Stephen M. Scheppmann
Analyst · Jesse Hulsing from Cowen
Thanks, Mike. Good morning. During my discussion today, except where otherwise noted, I'll be addressing margins, expenses and EPS outlook on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation and other special items, including acquisition-related and other special items that may arise from time to time. Reconciliations from GAAP to non-GAAP items are included on the Investor page of teradata.com. Additionally, historical information for each of our new business segments is also available on the Investor page. As you are aware, the strengthening of the U.S. dollar has become a big headwind for many companies, and in Q1, it was even more than the 5 point impact we had suggested during our last earnings call. Correspondingly, approximately 40% of this revenue impact flow through to operating income, which was slightly more than the third we had estimated at that time, due to the amount and rate of the strengthening of the U.S. dollar. The currency movement impacts our product gross margin particularly resulting in an estimated 340 basis point reduction as compared to prior year's Q1. Product gross margin in the first quarter was 56.4% as compared to 68.1% in the first quarter of 2014. In addition to the 340 basis point currency impact, product gross margin was also negatively impacted by product mix. You may recall during the fourth quarter earnings call, as part of our Big Data discussion, we mentioned we had a couple of 1000 Series transactions that slipped out of Q4 and into the first part of 2015. Due to the aggregate deal size and naturally lower margin, this had a meaningful negative impact on overall product gross margin in the quarter of over 500 basis points. We also had some large 6000 Series transactions that moved out of Q1, which reduced our product gross margin in Q1 by approximately 150 basis points. And a reduction in product volume in Q1 resulted in a 120 basis point decline in product gross margin. We are forecasting product gross margin to recover significantly in Q2, but we believe it'll still be about 200 basis points less than Q2 2014. Services gross margin in the quarter was 44.3%, down from 44.8% in Q1 2014. Services margins were negatively impacted by the timing of work-in-process-related consulting projects and the investments we are making in our applications and Teradata Cloud capabilities. We are anticipating similar service gross margin in Q2 compared to Q1 2015. As a result, overall gross margin was 49.3% in the first quarter compared to 54.9% in the first quarter of 2014. Turning to operating expenses. SG&A expense of $170 million was 3% lower than the first quarter 2014, largely due to the benefit of currency, as we held line on G&A expenses. We continue to scrutinize and optimize our expense structure to support our strategic initiatives and to improve our long-term operating efficiencies. In Q1, we incurred incremental costs associated with this strategic investment strategy, as we described on our last earnings call, and we expect this to build for Q2. Research and development expense in the quarter was $56 million, a 24% increase compared to the first quarter of 2014, as we increase and shifted investments to Big Data, Cloud and Marketing Applications activity, which includes R&D expenses associated with the acquisitions we made in 2014. I would also like to note, we do not capitalize R&D activity related to Big Data, Cloud or Marketing Apps projects like we do for the Teradata -- for the core Teradata software projects, which resulted in higher R&D expense hitting the income statement currently. We believe that the Q2 increase in R&D expense will be similar to or larger than the Q1 increase. Total R&D spend for the first quarter, which includes R&D expense plus the addition to capitalized software development cost from the cash flow statement, less the capitalization of internally developed software, was $69 million. This compared to the $64 million in Q1 2014. As a result of lower revenue, the lower product gross profit and higher R&D expenses as well as the currency impact mentioned earlier, operating margin for the quarter was 10.5% compared to 19.9% in Q1 2014. On a GAAP basis, our effective tax rate in Q1 2015 was 26.7%, 130 basis points lower than the 28% in Q1 2014. Our non-GAAP effective tax rate for the first quarter was 27.9% versus 30.4% in the same period 2014. The lower tax rates were primarily driven by more favorable forecasted foreign earnings mix year-over-year. Looking forward, for 2015, we expect our full year GAAP effective tax rate to be approximately 26% and our non-GAAP full year effective tax rate to range -- to be approximately 27.5%, with the actual tax rate being heavily dependent upon our earnings mix. In addition, both rates presume that the U.S. R&D tax credit, which expired as of December 31, 2014, will be retroactively reinstated at some point during 2015. Until such time this occurs, quarterly effective tax rates will be impacted by approximately 80 basis points. In terms of earnings per share. Our Q1 GAAP EPS was $0.15 compared to $0.37 in Q1 2014. Adjusting for stock-based compensation and other special items, which equated to $22 million or $0.15 in the first quarter of 2015, our non-GAAP EPS was $0.30 compared to $0.54 in Q1 2014. Turning to cash flow. Net cash provided by operating activities was $222 million in Q1 2015, which was $120 million lower than the first quarter of 2014. This was expected -- as expected, since we collected a sizable amount of receivables from Q4 2014 transactions in the fourth quarter, which left fewer receivables to collect in 2015. As you may recall, we described this as a favorable timing item for 2014's free cash flow during our last quarter's earnings call. After $32 million of capital expenditures versus $33 million in the first quarter 2014, we generated approximately $190 million of free cash flow versus $310 million of free cash flow generated in Q1 2014. Again, the decrease in free cash flow for the first 3 months in 2015 over '14 was primarily a result of the reduction in income from operations, combined with the net changes in AR, as I previously just mentioned. For the full year, we continue to expect free cash flow to be in the range of equal to, to $50 million higher than GAAP net income. However, as I mentioned during the Q4 earnings call, the year-over-year free cash flow comparisons in the next quarters are expected to be less favorable and the full year 2015 free cash flow is expected to be more than $200 million lower than the 2014 free cash flow, primarily due to the favorable timing of collections of receivables in the fourth quarter of 2014. Moving on to share repurchases. During Q1, we repurchased 6.3 million shares for approximately $273 million under our open-market share repurchase program. We have used over $2 billion to buy back more than 52 million shares since the program's inception in 2008. As of March 31, we had approximately $131 million of remaining authorization in our open-market share repurchase program. To provide for sufficient flexibility for future share repurchases, our Board of Directors just authorized another $300 million, resulting in a current authorization of $431 million to repurchase our shares. On March 25, we completed a $1 billion refinancing of our credit facilities, whereby we refinanced our existing term loan with a new 5-year $600 million senior unsecured term loan. At the same time, we also replaced a $300 million revolving credit facility with a new 5-year $400 million revolving credit facility. Both facilities expire in March 2020. As of March 31, 2015, our total debt outstanding was $600 million, with no funds drawn under the new revolving credit facility. With respect to accounts receivable, AR decreased $24 million in Q1 2015 versus Q1 2014. Days sales was 79 days as of March 31, 2015, compared to 81 days as of March 31, 2014. The decrease in AR was primarily due to the currency impact as of March 31, 2015. Total deferred revenue was $508 million as of March 31, 2015, which was down $15 million from March 31, 2014. Now turning to guidance for the full year. As Mike indicated, we continue to expect constant currency revenue growth in the 3% to 5% range and flat to down 2% as reported. As a result of our Q1 performance, we now expect non-GAAP EPS to be at the low end of our initial $2.50 to $2.70 guidance range. We also expect GAAP EPS to be at the low end of the guidance range. And I'll provide some added color on our expectations for Q2. We anticipate that reported revenue will be lower than last year's Q2 revenue. And as is always the case, the timing of large transactions have a meaningful impact on our quarterly revenue. We expect product gross margin will improve significantly from Q1, but we anticipate it to be a couple of points below prior year's Q2. We also believe services gross margin will approximate Q1 2015 services gross margin. And we expect R&D expense to be up close to 30% in Q2. The impact of just the projected lower margins and the estimated higher R&D expenses versus prior Q2 is approximately $0.14. Let me assure you, we are not happy or satisfied with our results. However, we understand the challenges we face and the opportunities we have, and we will continue on the path to improve the performance of the company. In addition to our prior acquisitions to position us in faster-growing markets, we have enhanced and advanced our technology in both core data warehousing and big data. We continue to optimize our cost structure, and we are in the process of realigning Teradata into 2 separate but integrated business units, led by 2 co-presidents, to address the specific opportunities and challenges for each business. In closing, we have great technology and a world-class services team, and we are investing to meet the current and future needs of our customers to gain a competitive advantage by leveraging their data assets and as a result, enhance our shareholder value. And with that, operator, we are ready to take questions.