Earnings Labs

Thryv Holdings, Inc. (THRY)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, May 7, 2015

$3.72

-3.63%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to Dex Media’s First Quarter 2015 Conference Call. With me today are Joe Walsh, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Paul Rouse, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Some statements made by the Company today during this call are forward-looking statements. These statements include the Company’s beliefs and expectations as to future events and trends affecting the Company’s business and are subject to risks and uncertainties. The Company advises you not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements and to consider them in light of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statement. These factors are listed at the beginning of this presentation a well as in the report filed by Dex Media with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company has no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. A replay of the teleconference will be available at 800-585-8367. International callers can access the replay by calling 404-537-3406. The replay pass code is 32259145. The replay will be available through May 28, 2015. In addition, a webcast will be available on Dex Media’s Web site in the Investor Relations section at ir.dexmedia.com. At the end of the Company’s prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. And now, I’d like to turn the call over to President and CEO, Joe Walsh. Please go ahead.

Joseph Walsh

Management

Thank you, Kris and good morning everyone. I’ll start by sharing an overview of our strategy for 2015 and then I’ll provide some insight into our progress during the first quarter. Paul will then get into more detailed quarterly results and I’ll wrap up with some closing remarks. When I became CEO of Dex in October of last year, I mentioned my mandate from the board to accelerate the company’s transformation from a print direct re-publisher into a full service digital media company. That work began in the fourth quarter and we’re continuing to work urgently across every functional department to reshape and redefine the business. Earlier this week, we announced the departure of EVP and Chief Revenue Officer, Del Humenik, who resigned to pursue other opportunities. As a result our sales leadership will report directly to me, giving me the opportunity to work closely with our sales leaders and to continue to transform and reinvigorate our business. Our mission is simple, to help local business thrive. The market place is crowded with competitors in the commoditized industry. We see an opportunity to differentiate Dex from all others in the space by improving our legacy products, simplifying our digital product suit and offering innovative new products delivered with outstanding client service. Where clients trust us to guide them and manage their entire online presence. We will increasingly focus on high margins, low churn recurring revenue products. These products may have lot of price points than digital products we’ve sold in the past, but we believe they’ll have larger addressable markets and attractive economics. Thanks to the lower churn rates. As part of that strategy, we’ll aggressively pursue new customer acquisition via all available channels including digital downloads of our products, some available through premium offers. We want to create a…

Paul Rouse

Management

Thank you, Joe and good morning everyone. Before I begin with the first quarter financial results, I’ll reference the non-GAAP financial numbers. We’ve provided a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures in the appendix of this presentation, as well as the financial schedules on the company’s investor relations website under quarterly results. As I mentioned on the last earnings call, the company would be reviewing the financial and operational measures to make sure we’re providing the type of metrics to investors that reflect the company’s performance. As a result we’ve decided to provide company quarterly guidance. We’ll continue to review and monitor various performance metrics and make update as necessary. For the second quarter of 2015, the company expects reported revenue to be in the range of $390 million to $410 million. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $140 million to $150 million, with a margin of 35.9% to 36.6%. In addition, guidance for free cash flow is expected to be in the range of $70 million to $80 million. Now, the first quarter ad sales results. Total ad sales declined 27.1% for the first quarter as compared to a decline of 12.7% for the same period last year. Print ad sales declined 26% as compared to a decline of 19.6% for the same period last year. There were several drivers that led to this decline. Over the course of 2014, there was a sales initiative to increase the level of digital sales mix from the existing print client base coupled with the continuation of client losses that exacerbated the prints clients. In addition, there was less focus on providing a print product conductive to print usage. For example, the font size was too small and the product was not user friendly for people who wanted…

Joseph Walsh

Management

Thanks, Paul. As we work to reshape the business in terms of operational efficiency, core assistance, key processes, client service and product offerings, we haven’t lost sight of the people who will make our vision a reality. We’re working to create shared cultural understanding of what needs to be done to improve our business and why? We know that above all, culture will drive crucial changes in our business and differentiate Dex within the market place. To facilitate our vision of enhanced client services, we’re investing in the development of our employees with new programs designed to raise the digital IQ of our workforce. We also recently added dynamic new talent to revitalize our sales training. Our newly implemented pay for performance program ties achievements for long term incentives, with emphasis on creating value for shareholders. This week the top 90 leader of the company gathered in Dallas, for sessions that outlined our vision for the future and created alignment with our 2015 goals. Over the next couple of months, these leaders will take vision forward to share with their own teams in a series of corporate meetings and sales rallies designed to energize the employees and activate our strategy. The idea is to ensure every Dex employee can articulate our goals, no matter where they work or what role they play in the company. We hope today’s call provided some sense of the progress we’re making across every functional department to transform the company. Our first quarter activities lay the foundation for strategic changes that will differentiate Dex in the market place and expand our product portfolio, while significantly enhancing the client experience. While our change efforts are ongoing, our ad sales performance in the first quarter was unsatisfactory. Sales performance is driven by many factors, including legacy, product offerings and outdated client service model overly complicated sales processes. We’re diligently working to change these issues and believe our changes will lead to more new client acquisitions, higher margin sales and reduced client turnover. In close, we know there are no easy fixes for transforming a 100 year old business, but with the talent, knowledge and dedication of employees throughout the organization, we remain confident we can create a thriving business with a solid client base, steady stream of revenue. Thank you, for your continued interest in our company. We’re now ready to take your questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Chris Mathewson with Ares Management.

Chris Mathewson

Analyst · Ares Management

Thanks, can you give us some color on how your ad sales are pacing in the second quarter, both print and digital?

Joseph Walsh

Management

As we mentioned in the prepared remarks, in December of last year, we announced the very big reorganization really of the whole company and is expected about [ph] the core of the workforce across the entire business. Closing offices, de-layering, doing all kinds of things and then we clearly disrupted things because lots of people got different assignments and had different geographies that they were covering, different reporting relationships , so we’re picking back up from that now and things are improving. I don’t have any numerical guidance I can give you, but we’re seeing momentum pick up. In fact, as I mentioned there’s a big group of leaders here this week, we’re all together with and people are really excited about the vision of where we’re going with the business and excited to get back and talk to their people about it.

Chris Mathewson

Analyst · Ares Management

So, I mean - and I hate to press on this, but I mean, ad sales on the digital front were down 30% in the first quarter. So is it - can you directionally say it’s 20% the rate, way to think about the 10, like got to be something you can give us, given the performance in the first quarter.

Joseph Walsh

Management

Yeah, I mean I think that’s part of why we gave the guidance in the second quarter to kind of give you something more concrete to work with. The challenge with the ad sales metric is, it’s kind of sales velocity, it’s not as much directly linked to what your actual outcome is going to be. We haven’t seen any tremendous change in how we believe revenue is going to track going forward. We just had a little bit of change in velocity, some timing differences in when we service some of the accounts.

Chris Mathewson

Analyst · Ares Management

So then why not provide kind of an annual guidance range to kind of provide people with a huge [ph] where we think things can go. Give some comfort around the first quarter was horrible, but the rest of the year this is what we think we can do?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Yeah, I mean we made a lot of progress in the quarter, it was maybe one of the best quarters the company has had in a long time if you measure it across all factors. Looking narrowly at the speed with which they closed accounts, it was a little bit slower. We’ll take your suggestion about considering giving guidance further on the future. Today we’re giving it for this quarter, we thought that would be helpful. We’re trying to look for ways to give you more visibility into the future. What we’re really focused on is, recognized GAAP reported revenue, I mean that’s our main thing that we’re really focused on. But we appreciate that you’re looking for some kind of peak at what forward trends are because recognized revenue is kind of backward looking.

Chris Mathewson

Analyst · Ares Management

Do you - kind of looking how much disruption there was in the first quarter, how would you rate the decision to get rid of so many layers as you said and sales people in such a fast manner? Why not kind of have taken up a little more gradual approach?

Joseph Walsh

Management

I would rate it a 10, on a scale of one to ten. It was long overdue. What had happened over the prior numbers of years is that - if you remember, if you go back and you look at what this kind of combined company was, it was sort of double the size that it is now and it’s been declining. And in the process of trying to adjust for that overtime, the sales force was reduced in size, but the management hierarchy, the management kind of super structures in place was really the same or very similar structure that they’d had for many, many years when the company was much larger with a much bigger customer base and many more sales people. So what we have now is, we have a flatter and nimbler organization where we can get at it and move and drive the business forward. It was long overdue, much needed, saved us tens of millions of dollars and we now are focused directed organization that we can really manage and work with. And I appreciate the disappointment in that speed of sales metric that you’re focused on. We’re fixing this business, we’re getting the cost out of it, we’re getting it cleaned up, we’re getting the service model repaired, so that our clients actually have a good experience, we’ll stay, pay and retain, we’ve something to build and we’re focused on changing the mix of the products that we sell to recurring revenue streams that are sticky and stay with us and where we can make decent margin on. So there’s a lot going on to fix this business and while we certainly care about the speed of servicing, we’re not concerned at all about servicing all the accounts that we need to service in this year or what the overall outcome would be for the year.

Chris Mathewson

Analyst · Ares Management

And I guess the last question. Given I guess the changes in the - that have been made in the management structure and the weakness or I guess the pressure that’s put on performance and a whole bunch of debt coming due next year, what’s the plan? It’s like, I know strategic alternatives and we’re going to talk to people and others , there’s going to be something more concrete because the numbers you were pretty soft.

Joseph Walsh

Management

Yeah, we work regularly with our board thinking about our options and where we’re going and what we’re going to do in terms of addressing this. We’ve got a year and a half and we just got here and as you accurately underlined, some of the things that we’re doing to make the business really move forward, you have to take a - have a step back to really be able to benefit from in the future. The company had been selling yellow pages ads and search engine marketing and a couple of other digital products and really was not experiencing any growth, it was continuing to go backward. And we’ve come in and really tried to give the company a pass to new revenue streams, to new growth and to a more sustainable longer term future. So that’s going to take a little bit of time to materialize and I think you’re asking this, are we plunging into some process right away? I think from our standpoint, in the not too distant future, we think we’ll be able to show some green shoots and some early evidence of the progress that we’re making. And we’re making a lot of progress, there’s a lot being done kind of under the hood here and it’s going to be a very good story in the fullness of time. So right this minute, it’s not our shining moment obviously, but we’re looking forward to some better days ahead with the changes that we’re making.

Chris Mathewson

Analyst · Ares Management

Thanks for answering the questions.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Chad Quinn with Bennett Management.

Chad Quinn

Analyst · Bennett Management

Just to follow on Ares question in a slightly different way. What are the ad sales assumptions that are driving the guidance, the second quarter guidance? Do you have ad sales assumptions?

Joseph Walsh

Management

We aren’t planning to give any ad sales guidance going forward. I mean, that’s again kind of a velocity run rate issue. And I would tell you that given the fact we’re servicing a little slower in Q1 in, we obviously are speeding up, we’re speeding up right now. But we aren’t prepared to give the numerical guidance for the space at which we’re going to sell in the second quarter.

Chad Quinn

Analyst · Bennett Management

Okay, and just understanding the timing, the 20 percentage points of timing in the digital as sales number, do some of the other sort of declines - does that give you pass that may be some of the change you’re making have not been or received by your customer base?

Joseph Walsh

Management

No, not at all. First of all, the new products, the new services that we’re launching are only heading into pilot right now, they’re not reflected in any way in what happened in Q1. And in fact the very early returns of those pilots are actually pretty positive and we’ll be back to tell you more in future calls about how that’s developing. So I don’t think that’s word [ph] on where we’re going on. I think it’s a little bit of word on what we did do last year quite frankly. There was a pretty big push last year, to try to sell more digital and that resulted in a lot of those digital sales being search engine marketing and those search engine marketing campaigns were variable campaigns, where the customers could pause them or raise lower than as they went. And it didn’t have anywhere near the stickiness or the predictability that our previous, obviously print products had or even our bundles that featured primarily fixed type programs. These variable programs were much less reliable and so the revenue retention was less and in many cases the campaigns didn’t even run for a year. You guys who follow the space know that the churn rate for search engine marketing is pretty high. It ranges around the industry 3%, 4%, or 5% per month churning out. And as this company put more emphasis on search engine marketing, it got more into that churn and that’s figured prominently into what we saw. And it meant any words [ph], we’re not here to be a search engine marketing shop, I mean we’ve got a much bigger idea and much better plan and there’ll be some SEM mix in what we sell, but we’re moving the business more toward what we believe will be much higher retention, recurring revenue stream kind of monthly subscription type products that will be indispensible service that we’ll provide to our local customers. And we’re rapidly building those out and rolling those out. So no, I don’t think the first quarter reflected anything about where we’re going with that.

Chad Quinn

Analyst · Bennett Management

Okay and one last one for me, just with the cost associated with the savings. Are those all cash costs in the period?

Paul Rouse

Management

Yes.

Chad Quinn

Analyst · Bennett Management

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Jan Gonsey with Newmark Capital.

Jan Gonsey

Analyst · Newmark Capital

Hi, thanks so much for taking the questions. So just as I guess a quick follow up on some of the other questions regarding the sales decline this year - this quarter rather. With print ad sales being down 26% versus, I guess they were more in like the lower 20’s in previous quarter. Is that also due to the sort of sales force restructuring as well?

Joseph Walsh

Management

No, but shortly, when you look at the print sales, it related more to some of the - the way the packaging and the programs were build last year. There was a discount or a bundle - a system of selling that discounted print or essentially moved some of the print revenue to digital, sort of migrated that over and that’s kind of what we’re seeing, reflected in that Q1 number. And I think there’s a mix also on top of there, the print products that we were publishing had very tiny type in it and was formatted in a way that really was seizing to be as useful or attractive to our target audience. And so the work that we’ve done to reformate our products put really attractive, iconic, local photographs on them to reformat the books that are little bit bigger with less columns and much bigger typefaces and kind of open formats. We really eliminated all the small ads, ads are medium sized, big and really big. So our target audience, which tends to be kind of 45 and older home owners, when they pick up that book, don’t necessarily have to go find their reading glasses. They’ll be able to pick this book up and use it. And we believe that the positive effects of those changes, you’ll see flowing into the business later this year. So just to put a wind up on it, no, I don’t really think that the minus 26 in print ad sales was related to those changes.

Jan Gonsey

Analyst · Newmark Capital

Okay, so I guess just in terms of the acceleration, in print ad sales decline this quarter, that was - I mean I’m just curious like why it accelerated this quarter versus prior quarters in terms of the - if it was pretty steady like below 20’s in the past whatever - eight quarters or whatever you want to call it?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Yeah, I don’t have really anymore of an answer. I think that those changes that we talked about were just a steady kind of building trend and we’re doing things to turn that trend around now and well, we don’t have any numerical guidance to give you today. We’re seeing some pretty good reaction, people are carrying around prototypes that these new formatted directories, customers are engaging, they’re interested, they’re excited, they’re saying it’s about time, the pizza market that uses your book and needs a book that they can read. I’m pretty [indiscernible] about what you’re doing. I’m going to keep my ad this year, I’m going to buy an ad that I hadn’t had one before. So we’re pretty optimistic about being able to emulate [ph] the decline rates in print as we move out. That’s suggesting it’s going to grow, just that it doesn’t have to decline by minus 26, it can decline at a slower rate than that we believe.

Jan Gonsey

Analyst · Newmark Capital

Did you have any - did you know what that rate would be?

Joseph Walsh

Management

I’m not prepared to give you guidance on that, I just think that it can be better. Just to sort of sight and this is a lot different, but just to sort of sight something to give a sense for it. There are independent publishers in the US, people that aren’t affiliated with phone companies, that aren’t a former incumbent publisher, that are just out there trying to publish directories that can compete. In many cases they don’t have a lot in the way of digital choices or alternatives to package or bundle with. They’re just out there selling their print products and many of those publishers are riding gains or coming in flat. They’re not really experiencing minus 26s and minus 22s and all that. There is not necessarily a reason we need to decline at the rate that we have and if we publish the best available directories, markets and fairly if we shoulder the needs of the customer and don’t steer the sales call too much one way or the other, but really work with our customers and try to give them the best possible products to deliver the leads that need. We think that the print declines can be less than what you’ve seen in the past.

Jan Gonsey

Analyst · Newmark Capital

Okay, that’s fair enough and then just in terms of - I mean, I know I guess previous management had mentioned, client retention rate had been in sort of the mid 80s area, is that what you’re seeing or have you seen like sort of an acceleration from there? Just sort of looking at these numbers here, I’m just wondering kind of how you guys are looking at thinking about retention rate?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Yeah, the metrics that we use there, we’ve got this great big process to look at what retention is and it backs out this and it puts in that. We’re examining that right now to see if that’s really a good measure. But the measure as it’s been presented in the past is exactly the same, it really hasn’t moved. But we believe that going forward, we won’t have people running as fast away from print. By the way, that doesn’t mean that we’re luddites and we’re here to build a print business. I’m just saying that that’s a really valuable asset that we have and it needs to be cared for and it’s glide path needs to be as gentle as possible. And so we’re going to manage it as skillfully as we know how and some of you guys have followed us before in other businesses and we’re pretty good at bringing the absolute most of that print product to fund the growth that we’ve got in this digital space and to help us go build a new business.

Jan Gonsey

Analyst · Newmark Capital

Okay and then just in terms of the newer rate on search a products, is that being down, is that due to the sales force realignment, just the minus 5% that you have on page 12 of the presentation?

Joseph Walsh

Management

No, that’s just the mix. That’s moving from selling these fixed bundles that they had in the past that had some more presence oriented digital product that were linked to a print ad and really leaving that stuff behind and going to full on search engine marketing on a variable budget basis, which proved to be not very productive for the company or in many cases for its clients. So we saw a renewal rate tick down and be very clear, while we can’t instantly change the fact that they had sold that way, so some of that is still flowing through. In terms of our strategy, what we’re doing going forward? We are really deemphasizing, just selling variable price SEM. We’re really focused on monthly recurring revenue streams with products that we can retain and renew overtime and have decent margins.

Jan Gonsey

Analyst · Newmark Capital

Okay, so I mean, I guess that makes sense. And in terms of the sales forces go to market, I mean is it sort of like lead with digital and see if the client is still interested in print or just sort of give them like the whole big pitch print and digital, what do you want type of thing?

Joseph Walsh

Management

I’m not sure I’m ready to say exactly how we felt as far our competitors are listening to these calls. But we really feel that, we’ve got I think a pretty small way to package these things together and explain them to customers. In fact the matter is, all advertising works to some degree, it’s a question of a particular business, the type of business they’re in, the category they’re in, where they’re at geographically, as to what they best set of solutions for them or our media consultants are pretty skilled at using the data that we provide them to find the best way to present to these customers and present them across, what we call the multiplatform approach. And we’re now adding campaign managers behind them particularly for the bigger accounts, that will look after those customers and really explain to them how to optimally use the services that they’re getting and make sure that they’re up to date and fresh, that they’re just not a dead website or dead pages. But we’re updating them and changing them and working closely with them and providing them a much needed advice layer that’s really not out there right now.

Jan Gonsey

Analyst · Newmark Capital

Okay and then just in terms of your margins, I mean it looks like they’re - you guys are implementing all these cost cuts, which is great, but I guess you’re not really seeing the margins like when can we kind of start - when do you think we’ll start seeing some margin improvement?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Thank you, for the compliment on the cost cuts. We worked very hard to try to streamline and rebuild this business. And you’ve got a pretty rapid fall in revenue, so working to keep margins where they are is not that easy and our margins are good when you look at other industry comparison. So as we improve the revenue curve, obviously that will be helpful for margins as we move forward in the future. If we can I think we’re going to move on to the next question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Steve Huffman [ph] with PineBridge Investments.

Steve Huffman

Analyst

Hi, this is Steve Huffman from PineBridge investments. I wanted to ask you what’s your current capacity to buyback term loan below par, it seems like you have a decent amount of cash on hand and if you could also indicate how much cash do you need to operate?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Paul is going to give that one to you.

Paul Rouse

Management

We’re constantly evaluating opportunities to market place and where there’s opportunity to help the company by a below par payment and within our debt covenants we will. And the cash needs to fluctuate based on quarter and the needs of the company, so there is money available for our below par payments now and we’ll opportunistically buyback.

Joseph Walsh

Management

Thanks for the question.

Steve Huffman

Analyst

Okay and just another follow up question is, if you look at the market right now, do you think that there is opportunities for consolidation of the directory space among companies?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Yes.

Steve Huffman

Analyst

Okay, okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Colin Wilson-Murphy with Bowery.

Colin Wilson-Murphy

Analyst · Bowery

Yes, thanks for taking my question. Joe, with G&A up 61% year-over-year of $40 million and a 500 basis point decline in EBITDA of Q1 of ‘15 and if you take the midpoint of 2Q guidance, I think its 36% EBITDA margin guidance for the second quarter. How should we think about a normalized EBITDA margin for the rest of 2015, as you transition to a more digital company?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Well, that’s a lot of question there. We’ve clearly got a declining revenue number, so what we’re working very hard to do is, variablize as many of the cost in the business as we can. So they flow up and down with the revenue and we’ve made a lot of progress in that in a very short period of time. I think we mentioned that we were on a 160 million run rate take out. So there’s more work to be done and the systems changes that I mentioned in the prepared remarks have got us very focused right now, essentially taking the old kind of Dex One company and the old SuperMedia companies, back office operating systems and integrating all that into one new more nimble system and there’ll be additional cost flow out as we completed that. And importantly more flexibility and more capability to help us better sell and better market these services going forward. So we’re going to do everything we can to hold the margin as we move along. We think - I don’t have any specific margin guidance, I guess that’s where I’m going to.

Colin Wilson-Murphy

Analyst · Bowery

Okay, I guess certain other way is a 35% EBITIDA margin, is that sustainable, is that realistic?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Well, I mean, look you probably follow other companies in this space that have margins that are lower than that, that are invested in various other digital initiatives. There’s no question, there’ll be pressure because the print margin - print product provides so much margin and as that continues to decline, some of that cost caring capability goes away. The print product itself, we think we can variablize the cost structure on, but as it provides less of a revenue cover for the business that we’re now building, there’ll be margin pressure. So I would say to you that there will be margin pressure overtime, but we will run this business efficiently as we possibly can. And we’ve got a team in there that really knows their around the cost and we’re turning every little screw and tapping on every little nail we can, trying to get this thing as tight as we can.

Colin Wilson-Murphy

Analyst · Bowery

Understood, I appreciate that. And then lastly Joe, is the 20% timing impacted digital sales in Q1, does that mean that we’re going to see that that it’s in the bag for 2Q, meaning that timing impact will be reversed and we will see a benefit in Q2?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Ad sales are not that precise, it’s kind of like throwing hand grenades around, it really is not a super precise thing. But yes, I think broadly speaking, if we sold a little slower in the first quarter, if we’re going to in the full year take care of all the accounts and do everything that we need to do, there will be a pick up. I think that’s a reasonable assumption for you to make and we’re not seeing anything that would indicate that’s not true.

Colin Wilson-Murphy

Analyst · Bowery

Okay and my last question is, given the market prices of the bank debt, are you going to be in the market to do debt repurchases?

Paul Rouse

Management

Like I answered earlier, we’re going to view the opportunities up there and where it makes sense, we will.

Joseph Walsh

Management

Next question?

Operator

Operator

Next question is from [indiscernible].

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

This explanation on what’s going on is very helpful. I mean, we definitely encourage you guys continue doing this. I mean we [indiscernible] sort of you spent a lot [indiscernible] market six months ago, so as and when it’s coming out, [indiscernible] to market what you’re doing on the granular level, I think will benefit almost everyone on this call.

Joseph Walsh

Management

Thank you, it’s an interesting question, that how much of the strategy we really want to review? Because as I had mentioned, competitors listen to these calls and we really wanted to get the pilot sorted out, going in the market get a little experience before we came out and really started to talk about it. The strategy -

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

I mean maybe [indiscernible] suggestion, I mean we can all appreciate that some of them in the call are bank debt investors, some people may be equity. But people on the bank debt side, I mean look we’re in Seattle we’re happy to host you, it’s sunny here, I mean we can invite [indiscernible] Dallas, but why not just have the meeting where you invite some of your larger bank debt guys and walk us through what you’re thinking. I mean [indiscernible]?

Joseph Walsh

Management

That’s true. Thank you for that suggestion, that’s something that we’ve talked a little bit about. We really - we frankly we wanted to get some progress under our belt before we really started to say what we were going to do. I mean some of you guys know who we are and know we’ve done this before, know we kind of no over doing. We’re doing open heart surgery, we got a lot of stuff torn apart and it’s going really, really well and I know that you look at the ad sales and say my god, they’ve left the company [ph], but we haven’t, it’s gone really well. We’re building something here that’s going to be very successful in the long term and we’re excited about it. Next question?

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Seth Crystall with RW Pressprich.

Seth Crystall

Analyst · RW Pressprich

Gentlemen, thanks for taking my call. I was just curious, a few things, first of all, for the first quarter, it's disappointing you as it was for investors in the market, did it meet kind of your internal plans or was this disappointment for you too?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Mixed, we were obviously disappointed to see the digital ad sales number that you sighted, but by every other measure we’re on or ahead of plan and we managed to find some additional savings and efficiencies that we hadn’t found when we made that initial announcement in December. So that was really great. We’ve on earth some amazing people, amazing leaders, executives, people that are stepping up, that want to be a part of this, but we weren’t sure that we’re here and they raised their hand, put their cap on and flown up and said, we’re ready to help you make you this happen, so we’re pleased about that and we’ve been very successful in terms of kind of vendor alliances that we wanted to put together or maybe even a little ahead of what we thought we were going to be able to do. We’re right on track in terms of the major initiative to merge these back office processes and they’re big and hard and we’re right on track to get that done, so we’re really pleased about that. We managed to rebuild the sales presentation and kind of put an eye pad sales presentation that gives the sales force a real track to run on, to tell their story to a customer and that’s been embraces and people are excited about that. So there’s a really long list of things that are going well, that we’re pleased about, so I would say we’re right on track in terms of the turn and going forward I think you’ll start to see some of that improvement as well. Those of you guys who have been investing in this space for a while know that, this is kind of a half year [ph] look back in this business and we’ve been here about a half a year. So going forward I think we’ll really be able to be more proud of the kind of numerical stuff we’re showing here.

Seth Crystall

Analyst · RW Pressprich

Okay and not that I like to use sports analogies. But it would seem to me on the product side, you're early in the early innings of getting things done, maybe the first or second inning in the cost side, maybe fourth inning on or off that stair in terms of reviewing what you're doing, but it seems like there's a long way to go and you talked about building this for the long term, but obviously as people pointed out, the bank debt at the end of 2016. How well do you think within let say the next 12 months, you'll be able to really be able to go into a bank group and just say, hey, look here, really what we've obtained, what would be the reason, the things we should look for that. No, I mean you've given us underlying, but like three or four bullets that would make me feel like, hey, this is a Company that is going to be here for the long term.

Joseph Walsh

Management

Well, the first is that is that we’re tapping in to a new high growth segment in where we’re going. If you look right now at the businesses that we’re in, the directories businesses, plus IYP and the print directories businesses are in a long term decline and that’s been the major focus of the company and we’re sort of shifting away from that. Although we’re going to, I think slow the rate of decline there. If you look at the other digital products that we’re selling, it’s dominated on a dollars and cents basis by search engine marketing. And that’s a tough business, it’s a pretty matured business, it’s one that’s very commoditized, there’s not a lot of money we’ve made in it to be honest with you and it’s not going to lead us to the promised land. So we really need to do something else and we’re focused really in this marketing automation, CRM space, really getting into the business operations of our local customers. And it’s interesting situation in the United States that you’ve got giant companies, national companies, regional companies, have got all the data, all the tools. They’ve got marketing departments, they’ve got agencies and they’re very skillfully competing with the local mom and pops, our local advertisers and they’re just skimming business away from them in a really effective way. And our local businesses need somebody to show them how to do that too. How to market on a mobile phone, how to use the data that’s available, how to develop a direct dialogue with their clients, with their customers and that’s what DexLink is going to do. And then you’ve got this blizzard of confusing places that a small business needs to try to put their message out, between social, between all…

Seth Crystall

Analyst · RW Pressprich

Okay, great. Thanks a lot. Good luck.

Joseph Walsh

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from Michael Fey with Babson Capital.

Michael Fey

Analyst · Babson Capital

This is Mike Fey. First of all thanks for finally providing guidance. I think it’s a step in the positive direction and I would say that goes to really comment at a full year look or more granularity into your assumptions that are driving some of those would be helpful to further take that. As far as the cost of the - I think you said, there should be one system by year end, what are the cost associated with that, implementation of that?

Joseph Walsh

Management

I don’t know Paul, if you have a number to hand or not.

Paul Rouse

Management

Yeah, I think we gave guidance last time, originally came out between 70 and 100 in our December 15 and I think we guided towards the high end of that, that we went for the high ends of the range in cost savings. So we’re continuing to monitor that and we’re going try they’re coming under that, but we’ll stay with the high range for now.

Joseph Walsh

Management

So that - I mean that whole cost to achieve is not around the systems. He’s trying to get underneath of the actual the systems change. What’s that costing to make that change? I don’t have that number to hand, I don’t know if you do either. I mean we - a fair amount of this IT, we were spending anyway, we’re just spending it on 27, 37 initiatives rather than just this one gigantic one to get this system merged. And we just kind of took all those resources and focus them like a magnifying glass, right on that point and we’re holding it there until we get the systems convergence finished, which will open up really a whole new list of opportunities for us, once we get on one platform and one system.

Michael Fey

Analyst · Babson Capital

Okay and then you also mentioned that the mobile apps and kind of website launches. I think you said, those are in pilot or they have - they’ve already been launched? If they’ve been launched what is the customer view of that? Again, in the past this is something that I think the Dex Knows and the SuperPages whatever the - the websites themselves were not highly successful because it just wasn’t - people go to Google or wherever they go and so you were partnering up in the past. So you got any initial read into how some of those are playing through?

Joseph Walsh

Management

Yes, we did have some sense. Let me try to see like in - there are two distinct areas here that I’m going to talk about based on the way you asked that question. The first, this will take me a minute, is the IYP, the internet yellow pages, Dex Knows and SuperPages. You’re right, those have been sort of left to float out like their chunk. We’ve really have not innovated, improved or invested in doing anything with those and yet money has been spent by a department that looks after it. We’re just kind of redirecting that logo, we’ve given both of those sites a facelift. The Dex knows site, we rewrote the code underneath of it, it was taking four or four and a half seconds for it to respond to a query. We’re now down to - the slow queries are four one hundreds of a second. So we got the underlying search running well and moving quickly. We gave both sites a facelift, where we optically where we put an all new facelift on them and made them look more contemporary, made them better. And now we’ve got a series of - not big investments, we’re kind of working with the budgets that was already there. But we’ve got a series of new search capabilities that we’re going to bring to them and we’re going to kind of unify what the product and simply what the product offering that we’re selling, if you will on those IYPs is. Now for those of you that are shaking your head and looking at each other saying, he thinks he is going out of Google, Google it, I am not saying that, but there is a market that uses these IYPs, there is now a market and they…

Michael Fey

Analyst · Babson Capital

Okay. And then also on the - in the ad sales decline, you did mention client loss, but there is no kind of number around that. What’s high as better as, what are your retention rates running out right now?

Joseph Walsh

Management

The broad all customers’ retention rates are flattish but what we’ve been doing is drilling down and looking at retention rate by individual products and really digging in. And what we are seeing is that our retention rates on search engine marketing are not anywhere near we like to be, they are not that great. And since the mix have shifted so dramatically last year to more search engine marketing, we are seeing more of a client loss because of that in that first quarter number. And again we are going to continue in that direction, we’re going to move in a different direction going forward, but there will be a little fly well fact as we go forward because so much momentum was around selling search engine marketing.

Michael Fey

Analyst · Babson Capital

Okay and then just finally there some other comments on the maturities coming up obviously I think one caller suggested a meeting probably would be helpful, because I think all just aware the 2016 will come sooner than you know.

Joseph Walsh

Management

We are keenly aware. We are the new guys here remember we just showed out, we came with that as a backdrop. And I think the idea putting a communication session together where we can tell you our story when we are just a little bit further along and when we got some more details to show you is a good idea.

Michael Fey

Analyst · Babson Capital

Okay, thank you guys.

Operator

Operator

We had enough lot of time for our questions today, I will now hand the program back over to Joe Walsh for any closing comments or remarks.

Joseph Walsh

Management

Now I’ll just thank you everybody. We appreciate the support and we’re here working hard and trying to fix this business. Thank you.