on Page 19. Over the long term, we believe that the purchase of our real estate will create value for our shareholders. The fundamentals of our business remain strong, as evidenced by solid storage rental revenue growth. On Page 9, looking at the top line growth for the quarter on a constant dollar basis, revenue is up 3.9%, reflecting solid storage rental revenue gains of 5.6% and service revenue growth of 1.3%. The growth in service revenue was driven by recent acquisitions and increases in imaging projects. On a constant dollar basis, year-to-date total revenue growth was 4.3%, driven by storage rental revenue gains of 5.5% and service revenue growth of 2.6%. Also on the same page, we show total worldwide volume growth. We continue to demonstrate improvement in net volume growth in Records Management with total year-on-year volume growth in the quarter of 5.5% including acquisitions, or 1.8% excluding acquisitions. Volume trends remain consistent with prior quarters, demonstrating stable incoming volume from existing customers, important additional contributions from acquisitions and further improvements in the level of terminations and withdrawals. Let's turn to Page 11, where we present components of growth on a segment basis. Q3 segment results were generally in line with our expectations, as our storage rental revenue continues to exhibit durability. North American Records and Information Management, or RIM, delivered positive storage rental internal growth and adjusted OIBDA expansion of 160 basis points to 39.5%. North American Data Management, or DM, delivered storage rental internal growth of 1.4%. However, the decline in service revenues in the DM business drove adjusted OIBDA margins for this segment down for the quarter. That said, DM remains a high-margin business of 56.2%. Declines in service revenues continue to reflect the trends towards reduced activity and related transportation revenues as our customers rotate their tapes less frequently and the biggest business becomes more archival. The International segment continued to generate attractive results with 6.8% storage rental internal growth. Internal service revenue growth for this segment declined by approximately 1.5%, primarily due to the reduction in nonrecurring customer projects. The International business continued to deliver profitability on a portfolio basis, in line with our mid-20s targets, with adjusted OIBDA margins of 24.5% year-to-date. Finally, Corporate and Other revenue was up about 10%, reflecting growth in data-centric service revenues. As Bill noted, we are making good progress, and we expect to end the year near a $20 million revenue run rate. Turning now to our outlook for the remainder of 2014 and preliminary guidance for 2015, on Page 10. Our business trends and operating fundamentals remain consistent, and we are on track to achieve our financial goals for 2014. Therefore, we are maintaining the majority of our 2014 guidance whilst tightening some of our ranges. That said, we have made 2 changes to our guidance that impact earnings per share. The first relates to the partial year impact of new shares that will be issued as a result of the special distribution. This will obviously impact our per-share metrics. The second relates to foreign exchange pressures. For the first half of the year, modest pressures from FX were offset by contribution from acquisitions and consistent core performance, which allowed us to remain comfortable within our previous ranges. However, as we have progressed through the year, we have witnessed further material strengthening of the dollar, which is outweighing the benefit from acquisitions and consistent performance. In the light of these recent changes, it is prudent to adjust for the known currency impact at this time. So as a result of the stock distribution and the impact of the foreign currency exchange rates, we have reduced adjusted EPS guidance for 2014 to $1.33 to $1.44 from our current range of $1.37 to $1.52. In addition, normalized FFO per share will be reduced to $2.21 to $2.46 from the current range of $2.25 to $2.51. Moving on to our preliminary guidance for 2015. From an operational standpoint, we believe we are on track to deliver our long-term goals, given the durability and strong fundamentals of our business. We are projecting constant dollar revenue growth of 1% to 5% and growth in adjusted OIBDA of 2% to 5%, in line with our strategic plan. Please note these growth ranges are in constant dollars based on our 2014 budget constant dollar rates. If the dollar remains strong, the current estimated impact on revenue and contribution could be at 100 to 150 basis points. We expect adjusted EPS to be in the range of $1.23 to $1.38 for 2015. To be clear, this guidance reflects an anticipation of an absolute increase in total earnings in constant dollars, offset on a per-share basis by the impact of the additional 15.8 million shares issued in connection with the special distribution. Driven by the consistent growth in our business and stable fundamentals, we expect normalized FFO to be between $440 million and $480 million, with AFFO between $570 million and $610 million. And, in addition, we anticipate that our dividend growth will continue to be in line with contribution growth. From a CapEx standpoint, we expect to maintain level spend on maintenance CapEx and acquisitions, although we anticipate an uptick in real estate investment driven by our purchase plan. We will update our outlook again on our Q4 earnings call to reflect changes, if any, including the impact of FX. Shifting to the balance sheet. Pages 25 and 26 present our debt maturity schedule and related metrics. At quarter end, we had liquidity of about $1.2 million. Our total lease-adjusted leverage ratio of 5.2x has increased over the past 3 years, as planned, to support shareholder payouts, expenditures in connection with our proposed conversion to a REIT and recent acquisitions. At today's stock price, our debt to total market capitalization is roughly 36%. We continue to shift our debt financing to international markets. In addition to having our expenses denominated in local currencies, we have long-dated bonds in Canadian dollars, pounds sterling, euro and more currencies available under our credit facility. This provides a natural foreign exchange hedge to support our growth in international markets and reduce taxable income in local jurisdictions. In September, we issued the equivalent of about GBP 400 million in a private pounds sterling fed offering in the U.K., and established a line of credit in Brazil to support our growth. Turning now to REIT-specific metrics on Page 20. We have provided storage NOI per racked square foot, which highlights the attractive economics we derive from our real estate for both our RM and DP businesses. We continue to achieve storage NOI in excess of $21 per square foot, amongst the highest in the REIT sector. On Page 21, our racking and building utilization rates remain high and in line with prior quarter at 91% and 83%, respectively. We believe that due to frictional vacancy, our maximum racking utilization is in the mid-90s. When we enter into a new facility, we generally target to achieve stabilized utilization in about 3 years' time. On Page 28, we have provided components of value, a summary of the various parts of our business to facilitate valuation. As a reminder, we present both storage NOI and service OIBDA excluding rent expense in order to present storage economics on a consistent basis whether leased or owned. To balance that, we provide total rent expense in the liabilities area. Finally, we are currently showing investment in buildings, racking and acquisition at book value, but it's our intent ultimately to provide a schedule of these investment categories with our expected returns. As we have stated in the past, we will continue to enhance our supplemental reporting, and we welcome your feedback. So, in summary, Q3 was a solid quarter, consistent with prior performance and supported by a sustained storage rental performance, stable profitability on our North American segments and strong international and emerging market performance. I will now hand the call back to Bill.