Earnings Labs

ScanSource, Inc. (SCSC)

Q4 2008 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 21, 2008

$40.61

-0.12%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Year-End Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer period. (Operator Instructions). Today’s conference is being recorded, and if you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. Now, I’d like to turn the meeting over to your host for today’s call, the CFO of ScanSource, Mr. Richard Cleys. Sir, you may begin.

Richard Cleys

Management

Thank you, Matt, and thank you for joining us for the ScanSource conference call to discuss financial results for the quarter and year ended June 30th, 2008. My name is Rich Cleys, and with me is Mike Baur, CEO of ScanSource. We’ll review with you, the quarter’s operating results and then take your questions. This conference call contains certain comments, which are forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. These statements are subject to the Safe Harbor created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results. For more information concerning factors that could cause such a difference, see the company’s annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30th, 2007, and the company’s annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30th, 2008 to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I will start our discussion by providing overall sales and operating results. The company posted sales of $554 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2008, an increase of 6% over sales of $524.3 million for the same quarter last year. Measuring sales based upon our product groups, shows year-over-year growth of 11% in AIDC and point-of-sale, along with a 3% year-over-year decrease in the communication products for the quarter ended June 30, 2008. That produced a 65-35 mix of AIDC POS versus communication products. Gross margin was 10.6% for the June 2008 quarter compared to 10.5% for the same period last year. This quarter’s margin of 10.6% was favorably impacted by improved cost on European POS and bar code product purchases as well as favorable program results, which more than offset lower program benefits from vendors in North America. Operating expenses were $34.4 million or 6.2%…

Mike Baur

Management

Thanks Rich. The June quarter performance was very good coming off a disappointing March quarter. However, we still have concerns around one of the significant problems from last quarter still affecting our Catalyst Telecom revenue. The other key problem affecting us last quarter regard to key European vendors pricing policy, that issue has been resolved and we are pleased to get it behind us. Also in this quarter we completed the acquisition of MTV Telecom, and are looking forward to building out our European Communications business. I will discuss these issues in detail shortly. First, I will comment on each of our reporting segments. Both American distribution includes sales into the United States and Canada posted sales of $447.8 million a growth rate of 2.9% for the June quarter on a year-over-year basis. Our North American discussion will start with Catalyst Telecom. As we discussed before Avaya has struggled with a launch of Communication Manager 5.0. This product is an upgrade of an existing software offering, but has new terms and conditions that have installed the rollout and acceptance of the product. Although changes announced in April were expected to be positive, our results were not as we expected in the June quarter. Recent meetings with the new of Avaya’s senior management team cause us to believe that they will resolve any remaining issues by the end of September. We anticipate that our Avaya business will return to normal for the December quarter and we expect to recapture some of the business delayed. Catalyst data were achieved this quarter with several other key vendors including Juniper, Extreme and Aruba setting a record sales results for those three vendors. In May during the quarter, in Myrtle Beach, Catalyst Telecom held our annual Partner Conference for the massage centered on the key…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Jeff Rosenberg of William Blair & Company. Your line is open. Jeff Rosenberg - William Blair & Company: Hi, thanks. I guess the first question is, when you had originally talked about your margins coming into this quarter, you expected some lingering difficulties in terms of gross margins from the shortfalls in the June quarter and the purchase prices that resulted from that and vendor incentives, etcetera. It sounds you outperformed those concerns. Can we talk a little bit about what happened there?

Richard Cleys

Management

Well, as you know Jeff – hi, Jeff, first of all. This is Rich. As you know we were working on the international pricing issue with our vendors and we resolved that, so that we were able to get the benefit of that resolution from the first day of the quarter, all the way through the end of the quarter. In addition, we had some good program results, which benefited us during the quarter, which we had not projected. So, we had a strong international margin versus what our expectations were. Jeff Rosenberg - William Blair & Company: Okay. And as we look to the embedded guidance on margins, would you just talk about for September just without having the chance to quickly do the math. It sounds like we are not expecting operating margins to stay quite as strong as they were in Q4. Is that gross margin issue? Is that some increase in operating expenses? What’s happening there to bring margins back in a little bit?

Richard Cleys

Management

Yeah. I think that at 10.6% we have these issues, these benefits in the European operations. We don’t expect all of those benefits from the programs to repeat. So, I think a more normalized margin expectation would be about 10.3%. As far as the SG&A goes, if you adjust out some one-time things, the SG&A run-rate should be about what it has been. So, if you would have model on expectation in the neighborhood of about 3.8% operating margin, that will probably work with our mid-point guidance of $0.46 and $540 million. Jeff Rosenberg - William Blair & Company: Okay. And then I guess the last question I’ll ask you for now is on your description of the impact of not having yet resolved the Avaya issues. And Mike, can you talk a little bit about, I mean, obviously normally, you get quite a kick in the September quarter from them seasonally a bit finish their fiscal year, what you are seeing there relative to the fact that there are not private? How [does all] that factor and what you would have expected and then how we should think about going into December relative to the fact that normally we would have expected you to see a little bit of retrenchment there from the seasonal strength. But maybe that’s somewhat of a silver lining that you sort of build in December, I mean how should we think about that?

Mike Baur

Management

Yes, Mike. As I said in the call, we have got a new Avaya senior management team there. Todd Abbott and Jeremy Butt, both of them used to work together at Symbol Motorola, and they understand and they have communicated that some of the strategies Avaya pull in the past we’re not going to continue going forward. And I think one of those particularly was, there was such a push on September the year end for Avaya as a public company becoming a major focus for everybody, and there were promising things that caused every December to be down that shouldn’t been normally. I think we went in every December quarter in the past talking about, well, how much business might have been pulled in the September quarter from December. So, good news is these guys are all about sales out. I would say the thing that I keep hearing from the new Avaya team is, let’s measure this business the way it really is, which is on a sales out basis. Let’s don’t keep looking at how much our distribution and reseller partnership want to buy. So, I think they are instating a whole new level of new discipline within the company. Fortunately, it’s going to take a while. Todd and Jeremy joined in late May, early June, and they came in after the changes that had been contemplated by the previous management were communicated to us, and some of those changes helped us. But in general, we still are down substantially from where we would have been. And when I look at the differences September and December and what business could move, could still be there available to us and our dealers and still be available in December, we sat down with our teams and made some calculations, and that’s where we came up with the number. And most of this is because this has to do with upgrading the installed base. And so the installed base is less of a concern, not totally less, but less of a concern of losing the business to competition. It’s more of a decision by end customer to a make decision to upgrade based on the value proposition and total cost of ownership. And so, we think these are complicated issues clearly, but that the team is well aware of them, and now we expect to have resolution and a new strategy in place as we exit the September quarter. And actually gives us confidence that December will be substantially better than December is typically are Jeff Rosenberg - William Blair & Company: Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Our next question comes from Chris Quilty from Raymond James. Your line is open.

Chris Quilty - Raymond James

Analyst

Thanks gentleman. I just want to follow-up on that gross margin question, if just to make sure I understand the sequential improvement in margins was almost entirely due to the vendor program and foreign exchange or was that only 50% of the sequential improvement?

Richard Cleys

Management

It was our international vendor program improvement as well as foreign exchange.

Chris Quilty - Raymond James

Analyst

And that was the vast majority of --

Richard Cleys

Management

It was more than the change.

Chris Quilty - Raymond James

Analyst

Okay.

Richard Cleys

Management

So there was actually if you look at the domestic program net-net all business units domestic then actually was sequentially down.

Chris Quilty - Raymond James

Analyst

Okay. So what you are seeing is the European vendor program goes away, you keep the foreign exchange gains and North America stays about the same or little better, little worse?

Richard Cleys

Management

It won't be worse for the North American and you are right on the international beat the program will not repeat but the foreign exchange should be sustainable.

Chris Quilty - Raymond James

Analyst

Okay. And speaking of geographic, we went through a tough period in the AIDC market for past year and half or so where North America had been pretty weak and Europe remain strong. I am hearing some chatter that North America is looking a little bit stronger from the hardware vendors, but now there is incompetent worry that Europe may be slowing which your sense of where geographically the market look good and bad?

Mike Baur

Management

Yes Chris, this is Mike. I think we would concur with that is that we saw fewer large deals in Europe this quarter especially in the U.K. and Ireland. And that's why we still have a significant amount of business as you know. And so we would concur that especially though the U.K. area was weaker than we had expected. And our guys has told us that there were larger deals that we had a year ago and even a couple quarters ago and we didn’t feel that kind of a funnel for the June quarter. And so we do have a softer view towards Europe right now because of that.

Chris Quilty - Raymond James

Analyst

Okay. And when you look at the U.S. marketplace, are you seeing strength either for point of sale or AIDC by certain verticals or applications in areas that were geographically?

Mike Baur

Management

We are not really other than my comment about POS took a pretty big slowdown at the, it was actually very end of the quarter. Lot about mid June any large POS fields were kind of put on hold, so that affects us and we think that may continue. I think both Europe and North America and Latin America are all offset by one of our largest vendors deciding to move their one tier guys who are generally the large resellers to two tier distribution. And so we believe that's given us an offset to the particular market condition that we were always talking about.

Chris Quilty - Raymond James

Analyst

Okay. And the recent spike in the U.S. dollar, Rich your thoughts there?

Richard Cleys

Management

The situation that we have with that particular vendor, we are protected going forward for a period of time, so that we are not going to have an adverse impact on exchange rates.

Chris Quilty - Raymond James

Analyst

Okay. So, no net effect from foreign currency moves.

Richard Cleys

Management

No, I think we are in a much better shape now for foreign currency fluctuation as Dollar versus Euro, than we were 90 days ago.

Chris Quilty - Raymond James

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you, gentlemen.

Richard Cleys

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the Ajit Pai of Thomas Weisel Partners. Your line is open.

Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst

Yes. Good afternoon.

Richard Cleys

Management

Hi, Ajit.

Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst

Just a couple of quick questions. I think, the first one is, just looking at, I think you have addressed the [accountancy]. It was not showing any material deterioration, but could you give us some indication of whether some of your customers are seeing the impact of credit markets impacting their business.

Richard Cleys

Management

Yes, Ajit, this is Rich. We read everything about the economy that you guys do to and we’re keeping close tabs on the situation especially with a number of our customers. Right now, what we’re seeing in terms of our ability to grant credit is we’re still utilizing the same underwriting policies and criteria and see that as continuing, but that, we’re constantly looking at that. So, we don’t want to be caught unawares. So --

Mike Baur

Management

And I would add just to it. Also, I think in the last year or 18 months, Rich’s team has done a great job in getting more financial information from our customers we never used to have. So, we get a lot more current financial data to make these underwriting decisions on, than we had a year and half ago, and I think that’s helping us.

Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst

Got it. And then very broadly when you are looking at maybe the past five quarters, I think the company has been delivering broadly decelerating growth. In that kind of environment, shouldn't you be, soon the investment in the business especially on the receivable side and on the inventory side also sort of be seeing some moderation and sort of cash flow generation, like historically if you go back over the past several years it hasn’t been so material but given the current environment and given that deceleration shouldn’t the cash flow generation start accelerating in this environment right now?

Richard Cleys

Management

Well, I think it has Ajit, I think for the year if you look at cash flow from operations will be at about $62 million from operations, we got about $53 million in the fourth quarter we had a blip in the March quarter that’s effected by timing but overall with a deceleration in growth we do generate cash flow and that’s exhibited by our change in overall debt.

Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst

Got it. And then given that you are entering this environment right now, how would you prioritize the uses of that cash, that you are beginning to generate?

Richard Cleys

Management

Well, we pay down the debt first.

Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst

Okay.

Richard Cleys

Management

And we do look at, as we look at our business going out, we know that this current forecast is a tight forecast for the September quarter, but we think that our underlying business model is still strong. So, we continue to invest in security, we are going to be investing more in our international communications business and those we see growth opportunities in the future.

Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst

Right, and when you looking at...

Richard Cleys

Management

…quarter.

Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst

You have been acquisitive in the past and right now when you are looking at the current environment especially as some market slowdown, are you seeing the environment, the number of opportunities increased, are they the same as they have always been. Are there areas that you find would be good additions discounts right now?

Mike Baur

Management

Ajit, this is Mike, yeah I will take that one. We have seen an increase and opportunities in the marketplace both domestically and internationally. And I would say we have been quite busy taking look at some of those we have got two key areas that we are focused on that we will prefer to focus on even though we will look at lot of other opportunities. Well, but right now security and European communications opportunities are things that we take a look at. So, we want to make sure we have acquisition opt in within our gun site if they are appropriate. You bet.

Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst

Okay. And the last question would just be on the security side, could you give us some color as to the big changes that have happened and the vendors you have been working with maybe over the past 9 months or 12 months the changes like -- in your mix today relative to what you had about a year ago?

Mike Baur

Management

Well, I think, what we have done is try to be more focused in our vendor approaches, try to put more of our efforts around not just singing a lot of vendors but very key vendors where our lan cards grown substantially but lot of those vendors really don’t have the kind of distribution agreement and distribution strategies that we would agree with. And so, we’re really not of the size with many of those vendors but we can impact their decision on how to go to the market. So, as a result we focused on fewer vendors from that standpoint, Panasonic is a great example of how they change their model, they have selected two years ago to focus only three distributors in North America we are one of them, and that’s benefited us. We have also focused on some new vendors to security that companies like Axis and Tropos and Alvarion, some of these guys that are coming more added from the data side and the IT side because they are looking for distributor who is not just in their low voltage, old security world but also able to educate and develop new channels, and so that’s I think the change over the last year.

Ajit Pai - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst

Got it. Thank you so much.

Mike Baur

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

At this time I have no further question in queue.

Mike Baur

Management

Okay. Well, if there are no further questions, our next conference call is scheduled for -- our September results our conference call would be expected to be on October 23, and thank you very much. Thank you, Matt.