Dennis Story
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is open
Thanks, Eddie. As Eddie said, three consecutive years of record revenue and earnings that record growth profitability and cash flow over those three consecutive years. So clearly Manhattan is taking care of business and our goal is a 4P. So as Eddie mentioned, we posted Q4 total revenue of $130.4 million, up 21% from last year and adjusted earnings per share of $0.30 increased 25% over prior year. Our Q4 2014 GAAP earnings per share was $0.27 increasing 23%. Strong revenue growth in license, services and hardware combined with a lower effective tax rate led to the strong performance. Currency rate volatility mainly in the Euro, British Pound, and the Australian dollar negatively impacted revenue 1% or $1.4 million in the quarter and pressured operating margin and profit with a $300,000 negative impact to operating profit. Full year total revenue was $492.1 million growing 19% over 2013. Total revenue by region was solid with Americas up 19%, EMEA up 21%, and APAC up 14%. Full year adjusted earnings per share was $1.16 growing 26% and GAAP earnings per share was $1.08 also growing 26% on record operating results. Q4 license revenue increased 13% to $19.5 million over prior year and full year license revenue was $71.6 million, increasing 15% over 2013. Despite the global macroeconomic environment, we continue to experience solid activity in our target markets and the demand environment remains quite positive. Overall, our license performance continues to depend heavily on the number and relative value of large deals we closed in any quarter. Allowing for the foreign exchange headwinds, our goal for 2015 is to achieve a 6% to 8% license growth rate. Q4 services revenue was $97.1 million growing 25% over prior year. For the year, our services revenue totaled $376 million, an increase of 19% over 2013. As a reminder, total services revenue includes both consulting and maintenance. On the consulting side, strong demand in Q4 continued with revenue growth of 27%, totaling $65.5 million and full year revenue of $260.1 million, increasing 23% over 2013. For the year, we increased our global services headcount by another 15% or about 230 heads to meet customer demand. We added about 25 new associates in Q4 and our Q1 2015 hiring plan is to add another 100 associates globally, which we are off to a good start with 31 already in the barn. As Eddie mentioned, based on our current demand outlook, for full year we're looking to add about 250 net new hires to our services franchise. Q4 2014 maintenance revenue of $31.5 million grew 20% over the prior year on license growth and stronger than forecast collections. Full year maintenance revenue grew 10% to $116 million over 2013. Solid license revenue performance, cash collections and retention rates of 90% plus contributed to the year-over-year growth. As a reminder, we recognize maintenance renewal revenue on a cash basis. So, the timing of cash collections can cause inter-period revenue lumpiness from quarter to quarter. Consolidated services margins for the quarter were 53.7%, compared to 56.1% in Q3 2014 and 53.8% in Q4 2013. Consistent with prior years, Q4 margins were down sequentially from Q3 2014, due to the Q4 seasonal holidays impact and the addition of 60 new billable professional services associates in Q3 and Q4. For the first half of 2015, we expect services margins to be in the 55.6% to 55.8% range and for full year of 2015 we are estimating margins to be in the 55.4% to 55.6% range. Margins in the first half reflect our [indiscernible] hiring plan, so down slightly year-over year, while second half margins increased over prior year reflecting increased billability in utilization ramp for the new hires. As a reminder, Q4 services margins do decline sequentially from Q3, due to the usually holiday seasonality. Our operating expenses, which include sales and marketing, R&D, G&A, and depreciation were $40.5 million for the quarter, up 26% over prior year and $144.4 million for full year 2014, up 15% over 2013. The increases were driven by variable performance based compensation, which is employee bonuses commissions and related taxes, our investment in Global Bay and early stage global investments in facilities expansion and enterprise IT system’s supporting company growth. Turning to operating income, we delivered record Q4 operating income of $31.9 million, growing 19% over prior year. Q4 operating margin was 24.4%, down 50 basis points on higher performance based compensation, our investment in Global Bay and negative currency impact. Full year operating income of $137 million increased 26% over 2013 with operating margins of 27.8%, up 160 basis points. So, for 2015, we are currently estimating operating profit to grow 10% to 12% with a 60 basis point improvement and operating margin increasing to 28.4%. We are targeting 28.7% for Q1. For Q2 and Q3 to be about 10 basis points above 2014 and Q4 to be about 200 basis points above Q4 2014. Below the operating profit line, other income which primarily includes interest income and foreign exchange gains or losses was a positive 850,000 in Q4 and a positive 874,000 for full year 2014. Consistent with prior years, we do not attempt to budget for FX gains and losses and other income, so we are forecasting quarterly interest income of about $250,000 totaling $1 million in 2015. Income taxes, our adjusted effective tax rate for 2014 was 36% as Congress retroactively approved the 2014 R&D tax credit in Q4 2014. This compares negatively to our 2013 effective rate of 34.8%, due primarily to two factors; first, higher state tax rates and second the fact that 2013 effective rate included two years of R&D tax benefit. As in prior years, Congress did not proactively approve an extension of the R&D credit for 2015, therefore we expect our 2015 effective rate to be about 37.2% for the year. Now turning to cash, we closed out 2014 strong, with Q4 cash flow from operations of $40.4 million and full year operating cash flow of $94.2 million, compared to $89.4 million last year. As a reminder, imbedded in our 2014 operating cash flow is a significant step-up in cash paid income taxes paying $38 million in 2014, up $17 million over 2013. So we rocked it on the cash flow front considering the large step up in tax payments. Capital expenditures for 2014 totaled $9.4 million. For 2015, driven by company growth and legacy IT systems replacements we estimate CAPEX to be in the range of $9 million to $11 million. We closed the year with a $124 million in cash and investments compared to $112 million in Q3 2014 and a $133 million in Q4 2013. We continue to carry zero debt on our balance sheet, self funding our investments and innovation, operations and share buybacks from operating cash flow. Our Q4 DSOs were 61 days versus 64 days in Q3 2014 and 61 days in Q4 2013. Regarding capital structure, we reduced our common shares outstanding 3% in 2014, buying back 2.6 million shares totaling $91 million, offsetting option exercises of about 286,000 shares. With our Q4 repurchase activity last week, our board approved raising our repurchase authority limit to a total of $50 million. Regarding diluted shares, for 2015 our weighted average share estimate for the quarters and full year is at $74.8 million shares. Consistent with prior years, our diluted share estimate and EPS guidance does not assume any common stock repurchases in 2015. So this closes the chapter on 2014 financial results, outstanding. So, let’s move to 2015 guidance. Overall, we continue to be committed to achieving steady organic revenue growth and earnings expansion. Our 2015 growth continues to be very similar to previous years’ post 2009 intersession. We are very upbeat about our growth prospects, but remain cautious given the continuing global macro economic uncertainty. Outside of the U.S. world economies are in the slum. In addition, while early falling oil prices could have a ripple impact in unpredictable ways. So, overall we continue to be cautious and have factored this into our guidance. For 2015 total revenue, our current annual guidance is to deliver $531 million to $541 million, representing 8% to 10% growth. The strong dollar and potential risk of currency volatility shaved about 2 percentage points off of our growth forecast over 2014. Our goal for 2015 is to achieve 6% to 8% in the license growth as I mentioned previously. From a revenue mix perspective, we believe 2015 hardware and billed travel will grow about 4% over 2014 and will represent about 9% of total revenue. Overall, we expect our full year total revenue split to be about 48% first half, 52% second half. For license revenue, we are modeling at 49%, 51% split first over second with a normalized seasonal pattern of Q1 and Q3 license revenue lower than Q2 and Q4. For services as usual, Q4 revenue will be down sequentially from Q3 due to the seasonal holiday impact. That covers revenue. For 2015, adjusted diluted earnings per share, our guidance range is $1.28 to $1.30, representing 10% to 12% growth over 2014 adjusted EPS of $1.16. Similar to revenue, negative currency impacts and a higher effective tax rate is placing about a 2 percentage point drag on our growth range. With beginning of the year salary increases worldwide, headcount additions to support services demand and a higher effective tax rate, we expect Q1 2015 EPS to be flat with Q4 2014 at sequential while posting 14% to 16% growth over Q1 2014. And somewhat similar to revenue, we expect EPS to have a first half, second half spread of about 48% to 52% using the $1.29 midpoint of our guidance range. For GAAP diluted earnings per share, we expect to deliver $1.18 to $1.20 in 2015 representing 9% to 11% growth over 2014 GAAP EPS of $1.08. The $0.10 full year EPS difference between GAAP and non-GAAP diluted adjusted earnings per share is primarily the impact of equity based compensation which we expect to spread evenly across the year to approximately $0.025 per quarter. So that completes the financial review. Thank you very much. Now, I’ll turn the call back to Eddie for the business update.