Mark W. Sopp
Analyst · Cowen and Company. Your line is open
Thank you, Roger and thanks to all of you for joining us on today’s call. We had a strong quarter on many fronts and I’m pleased to report increased margins, earnings, working capital efficiency and cash flow generation on a year-over-year basis. These improvements are all in the face of continue albeit moderating revenue declines driven by distressed federal government spending environment. Consolidated revenues were $1.3 billion for the third quarter, which represents a decline of 9.8% year-over-year, slightly better than our expectations and driven by better than expected performance from our Health and Engineering sector. Non-GAAP operating income margin was 7% also better than expected with $89 million of operating income in the quarter up 25% year-over-year driven by continued solid performance by our National Security sector and better than expected performance from Health and Engineering. Interest expense was $18 million below our typical run rate of $20 million a quarter driven by two items. First as Roger said, during the quarter we repurchased a $105 million of our outstanding debt at below par and second, we also entered into interest rate swap agreements for $450 million of our fixed rate debt maturing in year 2020, effectively converting a portion of our debt to variable rate debt tied to the LIBOR rate? Both of these are expected to drive reduced net interest expense as along as interest rates remain low. Our effective tax rate was below our normative rate due to favorable resolution of reserved items. Non-GAAP earnings per share from continuing operations was $0.65 per share as detailed on Slide 15 and 16 of our investor presentation available on our website. This excludes the impact of $17 million of impairment charges incurred in the Health and Engineering sector which I’ll cover in a moment. Operating cash flow $179 million was a highlight in the quarter. I would like to add to Roger’s remarks my commendations to the team on a job well-done here particularly in a quarter with an extra payroll cycle. We had referenced unfavorable cash flow timing items in prior quarters, in this quarter we saw a recovery from many of those issues with billing and collection efficiencies being the most significant positive driver. We certainly have more work ahead of us to deliver further improvements in this area, but we’re pleased with the progress we’ve made thus far. We exited Q3 with a healthy cash balance of $418 million and that’s after $105 million of debt buybacks we executed during the quarter. As for deployment of excess cash balances we always review all options with our Board every quarter and paying our regular dividend remains the top priority. Beyond this, share repurchases, M&A and financial leverage management are always options we review and prioritize with the Board each quarter. Shifting to business development results, consolidated net bookings totaled $1.2 billion in the third quarter, for a book-to-bill ratio of 0.9. We ended the quarter with $8.3 billion in total backlog which is down 16% year-over-year. Funded backlog of $2.7 billion was down 10% over the prior year, but still represents over six-months of forward revenue coverage. The value of bids outstanding at the end of the third quarter increased nicely up 34% sequentially to $16.2 billion, this primarily reflects a material increase in the value of bids in our National Security sector. Now let me select sector results for Q3. First, National Security revenues decreased year-over-year by $105 million or 10%, about half of the decline was due to continued reduction in U.S. overseas war related or OCO business. Balance of the revenue decline was driven by overall reductions in Defense and U.S. Government spending. We continue to expect that OCO related revenues will be in the $400 million to $450 million range this fiscal year and that we will eventually be able to turn about half of the remaining business into programs of record in the future. Operating margins in our National Security sector increased 140 basis points compared to the prior year, reflecting an operating income increase of $6 million. This reflects ongoing cost reductions across this sector, but also solid program execution. I am pleased to note that these factors more than offset the overall profit impact from the revenue decline. National Security sector net bookings in the quarter were $830 million resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of just over 0.9. Total backlog in this sector was $6.5 billion down 19% compared to the prior year and funded backlog was $1.6 billion down 18% year-over-year. As Roger said we are disappointed by these results and we are making operational and organizational changes to improve the outcome. Looking forward however the value of outstanding submitted bids in the sector at the end of the third quarter increased more than 40% sequentially to $13.9 billion. This included the impact of a few large opportunities recently submitted. Now on to Health and Engineering. Health and Engineering revenues decreased to $33 million or 8% year-over-year. The revenue declines in this sector have moderated quite a bit over the course of this year. The highlight has been strong contribution from our federal health business with a revenue and profitability profile better than our expectations. From a year-over-year perspective the revenue contraction reflects lower sales volume in our commercial health and security products businesses. We were disappointed in particular with a further slip of product deliveries in our security products business, but this remains mostly tied to logistics and administrative delays with one large contract in the Middle East. The timing of the resolution of this delay is uncertain. And we accordingly are being cautious in our expectations on this program in the short-term particularly as it applies to our guidance from the balance of this fiscal year. GAAP operating margins in the Health and Engineering sector include $70 million of impairment charges during the quarter are roughly 450 basis points of margin impact. $40 million of the impairment relates to intangible assets acquired as part of the fiscal 2011 Reveal acquisition. This impairment resulted from the transportation security administrations recent industry announcement detailing lower expected procurements of inspection scanning systems over the next few years. Additionally we incurred a $3 million impairment for intangible assets associated with fuel supply contracts for the Plainfield Renewable Energy plant. When excluding the effect of these impairments profitability improved in Health and Engineering sector compared to the prior year quarter. This improvement was driven mostly by cost reductions, but it’s still depressed by operating losses on the Plainfield power plant which amounted to $6 million in Q3 or about 160 basis points of margin impact. Our health and engineering business had a book-to-bill ratio of 1.0 in the quarter. Total backlog was 1.8 billion down 3% year-over-year, while funded backlog for the sector was $1.1 billion up 7% compared to the prior year. The value of bids outstanding in health and engineering at the end of the third quarter was roughly comparable to the Q2 level at $2.2 billion. While we did submit the large DoD healthcare management system modernization IDIQ bid this quarter consistent with our past practices we only included the portion related to define task orders in our outstanding submittal number. As such this IDIQ submission did not materially impact our outstanding submittal number for the quarter. Overall, we view these quarters moderating revenue declines and better than expected profitability when excluding the impairments as a step in the right direction for the Health and Engineering sector. That said we still have a long runway of operational improvements we must make ahead of us. In the subsequent positive impacts on the P&L that we expect will be more evident in the medium to longer term timeframe rather than the near-term. Now let me move on to guidance, we expect to deliver fiscal 2015 revenues in the upper half of our guided range of $4.9 billion to $5.1 billion. Our non-GAAP earnings per share we also expect to come in within the upper half of our guided range of $2.10 to $2.30. From an operational perspective we expect our businesses to perform generally inline with seasonal patterns for the top line, which we suggest a slight sequential downtick from Q3 due to holiday impacts on our billable hours. On the margin line we expect our businesses could experience a slightly greater decline than typical seasonality would suggest as some of the margin strength in Q3 such as positive contract adjustments and certain lower indirect expenses are not expected to recur in the fourth quarter. Our non-GAAP EPS guidance also includes the possibility of certain discreet expenses and investments during the fourth quarter to continue to improve our cost competitiveness and also potential continued performance headwinds and certain parts of the business. Much of this is expected to be reflected in the corporate segment, so you can expect an uptick in cost in that area in Q4 relative to Q3. All these items impact us in the near-term from an expense standpoint. In aggregate they drive longer-term savings allowing us to further optimize our cost structure and better positioned us to win business and grow. For fiscal 2015 operating cash flow, we expect to come in comfortably above $300 million, particularly given the strong performance we had this quarter. We expect interest expense would be added a $16 million quarterly run rate now driven by the debt transactions discussed a momentum ago. In conclusion, I’m pleased with the performance in the quarter with the year-over-year improved results in operating margin, earnings per share and most significantly in our ability to generate over two times our net income in cash from operations during the quarter. A job well-done by our employees and certainly a step in the right direction for the company. With that operator, let’s open it up, so we can take some questions.