Paul Sarvadi
Analyst · First Analysis
Thank you, Doug. Thank you everyone for joining us. Today I'll address the following topics. First, I'll comment on the outstanding results from Q1 and provide some color around the drivers of this substantial outperformance. Second, I'll address the positive trends we're experiencing and the ongoing initiatives we are implementing that are driving the upward revision to our adjusted EBITDA over the balance of 2015. And third, I'll comment on our competitive advantages driving the long-term prospects for growth and profitability of Insperity. From a big picture prospective, this is the third quarter in a row that we have significantly outperformed our expectations as we are gaining traction and momentum from our broad growth platform. Our persistence in implementing this improved business model is paying off. The first quarter financial results were directly driven by the successful yearend transition, fueled by the new platform. Improvements in sales, retention and client selection led to the combination of new accounts enrolled, renewing accounts that were repriced and direct cost benefit from terminated accounts to produce better results than expected. We had a 23% reduction in client attrition, which is largely attributable to providing more service alternatives for mid-market accounts and continued excellent service results in our core small business client base. The availability of two co-employment options coupled with our ability to customize a solution for mid-market accounts with additional business performance solutions are direct outcomes from the strategy we employed several years ago to broaden our array of services. This improvement resulted in less than 10% of our worksite employee base churning in Q1, which produced better pricing from the resulting mix of new and renewed accounts. New accounts are priced more aggressively than renewing accounts, so the mix affects the allocations for the per employee elements of our pricing like health insurance and HR service fees. So the bottomline to the first quarter financial results was the higher than expected allocations with a result of solid execution and client retention and lower than expected medical cost with a result of deliberate client selection and efforts to reduce COBRA related risk. During the quarter, we also experienced an expected ramp up of our year-over-year unit growth rate from 8% to 10% in spite of lower than expected net new hires from the client base. This growth momentum is expected to continue as we expect 10% to 11% year-over-year growth in Q2. Our confidence is high due to recent sales success and impressive improvement in key metric. Our core sales team produced a 41% year-over-year increase in these sales, which was a 103% of the significantly higher forecast for Q1 compared to last year. Sales efficiency increased 37% driven by a 12% increase in obtaining business profiles from discovery calls and an 18% improvement in the closing ratio. Discovery calls were up 25% and business profiles increased by 39%, resulting in the 41% increase in sales year-over-year. This was accomplished by sales team of 311 trained business performance advisors, which was only up four from the number we had in Q1 of 2014. This team is hitting their stride, as over 60%, now have a tenure greater than 18 months. We have previously announced and have begun to ramp up of new BPAs averaging 330 total higher BPAs in the quarter, and ending at 340. We intend to reach 390 to 400 in the latter part of this year with the trained BPA count of 350 by yearend. The sales team also made progress in selling additional business performance solutions bundled with workforce optimization and on a standalone basis. In Q1, this team achieved a 34% increase in the sales of these additional solutions, designed to increase client retention and to expand our customer base more rapidly. We also made important progress in the first quarter in the development of our mid-market sales and service initiative. We trained nine of our core market business performance advisors to fill the role of co-employment consultants on specific mid-market prospects engagements. This quickly expanded our capability to handle more mid-market leads. At the same time, we aligned incentives across the entire sales team, which immediately increased the number of sales leads for these larger accounts. The result is a much stronger pipeline for potential mid-market accounts and the ability to take these prospects through an improvement process to arrive at an appropriate customized solution. Another key initiative completed in Q1 was the definition and clarification of our project-based outcome driven strategic HR services that distinguish workforce optimization from workforce synchronization. These projects are now available on a standalone basis or coupled with other traditional employment services creating a new revenue stream for the company with excellent potential margins. One other important trends on the last three quarters that I would like to highlight for investors is the management of our operating expenses and the resulting operating leverage. As a service company, the primary driver of cost is a number of corporate employees we have. We ended the quarter with the company 10% larger than one year ago, and only 14 more corporate employees of 0.6% increase. In the service area specifically, many initiatives have been pursued to create operational efficiency gains, while elevating customer service. These include improvements in onboarding processes, leveraging technology to streamline manual processes, and optimizing by ensuring clients are in the most efficient service model to meet their needs. These resulted in a 13% improvement from one year ago in our ratio of the number of worksite employees per direct service personnel. An additional key contributed to the operating leverage is shifting the balance of our marketing spend from brand and product positioning to directly production activities. In Q1, we experienced a 40% increase in workforce optimization leads, a 16% increase in other business performance solution leads, and a 23% increase in unique visitors to the insperity.com site on a 25% reduction in advertising spend. Based on the first quarter financial results of these positive growth and cost trends we're experiencing, we are substantially increasing our guidance for adjusted EBITDA growth for 2015. In addition to the $8 million beat from Q1, we have built in approximately $2 million more of additional gross profit and another $2 million from lower operating cost from the original forecast. The last topic, I would like to discuss today is the competitive advantage we believe we have driving the momentum we are currently experiencing. Insperity's position as the premium HR services provider in the marketplace offering high-tech services on a robust high-tech platform. This premium service positioning helps us win in the marketplace, really due to three drivers: the breadth of services, the depth of service, and the level of care. Each of these elements yield higher value for the customer and higher pricing for us, as it distinguishes our services in the marketplace. The breadth of services of our broad platform allows us to meet the needs of a higher percentage of prospects we call out. We are now casting a wider net to bring in more new customers for the same sales activity. This wide array of services has provided the opportunity for creative packaging of service bundles and the capability to customize the solution for each client. We are able to deliver value commensurate with the client need and the price they're willing to play. Our breadth of services establishes Insperity as an advisor that can bring solutions to bear over the lifecycle of our clients business. The Customer for Life model we have in place is leading to higher retention and more cross selling opportunities. The depth of our service capability is unmatched in the marketplace allowing for the higher sharing of risk and greater value from the peace of mind we provide to the business owners we serve. Our deep expertise across all areas of employment combined with our deep understanding of what it takes for businesses to succeed offers lower risk and speed of execution to highly-valued advantages in today's marketplace. It's important to understand our risk-based growth model. We're growing at a targeted rate, adding the right risk profile clients creates more value for shareholders than growing faster without the capability to manage the risk. In the PEO model each new worksite employee is a unit of revenue and profitability, but also a unit of risk for costly employment-related claims. The third distinguishing factor across our service platform is the level of care delivered by Insperity employees. The quality, expertise and service mentality of our staff has been described by clients often as caring about their business and their people. This level of care will always be valued and worth a higher price point in the marketplace. These three competitive advantages are foundational for our long-term plan for growth and profitability and they are driving the demand and momentum we are seeing in the business today. One last item I'd like to discuss from Q1 is our efforts to be responsive to investor input. As you know, Starboard Value became our largest shareholder in January and we have expeditiously to develop the constructive process to work together. We've added one new Board member from Starboard and two independent directors from several candidates they provided. We have formed an independent advisory committee that is already working, reviewing the business to develop recommendation for the full Board to consider. We are hopeful this effort will build upon the excellent momentum we are seeing here at Insperity today. At this point, I'd like to pass the call back to Doug to provide guidance for Q2, and update the full year.