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Superior Group of Companies, Inc. (SGC)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 25, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to the Superior Uniform Group's Conference Call to discuss the company's Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Year End 2015 Financial Results. With us today are Mr. Michael Benstock, Chief Executive Officer of Superior Uniform Group, and Andy Demott, Chief Operating Officer, CFO and Treasurer. After the speakers' opening remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. [Operator Instructions]. This call is being recorded and your participation implies consent to our recording of this call. If you do not agree to these terms, simply drop off the line. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the call over to Hala Elsherbini, Senior Vice President of Halliburton Investor Relations, who will read the Safe Harbor statement. Please go ahead.

Hala Elsherbini

Analyst

Thank you, Andrew. This conference call may contain forward looking statements about Superior Uniform Group's business opportunities and its anticipated results of operation. Please bear in mind that forward-looking information is subject to risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ from what you hear today. Many of these risks and uncertainties are described in Superior Uniform Group's Annual Report on Form 10-K for fiscal 2015, in this morning's news release and the company's other filings with the SEC. Forward looking statements in this conference call are based on our current expectations and beliefs. Management does not undertake any duty to update the forward looking statements made during this conference call or elsewhere. Please note that all growth comparisons that management makes today will relate to the corresponding period in 2014 unless otherwise noted. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Michael.

Michael Benstock

Analyst

Thank you, Hala. And good afternoon everyone. We're glad you could join us for a review of our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2015 results. I'll start as with usual with some highlights of our financial and operational performance for the quarter and full-year and then provide our thoughts on key industry trends. Andy will then give you additional insight into our financial progress. Finally, I'll come back with some comments on our general outlook for 2016. And after this, we'll be happy to answer your questions. We finished another solid year with successful execution on our long-term growth strategies with fourth quarter net sales up 7% to $53.2 million. We continued our string of 13 consecutive quarterly sales increases. Our fourth quarter results are typically our seasonal low period in our employee I.D. business. As u recall, many of our customers are more focused on holiday related sales than on buying uniforms at year-end. Our second and third quarters are most -- more reflective of peak buying patterns in our annual cycle. Let's take a look at how each of our segments performed during the quarter. Uniforms and Related Products continue its momentum, increasing sales by 5.2% over last year to $49.9 million. We continue to expand our market penetration across new and existing customers. Remote Staffing Solutions delivered another stellar quarter with sales up by 34.6% to $4.2 million. Sales to outside customers increased by 45.3% from a year ago as we continue to penetrate new customer accounts. From a profitability perspective, we continue to leverage our fixed cost across higher sales volumes and from low touch programs that become solidly profitable accounts due to their low level of service. This gives us the added ability to compete on larger programs that may be lower gross margin or…

Andy Demott

Analyst

Thank you, Michael. And good afternoon everyone. Let's start with the fourth quarter income statement. Net sales increased 7% to $53.2 million. Uniforms and related products contributed 4.9% of this gain with remote staffing adding the remaining 2.1%. Uniforms and related product sales were up 5.2% from the 2014 quarter. This reflects a continuation of the trends we saw all year, greater market penetration, higher levels of employee turnover and a solid new business pipeline. In remote staffing solutions, quarterly sales to outside customers expanded by 45.3% from a year ago. We continue to increase business of existing customers, as well as to attract new ones. Cost of goods sold rose 8.9% to $35.3 million. As a percent of sales, cost of goods sold were 66.4%, compared with 65.3% in 2014. This reflects the pattern you saw throughout the year. We experienced higher direct product cost as a percentage of net sales in our uniform segment due to contract mix. We see this when some new business carries a lower gross margin than our average contract. As Michael mentioned, one of our large customers initiated a Made in the USA uniform program earlier in the year, which had a higher than average dollar selling price and lower than average gross margin percentage. However, this is offset by the fact that this business requires a lower level of customer service, distribution and other related cost and those factors reduce our SG&A. This account and others like can be just as profitable if not more so than contracts with higher gross margins. Additionally, our remote staffing segment experienced a significant portion of its growth in net sales at our US location. While sales generated from our domestic locations in this segment carry a higher hourly rate, they also carry a significantly lower…

Michael Benstock

Analyst

Thanks Andy. We're proud of our 2015 results, a year in which we reinvested significantly in our business segments and delivered top-line revenues that were solidly accretive to the bottom-line results. We believe our investments will drive long-term profitability, strengthen our competitive position and meet our broadening customer needs. We've discussed our aggressive acquisition strategy. We remained very active in seeking acquisitions that reach new markets, create new relationships for us or offer natural product to our service additions. Our acquisition pipeline is robust and we believe we can close on at least on acquisition this year. We expect to achieve additional efficiencies as well in our sourcing, which ultimately will include the benefits of our new Haiti manufacturing facility. And we also will be leveraging the highest level of sales across our fixed cost structure that should lower SG&A as a percentage of sales. While we expect some of our customers may be distracted by the presidential election year, we feel positive about our outlook for 2016. Barring any major geopolitical events, our long-term outlook remains unchanged. Excluding the impacted acquisitions, we expect consolidated average organic sales growth over the next three to five years in excess of 8% per year. This includes expansion in our uniform segment of approximately 6% per year and $2.5 million to $3 million increases for our remote staffing solutions. That wraps up our prepared remarks. Now, Andy and I are happy to take your questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from Kevin Steinke of Barrington. Please go ahead.

Kevin Steinke

Analyst

Good afternoon. You talked about penetration of existing customers is a growth driver on the uniform side of the business. Just wonder if you talk more about how you're doing that, if it's with additional product or just capturing greater share of customer wallet in certain product categories or how you go about doing that?

Michael Benstock

Analyst

It's both of those, Kevin. Thanks for the question. We have long-term relationships with many of our customers. And where we seek to penetrate them further is usually by offering them products that they might be buying from somebody else or products that they perhaps are not even supplying currently to their employees, that their employees are having to supply on their own. We focus heavily on our customers’ branding efforts in all the markets that we serve and sometimes even on our customers’ customers' branding efforts and try to support those activities as well. Sometimes that's what value-added service is, such as embroidery or screen printing. Sometimes it may be a component of introducing our shoe line to them, which is something they may not be purchasing now. Often times it might be for vent apparel that they're currently not buying from us or could be any range of promotional products as well beyond the uniforms that they're buying from us. So it's really a mixed bag of -- on one hand it's defiantly more and more products trying to introduce into. It's more focused selling to penetrate markets and acquire new customers. It's really working for a much more intelligent lead list and I think much more intelligent selling techniques that we've used in the past.

Kevin Steinke

Analyst

Okay. Great. And you mentioned having a solid new business pipeline. How would you characterize the new business pipeline compared to maybe a year ago? And how did it progress as you move throughout 2015?

Michael Benstock

Analyst

It has improved over last year significantly. And it has steadily got larger and larger I think in part, because the economy has improved during that period of time, but also in part because I think our -- I know our sales efforts are much more targeted. And we're being much more careful about what business we're targeting and making sure that it's the right type of business for us. And in doing so, we might be dealing with fewer opportunities in some cases, but there are larger opportunities and more right for our company.

Kevin Steinke

Analyst

Okay. Thanks. That's all I had for now.

Michael Benstock

Analyst

Sure. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Ralph Marash from the First Manhattan Company. Please go ahead.

Ralph Marash

Analyst

Good afternoon. I have a question about cash flows for 2016. Can you give any projections at all on what you think bottom-line might look like in terms of cash production? And if you don't want to do that, then how about just CapEx estimate for 2016?

Michael Benstock

Analyst

Yes. I mean we -- as you know, we generally don't give guidance on the earnings side of it. But I will tell you on -- from a cash flow perspective for fixed asset additions, I mean we are still continuing the wrap up of the project in El Salvador, which we’ve got roughly another $2.5 million to spend on that in 2016. A normal CapEx is typically $2.5 million to $3 million, so yes to add to that and there may be a $1 million more about the products -- projects that we have going on.

Ralph Marash

Analyst

Thanks. That's helpful. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

At this time, there appear to be no more questions. I would like to turn the conference back over to Michael Benstock for any closing remarks.

Michael Benstock

Analyst

Thank you, Andrew. Andy and I thank you very much for your time today. We look forward to sharing our first quarter performance with you in April. Till then, we wish you a good finish to this earnings season.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.