Earnings Labs

TrueBlue, Inc. (TBI)

Q2 2018 Earnings Call· Mon, Jul 30, 2018

$4.80

+1.48%

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.

Same-Day

-0.92%

1 Week

+6.23%

1 Month

+7.69%

vs S&P

+3.57%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Chantal, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the TrueBlue’s Second Quarter 2018 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Derrek Gafford, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, you may begin your conference.

Derrek Gafford

Analyst

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today’s call. I’m here with our Chief Executive Officer, Steve Cooper; and our President and Chief Operating Officer, Patrick Beharelle. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that today’s call and slide presentation will contain several forward-looking statements, all of which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and we assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties, some of which are described in today’s press release and in our SEC filings, could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. We use non-GAAP measures when presenting our financial results. Included as adjustments to net income and our Q2 results, our integration and acquisition cost, amortization of intangible assets, cloud-based software implementation costs and adjustment of the effective income tax rate to the ongoing expected rate of 16%. Adjustments to EBITDA include Work Opportunity Tax Credit processing fees and cloud-based software implementation costs. Additionally in our outlook for Q3, we have included an adjustment to net income and EBITDA for the acceleration of the equity grants associated with the CEO transition announced today. Please refer to the non-GAAP reconciliations in today’s earnings release and on our website at trueblue.com under the Investor Relations section. Any comparisons made today are based on a comparison to the same period in the prior year, unless otherwise stated. Lastly, we will be providing a copy of our prepared remarks on our website at the conclusion of today’s call, and a full transcript and audio replay will also be available soon after the call. Okay, I’ll now turn the call over to Steve.

Steve Cooper

Analyst

Thank you, Derrek, good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us. Our total revenue increased 2% on an organic basis, excluding our divested PlaneTechs business and the recent acquisition of TMP. We are pleased with this quarter’s results which included revenue growth at PeopleReady, operating margin expansion and strong growth in net income per share. We experienced widespread revenue improvements in our PeopleReady business driven by a consistent focus on business development activity. For Q2, PeopleReady revenue increased 2% versus the 5% decline in Q1. Our PeopleScout segment produced 19% organic revenue growth in Q2, which was the fourth quarter in a row with double-digit growth. Efforts to reduce cost of services across all segments continue to produce value. Our gross margin expanded 150 basis points, our tenth consecutive quarter of gross margin expansion which contributed to our adjusted net income being stronger than expected. Net income per share increased 42%. This improved profitability was the result of a lower effective tax rate, share repurchases, and stronger business results. In particular, the stronger revenue results at PeopleReady, continued growth in our high-margin PeopleScout business, and the fact that our focus on reducing our cost of services is paying off all drove profitability growth. The progress we’ve made is a welcome confirmation that we’re focused on the right strategic priorities. On the technology front, we are leading the way in digitally transforming how we connect people and work. JobStack is our digital platform in our PeopleReady business that matches our workforce with available jobs and allows our customers to initiate orders. JobStack can make this match within minutes and provide customers with the confidence their needs will be met as they have the ability to track their orders from dispatch to arrival and quickly approve the worker’s hours at the…

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst

Thanks, Steve. I’d also like to thank the members of the board for their leadership and support. Indeed, the future is bright at TrueBlue. We have a great team and strategy in place, and I’m excited about the opportunity to lead TrueBlue into its next phase. I’m going to walk us through the results of our segments, and I’ll follow that with a strategy discussion before turning it over to Derrek for more financial results. PeopleReady is our largest segment, representing 60% of trailing twelve months total company revenue and 54% of combined segment profit. PeopleReady’s local relationships, national footprint of physical branch locations and growing use of technology, are helping clients find contingent industrial labor quickly and efficiently. PeopleReady’s 2% top line growth was driven by strong business development execution. The changes we made in Q4 of last year are delivering the benefits we intended. We flattened the organization to provide more accountability and focus on delivering service excellence to clients. We also made significant investments by adding more revenue generating resources to the PeopleReady field organization. As a result, we are adding new clients at a faster pace and gaining wallet share with our existing clients, both of which contributed to improving trends at PeopleReady. Turning to PeopleManagement which represents 31% of revenue and 17% of combined segment profit, this segment provides on-site workforce solutions in the North American industrial staffing market. Revenue declined 2%, excluding the impact of PlaneTechs, which we sold during the first quarter. Our same-store sales were somewhat lower than expected due to lower production volume with consumer products customers. While we continue to win new business, sales cycles have elongated a bit and the conversion rate wasn’t strong enough to provide a full offset to same-store headwinds. However, the front end of the…

Derrek Gafford

Analyst

Thank you, Patrick. I’m excited about the leadership transitions announced today. I’m happy that Steve has agreed to serve in a leadership capacity on our board of directors. His knowledge of the human capital industry, shareholder focused mindset and strategy development skills will serve shareholders well into the future. I’m also pleased to see Patrick become our next CEO. I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with Patrick over the last four years. He is an effective and well respected leader at our company and has a strong command of the businesses we run. The company’s preparation for this event has been thoughtful and thorough to ensure a seamless transition while maintaining momentum on strategic priorities. Turning to the quarterly results, total revenue of $614 million was higher than our $585 to $600 million expectation due to stronger performance by PeopleReady. The acquisition of TMP added about $3 million of revenue, but did not have a meaningful impact on total company profit. Net income per share was $0.44 and adjusted net income per share was $0.57, or $0.07 above the midpoint of our $0.47 to $0.53 expectation. The adjusted EPS outperformance was primarily driven by stronger performance of the PeopleReady business. Adjusted net income per share increased by 36%, or $0.15. Out of this increase, roughly $0.08 was from a lower effective income tax rate, $0.02 from a lower share count, and $0.05 from operational performance. Gross margin of 27.0% was up 150 basis points representing our tenth consecutive quarter of year-over-year gross margin expansion. 90 basis points of the improvement is from our staffing businesses, primarily driven by lower workers’ compensation expense as a result of a variety of safety and claim management practices. The remaining 60 basis points of improvement is from recruiting process efficiencies and the addition…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Jeff Silber with BMO. Your line is open.

Henry Chien

Analyst

Hey, good afternoon. It’s Henry Chien on for Jeff. I just wanted to follow up on the Amazon impact. I think you said it was $24 million in revenue. I believe for this current quarter and then $8 million, I didn’t catch what that applies to. So just I guess first question is beyond that quarter what’s the size of the Canada business that we should assume should be going away?

Derrek Gafford

Analyst

Hi, Henry. Good afternoon. It’s Derrek here.

Henry Chien

Analyst

Hey.

Derrek Gafford

Analyst

So the $8 million of headwind that we were referring to is the headwind that’s going to come in Q3 as a result of less Amazon headwind.

Henry Chien

Analyst

Okay.

Derrek Gafford

Analyst

To your question as far as where the Amazon relationship stands in its totality on a trailing twelve month basis, we’ve done through $53 million of revenue with Amazon and $6 million of segment profit. I’ll refer you back to, if you haven’t got a chance to look at all this, but if you take a look at our earnings release deck in our outlook section, we put some quarterly information, trailing four quarters of both the revenue and the segment profit that will be helpful for you. But you know in big picture $50 million of revenue-ish, $6 million of segment profit, about half of that segment profit let’s call it $3 million or so will be a headwind this year and then the other $3 million will be a headwind for the through the first – mostly the first two quarters of next year.

Henry Chien

Analyst

Okay, got it. Okay, that’s helpful. And $6 million that’s for the year, that $6 million.

Derrek Gafford

Analyst

Yeah, $6 million is on a trailing four quarter basis.

Henry Chien

Analyst

Got it, okay. And so forth third quarter and sorry if I missed this in the slide deck, the operating impact from Amazon for 3Q?

Derrek Gafford

Analyst

It’s going to be about $8 million less in revenue than we would have if we kept the relationship and kept revenue flat on a year-over-year basis.

Henry Chien

Analyst

Got it. And like the operating profit impact the…

Derrek Gafford

Analyst

Probably around a million-ish, maybe a little bit south of that on a segment profit basis.

Henry Chien

Analyst

Got it, okay. Great, thank you. Okay, that’s very helpful. Yeah just shifting over to the RPO business and I guess by the way congratulations to you Patrick. Just it seems like that is becoming – it seems like if that’s more of a strategic focus, are you looking for more acquisitions to kind of scale up the business. I guess that’s the first question. And second is the growth what’s been driving that’s kind of strong accelerated growth? And how confident are you that that can be sustainable for the next few years? Thanks.

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst

Thanks, Henry. This is Patrick. In terms of acquisitions, in PeopleScout business, we’ve got a position of strength in North America, position of strength in Australia, New Zealand. The areas we haven’t had as much strength have been in Europe and in Asia. And so, we’ve been growing those areas organically. But we thought it made a lot of a sense to jumpstart our capabilities in Europe with the TMP acquisition you know as we try to go out and sell new deals, it’s important to have referenceable clients locally. So we’ve now completed that acquisition in Europe and we’ve been looking in Asia haven’t necessarily found anything that fits what we’re trying to accomplish, but we’re going to continue to look for opportunities that expand our global capabilities. Coming to your second question around the growth, there’s been a mix of going out and selling new deals. We’ve had a lot of sales success particularly since we launched the Affinix platform. I’m doing a lot of sales calls and talk with a lot of clients and the excitement around the Affinix platform is high and that’s helping to drive our win rate up in recent quarters. And so that bodes well for future quarters. We’re also seeing a good bit of expansion within our existing client base often times when an RPO deal is sold for a partial amount of scope. And when we prove ourselves then the client will continue to add more positions, more geographies and more process steps. And so the combination of going out and win new engagements and expanding scope with our existing client base have been the two primary drivers of growth for PeopleScout.

Henry Chien

Analyst

Got it, okay. Yes, that’s helpful. And just in terms of the demand for RPO is there – if this is the right way to think about, is there kind of a meaningful shift using RPO versus using a permanent placement type of service from a temp firm or a placement firm?

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst

Well, one of the things that we’ve seen over the last couple years is companies are looking for scalability both from a seasonal perspective as well as a cyclical perspective and so lot of clients are engaging us for scalability reasons. A second reason that we’re seeing clients engage us is – RPO engagement is typically our cost savings opportunity for clients particularly if they’re using third party agencies, which carry a much higher cost on a per hire basis. And so, yeah, it depends on the client starting position, the degree of savings, but we’re seeing a lot of opportunities for saving clients’ significant amount of money and that’s one of the key reasons why they’re engaging us in addition to that scalability point that I made earlier.

Henry Chien

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks for the color.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from John Healy with North Coast Research. Your line is open.

John Healy

Analyst · North Coast Research. Your line is open.

Thank you. I wanted to ask just a little bit more about the bounce back in PeopleReady revenue this quarter. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more color on the performance by month for this segment. And if you look at kind of hours versus wages maybe what the performance might be for that segment?

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst · North Coast Research. Your line is open.

Yeah, we’re really pleased with the performance this quarter with PeopleReady, the 2% growth. The growth – PeopleReady exited the quarter at 3% exit rate. If you get into to looking at the revenue trends, was a very broad base quarter for us, the improvements. It wasn’t a big project. It wasn’t a big client. Every industry vertical that we serve either had growth or the sales trend improved. On a year-over-year basis, we’re comparing Q1 to Q2. From a geographic perspective, very broad based as well. All 10 – our top 10 states, the revenue trend improved from Q1 to Q2. The only exception to that is California, and California had a minimum wage increase that went into play at the beginning of the first quarter. So we normally see a spike in revenue as we increase the bill rates, and then that tapers down a little bit as people trim some hours and then it tends to recover in the quarter. So I think that has less to do with us and some of the adjustments we’ve made from a business development perspective than it does for any other reasons. Your last question, when it comes to margin – or excuse me, to bill rates, hours are slightly down for us. I mean, our bill rates are running up about 5%-ish. So you deduct out the – do the math on the hours, you got – probably got an hour decline of around 3%. That’s probably the best where we’ve been from an hour’s perspective though. The hour’s declines have been slightly larger than that if we looked at prior periods. So I think I got all your questions there, John. If I missed something, why don’t you hit me back with another follow-up question?

John Healy

Analyst · North Coast Research. Your line is open.

That’s very helpful. I just wanted to ask just kind of where we’re at with the business right now. As I look out the next few quarters, it seems like there’s a number of moving parts with the TMP acquisition, the Amazon business out of Canada kind of going away. Just as you look at the revenue profile of the company, and if I kind of take your guidance on a pro forma basis, a low single-digit type revenue growth, in that kind of environment and where you’re at with investments in your business today, what do you think that kind of corresponds to the level of SG&A that you had grown in the business? I feel like SG&A has been growing more in the mid-single-digit type clip, even though the revenues are kind of low single digit. Is that the right kind of calibration for what those two – what that SG&A level should be given the revenue growth we’re seeing on the business maybe in the next few quarters?

Derrek Gafford

Analyst · North Coast Research. Your line is open.

Sure, well from a broad perspective, we’re feeling really good about the future here. I’ll just talk about where we feel from a growth perspective, from a macro perspective. We like the macro environment. Things look really healthy to us. I mean, this is an environment where we think we can be putting up mid- to upper single-digit organic growth percentages and really be pushing some operating leverage to the business. From an SG&A perspective, in some of our results, we’ve got some add-backs in there, some unique items. So if you look at our guidance for the third quarter and exclude any unique items that we got in there for add-backs, the rate of SG&A growth is pretty close to what we’ll expect the revenue growth to be on an organic basis. So I think it’s pretty much in line with where the revenue growth is headed, and with the gross margin expansion that we’ve been having, that should still produce some nice operating margin or EBITDA margin, depending on how you look at expansion.

John Healy

Analyst · North Coast Research. Your line is open.

And I guess, Derrek, I just wanted to ask that question – you said you guys like the macro right now and you feel like that there’s potential to be growing much faster. I guess I just want to ask, what do you think is holding you back from doing that right now? Because if I look at the PeopleReady business, and it’s such a big percentage still of what you guys are doing, and that revenue level has been kind of steady for a while now. And I’m just trying to understand what needs to give to get to that upper single-digit growth rate that you think the company could deliver?

Derrek Gafford

Analyst · North Coast Research. Your line is open.

Well I think, we’re well on our way. If we take a look at where we’ve been, that business has been in a period of low single-digit declines for a while, the bounce-back this quarter was really nice, plus 2% versus being down minus 5% in Q1. I think we’ve got the right things lined up really with PeopleReady to get it to where we want, into that mid- to upper single-digit organic growth. Last year, there were some changes that were made to flatten out the org charts, to clarify roles, particularly when it comes to sales and who’s responsible for that. Those were good adjustments that we made last year. Coming into this year, as far as what the business development and expectations are for our branch managers and how much time they should be in the field and those types of expectations have been well set. So I think we’ve got things on the right track and that’s really what’s producing the turn. Now particularly with the PeopleReady with our local accounts, that was an area where we’ve been suffering a bit. We think it was mostly related to the business development activities at the branch level, maybe that we’re relying on salespeople a little too much versus the branch manager being actively engaged to the extent that we would like it. And I think the right adjustments have been made, John. I think we’re – I think we just need to follow the plan that’s been laid out and execute, and well, I think we’ll continue to see some momentum in this revenue trend, assuming a healthy economic environment, which looks really good right now.

John Healy

Analyst · North Coast Research. Your line is open.

Okay, I look forward to it guys. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Marcon with R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

All right, good afternoon. I guess, first, I’d just like to say, Steve, I really enjoyed working with you over the years and congratulations on the next stage in your career. And Patrick, congratulations to you.

Steve Cooper

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Thanks, Mark. Sure, I appreciate that.

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Thanks, Mark.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

All right, just with regards to, I guess, first, from a leadership perspective, should we anticipate any sort of downturns in terms of areas of emphasis from a strategic or executional perspective? Or any sort of changes from that perspective?

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Yeah, Mark, this is Patrick. Yeah, Steve and I’ve really been working hand in glove for the last several years on developing our strategy in the areas that we’re focused on. Yes, you’re going to continue to see a focus on the digitalization of our PeopleReady business, rolling out our JobStack capabilities to clients and to workers. You’ll continue to see a focus on building out our global capabilities in the RPO space. You’ll continue to see a focus on operating more as one company, with more cross-selling. We’ve had a lot of success with our cross-selling efforts, and so we’re making more investments in cross-selling across the organization and other technology investments and capabilities such as Affinix and some back-office capabilities that we’re investing in. So from my perspective, it’s going to look a lot like it has in the last couple of years in terms of areas of focus. And one of the things Derrek mentioned earlier is really ramping up our ability to execute. As I think about PeopleReady in Q2, we’re staring to see the fruits of some of the changes in investments that we made in Q4, and we’ve added additional resources in our branches. We’re putting more focus and accountability on those branches, and they’re responding extremely well. We flattened the organization a bit. And so I would expect that the strategies that we’ve laid out, we’re just going to continue to try to execute on those better. Steve, I don’t know if you have anything you would like to add to that or not?

Steve Cooper

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

No, I appreciate that. Mark, we have been anticipating this for a while and working towards it. And so Patrick and I have been shoulder to shoulder, along with Derrek, in many of these strategies that Patrick has just mentioned here. And we haven’t held back on what leadership team will support Patrick. So we have been very busy in the last 18 months and adding strength to that layer, so when this day came, Patrick can be very focused on running the business rather than needing to change out the team below him. So I think the team that got the results this quarter are in play. And I think the turn is nice, as Derrek has mentioned, in the results, and we do believe that we’ve turned the corner and there should be good things to come from the strategies and initiatives that we put in play here.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Great. From the outside, it seemed pretty transparent in terms of both the way that leadership was evolving, so again, congratulations on that. With regards to PeopleReady, so as we think about the turn, you did provide some color in the deck with regards to headwinds on the energy side. I’m wondering how we should think about that, particularly from a margin perspective, and how that will end up impacting this churn here?

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Yeah, right, thanks for that question, Mark. Just to kind of recap what’s in our deck so everyone can know what we’re referring to here. Our energy business, on a quarterly basis, the run rate has been averaging about $10 million or so a quarter, which has been a slight headwind compared to last year. Let me give you an example. Q3 of last year was $15 million, so not too much of a headwind. The thing that we wanted to call out in our deck, which we talked about last quarter, was that the fourth quarter this year is a bigger headwind in energy. It’s really the biggest one on a quarterly basis. So Q4 of 2017, the revenue was $26 million. So if we continue at this $10 million run rate that would be more like a $16 million headwind. And then after that we really get into a more stabilized basis. The margin on that business is probably – it’s a little bit lower than the overall PeopleReady business. The overall margin on that business is probably a good maybe 7 points or 8 points less on average than our blended margin at PeopleReady. I’m talking about on a gross margin basis, so you could kind of flow that through from an operating margin perspective.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Okay, great. And then with regards to the turn that you’re seeing in PeopleReady outside of that energy business and the bill rate increases, would you anticipate that the bill rates are going to increase at an even higher rate than 5% going forward? Or do you think that that’s a good sustainable level at least for the next two, three quarters?

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

I think it’s about right, Mark. If we were to break out where bill and pay rates have been this year, the dynamic there has been pretty consistent with what it has been in the last couple of years. So I think that’s about right in this environment. We’ve been through the vast majority of the minimum wage increases, which really put a bit more spike in our rates compared to the general industry. So I think that’s about right.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Okay, great. And then with regards to just the percentage of branches that are using JobStack the way that you would – that you think is optimal, can you give us an update there and take-up there?

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Yeah, Mark, this is Patrick. We’ve got about 20% to 25% of our branches where the fill percentage of jobs, coming through JobStack is north of 50%. So if you’re asking the question, as we’re starting to get to optimal, we’ve got about quarter of our branches that are there, so we’ve got a lot of upside, a lot of running room still with those other branches. And we’ve done a really good job of getting workers signed up. We’re north to 70% on that. We’ve done a really good job of adding clients. We’re over 7,000 now. We’ll finish the year ahead of our 10,000 target. I think the one area that we need to turn the crank a little bit better is the percentage of positions that are being filled by JobStack in some of those other branches. And so we’re working really hard on that. And I expect, by the end of the year, we’ll see some significant improvement from where we’re at today. So I think the headline is there’s a lot of upside from our current position.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Can you talk a little bit about what sort of you know margin profile you’re seeing in those, that 20% to 25% of the branches where you are getting that 50% feel rate?

Derrek Gafford

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

I don’t have those numbers in front of me, so we will have to get back to you on that. I haven’t consolidated those 20% to 25% of branches. So we’ll have to get back to you on that.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

All right, and then on PeopleManagement, it sounds like even – please correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like ex-Amazon, we’re still – the business is still a little bit softer, is that true? Or did I hear that correctly?

Derrek Gafford

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Yeah, that’s Mark. So if you take a look at our Q2 results for PeopleManagement, I’m going to give you a couple of statistics here. Overall, PeopleManagement for the quarter was down 7%. In that 7%, there is about 5 points of headwind that’s related to the PlaneTechs divestiture.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Yeah.

Derrek Gafford

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

If it’s down about 2 points and then the guidance that we provided today for PeopleManagement for the third quarter excluding PlaneTechs again, that divestiture as well as that $8 million of headwind that I spoke about related to Amazon, we’re expecting the business to be up about 1% to 4% in the third quarter.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

It would actually be up 1% to 4% ex-PlaneTechs, ex-Amazon?

Derrek Gafford

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Yeah, that’s right. We had a few customers where the production volumes were just came in a bit softer of our existing clients than what we had expected here in the second quarter. The indications that we’ve got from those same clients are, I think, getting a little bit back to normal. Plus we had some nice winds here in the third quarter related to PeopleManagement, in both the staff management and the CMOS businesses, which will be coming on in Q3, which are helping that growth rate out a little bit more versus what we posted here for Q2.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Okay. And on PeopleManagement, are you going to have – when Amazon goes away, are you going to have anything in Canada left or how should we think – or is there – are there any other charges that we should anticipate?

Derrek Gafford

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Well, related to Amazon, that’s our last bit of business with them. Of course, we have other clients that we’re serving in Canada, but from an Amazon perspective, that’s the last bit of business we have with them.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Okay. So I mean, everything is anticipated. No charges to anticipate or anything like that?

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

No. It’s a cost-plus model. So any charges that we are going to have will be picked up by the client.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Okay. And then on TMP, with that coming in, can you talk a little bit about the pipeline for RPO bids? And how much of their – how much does that open you up to not just UK, but European RPO bids?

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Well, we’re already starting to see the impact. In fact, PeopleScout was just notified last week of a really nice win that is in Europe and Asia. And one of the things the client indicated to us in that decision was that the expanded capabilities that we had in Europe was a major part of that decision. We’ve also got over half a dozen of our existing clients that are North American-based, that we’re in discussions with about, including scope in Europe. So we’re already seeing some significant near-term set of discussions. In the mid- to longer-term, we expect to see increase in the number of invitations that we receive to compete on for global deals and also our win rate to go up because one of the challenges we’ve had, Mark, is when we finished second in a lot of global deals where the client will say, gosh, we really liked your North American capabilities, your Australian capabilities, but you’re just a little light on Europe. And so that had – we’ve been bridesmaid several times on those global opportunities. Now this really should have an impact on our win rate going forward. I think the other key point to make related to TMP is the employer-branding capabilities. They’re an organization that is known for employer-branding. That’s an area of opportunity for us, to take those capabilities and incorporate those into our existing client base outside of Europe. And so we think there’s a really nice opportunity to get invited to more bids, to win more bids and also, with the employer-branding capability, to offer some of these services to our clients that we had not offered to – haven’t offered before.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Great. And I’ve got two more questions. One, just circling back to PeopleReady on construction, what are you seeing there?

Patrick Beharelle

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

We saw a pickup a little bit, Mark. We were down about, here, let me look at the exact, give you the exact here. I was going to do it from the top of my head, but this is safer. One second here. So for PeopleReady, construction right now is really our biggest headwind. It was down 8% in Q2 2018 versus the same quarter a year ago, which is an improvement from being down 10% in Q1 and an improvement from being down 12% in Q4. So where we’re starting to see more improvement is in the residential area. That’s where we had some of the bigger headwinds really towards the tail end of last year. So we’re starting to see more improvement there. And usually, as we start to see more improvement on the residential area, the commercial area starts to follow.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Okay. That’s good to hear. So you’re not seeing any signs of the California softness as it relates to resi?

Derrek Gafford

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Nothing significant – nothing really noticeable at this point. Most of our work that we do in California, particularly when it comes to residential, is – are a lot of that is remodels. Our CLP business does a lot of that, seem to be higher-end remodels. Some of the lower-end residential developments is not an area where we would play in a lot in California.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Great. And then we’ve got a lot of moving impacting onto the fourth quarter. I know you’re not giving guidance for the fourth quarter, but just in terms of thinking through profitability from a seasonality perspective and typical flows, how should we think about the fourth quarter in terms of like puts and takes?

Derrek Gafford

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

Yes, well, I think as we think about, let me just call it the back half of this year, some callout to just to keep in mind, is in the third quarter this year, we’re facing about a point of headwind because we had some benefit from hurricanes in Q3 of last year. And then as we go into the fourth quarter, really the two main things we’ve called out pretty well here, which is the energy area and Amazon. And I know you know this Mark because you’re looking at the deck, but I’ll just guide everybody else, in the back of our earnings release deck, that provides more color on that. I mean, those are really the two callouts. Outside of that, from a year-over-year perspective, revenue-wide, the underlying growth trends, I mean, we’re expecting those to be healthy. The gross margins, we’ve had some good success in lowering the cost of sales. We’ve got – there used to be a lot of programs focused on that. And we’re still managing our SG&A tightly. We haven’t got back to mid-single-digit growth yet, so we know that we need to keep the SG&A at about the same rate or less growth than where revenue is, excluding the add-backs that we’ve talked about. So that’s how we’re thinking about the back half of this year. As we’re thinking about 2019, I can tell you that we’re planning the business for healthy growth. We’re planning on a growth year from a planning perspective. We’re not giving any guidance on this, but that’s how we’re thinking about it. It’s a healthy environment. We’ve got PeopleReady turned the right way. Ex this Amazon business at PeopleManagement, we’re expecting to be back in the growth on an organic basis, excluding PlaneTechs in Q3. And the PeopleScout business is doing really well. And we’re really excited about the opportunities to get some of these multi-continent deals. So we’re feeling pretty optimistic about 2019.

Mark Marcon

Analyst · R W. Baird. Your line is open.

That’s great to hear. Congrats again, Steve and Patrick. A - Steve Cooper Thanks, Mark.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to the presenters

Steve Cooper

Analyst

Well, we appreciate you joining us today. We’re excited about these opportunities we have ahead, and we look forward to updating you next quarter.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.