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V2X, Inc. (VVX)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 9, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Vectrus Incorporated Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Results Conference Call. Just a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. For opening remarks and introductions I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Smith, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead, Sir.

Michael Smith

Management

Thank you, Debbie. Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Vectrus third quarter 2016 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Ken Hunzeker, Chief Executive Officer and President, and Matt Klein, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Slides for today's presentation are available on our Investor Relations website, investors.vectrus.com. Please turn to Slide 2. During today's presentation, management will be making forward-looking statements pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. Please review our Safe Harbor statement in our press release for a description of some of the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from the results contemplated by these forward-looking statements. We assume no obligation to update our forward-looking statements. Also we will be making reference to non-GAAP financial measures during this call. We remind you that these non-GAAP financial measures are not a substitute for their comparable GAAP measures. You can find the non-GAAP reconciliations and other disclosures in our earnings release, and in our presentation slides which are publicly available on the Vectrus website at investors.vectrus.com. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Ken Hunzeker.

Kenneth Hunzeker

Management

Thank you, Mike. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us on the call. Today, we are reporting third quarter 2016 financial results. Please turn to Slide 3. Revenue was $284 million compared to $299 million from last year mainly driven by the anticipated reduction of our contracts based in Afghanistan. Operating margin in the third quarter was 3.9%. Diluted earnings per share were $0.60. Year-to-date 2016 net cash provided by operating activities was $34 million. Our day sales outstanding or DSOs continue to be favorable and were 55 in the third quarter. Our strong cash collections enable us to make voluntary debt payments totaling $8 million in the quarter. The $8 million of voluntary payments brings our year-to-date debt payments to $10 million. In total we have made $22 million of voluntary debt payments since September 2014 and reduced our total debt by 33%. Please turn to Slide 4 where I will provide an operational update on Vectrus. As previously announced during the quarter we were notified that Vectrus was not selected as the Army's provider for the Kuwait based operations and security support services contract to Re-Compete or K-BOSSS 2.0. We along with all three other unsuccessful bidders protested the award decision to the Government Accountability Office or GAO. On November 7, 2016 we were notified by the Department of the Army that was taking corrective action to resolve the protest. As part of the corrective action, the Army will amend the solicitation and clarify its requirement, request revised proposals from the existing offers based upon the amended solicitations and conduct discussions if necessary and issue a new award decision. Through September 30, 2016 K-BOSSS contributed $323 million or approximately 36% of revenue. Additionally, the K-BOSSS contract currently runs through December 28, 2016 with an option to…

Matthew Klein

Management

Thank you, Ken and good morning everyone. Please turn to Slide 5. Today I will be discussing our financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016. The tables at the top of Page 5 and 6 reflect the generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP financial results for Vectrus. The tables at the bottom of Page 5 and six reflect the adjustments made to operating income and diluted earnings per share in the prior year period only, which excludes operation costs required to become a stand-alone public company and one-time favorable settlements of cash liabilities. I will address the financial results related to income measures on an adjusted basis which we believe better reflect the ongoing business trends. You can reference the appendix of this presentation for the reconciliation of our adjusted result to GAAP. For the third quarter funded orders were $77 million down $367 million compared to the same period of 2015. This change is primarily driven by a partial year funding increment on our K-BOSSS contract as this contract approaches the end of it contractual period of performance. In the third quarter revenue was $284 million down $15 million or 5% compared to the same period of 2015. This change was primarily driven by $26 million decrease in revenue from Afghanistan programs and a $12 million decrease in revenue from our U.S. and European programs partially offset by an increase in revenue from Middle East programs of $23 million when compared to the third quarter of 2015. Operating income was $11.2 million or 3.9% operating margin in the third quarter of 2016, $600,000 or 5% lower compared to the third quarter 2015 adjusted operating income. The change is primarily driven by the year-over-year decrease in revenue. Diluted earnings per share for the third quarter…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We'll go first today to Brian Ruttenbur with Drexel Hamilton.

Brian Ruttenbur

Analyst

Yes, thank you very much. Couple of questions on the backlog first of all 2.1 billion from 2.3 billion last quarter was that all because of K-BOSSS dropping I know you've mentioned something about funded dropping 77 million from K-BOSSS, but could you elaborate a little bit?

Matthew Klein

Management

Sure, so the $2.3 billion that we realized in the second quarter as we earn revenue that comes down with that earned revenue and then any contract value that we see in the quarter adds to that. So the simple math is $2.3 billion in the second quarter, $284 million of revenue in this quarter and then we had about $50 million of additional contract value added to the third quarter and that contract already comes from ASCAP about $20 million of our ASCAP tasks order win in additional work on several of our contracts.

Brian Ruttenbur

Analyst

Okay, thank you very much. That's helpful and then just as a follow on, Maxwell Air Force Base LPTA is that what it's always been or under your previous or the current contracts said better was it an LPTA contract?

Kenneth Hunzeker

Management

Well, this is Ken. Obviously, it was full and open in the past and it was done on best value. But if you look at the buying behavior of the Air Force Education Training Command Base in San Antonio they've been going through the LPTA cost structure on their base operations. So on all the work that's associated with that is still on the LPTA basis.

Matthew Klein

Management

Brian, I would also highlight that our Thule contract and our Turkey Spain contract are Air Force contracts, both LPTA. So we have experience, recent experience with winning with this customer in this contract type.

Brian Ruttenbur

Analyst

Okay and then last question is just on K-BOSSS. You were very confident in the past on winning it given that there is a brand new chance for you guys in a rebid, do you feel as confident as you were before say six months ago, what do you feel about the chances of rebidding this contract?

Kenneth Hunzeker

Management

Well, Brian, just I got t tell you this, our past performance here as we've talked about is exceptional. It continues to be best value. I think we really don't know exactly what the competition this will look like until we actually see what the government comes back with. But what I do know is that we will take advantage of all the things that we've done in the past as far as operational excellence, bidding lean, understanding the customer's requirements and things along those lines. And based on understanding the mission as well as anybody can, I know we will put in a phenomenal solution for this thing and I'm very confident that hopefully we can win this going forward. Matt, anything to add?

Matthew Klein

Management

Yes and what we're looking for in our solicitation is a fair valuation. We found some anomalies that we were concerned about and we raised that to the GAO. The procuring agency agreed and agreed to amend some of the requirements. So we feel like that's the best outcome and given a fair solicitation our solutions will be valued and we'll be competitive.

Brian Ruttenbur

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll go next to Bill Loomis with Stifel.

Bill Loomis

Analyst · Stifel

Hi thanks, good morning. Just on the cash flow guidance so just to be clear, you said 100% cash from operations after working capital will be about 100% net income in 2017 is that accurate?

Matthew Klein

Management

Right, typically in this business we've always said that we track to 100% conversion. There are some non-cash items like equity grants that we should see some additional cash, but what we wanted to make sure was understood is APS-5 and K-BOSSS are very efficient today. And if they continue to the end of the year we would not expect any benefit next year, though these programs conclude.

Bill Loomis

Analyst · Stifel

Okay, so it's just the conversion this year at least cash guidance is about 130%, but what's going to change next year, are you just being conservative with 100?

Matthew Klein

Management

What we realized this year is really some inefficiencies that we had in historical periods. We've created a VIP which is a Vectrus Improvement Project. Our team is focused on what we could to improve our accrued receivables and our turns once we submit an invoice. And as you've seen in our DSO over the last couple of quarters we've been highly successful and we couldn’t be happier and I want to thank our teams for further success. But with that performance that's a one-time up tick right. So you get efficient on your balance sheet you realize that this year we're happy to have that cash infusion and you can we've paid down our debt in advance so $10 million of voluntary payments. And also if you look at the balance sheet we have about $53 million of cash in a bank account. So we're performing optimally right now, but we can expect that to continue into 2017 because we've already realized that efficiency this year.

Bill Loomis

Analyst · Stifel

Okay, and then after you spend a lot of time I'm sure looking at scenarios of the last couple months, so what would you think if let's say you are unsuccessful on the second time on K-BOSSS and then on that APS-5 protest and they could completely go away. What kind of structure should we be thinking about in that type of scenario? I mean Ken SG&A dropped by the revenue amount or is it going to be detrimental to margins or can you – is there some cost savings over the gross margin on those programs being lower that can result in the same or maybe a little better margins if the remaining programs are higher gross margin?

Kenneth Hunzeker

Management

So let's me start with our view on costs. So we took a first step in considering our SG&A position as we go into next year. What we've always said is we proactively look at our cost structure and we can adapt very quickly and I think our actions on October 18 reflect that. We also have to be cognizant that we can't impair our ability to bid new contracts. So we're making sure that our investment and beauty is strong and is sustained. The other thing that we think about is we're still performing on APS-5 and K-BOSSS. We are on contract on APS till February and K-BOSSS through December. So some personal and some wrong requirement that's built into our SG&A is required to run those programs. So my point being is, we've made some adjustments, we expect those adjustments to save about $8 million annualized. And then as we know more, as we close out the fourth quarter and if things change we think we can make some other adjustments and another considerations. So we have to be cognizant. And really kind of our culture is we have to make sure we perform. We can't sacrifice our performance in managing our cost. Going back to your questions on margins, I believe that we have enough levers that we can adjust our cost structure. We shouldn’t see significant margin erosion related to SG&A. But as far as setting specific SG&A targets, there's too many variables that are in play that I just, I can't commit to right now.

Bill Loomis

Analyst · Stifel

When you say no margin degradation, are you talking about if those two programs go away from you that you'd be able to hold margins, is that what you are saying?

Kenneth Hunzeker

Management

Our anticipation, we're in business to make money and increase shareholder value. So we would take the appropriate steps and I'm not saying it is pro rata to manage our SG&A to make sure that we're competitive without sacrificing our business development to investment, but also trying to maintain margins. I still believe this company should be able to realize 4% normalized margin or not quite there. We would have closed this quarter. We were counting on certain levers like the recomplete contracts re-awarding, having some contractual elements to a fixed price element that we could implement our bps program and realize improved margins over time because this is delayed and the real question is when, when can we realize some increased margin? So we'll just have to wait and see. We're happy that we're having a fearless station on K-BOSSS. We can re-win that then that gives us more options.

Bill Loomis

Analyst · Stifel

Okay and just quick one. I was just talking about martins being good enough in the third quarter, it looks like you had some nice positive EAC adjustments. Are those one time or do you think you could see some more of those over the next year?

Kenneth Hunzeker

Management

There is always the possibility that we can realize that in the future. The one thing I would caution if you watched our tunes and catch up in the 10-Q, those changes. Those net changes can be positive and negative. And there are a lot of factors that go into why they are positive or negative and a lot of it is timing of when you realize costs and when you realize extensions. This quarter we had a positive catch-up of $1.1 million. That contributed to our performance. As we look to the fourth quarter, you noticed we tightened our margin range. We're not expecting that kind of an uptick in the fourth quarter although we still have a couple of them. Two more months to close out and so we have to wait and see and if we do we'd be happy no two moments the closeouts will have to wait see and if we do would be happy to report that.

Bill Loomis

Analyst · Stifel

Okay, thank you.

Kenneth Hunzeker

Management

Thanks Bill.

Matthew Klein

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] With no other questions at this time, I'll turn the conference back to Ken Hunzeker for closing remarks.

Kenneth Hunzeker

Management

Thank you for joining us on the call today. Vectrus has a strong reputation of supporting this customer's missions with a legacy dating back to 1945. We've had our fair share of obstacles over the years and in each situation we found ways to overcome these challenges. Looking forward, we will continue to support our customer's missions with exceptional value, performance and the ethical standards that have come to be expected from Vectrus. Finally, on November 11, 2017 we observed veteran's day. It is our national day of remembrance honoring the men and women who have served and are serving in the defense of our country. On behalf of the entire Vectrus workforce, I'd like to thank each veteran for your sacrifices and your service to our great nation and for those service members currently keeping the world safe, thank you for continuing commitment to his great country.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's conference. You may now disconnect.