David Roberts
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Marc, and thank you to everyone for joining us on the call today. Before we dive into our first quarter results, I would like to spend some time on the current environment. As you are all aware, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to create challenges for countries, towns, businesses and families around the world. Beyond the impact of global human health, the virus has not spared the global economy. Markets and businesses around the world are struggling with high levels of uncertainty, while also struggling with decreases in demand for products and services. As we navigate this uncertain environment, we will do our best to remain thoughtful and transparent in sharing as much as we can about what we are seeing in our business. And finally, our thoughts and prayers go out to those families that have been impacted, and our gratitude goes out to the dedicated medical staff that are on the front lines helping fight the virus. We are pleased with our execution in the first quarter and look forward to sharing those results, which show relatively minor impacts from COVID-19. That said, before we get into our Q1 results, we want to provide transparency to our customers, employees and shareholders on the effects COVID-19 is having on our business and how we are addressing it. In our Commercial Services segment, the majority of our revenue comes from agreements with the three largest rental car companies. The rental car industry has experienced significant declines in activity given the overall reduction in global travel. We are highly correlated to travel activity and are expecting a material decline in tolling revenue as a result. For some perspective, the RAC industry is said to be down 80% for the month of April. We are expecting a similar impact to our correlated RAC revenue for the entire second quarter and significant compression for the remainder of the year. Moreover, once the travel restrictions are lifted and the economy starts to recover, we believe the travel industry will recover more slowly than other parts of the economy, but nonetheless, should begin to recover during the year. As we exit 2020, we will most likely still be below the historically high levels we saw in 2019 and are not anticipating a return to 2019 volumes until 2021. Clearly, this is a point-in-time update and our assumptions are made based upon the best available information as the year progresses, we will update with more timely data analysis. As we have highlighted in the past, we’ve been working towards the geographical expansion of our RAC tolling product to Europe and believe we have the – had built the necessary foundation exiting 2019. That said, we anticipate that our European tolling efforts will be slow due to travel restrictions in Europe and given our customers and potential customers’ priorities have shifted to address more immediate business pressures. Our Government Solutions segment executes photo enforcement programs for local municipalities and school districts, 40% of which are in variable photo enforcement contracts, which, in turn, means that we are anticipating fewer paid citations, which will impact revenue. As the economy recovers, we expect paid citations to return to normal levels over the course of the year. Additionally, CrossingGuard, our school bus stop arm camera program, is also experiencing a decline in activity resulting from a variety of school closures nationwide. We are hopeful this program will resume closer to normal activity in the fall, assuming schools return to traditional schedules. In response to the coronavirus and the resulting stay-in-place orders that are causing material decline in our business, we have implemented a number of cost-saving initiatives. The austerity measures included are the elimination of discretionary spending and nonessential corporate travel and a hiring freeze on all nonessential positions through Q3 of this year; the elimination of all discretionary capital expenditures. In April, approximately 30% of our employees were furloughed for 90 days, primarily those employees whose workflows were correlated to the decrease in volume of our customers. Finally, I am forgoing my entire salary for Q2 and salaries for employees at the level of Vice President above as well as cash compensation for our Board were reduced for the same period. On the positive side, while our business is facing extreme challenges, like most of the global economy, we continue to believe we have built a highly resilient business that has incredible upside. The expansion of the school zone speed program in New York City is tracking slightly ahead of schedule as we are continuing to install cameras at the same pace as 2019. At this time, we are not expecting any bottlenecks in the process and are not anticipating a slowdown in camera installations. The most important aspect of these programs is safety and recent reports have highlighted that even though traffic volumes have dropped in New York City, people are able to speed through the empty streets, which has increased the number of violations issued. Finally, I would like to highlight that we ended the quarter with $113.6 million of cash on the balance sheet, and we have not had to tap any of our lines of credit. Our current model, which includes the implementation of the cost-saving initiatives outlined previously, shows us remaining cash flow positive for the year. Now moving on to our Q1 results, which Tricia will discuss in detail later during this call, first quarter revenue grew 19% year-over-year to $116.7 million, and our adjusted EBITDA came in at $54.9 million, up 7% year-over-year. The Commercial Services segment declined 2% year-over-year to $61.2 million and reported adjusted EBITDA of $33.6 million, down 12% year-over-year. This decline reflects the impact of COVID-19 on our business during the second half of March. In Europe, we recently completed the integration with Rent A Car and are currently executing tests and preparing for an early summer pilot launch, depending on how COVID-19 progresses in conjunction with the corresponding travel restrictions. As we had highlighted in the past, geographical expansion of our RAC tolling product to Europe will be a meaningful growth driver of all of our Commercial segment in the future. The next phase of our expansion, including other proof-of-concept pilots and back office integrations are on hold as rental car companies reassess their investment priorities. Our Government Solutions segment grew revenues 55% year-over-year to $55.5 million and reported adjusted EBITDA of $21.2 million, up 61% year-over-year. Growth in the Government Solutions segment this quarter was primarily driven by the expansion of the school speed program in New York City, which included additional product revenue and subsequent service revenue associated with newly installed cameras. Our work with the New York City Department of Transportation to expand the number of schools on speed enforcement areas continues on pace, and we are excited to be able to bring this important public safety initiative to fruition even during these challenging times. We installed 218 cameras in the first quarter, an average of 73 per month. Additionally, we installed nine new bus lane camera systems. During the quarter, we renewed two large and important photo enforcement programs with the city of Chicago and Washington, D.C., as well as signed new customers such as Morningside, Maryland for school zone speed. Last quarter, we announced two Georgia schools on speed contracts, Carroll and Spalding counties, we are pleased to announce that implementation has begun for roughly 40 cameras across both of those counties. Overall, we believe there are many more opportunities in Georgia, which we will pursue once school districts open back up. On March 17, we withdrew our full year 2020 guidance due to the uncertainty surrounding the global outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, its duration and overall business impact. That uncertainty remains, and we will not be issuing full year guidance at this time. Clearly, our business is impacted by global travel restrictions and school closures. We will continue to monitor these measures closely for positive changes that point toward a recovery. In summary, we executed well in the first quarter and implemented strong countermeasures to ensure Verra Mobility’s long-term strength in these challenging times and beyond. While it remains uncertain how long COVID-19 or its impact on our customers and our business will persist, we are confident in the resilience of our employees and our ability to manage through these turbulent times. We look forward to updating all of our stakeholders, from our employees and customers to our shareholders on a continued progress as the stay-at-home policies and are ultimately relaxed and our business begins to return to normal. With that, let me hand it over to Tricia to walk through the financials in more detail.