Earnings Labs

Kelly Services, Inc. (KELYB)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 4, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Kelly Services’ Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All parties will be on listen-only until the question-and-answer portion of the presentation. Today’s call is being recorded at the request of Kelly Services. If anyone has any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host, Mr. Carl Camden, President and CEO. Sir, you may begin.

Carl Camden

Management

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Kelly Services’ 2015 Q4 conference call. With me on today’s call is Olivier Thirot, our CFO; and George Corona, our COO. Let me remind you that any comments made during this call, including the Q&A, may include forward-looking statements about our expectations for future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those suggested by our comments and we have no obligation to update the statements made on this call. Please refer to our SEC filings for a description of the risk factors that could influence the company’s actual future performance. As we walk through our quarterly results this morning, let me point out that year-over-year comparisons are represented in constant currency due to ongoing volatility in foreign currency exchange rates. Also note that Kelly Services had a 53 week fiscal year in 2015, which is reflected in our results. As an additional resource to help you navigate our Q4 and full year results, we've once again published a slide deck on the Investor Relations page of our public Web site summarizing our key financial performance indicators. Before we turn to our Q4 and full year results it is worth recalling how we entered 2015. Coming off 2014, a year of aggressive investments and structural change, we knew that 2015 would be a critical test of Kelly’s to deliver on our strategy. That was a year where focused execution was paramount and I'm very pleased to report that Kelly's performance significantly improved on several fronts. Revenue for the quarter was $1.5 billion, up 7.3% year-over-year and for the full year Kelly's revenue was $5.5 billion up 4.7% compared to 2014. We achieved earnings from operations of 27 million for the quarter, tripling last year's Q4 operating profit of 9 million in nominal…

Olivier Thirot

Management

Thank you, Carl. Revenue totaled 1.5 billion, up 7.3% in constant currency compared to the fourth quarter last year. In nominal currency we continue to be impacted by weak global currency by more than 400 basis points in Q4, even as we anniversary the strengthening of the U.S. dollar which occurred in late 2014 and has continued throughout 2015. Now consistent Carl the remainder of my year-over-year comments are represented in constant currency. And as Carl also mentioned our 2015 fiscal year result include 53 weeks. The additional week of revenue in Q4 represents about half of our Q4 year-over-year revenue growth rate. Staff and placement fees were down 3.6% year-over-year as the growth we saw in the Americas and the now positive fee trend generated in EMEA in Q4 are offset by declines in APAC. In constant currency overall gross profit was up 27.1 million nearly 12%. Our gross profit rate was 17.1% up 80 basis points when compared to the fourth quarter last year. Our GP rate reflects effective management of temporary employee payroll tax and benefit expenses combined with continued improvement pricing in our branch based business and improved customer mix in the U.S. SG&A expenses were up 3.3% year-over-year, excluding the impact of prior year restructuring charges, which reflect another quarter of continued expense leverage in all business units. Our Q4 results reflect higher expenses in our U.S. branch based and OCG businesses as a result of revenue growth as well as higher corporate litigation related expenses. Corporate litigation expenses accounted for half of our year-over-year growth in SG&A expense. Partially offsetting this increase were continued cost management efforts in EMEA and as a remainder included in Q4 2014 results were 6.2 million of restructuring cost. Earnings from operations were 26.5 million in the fourth quarter…

Carl Camden

Management

Thank you, Olivier. There is no question that 2015 was an important year if strategic execution for Kelly Services. We entered the year with our new operating models firmly in place and I'm pleased that we gained traction from throughout the year as we delivered against our investments and accelerated bottom line growth. We’re extremely proud of the Kelly team and the results they achieved and their commitment to driving the company's strategy forward. We are operating as a more efficient organization deeply focused on profitability. Our investments in high margin PT and OCG are yielding results and we’re delivering on a strategic plan that not only aligns with critical market trends but positions Kelly as a leader in workforce solutions markets worldwide. Account service through our U.S. branch networks are delivering strong sustained growth in our PT specialties, and we’re very pleased with our results in this segment. Our expanded salesforce is pursuing and winning new business while our PT recruiting centers are efficiently connecting U.S. clients with specialized talent. Our centrally delivered account portfolio was starting to show signs of improved performance in the face of client specific fluctuations and we are responding to changes on large companies buying behavior by adjusting our centralized recruiting structure. As existing large customers transition their PT business to a competitive source model we are capturing new opportunities for Kelly's talent supply chain management strategy and are earning fees and our CWO business by managing these competitive source models. In our international segments we’re pleased with the results from both our APAC and EMEA regions. APAC delivered record breaking earnings for 2015 and in EMEA our operations delivered strong revenue growth combined with effective cost discipline that yielded solid improvements in operating earnings. Our OCG segment continues to perform well expanding current…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And we have a line of John Healy with Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.

John Healy

Analyst

Congratulations on strong close of the year and just kind of wanted to ask a kind of a cadence question. When I look at the gross margin improvement in 2015, it seems very weighted towards the back half of the year. I want to say gross profit was up 80 bps or so 70-80 bps on a year-over-year basis. Is it reasonable to think that that type of year-over-year improvement can take place in 1Q and 2Q of 2016? And without committing to a firm number, but just given the mix in the business and kind of the growth that you are getting in PT, should we see that type of GP improvement at least in the first half of the year?

Olivier Thirot

Management

Yes, there are several drivers, I mean we talk about several time about price discipline and that’s something we will continue to exercise in the future. I would say the second point is the social shift to higher margin in PT and OCG that should continue to improve our margin overtime. And we have also -- and we will continue to focus on our temporary employee tax and benefit expenses to continue to improve our cost of sales. Now there might be short term fluctuations quarter-over-quarter to seasonal nature of some of our business or customer needs. So there are going to be still on a short term basis, some fluctuations ups and downs.

John Healy

Analyst

And Carl I just kind of wanted to take a step back and get your thoughts just kind of the on the activity within your customer base. Maybe if you just kind of think about the U.S. and maybe the rest of the world. How are you seeing your big customers behave what kind of conversations are you having with them and are you seeing any sort of change in the behavior on kind of a sequential basis?

Carl Camden

Management

Yes I’ll start and then I will let George weigh in. I am going to set aside the natural resources sector which is experiencing as you know probably from all the work that you do great tumult right now. And there are announcements of significant layoffs inside the natural resource sector and plans for how they deal with the dramatic drop in oil pricing and how they deal with their expense base. But if I remove that sector from consideration I am not seeing any from the customers I talk with any significant change and how they are approaching operating this year compared to last year. George talks to a different group and…

George Corona

Analyst

Well, the only thing that would add to that John is that as we continue to work with these customers, more and more there are continuing to talk to us about taking on expanded roles and workforce solutions. So we see no slowdown in their apatite to take what we have been doing for them and ask us to do more. And as you see from the growth rates of our OCG we are capturing that momentum and so we see no slowdown in that at all.

John Healy

Analyst

And then just one modeling question, I know you guys gave the kind of the thoughts on kind of about the full year I believe those numbers were in constant currency just trying to make sure. Is there a way you could kind of maybe help us make sure we have got the -- if rates kind of stay the same what the FX impact is maybe as we move throughout the year?

Olivier Thirot

Management

Well I mean it is in constant currency, that’s the way we have done it and that’s the way we have done it again today. As for currency expectation I mean it is very hard for us to know what it is going to be next. I mean what we have seen is that we are still impacted in Q4 for about 400 basis points we were impacted by about 600 basis points at the beginning of the year throughout Q3. We cannot say what is going to be next, that’s why we are saying that constant currency is probably the best indication we can give so far.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And Mr. Camden, allowing a few moments there are no further questions coming in.

Carl Camden

Management

So, thank you and I appreciate you all attending the call and thank you John.