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Unisys Corporation (UIS)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 21, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Unisys Third Quarter 2015 Results Conference Call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Niels Christensen, Vice President of Investor Relations at Unisys Corporation. Please go ahead, sir.

Niels Christensen - Head-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us. Earlier today, Unisys released its third quarter 2015 financial results. With us this afternoon to discuss our results are Peter Altabef, our President and CEO; and Janet Haugen, our CFO. Before we begin, I'd like to cover a few details. First, today's conference call and the Q&A session are being webcast via the Unisys Investor website. Second, you can find the earnings press release and the presentation slides that we will be using this afternoon to guide our discussion on our Investor website. Third, today's presentation which is complementary to the earning's press release, includes some non-GAAP financial measures. These have been provided in an effort to give investors additional information. The non-GAAP measures have been reconciled to the related GAAP measures and we've provided reconciliations within the presentation. Finally, I'd like to remind you that all forward-looking statements made during this conference call are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. These factors are discussed more fully in the earnings release and in the company's SEC filings. Copies of these SEC reports are available from the SEC and from the Unisys Investor website. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Peter. Peter A. Altabef - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Niels, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss our third quarter results and the progress we're making toward our goals of transforming the business and improving our financial results. In the third quarter, we improved our underlying operating profitability sequentially, showed progress in our Services business and began implementing a go-to-market strategy with improved offerings and capabilities that are enhancing our competitiveness in the market. We're increasing our focus on…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question is from James Friedman with Susquehanna.

James E. Friedman - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Hi. This is really good work on the improved presentation of the financials and I appreciate it. So there's a lot of different directions that I can go. But let me start out with your comments – I'm going to direct a first couple to Janet. You're calling out the $40 million delay in the collection and the receivables from two government clients, Janet. I'm wondering now how did that impact, if at all, the cadence of growth in that segment? Could you actually put up a good number in Federal services? So how should we reconcile those two observations? Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: So, Jamie, the $40 million delay was in – not in U.S. Federal government budget delays, it's in local entities in the U.S., state entities in the U.S., where they've got budget negotiations going on. And as part of that, there was a delay in the budgets being improved, therefore a delay in paying their bill. And as a result, we saw $40 million of a delay in customer client payments that we would normally see coming through the quarter, not flowing through the cash from operation. But it did not affect the cadence of growth in this sector.

James E. Friedman - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Okay. Yeah. I got my signals crossed there. I was putting it all into the same government. In terms of – I just want to make sure I'm following the slides right, because I didn't see where you – the performance that you described from application services and the cloud, is that decomposed in slide four, which is a fascinating slide, but I don't see those service line achieve – yeah, maybe you can help us with that. Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Sure. So, Jamie, on slide four, we do have the segment detail and then below we do have the constant currency growth from the geographic perspective and the vertical or industry perspective. We don't have a section on here that does comment on the growth of the various sectors. So I understand why my comments, you can see on the charts itself. So we're trying to give some flavor around the underlying components, where did we see growth. Clearly, in application services, the Federal government – our Federal government business had a really strong quarter. They continue to do excellent work in the application services areas, most notably as they bring up the BEMS contract in Federal. Now, they did benefit in that quarter from some accelerated implementations under that contract as the Federal government closed after fiscal year, and agencies took advantage of having fiscal 2015 funding available to accelerate action.

James E. Friedman - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Okay. And I guess, now that I'm looking at it, you can actually see this segment breakdown in the appendix, maybe it's slide 15. So, Peter, a question for you, with regard to the Technology performance, was the year-over-year decline really just calendarization, I guess because that's obviously beyond the company's control? How do you feel like the Technology segment is performing based on the opportunities that you actually had? Peter A. Altabef - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Jamie, that's a great question, and thank you for being on the call. Thank you also for commenting about the data. As our hope is apparent, we're working to really increase transparency around the numbers. So when you look at the data sheet we've got out there, as Janet pointed in her comments for the very first time ever at least in my understanding, we are now providing recurring versus non-recurring Services numbers. I think you're seeing a much more detail from us around the data. It's our attempt to make this easier for you guys to understand, and we want to tell the story. The Technology story is complicated. There are several things going on this year and as we look forward to next year as well. So in the big picture, and then I'm going to turn it over to Janet, you really have kind of three things going on. And those involve, if you will, our third-party sales of Technology, we're reselling third-party technology. Sometimes we're doing that as part of a specific deal, sometimes we're doing it more as a one-off. And those one-offs, as Janet's going to talk about it, relatively less exciting to us. The second thing going on is obviously ClearPath and ClearPath renewals, and the third is the other software that…

James E. Friedman - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Okay. That's really helpful. I appreciate the color. I'll turn back into the queue. Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Thanks, Jamie.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Ned Davis with Wm Smith & Co. Ned Davis - Wm Smith & Co.: Thank you. I reiterate the comments Jamie made about the transparency, it's really getting much easier, if you will, to kind of understanding what's going on. So related to that, the cash flow dynamics are – there are a lot of moving parts going out through 2016. You've got the remaining investment in the cost reduction program, the cash investment. You've got this CapEx which you're hoping to reduce as a ratio to revenue if I understood your comments, although that's a process that takes some time. And then you've got the pension funding and then the need for outside financing. It looks to me like you've had a net change of about $260 million odd in the net cash, net debt, however you want to look at it, of the company year-to-date. I'm wondering, I know you – I don't want to ask you to give specific guidance on this, but I'm wondering where the net cash position is likely to bottom out – net debt, whatever, net cash, however you want to look at it? And when given your current plans for the cash investment in both the pension and the cost reduction program, just I think there are so many moving parts, it's still, even with the transparency hard to – for an outsider to reject this. So even if you can just give some color on this, I would appreciate it. Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Sure, Ned. As you look at – you appropriately identified the non-operational items that are affecting cash. The impact of the cash restructuring charge which I mentioned was roughly $280 million of the $300 million…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Frank Jarman with Goldman Sachs. Frank Jarman - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Great. Thanks for taking my questions, guys. I just wanted to follow-up. I think in September, you guys had $350 million secured bond deal in the market and I think you opted to hold off on coming to market with that deal. So I just wanted to check in and see sort of where you are in terms of thinking about coming to the market with a deal? How important is that capital to your future funding needs, especially given the $40 million of delayed receivable that's still outstanding? Thanks. Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: So we are continuing to explore the wide range of financing alternatives. We went to the market as you mentioned with an opportunistic transaction, we were not willing to consider doing something that wasn't within the parameters of what we felt appropriate for us going forward. And so we have not settled on one, we'll continue to evaluate the alternative. Peter A. Altabef - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And Frank, this is Peter, I want to thank you for the question and obviously happy to do follow-ups with you and any of the other analysts on the call. Frank Jarman - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Arun Seshadri with Credit Suisse. Arun A. Seshadri - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Yeah. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask about Services revenue growth, you gave us, I think for the first time in a little while, Services bookings in a very granular fashion, so appreciate that. I just wanted to ask, in terms of cadence of these orders converting to revenue, I don't know if you can give us some sense for sort of what the seasoning of these Services orders are and sort of how much of that converts to revenue in any given sort of – and how many quarters out? And also wanted to get a sense for, I think we saw Services revenue in 1Q was up – sorry, orders were up substantially in 1Q, and I think this quarter, 2Q, was down. So just trying to get a sense for when some of the recent momentum can – will start to result in some more – some larger growth on the Services revenue line? Peter A. Altabef - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Arun, this is Peter. Thank you for the question, or the questions. As you know, from an order standpoint, both the Services and, in our case, the Technology business, is particularly lumpy. And the lumpiness will be not only in the size or the aggregate size of the orders, but in the mixture of the orders. So this quarter, in the aggregate, we had a very good quarter, obviously sequentially and year-over-year, our backlog is up. All of that is good. But a fair amount of this quarter's orders were renewals. And I think I pointed that out as did Janet. So you do have to…

Operator

Operator

We take our final question from Grant Jordan with Wells Fargo.

Grant Jordan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Good afternoon. You provided a good bit of detail on the Technology side for expectations for constant currency to be down for 2016. Is there any way you could give us an idea, maybe the order of magnitude of that decline, whether it'd be low single-digit or otherwise? Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Grant, can – I'm going to just make sure I understood your question. We have given some visibility into what we think for 2016 for Technology. We've given an expectation for full year 2015 on the impact of currency for the year. Are you asking us for what we think about Services going forward?

Grant Jordan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

No, I'm sorry. On the Technology side, you mentioned you expect a decline again on a constant currency basis for 2016, and I was hoping you could help – give us kind of an order of magnitude of what should we expect that further (59:33) decline? Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: So what I was mentioning is that if you're looking at the total year of 2015 and you look at – if you look at our 42%, 58% split between the first half and the second half of the year and if you factor that in and then recognize that we've got about 8 points of constant currency impact in 2015 to 2014, that backs into a constant currency decline roughly in the 14% to 15% range. And I was mentioning that that would be the rate, that when you put all the three factors that Peter and I both mentioned, would affect the comparison in Technology between 2015 and 2016, and after that expected to flatten out.

Grant Jordan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then on the cash outlays for the restructuring charges, you mentioned that many of those charges you would be able to delay until the second half of 2016, when you would have to make those decisions. Could you give us anymore color on maybe the cash payments that you would expect, either in Q4 or the first half of 2016 until we get to that – to the larger outlays end of 2016? Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Right. So I point back to the – in the restructuring charge itself, the split between the U.S. and the rest of the world, between $220 and $80 million, the $80 million for the rest of the world are most of the cost reductions in the cash outlays in 2015. And if I was to roll forward to the fourth quarter, I think we'd end up with the total year in the neighborhood of about $55 million to $60 million of cash outlays related to that program. And that leaves the bulk of the payments in EMEA coming in 2016, and they may roll a bit over into 2017.

Grant Jordan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. That's very helpful. And then just one question on the income statement. You've got $17 million add back, and I was wondering if you could help allocate – tell us how that's allocated between cost of revenue, SG&A and R&D expense? And then just to follow-on that, if there's any way that you would allocate that between the Services segment and the Technology segment? Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Right. So we have $21 million of savings in the third quarter for this affect of the cost reduction program. $17 million of that is in the Services segment and the remainder is in the Technology segment, roughly almost all of that is going between – through the SG&A line with about $9 million going through cost of services – I'm sorry, $7 million going through cost of services. So the $21 million, $17 million is in Services, $7 million of that $17 million is in the cost of services line, the rest of it is in SG&A. And then the remainder is in the Technology business with all that predominantly in the SG&A line item.

Grant Jordan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Got you. I might have to follow-up with that afterwards. Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Okay. More than happy to, Grant.

Grant Jordan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

I think that's all. Okay, great. And that's all are the questions. Thanks. Janet Brutschea Haugen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Thank you for taking the time to be on the call and we're more than happy to follow-up, Grant.

Operator

Operator

I'd like to turn the call back over to our speakers for any closing comments. Peter A. Altabef - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you. I'd again like to thank everyone for having join the call. As I pointed out and Janet pointed out, there is more data than we've ever had on our analyst website. I also want to reiterate for those of you, who want to dig even deeper into our offerings and into our capabilities, there are now on that analyst website, a host of presentations and materials from our industry analyst meetings from September. And I hope you find those enlightening as well. Look forward to the next call. On behalf of Janet and I, thanks again.