Paul Sarvadi
Analyst · SunTrust
Thank you, Doug. Today my comments will focus on three important areas for investors. First, I'll address recent results in the stage that is set for our fall selling and retention season. Second, I’ll discuss our competitive position and our outlook for the year-end transition ahead. And lastly, I'll explain the factors driving our confidence we have in our long-term strategy for growth and profitability. Our strong reason results reflect solid execution of our plan to accelerate growth throughout 2015, while holding the line on operating costs. The resulting operating leverage is evident in our year-to-date adjusted EBITDA and EPS growth of 52% and 81% respectively. We believe that our dynamic business model, which is built on a wide platform of business performance solutions targeting an expanded addressable market puts Insperity in a position to grow profitably for many years to come. The drivers of this growth in profitability are clear in the Q3 results we are reporting today. Our sales and marketing engine is revving up and performing well. Core workforce optimization sales to accounts with less than 150 worksite employees increased 18% over Q3 of last year on a 14% increase in trained business performance advisors. Year-to-date core workforce optimization sales were 102% of budget, up 28% over 2014, driven by 20% improvement in sales efficiency reflecting a successful ramp up in the salesforce from 287 trained BPAs to 328 in Q3. Total BPAs hired reached 388 by the end of Q3 and we are on track for our goal of 400 by year-end. This will put us in a position for a nice step up in trained BPAs in the first and second quarter next year to drive future growth. Core sales activity has ramped up on plan in September as we launched the fall campaign. Discovery calls, which are face-to-face meetings with calls by prospects and business profiles which are opportunistic to bid our flagship workforce optimization solution have increased accordingly. Midmarket sales which refer to accounts above 150 employees are also on track for the year at 114% of budget, including the sale of an account with more than 2,000 employees which was sold in Q2 and is scheduled to roll into paid worksite employee count in December. This large client while adding to the worksite employee count will also drag on gross profit in the payroll tax area in Q4 due to the double taxation which occurs on new accounts. As previously discussed, small business efficiency act was passed last year to address this issue among others. However, this new law is not yet in effect. More importantly, the timing of the enrollment of this new client before year end has a substantial impact on the likelihood of a successful year-end transition and therefore next year starting point in paid worksite employees which is a key driver to our 2016 growth rate. The recent quarter also included strong client retention results continuing the pattern we have seen over the several quarters. Year-to-date attrition rate of worksite employees from terminating accounts is 22% lower than at this point in 2014. The combination of growing core salesforce with improving sales efficiency, increased sales activity, and historically high retention rates provided a strong start to fall selling and retention campaign. Normally this time of the year, we address the risk associated with the churn of business on January 1st caused by the high number of client renewables due at the time and the volume of new accounts sold to replace any terminating clients. Last year, we executed extremely well over this period in sales and retention, and essentially sold enough new account to replace the terminating accounts. This allowed us to start 2015 with double-digit unit growth well in hand setting up a very strong year. This year we are seeing several factors indicating our growth risk over the year-end transition is substantially lower than in previous years. While we are still expecting a level of churn which can affect both growth and pricing, our confidence level is high and for good reasons. One factor playing toward a successful year-end transition is the strong demand for our services as the implementation of the Affordable Care Act continues to cascade down state-by-state and carrier-by-carrier to the small business community. Compliance issues and complicated reporting requirements are taking center stage causing some justifiable consternation among business owners, CEOs and CFOs. Our investment in supporting our clients in this area allows us to bring a robust solution to help meet their need and some peace of mind to go with it. Second, our competitive position is very strong in terms of products and services available, our ability to customize a solution for each client company and the stability of our direct cost structure. Our business performance advisors are continuing to attach other business performance solutions to workforce optimization sales and sell them on a standalone basis. Year-to-date sales of these additional offerings have increased 40% over last year. Perhaps one of the most important competitive advantages we have is the stability that we have experienced in our direct cost including payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and healthcare benefits. Our long-term commitment in investment in the infrastructure to effectively manage these costs have contributed to favorable trends and a stable cost structure. This has been a positive for recent sales and retention results and should continue to support our sales and retention efforts during this fall campaign. In fact, one of the most significant drivers to our confidence level surrounding this year-end is the pipeline of accounts already sold and inline to be enrolled and paid. Compared to last year, at this early stage in the process, we have more than doubled the worksite employees in this pipeline without including the large account I referred to earlier. The additional 2000 employees expected to be paid in December from this one client has considerable confidence in our growth rate for 2016. At this point, the likelihood of continuing double-digit unit growth into next year is relatively high compared to previous year. Our outlook for gross profit in 2016 is still dependent on the pricing and direct cost trends, which will be more apparent in February. However, we’ve also clearly demonstrated the operating leverage in our business model at these growth rate, which provides additional confidence looking ahead to next year. We’ve been in a continuous improvement process to optimize our cost structure to ensure this strong operating leverage continues. So we believe that our long-term strategy for growth and profitability is in place and that we are in a strong position to drive this strategy forward. Our confidence in this plan is based on our proven capabilities and the success we’ve had in reducing an otherwise complex business model into three clearly defined drivers. We have effective strategies, defined plans and specific tactics in place to drive double-digit unit growth, optimized gross profit and generate operating leverage into the future. Confidence in our long-term growth plan comes from our ability to continue to drive unit growth and our core workforce optimization business by growing the number of BPAs and ramping up their sales efficiency just like we have done this year. We also have the potential to further accelerate our growth rate through our unique mid-market co-employment and traditional employment offerings that are gaining traction in the marketplace and have greatly expanded our addressable market. We plan to continue to rely on our proven capability to manage pricing and cost of payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and benefit critical to our co-employment offerings which provides a substantial competitive advantage. Another factor driving our confidence in our ability to optimize gross profit is the steady increase in gross profit contribution we had seen from the wide array of business performance solutions from our strategic business unit. The addition of value-added solutions attached to workforce optimization or on a standalone basis provides a powerful customization capability and a strategic third contributor to gross profit. The third element of our long-term strategic plan is to generate sustainable operating leverage while balancing the necessary investments in growth and competitiveness. Once again this year's results to-date, demonstrate our capability to meet these objectives. Our corporate culture and the continuous improvement mindset of our highly qualified dedicated staff gives Insperity an impressive execution capability to meet specific operational goals. So through a very systematic and strategic approach, we have reduced an otherwise complex risk-based business model into three clearly defined drivers of long-term success. We believe this has resulted in an improved capability and a unique opportunity to drive long-term shareholder value for many years to come. At this point, I'd like to pass the call back to Doug.