Eddie Northen
Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Jerry. The obstacles that impacted Q2 and Q3 continue to decrease throughout the quarter and our operations and non-operations groups continue to make tremendous adjustments to the new lives that we are all leading. We are utilizing mostly remote workforces, which has forced us to continue to evaluate processes and become more efficient. These changes have made us a better company. We are also thankful that we have invested in technology the way that we have over the last 4 to 5 years. Dealing with the increased demand on the residential side of our business and the disruption aroused on the commercial side of our business would have been an extreme challenge to handle without these tools in place. For the quarter, our residential pest control and termite service lines showed growth and keys to the quarter included a fourth year in a row of metric improvement through our routing and scheduling initiatives, safety improvement that translated to expense reductions and successful continued cost containment implemented to drive margin improvement year-over-year. As John referenced, I will be reporting both GAAP financials for the quarter and GAAP and non-GAAP financials for the full year that were impacted by accelerated investing of shares in the third quarter of this year, and the impact of the pension plan moving off of our Rollins’ books in 2019. Looking at the numbers, the fourth quarter revenues of $536.3 million was an increase of 6% over the prior year’s fourth quarter revenue of $506 million. Our income before income taxes was $86.9 million or 28.7% above 2019. Net income was $62.6 million, up 23.4% compared to 2019. Our EPS were $0.13 per diluted share. Looking at the full year, revenue of $2.161 billion was an increase of 7.2% over the prior year’s revenue of $2.015 billion. Our GAAP income before taxes was $354.7 million or 35.8% above 2019. Our net income was $260.8 million, up 28.3% compared to 2019. Our GAAP earnings per share were $0.53 per diluted share. For the full year, looking at our non-GAAP financials, taking into account the accelerated stock vesting that occurred in the third quarter of this year and the pension plan moving off of our books in 2019, income before taxes was $361.4 million and was up 16.2% and net income was $267.5 million this year compared to $229.9 million in 2019, a 16.3% increase, and our non-GAAP EPS were $0.54 compared to $0.47, which is a 14.9% improvement. Jerry mentioned our 2021 leadership meeting, and while our gathering online instead of in-person looked different than the previous years, our focus on messaging and alignment for the year to come continue to be the same. One of the sessions over the three days was entitled, items to make you successful in 2021. During this segment, we discussed several different topics that will impact our journey of sustainability through Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG. The topics were all focused on actionable items that each and every operation can impact as we move forward in the new year. In depth, we discussed our routing and scheduling and how it saves miles, improves margin and helps to reduce our carbon footprint. Next, we discussed our launch of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or DEI initiative that John mentioned earlier. Freeman did an excellent job sharing how a more diverse group will help lead our decision-making in the future. And then, Jerry spent time and discussed our safety journey and how this positively impacts our workforce and our financial performance. The advantage to hosting these sessions online, and yes, I am looking for silver linings here, is that we get a chance to read comments in real-time as the speaker is leading the session. There was a very positive energy around all of these topics and others that will support our sustainability for years to come. Let’s take a look through the Rollins revenue by service line for the fourth quarter. Our total revenue increase of 6% included 1.5% from acquisitions and the remaining 4.5% was from pricing and new customer growth. In total, residential pest control, which made up 45% of our revenue, was up 11%, commercial, excluding fumigation, commercial pest control, which made up 34% of our revenue was down five-tenth of a percent and termite and ancillary services, which made up approximately 19% of our revenue, was up 8.7%. One item of note is that our wildlife service grew at their fastest rate since Q1 of 2018. Again, total revenue less acquisition was up 4.5% and from that residential was up 9.3%, commercial ex-fumigation decreased 2.4%, and termite and ancillary grew by 8.4%. Our residential business continues to perform well and our commercial pest control business has seen steady improvement each month since April. While we continue to manage our cost appropriately, it’s difficult to know how the revenue levels will look as we move through the pandemic with restrictions continuing to change throughout the world. In total, gross margin increased to 50.3% from 49.7% in the prior year’s quarter. The quarter was positively impacted by lower service salary expense as well as lower fleet expense through continued improvements from our routing and scheduling efficiencies. These gains were offset by higher materials and supplies cost related to our personal protective equipment inventory. Depreciation and amortization expenses for the quarter decreased $203,000 to $22.4 million, a decrease of nine-tenth of a percent. Depreciation decreased $57,000 and amortization of intangible assets decreased $148,000 as intangibles from previous acquisitions such as HomeTeam and Western became fully amortized. Sales, general and administrative expenses for the fourth quarter increased $4.3 million or 2.8% to $159.1 million or 29.7% of revenue. This was down 2.9% compared to 2019 and the quarter produced savings in salaries and benefits and lower bad debt through better collection efforts. As for our cash position for the period-ended December 31, 2020, we spent $147.4 million on acquisitions compared to $430.6 million the same period last year, which included our initial Clark Pest Control acquisition. We paid $160.5 million on dividend and had $23.2 million of capital expenditures, which was slightly lower compared to 2019. We ended the period with $98.5 million in cash, of which $71.3 million is held by our foreign subsidiaries. These numbers all include our reduction in debt of $88.5 million for the year. As you may remember, we kicked off the reporting of our ESG activities at the beginning of the year in 2020 with our first ever 2019 Sustainability Report. In March of 2021, we will produce our second addition, which will include more updates and goals in the areas that will impact our company over the next five years. Yesterday, the Board of Directors approved a regular cash dividend of $0.08 per share, which was a 50% increase in the pre-split numbers from last year that will be paid on March 10, 2021 to stockholders of record at the close of business February 10, 2021. Gary, I will turn the call back over to you.