Earnings Labs

Spok Holdings, Inc. (SPOK)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Sun, Nov 2, 2014

$11.43

+0.97%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.
Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to Spok’s Third Quarter Investor Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded. Online today, we have Vince Kelly, President and Chief Executive Officer; Shawn Endsley, Chief Financial Officer and Colin Balmforth, President of the company’s Operating Company. At this time for opening remarks, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Endsley. Please go ahead, sir.

Shawn Endsley

Management

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for our third 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 Spok’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. Spok’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, our third quarter Form 10-Q, which we expect to file later today, and related documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please note that Spok 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.

Vince Kelly

Management

Thanks, Shawn, and good morning. We’re very please to speak with you this morning about our third quarter results, which clearly were among the strongest we reported in many years. Indeed, in our first full quarter under the Spok's name, the company grew organically for the first time in our recent history as revenue, operating cash flow and EBITDA, increased from the prior quarter. In addition to this important milestone, our software bookings reached an all-time high for the second straight quarter. Software revenue increased substantially from the year-earlier quarter and our backlog remained near a record high. At the same time, wireless trends continued to improve as we ended the quarter ahead of our key operating goals for total revenue, gross placements and pager churn. Overall, we met or exceeded virtually all of our operating goals, enhanced our product offerings, expanded our market reach, strengthened our balance sheet and once again return the capital to stockholders in the form of cash dividends. Shawn and Colin will provide details on our financial results and operating activity shortly, but first I want to review some key results for the quarter. Number one, consolidated revenue increased to $49.8 million, an increase from both, the year earlier and prior quarter. Our software revenue more than offset the decline wireless revenue. In short, Spok got bigger on an aggregate basis, not smaller. While, we expect it will take more time for the company to grow consistently on an annual basis, we believe this is a noteworthy achievement in Spok's evolution as we continue to reposition the company for long-term growth. Number two, software revenue increased 34.4% from the year-earlier quarter to $15.9 million while bookings reached to record high $20.4 million versus $17.3 million a year-earlier. Also our backlog rose to $42.1 million at…

Shawn Endsley

Operator

Thanks, Vince. Before I review our financial highlights for the quarter, I would again encourage you to review our third quarter form 10-Q, which we expect to file later today as it contains far more information about our business operations and financial performance than we will cover on this call. As Vince noted, we were pleased to report excellent operating results for the quarter, results that were consistent with our previously announced financial guidance. An increase in software revenue combined with solid wireless revenue along with discipline expense management, contributed to strong cash flow, EBITDA and operating margins. Our balance sheet also improved during the quarter as our cash balance at September 30th exceeded a $106 million. This morning, I will highlight several items regarding our third quarter financial performance. They include first, a review of certain items impacting our revenue. Second, a review of selected items impacting our expenses, and third a brief review of the balance sheet and other key financial items. If you have specific questions about these or other financial issues, I would be glad to address them during the Q&A. Our wireless revenue for the quarter declined only 2% from the second quarter of 2014. This decrease reflected the performance of our sales teams in generating wireless gross additions and management of our direct quarterly average revenue per unit or ARPU, which declined only $0.01 in the quarter. We were pleased with this performance in a very competitive wireless marketplace. During the third quarter, we also benefited from a large cellular transaction. In addition to helping increased our cellular activations to their highest level in more than two years, the deal helped generate $350,000 in third quarter cellular revenue. Our cellular revenue is a small component of our total wireless revenue. It continues to be…

Colin Balmforth

Analyst

Thank you, Shawn, and good morning. After another record-setting quarter this year, our sales and marketing teams helped us close a solid third quarter with software bookings of $20.4 million. Included in this figure is a 72% increase in new logo business from the third quarter in 2013. While new customers are an important part of our growth, our long time customers continued to return and invest in upgrades to their existing applications as well as add new products and expand their portfolio of communication solutions. Q3 included notable upgrades for a number of our call center customers.. One example is a large southeastern health system with more than 20 acute care nursing care and hospice facilities were added to Spok's clinical alerting solution. The health system needs to consolidate several of its call centers and is focused on centralizing the management at critical alerts such as code calls, panic alarms, fire alarms and medical gas interruptions. Their decision was driven by the need to integrate these critical alarms for multiple locations with a call center to increase its patient safety and enhance operational efficiencies. We continue to meet our goals for gross additions to our paging services. As I have mentioned in the previous calls, there are also many positive collaboration efforts among sales representatives. Our cross-selling efforts brought in 17 deals during the third quarter, representing more than $1.5 million in bookings. I also talked before about our five pillars for growth. They represent Spok's strategy for meeting our long-range objectives. I would like to update you on our progress in each area. Our first pillar is the midmarket healthcare space, which we define as hospitals with 200 to 600 beds. We are very proud to have a majority of large healthcare institutions in the U.S. as our…

Vince Kelly

Management

Thank you, Colin. Before we take your questions, I want to comment briefly on several other items that may be of interest. First, update you on our revised capital allocation strategy. Second, review our business outlook over the balance of the year. Third, give you some information about our upcoming Analyst Day and investor meeting we will host on November 20th in New York. With respect to our capital allocation strategy, we have evaluated several options for deploying capital that will allow us to meet our principal goal of achieving sustainable business levels while maximizing long-term stockholder value. I would add that we been particularly mindful of our asset allocation choices in recent months as the company has continued to generate strong operating cash flow and our cash balance surpassed $100 million at September 30th. While circumstances can always change and the Board retains the option to make changes in the future, we thought now is a good time to provide more clarity around our current plan. As previously discussed, we expect to reserve capital for potential software related acquisitions that would expand and enhance our current applications and services capabilities. As you know, the Board and Management have evaluated numerous acquisition opportunities in recent years. Today, however, we still have not identified a candidate that meets all of our stated criteria and is available with what we regard a reasonable value. Even so, we continue to pursue viable candidates and believe we ultimately will find a strategic fit. In the meantime, we remained very disciplined in our approach. Regarding other uses of capital, we expect to continue paying our quarterly dividend of $12.5 per share or $0.50 annually for the foreseeable future based on our current projections for operating cash flow. In addition, we may buyback additional shares of…

Operator

Operator

Yes, sir. Thank you. (Operator Instructions). We do have one in queue. We have Josh Paulson with Claragh Mountain Investments.

Josh Paulson - Claragh Mountain Investments

Analyst

Yes. Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. I was wondering if you guys could talk a little bit more about your backlog for software operations, with the new revenue recognition method on a ratable basis. How are you modeling future recognition of that current $42 million backlog?

Vince Kelly

Management

Shawn, you want to ahead and take that?

Shawn Endsley

Operator

Yes. Essentially that backlog includes both, our maintenance renewals and our operations. We implement that over a specified period as normally either the longer the maintenance or the implementation period. To the extent we implement faster than that, we than both have a catch up revenue amount. At this point, we expect that most of that will be recorded in 2015 over the entire year.

Josh Paulson - Claragh Mountain Investments

Analyst

Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Mr. Paulson has re-queued. Please go ahead, sir.

Josh Paulson - Claragh Mountain Investments

Analyst

Thanks for taking the next question. I was wondering also if you could provide detailed on the average sale price for your software solutions in general or by sector if possible as well as the high and low range. For example, in yesterday's results you mentioned 28 new accounts for your public safety sector. I am trying to get a better understanding of how this impacts top-line revenue for software sales in general?

Vince Kelly

Management

Colin, you want to take about the average sale price of our solutions?

Colin Balmforth

Analyst

Yes, I would be happy to talk that, Josh. The overall averages that we record typically for new logo sales around $111,000 the public safety deals have been slightly higher than that Josh, so we have been running those at closer to about $150,000, but they do vary in size quite considerably. Our new logo transactions have increased as I mentioned earlier and our six-figure deals have increased the year-over-year as well, so just to give you a little bit color on that. We had 46 transactions this last quarter to six-figure deals. In Q3 2014, we had 24 six-figure transactions and that also relates to about 33 in Q2 2014.

Josh Paulson - Claragh Mountain Investments

Analyst

All right. Great. Thanks guys and congrats on the quarter.

Vince Kelly

Management

Thank you. Okay. That’s all the questions that I seen in the queue, so we will probably wrap up now. I don't see no one else joining the queue, so thanks everyone for joining us this morning. We look forward to seeing some of you at our Analyst Day in New York on November 20th. And speaking to all of you again after we release our fourth quarter and full year results early next year. Thanks again, everyone, and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. We do thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you for calling.