Dennis B. Story
Analyst · Raymond James
Thanks, Pete. I'm going to cover our non-GAAP results for Q4 and full-year 2011 and hit GAAP EPS performance then review our guidance for 2012 and then turn the call back to Pete for the business update. As you can see, we delivered solid Q4 and full-year financial performance, led by double-digit organic revenue growth with record operating profit and earnings per share for both adjusted and GAAP results. In a global macro environment that continues to struggle with growth recovery, our financial results reflect strong execution and demonstrate the power of acquiring market share through R&D investment in supply chain software innovation to serve our target markets. We posted Q4 total revenue of $83.5 million, increasing 17% over Q4 2010 on double-digit growth in license and services revenue of 31% and 17%, respectively. On a regional basis, Americas grew total revenue, 16%; EMEA, 21%; and APAC, 17% over Q4 of last year. Full-year 2011 total revenue of $329.3 million grew 11% despite flat year-over-year license revenue growth as services demand continues to expand. On a regional basis, Americas grew total revenue of 10%; EMEA, 19%; and APAC, 13% over full-year 2010. While cautious, we are continuing to experience solid activity in our target markets, and the demand environment continues to remain quite positive. On strong revenue and operating earnings leverage performance, we delivered record Q4 adjusted earnings per share of $0.60, representing 58% growth over prior year. Full-year 2011 adjusted earnings per share of $2.32 grew 47% over our 2010 full-year performance of $1.58. As mentioned in our prior 2011 earnings call, 2011 full-year adjusted EPS results include a one-time $2 million tax benefit, or $0.09 per share resulting from the release of a valuation allowance due to a change in India tax law. So apples to apples, excluding the India income tax benefit, 2011 adjusted EPS of $2.23 grew 41% over 2010. License revenue for the quarter totaled $16.6 million, up 31%, compared to the $12.7 million we delivered in Q4 2010. From a regional perspective, Americas posted license revenue of $14.7 million; EMEA, $1.2 million and APAC, $720,000. Our license performance continues to depend heavily on the number of relative value of large deals we close in any quarter, and as Pete mentioned, we had a solid Q4 with 5 $1-plus million dollar deals closed. With Q4 solid license performance, 2011 full-year license revenue totaled $54.2 million, essentially flat with 2010 license revenue of $54.5 million. Our weak Q1 2011 license revenue of $7.8 million masked a 15% year-over-year license growth rate over the last 3 quarters of 2011. We believe global economic swings continue to shape buying decisions and estimating sales cycles for large deals still remain somewhat less predictable than pre-2009. But overall, large-sized deal activity has been solid for the past 3 quarters. Q4 services revenue of $60.6 million grew 17% year-over-year and as previewed on our Q3 2011 call, was down 5% sequentially due to the seasonal holiday period. Full-year 2011 services revenue of $244.1 million increased 14% over 2010. And as you know, our services revenue is comprised of 2 distinct streams: Consulting and Maintenance. Consulting revenue for Q4 and full-year 2011 totaled $38.1 million and $156.8 million, respectively, growing 26% for Q4 and 19% full year over 2010 comparable periods. Consulting revenue growth year-over-year for the last 3 quarters of 2011 totaled 24% on strong demand, which continues to exceed our hiring pace for billable IT professional services personnel. We increased our global services headcount 20%, or 200 heads in 2011. About 60 of these heads were added in Q4 2011, and our Q1 2012 budgeted hiring plan is to add 100-plus personnel to better align billable capacity with demand and meet our 2012 growth objectives. Q4 2011 maintenance revenue totaled $22.6 million, increasing 3% over the prior year, and 2011 full-year maintenance revenue of $87.3 million grew 7% over 2010. 2011 license revenue, cash collections and retention rates of 90-plus percent contributed to the year-over-year growth. As a reminder, we recognize maintenance renewal on a cash basis. So the timing of cash collections can cause some inter-period lumpiness from quarter-to-quarter and maintenance revenue recognition. Consolidated services margins for the quarter were 55.9% compared to 56.5% in Q3 2011 and 52.3% in Q4 2010. As expected, Q4 margins were down from Q3 2011 due primarily to the Q4 seasonal holidays. For full-year 2012, we expect services margins to normalize into the 53.5% to 54.5% range as we continue to align billable capacity to support business book and capture additional pipeline opportunity, while maintaining customer satisfaction and avoiding burnout of our professionals through non-sustainable utilization. For Q1 2012, we expect services margins to be in the 52.5% to 53.5% range, reflecting the full cost of the 60 new hires in Q4 2011 and in an aggressive Q1 2012 hiring plan, aimed at adding 100-plus billable heads. The investment of on-boarding new staff in Q1 2012, combined with annual salary increases, which apply to all global employees on a January 1 cycle and seasonally high FICA payroll tax expense, will raise our cost of services sequentially from Q4 2011 to Q1 2012 by about 14%. With full-year services margins in the 53.5% to 54.5% range, we expect Q2 through Q4 services margins to increase as billability and utilization ramp for our Q1 hires. Now turning to operating earnings leverage. Through strong license and services revenue growth, exceptional services productivity and operating expense control, we delivered record Q4 adjusted operating income of $19.3 million and $70.4 million record full-year operating income. We closed out 2011 with full-year operating profit growth of 32% over 2010 and operating profit margin of 21.4%. As I mentioned in our Q3 call, our full-year performance exceeded our 2011 margin expansion objective of 100 basis points, or 19% and has marked 2 consecutive years of 300-plus basis point improvement. This acceleration reflects the confluence of 2 broad events. First, a multi-year recovery from the 2009 global macroeconomic collapse; and second, our commitment to investing in innovation through the downturn. In 2009, during the global economic collapse, we stayed the course with R&D investment in our platform-based strategy and in January 2010, we launched our Warehouse Management Solution on our supply chain process platform. As the global macro environment started to improve exiting 2009, our 2010 margin expansion of 300 basis points was largely driven by license revenue growth of 57%, representing a $20 million increase over 2009. In 2011, despite the license revenue being flat due to Q1 performance, strong services demand outstripped capacity contributing to significant 2011 earnings leverage, substantially driven by platform-based deals. I believe our win rates Pete discussed earlier offer further confirmation of the markets alignment with our platform-based strategy. Bottom line, we continue to be committed to operating margin expansion in 2012. But 300-plus basis points expansion annually is not sustainable. We are planning to deliver a full year 50 basis point improvement for 2012 just as we discussed in our previous earnings call. And while we remain cautiously optimistic about the 2012 global macro demand picture, we expect our 2012 full-year financial results will begin to normalize across license and services revenue growth and margin contribution to earnings leverage. For Q1 2012, we expect operating margins to be in the 19.5% to 20% range versus Q1 2011 operating margin of 14.5%. The improvement will largely be driven by license revenue growth, partially offset by aggressive hiring, primarily for services professionals and other sequential cost increases associated with annual compensation, FICA payroll taxes and full reinstatement of our 401(k) match program. We expect Q2 through Q4 operating margins to range between 22.5% and 23% adjusted for quarterly license and services revenue mix due to seasonality. Now onto other income. Other income, which includes net interest income, net gains or losses on asset disposals and the net impact of realized and unrealized foreign exchange gains or losses, was a positive $650,000 in Q4 2011 and a positive $1.9 million for full-year 2011. For the full year, interest income accounted for $1.1 million and FX gains, $800,000. Volatility in second-half foreign exchange rates resulted in a net foreign exchange gain impact totaling $0.03 in unexpected incremental EPS benefit for the year, as we do not forecast FX gains and losses. Consistent with prior years, we also do not budget for FX gains and losses and other income. So the 2011 $0.03 EPS benefit negatively impacts our 2012 adjusted EPS growth. Our 2012 interest income forecast is $500,000, down from 2011 on lower average cash balances. So in total, the 2012 decline in other income equates to a $0.05-drag on 2012 adjusted EPS growth. On taxes, our adjusted effective income tax rate for 2011 was 31.1%, which represents an underlying rate, effective rate of 34%, less discrete tax items we recorded during the year, including additional tax reserves in Q4 2011 for potential transfer pricing tax contingencies in certain international markets. For 2012, our effective tax rate estimate remains at 34%. So now I'm going to transition to diluted shares. We continue to efficiently manage our capital structure with our share buyback program, which has been highly accretive to our shareholders. For the quarter, diluted shares totaled 20.9 million shares, down from 21.125 million shares in Q3 2011, driven by 2011 cumulative share buyback activity net of option exercises. For the full year, we reduced our common shares outstanding 6%, buying back 3.6 million shares totaling $131 million, against option exercises of 2.1 million shares generating net cash proceeds of $53 million. In Q4, we repurchased 857,000 shares of Manhattan common stock totaling $37 million against option exercises of 856,000 shares, generating net cash proceeds of $22.5 million for a total buyback investment in Q4 of a net $15 million. You may recall in January 2010, our comp committee approved the redesign of Manhattan's long-term equity incentive plan, eliminating stock option awards in favor of 100% restricted stock grants. The objective was to optimize program performance, retention strength and manage program share usage to improve long-term equity overhang. At January 1, 2010, the company had $5.8 million option grants outstanding totaling 26% overhang on common shares outstanding. So since January 2010, option grants outstanding have declined 4.2 million options, or 72% primarily on option exercises of 3.7 million shares and option expirations of 500,000 shares, substantially lowering our option overhang to 8% of common shares with no earnings dilution to shareholders. Our buyback program mitigated about $0.50 of earnings dilution impact from these exercises, while achieving a cumulative net reduction of 9% in common shares outstanding over the past 2 years. And just as important, 100% of our buyback program was self-funded from operating cash flow and cash proceeds from option exercises. And on that note, last week, our Board approved raising our share repurchase authority limit to a total of $50 million. So for 2012, we are estimating full-year diluted shares of 21.1 million shares. We currently expect Q1 2012 diluted shares to be about 21 million shares even, with the balance of the year rising to an average of about 21.150 million diluted shares per quarter, that's Q2 through Q4. Our estimate does not assume any common stock repurchases and depends on a number of variables including stock price, option exercises, forfeitures and share repurchases, which can significantly impact our estimates. So that covers adjusted results. On GAAP earnings per share, Q4 2011 GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.50 increased 72% over $0.29 in Q4 2010. 2011 GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.09 was a record year, significantly higher than 2010's previous record of $1.25. Results for the 12 months of 2011 include a positive impact of $0.12 per share for the recovery of an auction rate security investment, which had been impaired in a prior period and the $2 million India tax benefit, or $0.09 per share discussed as part of the adjusted results commentary. Overall, our GAAP performance was driven by the strength of adjusted operating results. A detailed description of GAAP and non-GAAP adjustments can be found in the supplemental schedules reconciling selected GAAP to non-GAAP measures that we published with our earnings release today. Turning to cash flow. For the quarter, we delivered cash flow from operations of $14.8 million, bringing our year-to-date total to $55.8 million, an increase of 12% over 2010 cash flow from operations of $50 million. Capital expenditures were $1.4 million in the quarter and $5.1 million year-to-date. And for 2012, we estimate CapEx to be about $6 million to $8 million. Our balance sheet continues to support long-term strategic flexibility and stability with cash and investments at December 31, 2011, totaling $99 million compared to $102 million at the end of Q3 2011 and $127 million at December 31, 2010. Our cash-to-asset ratio is 38% and we have $0 in debt. The company has never borrowed money in its history. The net decrease in cash from December of 2010 is attributable to our share buyback investment. That closes the chapter on 2011. Now we'll cover our 2012 guidance and then hand off to Pete for the business update. So I gave a lot of color commentary throughout the 2011 coverage. But for 2012, we expect global macroeconomic growth to continue to be sluggish with some risk of potential deceleration in global activity in the first half. Year of sovereign debt, Washington gridlock and projected advanced economy growth rates of 1.5% will keep unemployment rates high, elongating, unfortunately, a multi-year global recovery cycle. For our targets, we are cautiously optimistic that investment activity is going to continue. We expected 2011 with 3 solid quarters -- or we exited 2011 with 3 solid quarters of momentum and so far sales activity continues to be quite positive. Given the macro, our 2012 growth thesis is similar to what we put forth at the start of 2011. We expect to grow top line revenue in the low-double digits, 10% to 12%, with operating profit growth of 13% to 15%, while expanding operating margin 50 basis points to 21.9% and adjusted EPS increasing 15% to 17% on an apples-to-apples basis, excluding 2011's $0.09 nonrecurring India tax benefit and $0.05 of other income declined associated with FX gains and lower interest income impacts that I discussed previously. So a few details. For 2012 revenue, we are forecasting to grow total revenue at roughly 2x the market growth rate, which we pegged at about 5%. Our current annual guidance for total revenue is to deliver full year $363 million to $370 million, which represents 10% to 12% growth. Overall, we expect our full-year total revenue split to be about 48% in the first half, 52% in the second half. We're assuming Q1 2012 total revenue growth to be about 20% over a modest Q1 2011 comp. We expect to return to a more historical seasonal pattern with Q1 and Q3 license revenue being lower than Q2 and Q4 license revenue, and services revenue lower in Q4, as always, due to seasonal holidays. So let me repeat that Q1, we are assuming Q1 2012 total revenue growth to be about 20% over a modest Q1 2011 comp. For 2012 adjusted earnings per share, we expect to deliver $2.50 to $2.55, which compared against $2.32 that we closed out 2011, represents an 8% to 10% growth over $2.32. Excluding India's one-time income tax benefit of $0.09 and the $0.05 of other income decline, we expect underlying EPS growth to be between 15% and 17%. Beginning of the year salary increases for our worldwide staff, full reinstatement of our 401(k) match and headcount additions to support continued strong services demand, we expect Q1 2012 EPS to decline sequentially from Q4. But similar to revenue, we expect full-year EPS to have about the same first half, second half spread of 48%, 52%. With the exception of Q1 2012 being down sequentially from Q4 2011, we expect the remaining 3 quarters of 2012 to average adjusted EPS of about $0.66-plus-or-minus, reflecting typical patterns for license and services quarterly seasonality. So that covers adjusted EPS. For 2012 GAAP earnings per share, we expect to deliver $2.22 to $2.27, representing 6% to 9% growth over 2011 GAAP diluted EPS of $2.09. On an apples-to-apples basis, excluding the $0.21 of EPS combined benefit of the 2011 auction rate security recovery and the India income tax benefit, our GAAP EPS growth range is 18% to 21%. Now you might notice on a full-year basis, there's a $0.28 EPS difference between GAAP and non-GAAP adjusted EPS. This represents the impact of our equity-based compensation program, which is options plus restricted stock. We expect that EPS impact to be spread evenly across the year at $0.07 per quarter. And as I mentioned, the company is no longer granting options. This is just the runout of previously granted option expense. Regarding adjusted operating margins, we continue to focus on year-over-year adjusted operating margin expansion. And as I said earlier, we're targeting a 50 basis point improvement over 2011. Q1 2012 operating margins are expected to be in the 19.5% to 20% range versus Q1 2011 operating margin of 14.5%. The improvement will largely be driven by license revenue growth, partially offset by the aggressive hiring, primarily for billable services professionals and other sequential cost increases that I've discussed earlier. We expect Q2 through Q4 operating margins to range between 22.5% and 23%, adjusted for quarterly license and services revenue mix due to seasonality. So that about covers the gamut. And now I'll turn the call back to Pete for the business update.