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Spok Holdings, Inc. (SPOK)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Tue, Mar 11, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the USA Mobility's Fourth Quarter and Year-End 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; MyLe Chang, Controller; and Colin Balmforth, President of the company's Consolidated Operating Company. And at this time, for opening remarks, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Endsley. Please go ahead, sir.

Shawn E. Endsley

Management

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter and 2013 year-end 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 operations and the business environment in which we compete contained in our 2013 Form 10-K, 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 fourth quarter and 2013 operating results and what we believe was another year of substantial progress for USA Mobility. The accomplishments during the past year included strong performances for our Wireless and Software operations, continued improvement in Wireless subscriber and revenue trends, expansion of our Software sales in both international and domestic markets and the immigration of our 2 operating subsidiaries and management team. On a consolidated basis, we met or exceeded our internal expectations, as well as our financial guidance for revenue and operating expenses. We made significant strides last year toward our goal of stabilizing our total revenue and transitioning to a growing business and long-term provider of unified communications solutions. In 2013, our Wireless operations ended the year ahead of key operating goals for total revenue, operating cash flow, average revenue per unit, or ARPU, and operating expenses, while our quarterly and annual rate of subscriber and revenue erosion improved either record or near record levels. In addition, our Software operations posted record-high revenue in bookings for the year, while our backlog at year end once again exceeded $40 million. At the same time, we were able to maintain strong consolidated cash flow margins, reduce expenses, operate profitably and remain debt free while once again returning capital to our stockholders in the form of cash distributions. Shawn will provide a financial overview in a few minutes, but first I want to review some other key highlights in the fourth quarter and 2013. Number one, strong performances from both Wireless and Software resulted in consolidated revenue of $209.8 million for 2013, a decline of only 4.5% from $219.7 million in 2012. Number two, subscriber and revenue trends in Wireless continued to improve in 2013…

Shawn E. Endsley

Management

Thanks, Vince. Before I review a few key financial highlights for the fourth quarter and 2013, I would encourage you to review our 2013 Form 10-K, which we expect to file later today since it contains significantly more information about our business operations and financial performance than we will be able to cover on this call. As Vince noted, we were pleased with our operating performance for the fourth quarter and 2013, as well as the substantial progress we made toward meeting our long-term operating goals. Results were consistent with our previously announced financial guidance for 2013 for both our Wireless and Software operations, and we believe we have positioned the company well for another solid year in 2014. In the interest of time today, I plan to forgo my usual review of the income statement since much of that information is contained in our news release schedule and federal filings. However, to the extent you ask specific questions about our financial results, I would be glad to address them during the Q&A. I want to focus instead this morning on 3 other key financial items that may be of interest. Those items include: number one, the status of our Software revenue remediation work; number two, a review of our deferred tax assets along with other balance sheet items; and number three, our financial guidance for 2014. As we noted in our earnings release, we successfully remediated the previously identified material weakness in the design of internal control over financial reporting relating to Software revenue recognition. Our remediation process involved staffing, training and process and procedure changes that are detailed in our 2013 Form 10-K. Our remediation efforts have also provided us the ability to reliably estimate the professional service period relating to our Software arrangements. This will enable us…

Vincent D. Kelly

Management

Thanks, Shawn. Before we take your questions, I want to comment briefly on several other items that may be of interest: first, the recent integration of our operating subsidiaries and management reorganization; second, our current capital allocation strategy; and third, our business outlook and key initiatives for 2014. With respect to consolidation of our Wireless and Software operations, on January 1, we established our company as a unified communications business founded on one integrated sales force selling Software and Wireless solutions, one set of overhead, one custom messaging experience, one platform for future growth and acquisitions. We took the initial steps to integrate our 2 businesses early last year, including consolidation of our finance, human resources, legal and IT departments. As a result, our final integration of sales, marketing and operations has gone very smoothly and without any disruptions to customer service. Today, as one unified company, we've not only gained operating efficiencies, but we are much better positioned to serve our customers, many of whom have increasingly asked us to be a single source provider for their unified communications needs. As mentioned in our press release, Colin Balmforth, former President of Amcom Software, was named President of our combined operating company, while Jim Boso, former President of our Wireless subsidiary, is now consultant and will focus on operational sales and related corporate development activities. Both Colin and Jim are exceptionally capable and experienced business executives, and we are confident they will be successful in their new assignments. Other management changes at the operating company include Kate Bolseth as Chief Operating Officer; and Gary Ash as Global Executive Vice President of Sales. While we now function as a single company, there are other steps that we might take to more effectively and efficiently market our company and services to customers on a global scale. Towards that end, we are currently exploring several avenues to better communicate our corporate mission, as well as generate greater exposure for our products and services. We'll keep you posted on this initiative as updates occur. At this point, I'll ask Colin Balmforth, President of our Consolidated Operating Company, to comment briefly on our fourth quarter sales and marketing activities. In addition, Colin will share some insights on what we see as our principal growth drivers going forward. Colin?

Colin M. Balmforth

Management

Thank you, Vince. Good morning. With respect to sales and marketing activities, both our Wireless and Software sales teams performed very well during the quarter. On the Wireless side, the end of 2013 marked 5 years of achieving gross additions targets on a quarterly basis. This phenomenal track record of success is a testament to the hard work by many teams in the company and reinforces the message that paging continues to be highly relevant and maintains an important place in critical mobile communications. The Wireless sales team continued the momentum from the previous quarter by bringing in 4 new hospital accounts. These were notable not only because these organizations selected our services to displace competitive systems but also because these wins underscore the ongoing trust and reliability of paging for critical communications. In addition to these new customer wins, 2 existing hospital customers significantly increased the number of paging units used in their facilities. Regarding our efforts in cross-selling and collaboration between our Wireless and Software sales teams, there were 14 transactions booked during the fourth quarter, up from 6 in the third quarter. We are pleased to achieve expectations in this area and anticipate further progress as we integrate our sales teams in 2014. On the Software side of the business, the Amcom sales and marketing team ended the year with record bookings, and the team recorded a record revenue performance, up from $51.3 million in 2012 to $60.3 million in 2013. Healthcare continued to be the primary vertical market for North American accounts won, with public safety and government sales growing steadily. We are pleased to note that both tenured and U.S. sales reps performed very well and closed deals in the fourth quarter, a great sign that we're accelerating the productivity of our newly hired sales…

Vincent D. Kelly

Operator

Thank you, Colin. Turning to our capital allocation strategy, we continue to evaluate how best to deploy our capital resources to support sustainable business growth and maximize stockholder value. This is particularly true as we pursue our stated business strategy to evolve from a standalone paging carrier to a provider of unified communications solutions. As I stated previously, our board and management has spent considerable time over the past few years evaluating various acquisition opportunities to expand the depth and breadth of our Software applications, service capabilities and market penetration. Today, as Colin noted, we haven't identified a candidate that we believe meets all of our stated criteria. Still, we remain optimistic yet disciplined and continue to look at potential acquisitions with the hope of identifying a good fit. With regard to other uses of capital, we expect to continue paying our quarterly dividend of $0.125 per share, or $0.50 annually, for the foreseeable future. We believe the current dividend rate provides an appropriate yield on our common stock. Plus this allows us to retain strategic capital as we weigh various other capital needs going forward. Also, we may repurchase more shares of our stock from time to time under our stock buyback program. With regard to capital allocation decisions over the longer term, the board and management will continue to assess all options. Of course, we will keep you updated with any change in direction or strategy here. As we move closer to a business model that can sustain long-term revenue growth, we expect capital allocation will shift more toward opportunities for long-term capital appreciation and total return. At the same time, we will continue to manage our balance sheet prudently by maintaining ample liquidity to support our working capital needs. Finally, with respect to our business outlook and…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

Vincent D. Kelly

Operator

Operator, it doesn't look like there's any questions. So I just want to thank everyone for joining us this morning. We look very much forward to speaking with you after we release our first quarter results. And thanks again, everybody. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

And thank you. That does conclude today's presentation. Thank you for your participation.