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Unisys Corporation (UIS)

Q2 2020 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 4, 2020

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Unisys Corporation Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Courtney Holben, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Courtney Holben

Analyst

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Courtney Holben, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us. Earlier today, Unisys released its second quarter 2020 financial results. I'm joined this afternoon to discuss those results by Peter Altabef, our Chairman and CEO; and Mike Thomson, 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 as well as other information related to our second quarter performance on our Investor website, which we encourage you to visit. Third, today's presentation, which is complementary to the earnings press release, include some non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP measures have been reconciled to the related GAAP measures, and we've provided reconciliations within the presentation. Although appropriate under generally accepted accounting principles, the company's results reflect charges that the company believes are not indicative of its ongoing operations and that can make its profitability and liquidity results difficult to compare to prior periods, anticipated future periods or to its competitors' results. These items consist of pension, debt exchange and extinguishment, cost reduction and other expense. Management believes each of these items can start the visibility of trends associated with the company's ongoing performance. Management also believes that the evaluation of the company's financial performance can be enhanced by use of supplemental presentation of its results that exclude the impact of these items in order to enhance consistency and comparativeness with prior or future period results. The following measures are often provided and utilized by the company's management, analysts and investors to enhance comparability of year-over-year results as well as to compare…

Peter Altabef

Analyst

Thanks very much, Courtney, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Since our last call, the world has continued to confront health, economic and social issues. And I'd like to start by saying that we hope you, your family and friends remain safe and healthy. Usually, when I say that, which I do a lot now, I'm referring to COVID-19. This afternoon, I'm also referring to the hurricane and the hurricane conditions that are affecting those of you on the eastern seaboard. 2020 has simply been that kind of year. Turning to the company's operations in the most challenging COVID-19 quarter, our revenue expectations are unchanged for the full year 2020 when we have increased visibility on profitability. Our client satisfaction is high, represented by our industry-leading Net Promoter Score. And our liquidity is strong, with our cash balance at $782 million compared to $790 million at the end of the first quarter. I want to begin by highlighting some of the reasons why our revenue expectations for the year are unchanged despite the year-over-year declines we experienced in the quarter. Approximately half of our revenue decline in the second quarter was due to COVID-19-related impacts to our Services business. And the other half was driven by intra-year, inside year, shifts in ClearPath Forward renewals as well as currency and expected declines in our check processing joint venture. We anticipate improvements in the most significant COVID-19 drivers in the second half of the year. For instance, and as we expected, field services, BPO and travel and transportation were the areas of the business that were the most significantly disrupted by COVID-19, and leading indicators within each of these have started to improve. Before describing the improvement in each of these, I want to put in context…

Michael Thomson

Analyst

Thank you, Peter, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to echo Peter's sentiments in hoping that you, your families and friends are all doing well during what continues to be a difficult time. In my discussions today, I'll refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP results. As a reminder, the reconciliations of these metrics are available in our earnings materials. Likewise, information related to discontinued operations is available on our website. As Peter had already highlighted, our revenue expectations for the full year 2020 are unchanged, and we've increased visibility into full year profitability expectations. We ended with a strong liquidity position after our most challenging COVID quarter. I'll give you a little more insight into the COVID-related impacts that uniquely affected us due to our mix of field services, the timing of our Technology renewals, the expansion of our Services margin and our strong liquidity position as well as an update on some other important topics. Let me start by reiterating that, to date, our actual and anticipated results are in line with our full year revenue expectations that we provided in the first quarter. While COVID-19 made the second quarter challenging, the portions of the business that impacted were consistent with our expectations heading into the quarter. Non-GAAP adjusted revenue was down 22% year-over-year or 18.9% on a constant currency basis. Approximately half of this decline was driven by Services non-GAAP adjusted revenue, which was down 13.3% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. To give you a little more insight here, I would note that field services was the primary driver of this decline and accounted for 8.7 points of the 13.3% decline. As we've discussed, we expected a revenue decline in our check processing joint venture, and that business accounted for an additional 2.8 points of the 13.3%…

Peter Altabef

Analyst

Mike, thanks very much. With that, operator, we'll open up the call to Q&A.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question today will come from Rod Bourgeois with DeepDive Equity Research.

Rod Bourgeois

Analyst

So first question about the demand environment and how it's impacting revenues. So clearly, during the intense COVID lockdown weeks, you saw demand disruption. At the same time, I would assume that there are parts of the business that should see increased demand due to COVID. And so my question is, is it true that COVID is or can bring some benefits to demand? And is it also true that the benefits of COVID demand are prone to occur at a lag, certainly relative to the hits that you've already experienced? In other words, are there some benefits in demand from COVID that are just going to occur at a lag effect to when the lockdowns existed?

Peter Altabef

Analyst

So that's a great question. Figuring out what is a benefit from COVID versus what would already have been in a business going up is kind of tricky. What I can tell you is our nonglobal workspace cloud and infrastructure business did well and increased over the quarter. When we look at that global workspace business, as I said, if you take out, depending -- Mike and I gave 2 for different ways to explain the numbers. I took out iPSL for my calculation. And when you take out iPSL and look at the decrease in Services revenue on a constant currency basis, 85% of that was a subset of global workspace just field services. So that 85% is -- and that's clearly COVID-19-related. So I think, yes, there are upsides in cloud that you see already. I see going forward, while we don't see an upside in field services -- I actually think that's -- we are reconfiguring our business to permanently have a lower level of field services. But the rest of global workspace, which includes service desk, it includes more of what you would call end-user experience as opposed to just end-user services. We expect all of that to be a growth driver coming out of COVID-19. We expect there will be more of that on an absolute basis. So Rod, I don't know if that completely answers your question, but I hope it does.

Rod Bourgeois

Analyst

Yes. No, that's helpful and makes perfect sense. The other thing is, I was interested that you cited -- well, your TCV was up year-to-year, encouraging there. But your win rate seemed to have improved quite a bit. Was that some lumpiness on select deals? Or is there something more structural going on that's helping your win rate, especially now that you're a more focused business post the getting rid of the Federal business? Is there something structurally that's maybe helping you on the win rate front?

Peter Altabef

Analyst

So I think it's the latter, and I think it will continue to go up. So when we look at our sales focus and we look at what we did as a company, really in 2018 and 2019, we knew we were very well positioned in the Federal market. That was a combination of our CloudForte and InteliServe, in particular, and also Stealth. But mostly CloudForte and InteliServe and Federal government were really exactly what the government needed, and the government was spending more time. The result of that is we really focused our sales dollars. We really focused our go-to-market in government, that drove really high win rates in government and allowed -- specifically, Federal, and allowed us, frankly, to sell the Federal business at a very large premium. So subsequent to that, we kind of, starting in March, wheeled around and said, "Okay, now we have the non-Federal business. How do we apply that same level of focus over here and start really focusing on this?" And we're doing that 2 ways. So what you're seeing right now in those win rate increases is additional discipline, additional focus because that is the company. But what you will see starting in the September, October time frame, is the launch of a new digital sales platform, which we have been working at for a while. It predates March, obviously, and it's a very big deal. We think it's going to be an industry-leading sales platform. We think it's going to dramatically increase our ability to use automation in the sales process to allow our sales executives and our business development people to be more effective and to increase margins as well as, ultimately, to drive up not only the win rate, but our pipeline because we'll be able to address more deals. So I would tell you, this win rate increase is a work in progress. Right now, it is due to that focus after the sale of Federal. Come the end of this year, we're bringing more tools to that party.

Michael Thomson

Analyst

Hey, Rob, it's Mike, too. If I could just add to that. Clearly, a concerted effort around calling the pipeline, a concerted effort around ensuring qualifying that pipeline at a much earlier stage and not chasing, obviously, a bunch of things that don't ultimately turn into TCV or revenue. And I think the part that Peter mentioned around public sector, as you know, at the end of '18 and early '19, we signed a lot of large public sector deals. So the know-how and muscle memory on what those governments or state and local and foreign governments are looking for is now starting to be part of our muscle memory on the next sale. And obviously, having tremendous quals there with our NPS scores is certainly helpful in that win rate as well.

Rod Bourgeois

Analyst

Great. And so one other question. You gave us numbers to make it clear that the earnings challenge that you had in the quarter was primarily due to the timing in your ClearPath Forward renewals. We've experienced that in the past where you have upside because the timing is positive and other quarters where the timing is negative. In the second half, do you feel like you have better visibility on the timing that would certainly increase the probability that your earnings works out for the year, so how is the visibility in the next two quarters on the renewal timing at this point?

Michael Thomson

Analyst

Yes. Look, I think the visibility for the year is always good, but as you know, if something slides even a week sometimes, a lot of these are scheduled to be at the end of the quarter, so it does have the lumpiness from quarter-to-quarter. As I noted in my script, we had 2 that moved forward into Q1, and we had 2 that moved back into Q3. So we feel pretty good around -- again, for us, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And we feel good about the total renewal schedule. And at this stage, we feel pretty confident around the timing of those in the back half. And just to reiterate -- I mean if you look at last year, we were about a 50-50 split front half, back half. This year, we're looking more like 40-60. And then in the back half of the year, we're looking at like a 30-70 Q3, Q4. So given that level of insight into per quarter should give you good insight to how we feel about the timing of delivery of those renewals.

Peter Altabef

Analyst

Yes. And obviously, Mike, when he talks about the timing, and we talked about a couple of the deals that were delayed from the second to the third quarter, we have very high confidence these will be signed in the third quarter. We actually had some deals, as you referred to, that were accelerated. We thought there were going to be second quarter deals and they were first quarter deals. So we really don't control the timing of these. Sometimes they come early, sometimes they come late. But from a number standpoint, when you have that kind of a shift in the way that expenses are recorded in the Technology line, it just has a very dramatic effect on the Technology profit, which has a dramatic effect on the company. So that's -- we really think it's an important message for all of the analysts that you really are spending time with us. When you see 90% of the decline in something that is inside the year, we hope you take that into account.

Operator

Operator

And the next question will come from Jon Tanwanteng with CJS Securities.

Jonathan Tanwanteng

Analyst

The first one, just on the renewals in the quarter. The two customers you referred to that pushed out. Can you give a reason why they delayed? Was it something COVID-related? Or something else, maybe a change of scope for contracts and just negotiations? Any color would be appreciated.

Peter Altabef

Analyst

I do not have color on the delay, whether it was COVID or not. But again, it is usually not. It is usually related to specific circumstances at the client themselves. When we look at the two that were accelerated into the first quarter, they were actually accelerated before COVID-19 really kind of hit in its current form. So largely, these are unrelated to COVID-19.

Jonathan Tanwanteng

Analyst

Got it. And just to piggyback on the prior question in terms of timing, there seems to be a very large portion of the Technology revenue falling into Q4. Is there any risk of that pushing into the next year?

Michael Thomson

Analyst

So I'll start. There is always risk of that, especially when we tend to have these deals signed toward the end of the quarter. We deal with that risk every year. Is there more risk of that in this year than in a typical year? Yes, because it is not a typical year. And -- but we don't see that as ultimately affecting the overall size of our renewals but certainly, some of them could, if you will, flop into early 2020 -- 2021 instead of 2020. It's always possible.

Jonathan Tanwanteng

Analyst

Got it. Okay. And then just switching to Peter, I think you mentioned that you had a party selling Stealth in the deployment. I was wondering if you could -- was that SAIC? Or another one of your partners? And if it wasn't SAIC, how are they doing in the market compared to your expectations? Have you seen any close from them thus far?

Peter Altabef

Analyst

So one of the -- that's a great question. And thank you, Jon. So 2 points on that, first, that partner was not SAIC. So one of the things we have been doing with Stealth is expanding our distribution pipe. So several organizations are out there now looking at working with us. Dell, for instance, has now included Stealth in its cyber vault's capabilities offerings. So in this particular case, this is, if you will, one of our distribution-type clients that is actually moving Stealth to an IT services company with our blessing. And that IT services company is selling Stealth inside their offerings, which we think is a terrific development. There is a big market out there, and we want to make sure we get it. With respect to SAIC, in particular, they're an outstanding partner. So they have been extremely focused on Stealth. The -- their wins in the quarter were relatively modest. Their pipeline going forward looks very good. But we're not ever going to announce SAIC deals, and we'll never going to categorize those, we will let them do it. But I could tell you, we are very happy with the level of engagement from SAIC.

Operator

Operator

And the next question will come from Joseph Vafi with Loop Capital.

Joseph Vafi

Analyst

It's Joe Vafi over at Canaccord. If we could just start first on -- could you just refresh us again on InteliServe and CloudForte and the revenue model there versus kind of global workspace in general? And then I'll have a follow-up.

Peter Altabef

Analyst

Sure. So if we think about the way industry uses terms, global workspace is kind of the umbrella term used for the interaction of an employee at a company with their employer and how they get connectivity, how they deal with their hardware, how they deal with their software, how they deal with their applications. Initially, in that space, people used to talk about -- so think of global workspace as the umbrella term. Initially, people used to talk about end user. An end user largely was a combination of field services and support desk, and those are kind of the key components. As end user has evolved, it's really evolved 2 ways, it's gotten much broader. So people like us tend to talk less about end user services and more about end user experience. It's not so much just do we have a help desk and we keep the lights on in terms of bringing it, but how do we increase the productivity of the employee? And when you think about that productivity, now all of a sudden, you're looking much broader. You're looking at how does that employee interact with the financial services platforms and financial services? How does that employee interact with HR? How does that employee interact with the business to make sure that whatever that person is doing for the company is most productive? So it's actually a significant expansion of what used to be end user services. We think, going forward, that is going to be a growth engine for us, and we think that's a growth opportunity. As I said, given the quarter, about 1/3 of our revenues is in this space. But our revenues will migrate as you go more to end user experience from end user services under the umbrella of global workspace, you start evolving with a relatively smaller proportion of your revenue in field services, and a larger proportion in doing things remotely, in doing things in an automated way, in using artificial intelligence and in using more of a consultative capacity so that can tie into the HR and the financial services and the business operations. And InteliServe is our way to do that. InteliServe is the way we use the glue that's tying all of these together in an automated artificial intelligence, much more in elastic -- a much more elastic way. So we use less and less labor as a percentage of cost of sales. One of the things we're doing across the company, if we look at year-to-year, our labor as a percent of cost of sales a year ago was 60 -- excuse me, 56-plus percent, it's now down to, I think, 50.9%. So we're gradually moving labor to a lower and lower percentage of cost of sales. And that's part of this journey from EUS to EUX, all under the umbrella of global workspace. That helped on the global workspace InteliServe answer, Joe?

Joseph Vafi

Analyst

Yes, I think so, Peter. Yes, I think that's helpful. And then just -- I know, Mike, you mentioned the international efforts on pension and charges there makes sense. Are there going to be -- is there a cash -- are there cash -- should we expect cash payouts or other things like that? I guess you feel that's a good use of the cash right here on the term basis versus having a term balance?

Michael Thomson

Analyst

Just to be clear, Joe, that the charges are settlement charges, they are noncash. And they don't -- and even when we do make the bulk lump sums and/or annuities, that cash comes out of the pension, not out of our cash coffers, right? So from our perspective, removal of the volatility of that liability is really what we're after. And so what we can supplement through public debt to make those contributions and fix that interest expense as opposed to the floating volatility that comes with the discount rate movement against those liabilities, so yes, we think all day, every day that we want to make sure that we're addressing both sides of that coin. But again, just to be clear, none of those charges are cash charge.

Operator

Operator

And the next question will come from Frank Jarman with Goldman Sachs.

Franklin Jarman

Analyst

I guess just to start, you mentioned in the slides that half the revenue impact was driven by COVID, but I wanted to see if we could dig into the travel and transportation channel a bit more. Really, just to understand, one, your offering there; two, sort of how to think about the revenue split; and then three, how we should be thinking about the expectations for the ramp back up. Obviously, being aware that you've already given us the guidance for the full year.

Peter Altabef

Analyst

Mike, do you want to take that one? I guess I'll start by saying, travel and transportation is a relatively small percentage of our business. And I think it was last year -- well, last year, it was about 4.5% of our business. So this year, obviously, it is a lower percentage of that. But at the end of the day, it's not a material part of the business. Mike, thoughts on that?

Michael Thomson

Analyst

Yes. No, I think that's spot on, Peter. And kind of the way we look at that, Frank, is really just some of the volume-based contracts can get impacted in that travel and transportation business. But even when COVID struck, I think when we combined both our China business as well as the travel and transportation business, it was sub-7% in total. So relatively low impact from T and T on the types of things that we were talking about for full year guidance. And I guess the volume component would largely be predicated on the waybills and other items that Peter mentioned in his script.

Peter Altabef

Analyst

So we do expect that business to pick up during the second half of the year somewhat. But just to put it in context, it's down about 50% year-on-year.

Franklin Jarman

Analyst

Great. That's super helpful. And then maybe one for you, Mike, just on the balance sheet. So you made in your comments that you plan to utilize traditional debt and be opportunistic about tapping the debt markets. And as I look at your balance sheet today, you obviously made a lot of progress with regards to deploying the proceeds to pay down the high-yield notes. You still, I believe, have about $59 million drawn in your revolver, you've got $84 million stub of converts, and then you've got the pension contributions this year. And then obviously, you have some time until 2026. So with that as context, I just wanted to better understand how you're thinking about being opportunistic. Obviously, the high-yield markets are relatively open right now. And so I wanted to think about what your appetite is to issue debt and be a little bit more proactive on the pension deficit here. And then further to that point, how should we think about your appetite for unsecured versus secured versus convertible debt at this point in the story?

Michael Thomson

Analyst

Okay. Well, great, Frank. A lot of good meat there. So let me start by saying post the contributions to the pension, one of the big factors in order for us to move forward with the "opportunistic view" of the debt markets is waiting to see what the stimulus package contains. If it has the elements in it that were embedded in the house bill, there would be no cash contributions required until 2026. So when we're talking about getting in to the public debt market at this point, we're looking at unsecured, and we were looking at it for the 2023 and 2024 contribution. So we're weighing what the pre-COVID rates were for unsecured debt and where they're at now. And although it is open, and it has been more favorable, it's still not back to pre-COVID rates. And so I think the first domino that would need to fall from our perspective is we need to see what the legislation provides as far as either it's pension-permanent relief or potential temporary relief in regards to that, and then that would kind of lead itself into us being out in the public markets. And again, I think we would be looking for unsecured and we'd be looking for something to deal with the 2023 and 2024 pension contributions. And as I mentioned earlier, what that essentially would do from our perspective on the U.S. plans is they would be in a position basically fully funded at that point, and we'd be able to remove a lot of that volatility that we see with the low interest rate environment that we've been living under for these probably 8 years now.

Operator

Operator

And the next question will come from Ishfaque Faruk with Sidoti & Company.

Ishfaque Faruk

Analyst

A couple of questions from me. First of all, on the Technology revenue side. Mike, you said that you expect maybe some bump that comes from some of the transition service agreements that you guys have with SAIC. When you give outlook for the back half of this year, does that factor any revenues from that? Or is that just organic Technology revenues from ClearPath Forward and Stealth?

Michael Thomson

Analyst

Okay. Hey, Ishfaque, yes, what's embedded in there is organic, right? We're not anticipating, in those numbers, a bump from SAIC. So that would be upside against what we've put out.

Ishfaque Faruk

Analyst

Okay. And just to follow-up on that, are you guys expecting maybe any revenues from that -- from some of the TSAs there are not maybe in the -- in these COVID times right now or maybe later on?

Michael Thomson

Analyst

Well, as Peter mentioned, look, I think we're very happy with the level of engagement that we've had with them. The relationship has been excellent. And we'll let them close their deals and announce their own sales. And we're happy that they are explicitly engaged with us, specifically in Stealth. As you know that we have U.S. Federal ClearPath Forward clients that were part of that transition, so those will come by way of normal renewal scales from our perspective. So really, it's really their sale closing process that we're kind of piggybacking on.

Peter Altabef

Analyst

And on the ClearPath Forward side, they have been successfully renewing those deals, obviously, with our assistance. So we don't believe there's going to be any drop or lack of focus on ClearPath Forward.

Ishfaque Faruk

Analyst

Okay. And a follow-up on a different topic, on the pensions. As the legislation -- if it comes through and it changes your -- maybe it doesn't require any cash contributions until 2026, do you still expect to go forward with some of the international buyouts? Or do you think that will change maybe your game plan for maybe handling some of the issues?

Michael Thomson

Analyst

Yes. Look, I don't think the liability reduction program changes at all, right? The legislative aspect is really purely on whether or not we need to make cash contributions in 2023 and 2024 on the U.S. plan. I think, in general, our goal has been to solidify our balance sheet, which we've done; reduce our net leverage, which we've done. And we're about a full turn beneath industry averages at this point. And we're expecting, by the end of the year, that that's going to even get better. So from a perspective of our balance sheet, we're firm. And at this point, we want to start removing that liability, not just mitigating the cash contributions that need to be made for -- to support those pension obligations. So the short answer is no, it doesn't change our liability reduction program one bit.

Operator

Operator

And this will conclude our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Peter for any closing remarks.

Peter Altabef

Analyst

So first, I want to thank everyone for staying on the call. I was on a call about 0.5 hour before we started here with someone from the East Coast and their power went out during the call, and so I know you guys are dealing with some issues on the eastern seaboard. Secondly, this was a complicated quarter for us. And I really appreciate each of you on the call, being on the call to dig into it. I want to reaffirm some of the items that Mike mentioned. On the Technology side, we really see this as an intra-year timing. Some of it moved to the first quarter, some of it is moving to the third quarter. On the Services, we -- when you take out field services, that is 85% of the non-iPSL-related drop in our Services' revenue. So we think that really is unique to that part of the business. Nonetheless, with all of that, we are consistent with our full year 10% revenue drop with which we led within expectation last quarter. We feel more confident about looking at expectations on profit. And so we have given you a range of profit expectations for the year, which we couldn't do last quarter. So we think that is an improvement in our visibility as well. We feel very confident about the company. I want to reiterate the things we are doing on diversity and inclusion, and my thanks to the -- to all the associates at Unisys for really a sterling effort throughout COVID-19. We do believe that the second quarter is the worst of the quarters for us, and so we look forward to having a better discussion with you next quarter. With that, I want to thank you all for joining. We have a lot of information in addition on our website, and we remain available to you for follow-on questions. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.