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Spok Holdings, Inc. (SPOK)

Q2 2013 Earnings Call· Fri, Aug 2, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to USA Mobility's second quarter investor call. Today's call is being recorded. On line today, we have Vince Kelly, President and Chief Executive Officer; Shawn Endsley, Chief Financial Officer; and MyLe Chang, Controller of USA Mobility. Also, from the company's software subsidiary, Amcom Software, we have Colin Balmforth, President; and Lynn Danko, Chief Financial Officer. At this time, for opening comments, I will turn the call over to Mr. Endsley. Please go ahead, sir.

Shawn E. Endsley

Management

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for our second quarter investor update. Before we discuss our operating results. I want to remind everyone that today's conference call may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to USA Mobility's future, financial and business performance. Such statements may include estimates of revenue, expenses and income as well as other predictive statements or plans which are dependent upon future events or conditions. These statements represent the company's estimates only on the date of this conference call and are not intended to give any assurance as to actual future results. USA Mobility's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. Although these statements are based upon assumptions that the company believes to be reasonable, they are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please review the Risk Factors section relating to our operation and the business environment in which we compete contained in our 2012 Form 10-K, our second quarter Form 10-Q, which we expect to file later today, and related company documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please note that USA Mobility assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements from past or present filings and conference calls. With that, I'll turn the call over to Vince.

Vincent D. Kelly

Management

Thanks, Shawn, and good morning. We're pleased to speak with you today regarding our second quarter operating results, and what we believe was another outstanding quarter and first half of the year for both our wireless and software businesses. On the wireless side, we ended the quarter ahead of our key operating goals for total revenue, operating cash flow, average revenue per unit or ARPU, and operating expenses. Our wireless sales force also exceeded the plan for subscribers, including gross additions, and the annual rate of revenue erosion improved to its lowest level in the company's history. In addition, our software business achieved excellent results of increased revenue and bookings, a near record high backlog and a growing pipeline of prospective accounts. At the same time, we were able to maintain strong consolidated cash flow margins, reduced expenses, and once again, returned capital to our stockholders. Shawn will discuss our financial results in more detail in a few minutes, but first I want to review a few key highlights of the quarter. Number one, subscriber and revenue trends in our wireless business continued to show improvement in the second quarter, with the rates of paging unit and the revenue erosion either at or near historically low levels. The annual rate of subscriber erosion was 8.7%, down from 11% a year earlier, while our annual rate of revenue erosion improved to a record level of 11.7%. We believe these positive results were due to another strong performance by our wireless sales force and increasing recognition among customers that paging continues to be the most reliable and cost-effective form of wireless communications and our continued investment in our software solutions and service capability. In fact, our top-performing Healthcare segment not only showed continued stability for the quarter but actually posted a net…

Shawn E. Endsley

Management

Thanks, Vince. As Vince noted, we are pleased with our second quarter financial results and the continued progress we made toward meeting our long-term operating and strategic goals. Both our wireless and software businesses performed exceptionally well, continuing the positive momentum we experienced over the past few quarters. Further improvement in the rates of subscriber churn and revenue erosion, combined with reduced operating expenses and a stable ARPU, contributed to strong cash flows and continued high margins in our wireless business. In addition, our software business reported increased revenue and bookings from the prior quarter, while the backlog remained near an all-time high. Looking first at our wireless business, we ended the quarter with 1,445,000 units in service, a net decrease of 35,000 units. This compares to unit declines of 35,000 in the first quarter and 34,000 in the second quarter of 2012. The slight uptick in the second quarter cancellation was due to a single large disconnect of 15,000 units by an indirect customer. These units came off at an ARPU of $2.18, substantially below our total ARPU of $8.22. As a result, our total net churn rate for the quarter was 2.4% compared to 2.3% in the first quarter and 2.1% in the year-earlier quarter. At the same time, however, our direct net churn rate for the quarter improved to 1.3% from 2% a year earlier. Our direct net churn rate is a better indicator of the overall performance in our subscriber base, as direct units and service represent 95.4% of our total subscriber base as of June 30. Despite the uptick in indirect net churn, our annual rate of total net unit erosion improved to 8.7% from 11% a year ago. Healthcare, once again, was our best performing market segment, accounting for 85% of direct gross placement.…

Vincent D. Kelly

Operator

Thanks, Shawn. Before we take your questions I want to comment on our second quarter sales and marketing activities, as well as briefly update you on our current capital allocation strategy. With respect to sales and marketing activities, both our wireless and software sales teams turned in excellent quarters. On the wireless side, our sales team surpassed expectations for subscribers, as we recorded 55,000 gross pager placements compared to 43,000 in the prior quarter, once again demonstrated an ability to consistently achieve a meaningful level of gross pager placement despite a still challenging business environment. Of note, the wireless team landed 5 large hospital sales during the quarter. They also recorded a significant number of unit placements to support the incoming class of medical students to our numerous existing hospital accounts. And, as previously noted, they are even able to achieve a net unit gain in our healthcare segment for the quarter. In addition, our wireless sales team played a key role in minimizing the rate of direct unit churns for the quarter which improved to 1.3% from 2% in the second quarter of 2012. Our wireless sales team also deserves a tremendous amount of credit for reducing the quarterly rate of revenue erosion to a 2-year low of 2.6% for the second quarter, as well as reducing annual rate of revenue erosion to an all-time low of 11.7%. As we look at long-term trends in our top wireless accounts, especially healthcare accounts, these accounts have been, and continue to be, very stable, notwithstanding the huge rise in alternative technologies such as smartphones, tablets and Wi-Fi. We attribute this primarily to 2 factors: Number one, the cost and reliability advantages of paging; and number two, our continued investment into our unified communications platform at Amcom, which differentiates us from our…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And at this time, we have no questions in the queue.

Vincent D. Kelly

Operator

Okay. Well, look, thanks for joining us for today. We look forward to speaking with you after we release our third quarter results, and everyone have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation.