Earnings Labs

ScanSource, Inc. (SCSC)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 30, 2014

$40.61

-0.12%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the ScanSource quarterly earnings conference call. All lines have been placed in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session. Today's call is being recorded. If anyone has any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mary Gentry, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. Ma'am, you may begin.

Mary Gentry

Management

Thank you, and welcome to ScanSource's earnings conference call for the quarter ended September 30, 2014. With me today are Mike Baur, our CEO, and Charlie Mathis, our CFO. We will review operating results for the quarter and year and then take your questions. A slide presentation that accompanies our comments and webcast is posted in the Investor Relations section of our website. Certain statements made on this call will be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors identified in the release and in ScanSource's SEC filings. Any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. ScanSource undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements to actual results or changes in expectations. We will be discussing both GAAP and non-GAAP results during our call and have provided reconciliations between these amounts in our slide presentation and in the press release. These reconciliations can be found on our website and have also filed on Form 8-K. Mike Baur will now begin our discussion with an overview of the results.

Mike Baur

Management

Thanks, Mary, and thank you for joining us today. Let’s start with the highlights for first quarter on Slide 3 of our presentation. We had another strong quarter of sales and EPS above our expected range. Our teams achieved record net sales for the quarter. Sales growth accelerated to 8% year-over-year, with growth in worldwide barcode and security and our worldwide communications and services segment. We are making strategic investments in our business, including acquisitions in attractive growth markets with higher operating margins. Since we talked with you last quarter, we successfully completed our acquisition of Imago Group Plc, Europe’s leading value-added video and voice communication distributor. We welcome Ian Vickerage and his team to ScanSource and look forward to continuing his focus on driving growth of video and voice communication solutions in Europe. We expect the addition of Imago’s customers and vendors to be almost entirely incremental to the existing ScanSource Europe voice and data business. This acquisition will allow ScanSource to complete the build out of our communication strategy across the major countries in Europe with our key vendors Polycom, Avaya and Shoretel. With the acquisition, we added approximately 120 employees in five locations across Europe. And Imago’s net sales for the 12 months ended July 31, 2014 totaled approximately $80 million. In August, we announced an agreement to acquire Network1, Brazil’s leading value-added distributor. Network1 currently has over 60 vendors, 8,000 customers and 365 employees. Network1 would be the largest company that ScanSource has acquired to date. Network1’s estimated sales for calendar year2014 are estimated to be $340 million. We are excited about this opportunity to expand our existing, successful value-added distribution business in Brazil with the addition of incremental technology solutions, vendors and customers. For both ScanSource and Network1, business is continuing as usual as we…

Charlie Mathis

Management

Thanks Mike. The financial information I will be discussing can be found on Slides 4 through 9 of our presentation. As Mike mentioned, we are pleased to have completed our acquisition of Imago on September 19 and our first quarter results include Imago for seven business days, which had minimal impact on our first quarter results. With the acquisition of Imago, as well as the planned acquisition of Net work1 this quarter, we are discussing our operating results and will be discussing in future quarters our operating results in terms of GAAP and non-GAAP measures. The non-GAAP measures exclude acquisition costs, the amortization of intangible assets and the change in fair value of contingent considerations. We believe that these non-GAAP measures provide better comparisons of our operations and will be helpful in understanding both our current performance and forecasts for future periods. Net sales for the first quarter totaled $792 million, a record sales quarter and an 8.2 % increase over the prior year quarter. Our worldwide barcode and security segment had another record sales quarter with 11.2 % year-over-year growth and our worldwide communications and services sales grew 3.4%. Our international sales were especially strong, growing 12.9%, driven by our POS and barcode business in Europe and Latin America, including Brazil. This quarter, foreign currency translation had a minimal impact on sales. Turning to profitability; our first quarter 2015 gross profit margin of 9.8% reflects the mix of business and higher volume big deals. The gross profit margin for the quarter -- for the prior year quarter was 10.5 % higher than we expected to maintain going forward and as indicated in last year’s call. The first quarter 2014 margin for our communications and services segment included a benefit from the timing of vendor program recognition. The worldwide barcode…

Mike Baur

Management

Thanks Charlie. Let me start with our worldwide barcode and security segment summarized on Slide 10, which represented 63% of our overall sales for the quarter. Worldwide barcode and security sales of $501 million increased 11% year-over-year and 2% sequentially. We have a record sales quarter and double digit growth for the segment for the second quarter in a row. We also had strong growth from our international POS and barcode business units, with double digit growth from Brazil and Europe and Mexico. Similar to fourth quarter 2014, it was a strong big deal quarter. As announced earlier, our largest barcode vendor worldwide Motorola Solutions, was acquired by another of our large vendors, Zebra Technologies. As we already have been doing significant business with both firms since the early days of the company’s founding, we anticipate no surprises or negative changes to our relationships. Our POS and barcode unit in North America had a record sales quarter, driven by big deals in retail system sales and market share growth in our run rate barcode mobility scanning and printing businesses. The Point of Sale payments terminal hardware business had another quarter of strong double digit quarter growth. We are seeing demand for EMV and NSC capable terminals increase as retailers move to adopt the more secure chip and pin technology in advance of the mandate from the credit cards issuers in October 2015. The retail reseller channel that we serve is becoming more and more involved in recommending selling and implementing these payment systems to the retail and hospitality end users as opposed to the traditional ISO channel that served retailers. The complexity of the new solutions and the integration between hardware and software require much more value-added support than in the past. We will continue to invest in this payment…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). And our first question comes from the line of Chris McGinnis of Sidoti & Company. Your line is now open. Chris McGinnis - Sidoti & Company: Good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions and nice quarter. I guess just to maybe just dig in a little bit deeper on the growth in North America, I guess some companies related to retail capital spending had I guess a little bit of a more difficult time. Is it more about market share gains for you that’s driving this or is it I guess just more deal growth that you are just positioned towards?

Mike Baur

Management

Chris, it’s Mike. I’ll start here. I think the number one thing for us was just we characterized as a big deal quarter and that came out of our barcode and POS business specifically where we had very good growth on the retail side and our barcode business. Good growth there. We certainly had – we were coming off of a strong June quarter as well. And so we were pleasantly surprised and I think part of it goes back to two quarters ago when we talked about we had lost some market share in the March quarter. And it was one of our goals was to make sure that we could gain back market share where we met appropriate financial returns. And I believe we’ve done that. We had a good execution on the part of our North America sales team taking share. Chris McGinnis - Sidoti & Company: Great. And the strength in international markets, is that similar in terms of more market share gains that obviously -- than what’s happening in the underlying demands?

Mike Baur

Management

Yeah. I think Europe itself was similar to North America in that we executed well. Our vendors are doing a good job with us. I believe the difference in those markets in Brazil would be Brazil. There’s some legislation that’s helping us grow our fiscal printer business. And that the new requirements for retailers to add fiscal printer technology, is underlying the continued strong growth in Brazil. In addition to the same scenario we are finding in Europe, in North America of we have the right vendor partners who themselves are gaining shares. We are gaining share within their distribution businesses. Overall it was just a really good execution quarter. And in some in cases where we were able to take some additional share, we felt like it was strategic for us because many of our vendors have programs that will reward growth and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t lose that on that opportunity, which we had frankly three quarters ago. Chris McGinnis - Sidoti & Company: And just two quick questions on, I guess just the quarter itself, you talked about a benefit from bad debt expense. I don’t think that that would carry forward obviously. Is that a onetime benefit for you?

Charlie Mathis

Management

Chris, this is Charlie. That’s correct. There was a $2.5 million credit in the quarter that will not -- we wouldn’t expect that to carry forward in the next quarter. Chris McGinnis - Sidoti & Company: That wasn’t backed out of the non-GAAP number, is that correct?

Charlie Mathis

Management

That’s correct. That was not backed out. Chris McGinnis - Sidoti & Company: All right. And I guess just going forward when you give Q3 guidance for the back half of the year, will you back out the extra expense for the ERP implementation?

Charlie Mathis

Management

We are certainly highlighting the fact that we are going to have these expenses too. You should be aware that we plan on having $5 million to $6 million expenses. The non-GAAP numbers that we disclose for the quarter related to three primary areas and that was amortization of the intangibles, the change in fair value contingent considerations and the acquisition cost. Those we spelled out. So yeah, I would not expect to exclude those -- the non-GAAP number. However, I do want to highlight for you that we have those expenses of which we don’t believe will be recurring in our business going forward.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). And our next question comes from the line of Keith Housum of Northcoast Research, your line is now open.

Keith Housum - Northcoast Research

Analyst

Good afternoon guys. Thanks for taking my call and good quarter. Charlie, the receivables were up $36 million compared to yearend. I think it might be a record of roughly $500 million from what I remember of that. What’s driving that receivables and is that perhaps just because sales are way towards the back end of the quarter?

Charlie Mathis

Management

Yes, absolutely. The receivables is up because of the strong sales which normally occur at the back end of the quarter. Yes. Our DSO numbers were consistent in that 55 days range. So there’s no change there.

Keith Housum - Northcoast Research

Analyst

Okay. Does that lead us to believe that the sales I guess the quarter end were strong and that carries over to the beginning of this quarter, correct?

Charlie Mathis

Management

Let me also add one other thing on that Keith, is that we also have Imago, the acquisitions for the receivables in that number as well. That was one of the other reasons why the receivables numbers were up because of the acquisition of Imago.

Keith Housum - Northcoast Research

Analyst

Got it. Okay, thanks. In the unified communications business, it looks like gross profit was down about $1 million compared to prior year. But the operating margin was up like $1.5 million. Is there anything going on in that business that perhaps stands out to you?

Mike Baur

Management

I’ll start first. Charlie, you can jump in. I think Keith it’s mixed and that was the indication we gave in the call that we had a different mix. So when you look at our communication business as it’s changed over the last few years, we’ve got other vendors now that are becoming stronger in that communications mix and so that’s what changing the margin from a gross margin.

Keith Housum - Northcoast Research

Analyst

I’m assuming – but it’s a higher operating margin, you’ve got less expenses going into it.

Charlie Mathis

Management

Keith, one of the things on the operating margin is the fact we had $2.1 million bad debt credit in that segment.

Keith Housum - Northcoast Research

Analyst

That’s what it is, okay. Got it. That makes sense. Okay, thanks. Your international sales have obviously been strong. Is that probably a function of the management restructuring you did last year as well? Is that helping the vendors to play better with you guys or what are your thoughts there?

Mike Baur

Management

I think overall it’s execution. I think our teams are executing better. We’ve got more people involved in the international business that was the design. And there’s certainly some benefit of the vendors recognize us now as more of a global player from their view rather than just a regional player. But I would say it’s more the execution of the teams and I think that’s why this this quarter we executed excellent in all those regions. We have more management worried about how we are doing in these markets and I think we are seeing the results of that today.

Keith Housum - Northcoast Research

Analyst

Okay. As I look at your guidance for the second quarter, do I think about roughly $0.61 on a GAAP basis? Is that a good way to back into it?

Charlie Mathis

Management

I think we gave you the non-GAAP number there which again excludes the amortization of the intangibles, the fair value change and contingent considerations and the acquisition cost related to that. I think going forward we are going to give non-GAAP guidance. And so I don’t have the GAAP guidance number for you right now.

Keith Housum - Northcoast Research

Analyst

Got it. And I guess the last question for you, I guess we are hearing more and more about congestion on the West Coast and the ports with inventory coming in from Asia. Is that a potential impact on the vendors you guys serve?

Mike Baur

Management

We are certainly aware of those issues. It’s been going on for quite a while and I think our teams have not highlighted them as a concern they have to date. We of course have always had strong inventory positions and I would say with the level of inventory we had today we are in good position to satisfy our customers, even if there’s some temporary shortages.

Operator

Operator

Thank you and I’m showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Mike Baur for any further remarks.

Mike Baur

Management

Thanks everybody for joining us today. We expect to hold our next conference call to discuss December 31 quarterly earnings results on January 29, 2015.