自動資料處理 (ADP) 2020 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning. My name is Crystal, and I'll be your conference operator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to ADP's First Quarter Fiscal 2020 Earnings Call. I would like to inform you that this conference is being recorded. (Operator Instructions)

早安.我叫克麗絲塔爾，我將擔任你們的會議接線生。在此，我謹代表ADP公司歡迎各位參加2020財年第一季財報電話會議。我想告知各位，本次會議正在錄影。（操作說明）

I will now turn conference over to Mr. Christian Greyenbuhl, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

現在我將把會議交給投資者關係副總裁克里斯蒂安·格雷恩布爾先生。請繼續。

Thank you, Crystal. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining ADP's First Quarter Fiscal 2020 Earnings Call and Webcast. With me today are Carlos Rodriguez, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Kathleen Winters, our Chief Financial Officer.

謝謝你，克麗絲塔爾。各位早安，感謝各位參加ADP 2020財年第一季財報電話會議及網路直播。今天陪同我的是我們的總裁兼執行長卡洛斯·羅德里格斯，以及我們的財務長凱瑟琳·溫特斯。

Earlier this morning, we released our results for the first quarter of fiscal 2020. The earnings materials are available on the SEC's website and our Investor Relations website at investors.adp.com, where you will also find the investor presentation that accompanies today's call as well as our quarterly history of revenue and pretax earnings by reportable segment.

今天早些時候，我們發布了 2020 財年第一季的業績報告。收益資料可在 SEC 網站和我們的投資者關係網站 investors.adp.com 上查閱，您還可以在那裡找到今天電話會議的投資者演示文稿以及我們按報告分部劃分的季度收入和稅前收益歷史記錄。

During our call today, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe to be useful to investors and that exclude the impact of certain items. A description and the timing of these items along with a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to their most comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release. Today's call will also contain forward-looking statements that refer to future events and, as such, involve some risk. We encourage you to review our filings with the SEC for additional information on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Before turning the call over to Carlos, you will have noticed in today's earnings release that we made a correction this quarter to certain PEO zero-margin pass-through revenues that we have previously reported on a gross basis and which, going forward, will be reported on a net basis. For consistency, we also revise prior periods and the total impact to fiscal 2019 revenues and operating expenses was $65 million. This does not materially impact our previously reported growth rates and does not impact consolidated earnings before income taxes, net earnings, consolidated financial condition or cash flows.

在今天的電話會議中，我們將提及非GAAP財務指標，我們認為這些指標對投資者有用，並且排除了某些項目的影響。有關這些項目的描述和時間安排，以及非GAAP指標與其最可比較GAAP指標的調節表，請參閱我們的獲利報告。今天的電話會議還將包含一些前瞻性陳述，這些陳述涉及未來事件，因此存在一定的風險。我們建議您查閱我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件，以獲取有關可能導致實際結果與我們目前預期存在重大差異的因素的更多資​​訊。在將電話交給卡洛斯之前，您應該已經註意到，在今天的收益報告中，我們對本季度某些 PEO 零利潤轉嫁收入進行了修正，這些收入之前是以毛額為基礎報告的，今後將以淨額為基礎報告。為了保持一致性，我們也對前期資料進行了修訂，對 2019 財年的收入和營運支出的總影響為 6,500 萬美元。這不會對我們先前公佈的成長率產生實質影響，也不會對所得稅前合併收益、淨收益、合併財務狀況或現金流量產生影響。

To better assist you, we have also included the details of these adjustments in the appendix to the presentation that accompanies today's call. Our supplemental schedule of quarterly history of revenue and pretax earnings by reportable segment also reflects the impact of these changes. Accordingly, our reported results and full year outlook and the following commentary from both Carlos and Kathleen also fully reflect the impact of these adjustments. As always, please do not hesitate to reach out should you have any questions.

為了更好地幫助您，我們還在今天電話會議的簡報附錄中列出了這些調整的詳細資訊。我們的按報告分部劃分的季度收入和稅前利潤歷史補充表也反映了這些變化的影響。因此，我們公佈的業績和全年展望以及卡洛斯和凱瑟琳的以下評論也充分反映了這些調整的影響。如有任何疑問，請隨時與我們聯繫。

And with that, let me turn the call over to Carlos.

那麼，現在讓我把電話交給卡洛斯。

Thank you, Christian, and thank you, everyone, for joining our call. This morning, we reported our first quarter fiscal 2020 results with revenue of $3.5 billion for the quarter, up 6% reported and organic constant currency. We are pleased with this revenue growth, which despite some higher-than-expected unfavorability in FX, was in line with our expectations. Our efforts to enhance our operating efficiency, along with our focused attention on transformation, helped us deliver 60 basis points of adjusted EBIT margin expansion for this quarter. This margin expansion was in line with our expectations, and we are happy to see the progress that our associates continue to make in helping to improve our productivity while also improving client satisfaction, particularly given the difficult margin compare given our strong performance in the first half of fiscal 2019. Together with share buybacks and a slightly lower-than-expected adjusted effective tax rate, these results helped us deliver 12% adjusted EPS growth this quarter, which was slightly ahead of our expectations.

謝謝你，克里斯蒂安，也謝謝大家參加我們的電話會議。今天上午，我們公佈了 2020 財年第一季業績，該季度營收為 35 億美元，按報告和固定匯率計算成長 6%。我們對此營收成長感到滿意，儘管外匯市場出現了一些高於預期的不利因素，但這一成長仍符合我們的預期。我們為提高營運效率所做的努力，以及我們對轉型的高度重視，幫助我們在本季實現了調整後息稅前利潤率成長 60 個基點。這次利潤率擴張符合我們的預期，我們很高興看到我們的員工在幫助提高生產力的同時，也提高了客戶滿意度，尤其是在 2019 財年上半年業績強勁的情況下，利潤率同比大幅下降，我們對此感到非常欣慰。加上股票回購和略低於預期的調整後實際稅率，這些因素幫助我們實現了本季 12% 的調整後每股盈餘成長，略高於我們的預期。

Moving on to Employer Services new business bookings, this quarter, we saw solid growth across our U.S. markets, which helped drive 6% growth in the quarter. With regard to our international and multinational sales opportunities, we did see some impact from timing as certain deals that were expected to close this quarter are now expected to close slightly later in the fiscal year. Nevertheless, we are maintaining our full year Employer Services new business bookings guidance of 6% to 8%.

接下來是雇主服務的新業務預訂情況，本季我們在美國市場實現了穩健成長，推動本季成長了 6%。就我們的國際和跨國銷售機會而言，我們確實受到了一些時間上的影響，因為一些原計劃在本季度完成的交易現在預計將在本財年晚些時候完成。儘管如此，我們仍維持全年雇主服務新業務預訂量成長 6% 至 8% 的預期。

Now turning to client service. We continue to drive improvements in our client satisfaction scores across our businesses. And this quarter, we were especially pleased with our progress in the upmarket with improvements in both our implementation and overall client satisfaction scores. We continue to take positive steps to transform our service organization and enhance the client experience. And with this continued progress in mind, we remain confident in our forecasted full year fiscal 2020 retention increase of 10 to 20 basis points.

現在進入客戶服務環節。我們持續努力提升旗下各業務部門的客戶滿意度評分。本季度，我們在高端市場的進展尤其令人滿意，我們的實施效果和整體客戶滿意度評分均有所提高。我們持續採取積極措施，改革服務機構，提升客戶體驗。鑑於這項持續進展，我們仍對 2020 財年全年客戶留存率成長 10 至 20 個基點的預測充滿信心。

We are pleased with our start to fiscal 2020 and with the continued momentum in advancing our strategy to simplify how we do business, deliver innovative solutions for our clients and associates and drive sustainable long-term growth for our shareholders. We understand that a key element of building our success in the market is in the capacity to be agile and to anticipate and adapt to change. Innovation is at the core of this need and it's a job that's never done. While we are incredibly excited about the solutions we are delivering in the market today to help clients meet the needs of an evolving workforce, we're even more excited about the future. As the workforce continues to evolve, organizations are looking for ways to manage their entire workforce through a single user experience.

我們對 2020 財年的開局感到滿意，並對我們在推進簡化業務方式、為客戶和合作夥伴提供創新解決方案以及為股東推動可持續長期增長的戰略方面持續保持的勢頭感到高興。我們明白，在市場上取得成功的關鍵要素在於具備敏捷性，能夠預見並適應變化。創新是滿足這項需求的核心，而這項工作永無止境。雖然我們對目前在市場上提供的解決方案感到無比興奮，這些解決方案能夠幫助客戶滿足不斷變化的勞動力需求，但我們對未來更加充滿期待。隨著勞動力的不斷變化，各組織正在尋找透過單一使用者體驗來管理其所有員工的方法。

Today, companies of all sizes are using a variety of applications to get work done. What they need is an open HCM platform that allows easy integration with third-party solutions and is also flexible enough to handle the increasingly dynamic nature of work, one where workers are organized around how work happens in teams, often with individuals working on multiple teams at the same time. Aided by insights from the ADP Research Institute, our Next Gen HCM platform is designed at the core to address these needs. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas, where our Next Gen HCM platform and newest innovations took center stage. As I met with clients and HR professionals, I was incredibly proud of the reception and recognition that we received for delivering innovative solutions that address how and where work is done today.

如今，各種規模的公司都在使用各種應用程式來完成工作。他們需要的是一個開放的 HCM 平台，該平台能夠輕鬆與第三方解決方案集成，並且足夠靈活，可以應對日益動態的工作性質，在這種性質下，員工是按照團隊的工作方式組織的，而且通常個人會同時在多個團隊中工作。在 ADP 研究院的洞見幫助下，我們的下一代 HCM 平台從根本上就是為了滿足這些需求而設計的。幾週前，我有機會參加了在拉斯維加斯舉行的HR技術大會，我們的下一代HCM平台和最新創新成果成為了大會的焦點。在與客戶和人力資源專業人士會面時，我們因提供創新解決方案而獲得了熱烈反響和認可，我為此感到無比自豪，這些解決方案旨在解決當今工作的方式和地點問題。

I was especially proud when our Next Gen HCM platform won both the HR Executive Top HR Product of the Year award and the Awesome New Technology award, a remarkable achievement and a testament to ADP's commitment to innovation.

尤其令我感到自豪的是，我們的下一代 HCM 平台同時獲得了 HR Executive 年度最佳人力資源產品獎和傑出新技術獎，這是一項了不起的成就，也是 ADP 對創新承諾的證明。

Back in September, we also had the opportunity to showcase some of the differentiating features of ADP's Next Gen platform to HCM industry analysts when we hosted our 2019 Industry Analyst Day. At this event, we spent time sharing some of the more meaningful and differentiating elements of our technology, such as the use of graph database technology that powers the unique ability to dynamically configure teams while enabling actionable data and insights around relationships or our metadata-driven design approach that allows a solution to be tailored by the client via low code rapid development through a drag-and-drop interface. In addition, our solution was designed from the beginning to be public cloud native. This, among other advantages, helps improve resiliency and uptime.

早在 9 月份，我們舉辦 2019 年產業分析師日活動時，也有機會向 HCM 產業分析師展示了 ADP 下一代平台的一些差異化功能。在本次活動中，我們花時間分享了我們技術中一些更有意義和更具差異化的元素，例如使用圖數據庫技術，該技術支援動態配置團隊的獨特能力，同時能夠圍繞關係提供可操作的數據和見解；或者我們基於元數據的設計方法，該方法允許客戶透過拖放介面進行低程式碼快速開發，從而定制解決方案。此外，我們的解決方案從一開始就被設計成公有雲原生解決方案。除此之外，這還有助於提高系統的彈性和正常運作時間。

Finally, our solution is designed to be global. Companies that are expanding globally or that would like to more effectively manage their existing global workforce are an ideal target for ADP Next Gen HCM. We were equally proud and excited to see the recognition of our efforts from industry experts at this event. And while it is great to receive these awards and to be recognized by industry experts, it is even more rewarding when we see our efforts translate into recognition and acknowledgment from our clients and prospects.

最後，我們的解決方案旨在在全球範圍內應用。正在全球擴張或希望更有效管理現有全球員工隊伍的公司是 ADP Next Gen HCM 的理想目標客戶。看到我們的努力在此次活動中得到行業專家的認可，我們感到無比自豪和興奮。獲得這些獎項並得到行業專家的認可很好，但當我們看到自己的努力轉化為客戶和潛在客戶的認可和讚賞時，我們會感到更有成就感。

As we work to scale our solution and its capabilities, our Next Gen platform is also building momentum in the market and continues to progress in line with our expectations. As an example, earlier this quarter, at our Industry Analyst Day, we shared details of a successful go-live with a 6,000 employee U.S. company that chose ADP's Next Gen HCM platform for its talent capabilities and the ease of integration with the client's own internally developed onboarding tool. At the same event, we were also pleased to share that we had recently signed a 65,000-employee global enterprise that was looking for an HCM platform capable of handling its growing workforce.

隨著我們不斷擴大解決方案及其功能，我們的下一代平台也在市場上累積勢頭，並繼續按照我們的預期發展。例如，在本季早些時候的產業分析師日上，我們分享了與一家擁有 6000 名員工的美國公司成功上線的案例細節。該公司選擇 ADP 的下一代 HCM 平台，是因為其人才管理能力以及與客戶自己內部開發的入職工具的輕鬆整合。在同一活動中，我們也很高興地宣布，我們最近與一家擁有 65,000 名員工的全球性企業簽署了合作協議，該企業正在尋找能夠處理其不斷增長的員工隊伍的 HCM 平台。

With that said, our focus on innovation is not limited to our Next Gen HCM platform. We have also increasingly leveraged machine learning to enhance our core strategic advantages in payroll and big data. As an example, we simplified 21 million raw job titles from our unmatched data lake and normalized them down to 2,400 job categories, ultimately enhancing both the functionality and accuracy of our ADP data cloud benchmarking. Customers are using our compensation and HR benchmark data to make substantial changes to their business. For example, one of our clients was able to leverage our turnover benchmark data to identify opportunities for improvement and ultimately to reduce their turnover by 20%, while another saw its front line managers use our Executive and Manager Insights mobile solution to help reduce its overtime costs by 6%. These equate to real multimillion-dollar operational savings that are being enabled by ADP's data and products.

也就是說，我們對創新的關注並不僅限於我們的下一代 HCM 平台。我們也越來越多地利用機器學習來增強我們在薪資和大數據方面的核心策略優勢。例如，我們簡化了來自我們無匹配資料湖的 2,100 萬個原始職位名稱，並將它們標準化為 2400 個職位類別，最終提高了我們 ADP 資料雲基準測試的功能和準確性。客戶正在利用我們的薪酬和人力資源基準數據，對其業務進行重大變革。例如，我們的一位客戶利用我們的營業額基準數據，找到了改進的機會，並最終將營業額降低了 20%；而另一位客戶則利用我們的高階主管和經理洞察行動解決方案，幫助其一線經理降低了 6% 的加班成本。這些節省相當於數百萬美元的實際營運成本，而這些成本的實現都歸功於 ADP 的數據和產品。

Also to enhance the efficiency of our implementation organization, we are designing our Next Gen Payroll engine to automatically recognize, convert and classify different formats and inputs from prior payrolls into payroll policies. We believe that this will give us an advantage when we onboard new clients since it will enable the automation of various elements of the implementation process and allow us to share best practices with our clients.

為了提高我們實施組織的效率，我們正在設計下一代薪資引擎，使其能夠自動識別、轉換和分類先前薪資的不同格式和輸入，並將其轉化為薪資政策。我們相信，這將使我們在吸引新客戶時獲得優勢，因為它能夠實現實施過程中各個環節的自動化，並使我們能夠與客戶分享最佳實踐。

And finally, we also continue to drive innovation for our frontline associates in an effort to transform how we work by reducing low-value client contacts while still delivering value-added service. With this in mind, last year, our support organization in the downmarket rolled out expanded chatbot functionality, which today is capable of handling over 100 different inquiry types for our more than 640,000 small business clients. ADP's unique ability to meet the needs of clients and their workers today while anticipating their needs in the future have been hallmarks of our success over the past 70 years, and I believe will drive our sustained growth in the years to come.

最後，我們也將繼續推動第一線員工的創新，努力改變我們的工作方式，減少低價值的客戶接觸，同時仍提供增值服務。考慮到這一點，去年，我們在低端市場的支援機構推出了擴展的聊天機器人功能，如今該功能能夠為我們超過 640,000 家小型企業客戶處理 100 多種不同類型的查詢。ADP 能夠滿足客戶及其員工當前的需求，同時預測他們未來的需求，這在過去 70 年中一直是我們成功的標誌，我相信這將推動我們在未來幾年持續成長。

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Kathleen for her commentary on our results and fiscal 2020 outlook.

接下來，我將把電話交給凱瑟琳，請她對我們的業績和 2020 財年展望進行評論。

Thank you, Carlos, and good morning, everyone. As Carlos mentioned, we're pleased with our progress in transforming our business in order to simplify, innovate and grow. Our strategy is working, and we are off to a solid start to the year. This morning, we reported first quarter revenue growth in line with our expectations at 6% on a reported and organic constant currency basis, which includes a slightly greater amount of FX unfavorability than we had previously anticipated. Our adjusted EBIT increased 8%, also in line with expectations. And adjusted EBIT margin was up 60 basis points compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2019. We're pleased with this margin improvement, which benefited from cost savings related to our workforce optimization and procurement transformation initiatives as well as continued efficiencies within our IT infrastructure. These benefits were partially offset by incremental brand spend as well as selling, amortization and PEO pass-through expenses. This margin performance is particularly gratifying given the difficult margin compare that we faced in the first half of the year. As a reminder, this resulted from the very strong performance in the first half of fiscal 2019, resulting from the outside benefits related to our voluntary early retirement program due to slower than anticipated planned backfills at that time.

謝謝你，卡洛斯，大家早安。正如卡洛斯所說，我們對公司在轉型過程中的進展感到滿意，我們的目標是簡化流程、創新發展並實現成長。我們的策略奏效了，今年開局穩健。今天早上，我們公佈了第一季營收成長情況，按報告和有機固定匯率計算，成長率為 6%，符合我們的預期。但其中匯率不利影響的程度略高於我們先前的預期。調整後的息稅前利潤成長了 8%，也符合預期。經調整後的息稅前利潤率比 2019 財年第一季提高了 60 個基點。我們對利潤率的提高感到滿意，這得益於我們透過優化勞動力和採購轉型措施所節省的成本，以及IT基礎設施效率的持續提升。這些收益部分被新增品牌支出以及銷售、攤提和 PEO 轉嫁費用所抵銷。考慮到上半年利潤率年比數據較為艱難，這樣的利潤率表現尤其令人滿意。提醒一下，這是由於 2019 財年上半年業績非常強勁所致，而業績強勁又得益於當時由於計劃中的人員補充速度低於預期，我們自願提前退休計劃帶來的外部收益。

Our adjusted effective tax rate decreased by 100 basis points to 21.2% compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2019. The decrease was mainly due to an increase in tax incentives related to our R&D efforts and a decrease in reserves for uncertain tax positions. Adjusted diluted earnings per share grew 12% to $1.34, and in addition to benefiting from our revenue growth, margin expansion and a lower effective tax rate was also aided by fewer shares outstanding compared to a year ago.

與 2019 財年第一季相比，我們的調整後實際稅率下降了 100 個基點，至 21.2%。下降的主要原因是與研發工作相關的稅收優惠增加，以及用於應對不確定稅務事項的準備金減少。經調整後的稀釋每股盈餘成長 12% 至 1.34 美元，除了受益於收入成長外，利潤率擴張和較低的實際稅率也得益於與一年前相比流通股數量的減少。

Let's move now to our Employer Services segment and interest on funds held for client. Employer Services revenues were in line with expectations and grew 4% reported and 5% organic constant currency. Interest income on client funds grew 13% and benefited from a 10 basis point improvement in the average yield earned on our client fund investments to 2.3% and growth in average client fund balances of 7% to $23.7 billion. This growth in balances was driven by a combination of client growth, wage inflation and growth in our pays per control, partially offset by lower SUI collections. Our Employer Services same-store pays per control metric in the U.S. grew 2.4% for the first quarter. Employer Services margins saw an increase of 50 basis points in the quarter. The increase in margins this quarter was enabled by the same factors I mentioned earlier when discussing our consolidated results.

現在讓我們來看看雇主服務部分以及為客戶持有的資金利息。雇主服務收入符合預期，按報告匯率計算成長 4%，以固定匯率計算成長 5%。客戶資金的利息收入增加了 13%，這得益於客戶資金投資平均收益率提高了 10 個基點，達到 2.3%，以及客戶資金平均餘額增長了 7%，達到 237 億美元。餘額成長是由客戶成長、薪資上漲和我們按控制付費的成長共同推動的，但部分被較低的 SUI 收款所抵消。美國雇主服務同店每控制指標第一季成長了 2.4%。本季雇主服務利潤率提高了 50 個基點。本季利潤率的成長得益於我在討論公司合併業績時提到的相同因素。

Our PEO segment revenues grew 8% for the quarter to $1.1 billion with average worksite employees growing 7% to 563,000. Revenues excluding zero-margin benefits pass-through grew 7% to $358 million and continued to include pressure from lower workers' compensation and SUI costs and related pricing.

本季度，我們的 PEO 業務部門營收成長 8%，達到 11 億美元，平均工作場所員工人數成長 7%，達到 563,000 人。不計零利潤福利轉嫁，營收成長 7% 至 3.58 億美元，並繼續受到工傷賠償和 SUI 成本及相關定價下降的壓力。

Margins decreased about 70 basis points for the quarter, largely due to changes in ADP Indemnity loss reserve estimates, which drove about 60 basis points of pressure resulting from a smaller benefit in the first quarter of fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2019. As a reminder, with ADP Indemnity results now reported in the PEO, it is normal to expect some volatility in our quarterly PEO margins as a result of changes in our workers' compensation loss reserves.

本季利潤率下降了約 70 個基點，主要原因是 ADP 賠償損失準備金估計的變化，導致 2020 財年第一季收益比 2019 財年第一季減少，從而造成約 60 個基點的壓力。提醒大家，由於 ADP Indemnity 的業績現在已納入 PEO 報告，因此，由於工傷賠償損失準備金的變化，我們的季度 PEO 利潤率出現一些波動是正常的。

Let's turn to the outlook for the full year and start with a consolidated view. We continue to anticipate total revenue growth of 6% to 7% in fiscal 2020. This revenue outlook assumes a more elevated level of FX unfavorability for the remainder of fiscal 2020 relative to our previous expectations. With the recent volatility in overnight and fixed interest rates, we now assume interest income on client funds of $570 million to $580 million, and interest income from our extended investment strategy is now expected to be $575 million to $585 million.

讓我們展望一下全年情況，首先從整體情況來看。我們繼續預期 2020 財年總營收將成長 6% 至 7%。與先前的預期相比，這項收入展望假設 2020 財年剩餘時間內的匯率不利因素將更加嚴重。由於隔夜利率和固定利率近期波動較大，我們現在預期客戶資金的利息收入為 5.7 億美元至 5.8 億美元，而我們擴展投資策略的利息收入預計為 5.75 億美元至 5.85 億美元。

With a continued negative interest rate environment in the eurozone, we made the decision this quarter to wind down our 2 eurozone-related client money movement activities in France and The Netherlands. As a result, we have liquidated our Dutch client funds portfolio, and we will be liquidating our French client funds portfolio by the end of fiscal year 2020. We, therefore, now anticipate our growth in average client funds balances to be about 4% as compared to our previous forecast of 4% to 5%. This decision is exclusive to France and The Netherlands.

由於歐元區持續處於負利率環境，我們本季決定停止在法國和荷蘭開展的兩項與歐元區相關的客戶資金轉移業務。因此，我們已經清算了我們的荷蘭客戶資金組合，我們將在 2020 財年結束前清算我們的法國客戶資金組合。因此，我們現在預計客戶平均資金餘額的成長約為 4%，而我們先前的預測為 4% 至 5%。這項決定僅適用於法國和荷蘭。

We continue to anticipate our adjusted EBIT margin to expand 100 to 125 basis points, and we now anticipate our adjusted effective tax rate to be 23.3%. The rate includes this quarter's unplanned tax benefit from stock-based compensation related to stock option exercises. It does not, however, include any further estimated tax benefit related to potential future stock option exercises, given the dependency of that benefit on the timing of those exercises. With these slight adjustments to our outlook, we continue to expect adjusted diluted earnings per share to grow 12% to 14% in fiscal 2020.

我們繼續預計調整後的息稅前利潤率將擴大 100 至 125 個基點，目前預計調整後的實際稅率為 23.3%。此稅率包含本季因股票選擇權行使而產生的非計劃性稅收優惠。然而，由於該收益取決於未來股票選擇權行使的時機，因此並未包括與未來潛在股票選擇權行使相關的任何其他預期稅收優惠。經過這些略微調整，我們仍然預計 2020 財年調整後的稀釋每股盈餘將成長 12% 至 14%。

Moving on to the segments, let's take a look at Employer Services. We continue to expect 4% to 5% revenue growth in our Employer Services segment. This outlook includes the anticipated impact from my previous remarks regarding changes in FX and adjustments to our interest income on client funds outlook. We continue to anticipate pays per control growth of about 2.5%. We also continue to expect Employer Services new business bookings growth of 6% to 8% and for our Employer Services revenue retention to improve 10 to 20 basis points.

接下來我們來看各個部分，先來看看雇主服務。我們仍預期雇主服務部門的收入將成長 4% 至 5%。這項展望包含了我先前關於外匯變動和調整利息收入對客戶資金前景的影響的言論所預期的影響。我們繼續預期每項控制權的支付額將成長約 2.5%。我們也繼續預期雇主服務新業務預訂量將成長 6% 至 8%，雇主服務收入留存率將提高 10 至 20 個基點。

I'd like to remind you, as I commented in the prior earnings call, that there is volatility inherent in the quarterly Employer Services bookings metric from larger international and upmarket deals. And I'd also like to remind you of the difficult compare in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020 resulting from our strong performance in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 due in part to a client list acquisition.

我想提醒各位，正如我在先前的財報電話會議上提到的，季度雇主服務預訂指標存在固有的波動性，這主要源於較大的國際和高端交易。我還想提醒各位，由於我們在 2019 財年第四季業績強勁（部分原因是收購了客戶名單），導致 2020 財年第四季業績比較艱難。

Moving on to margins. We continue to expect our margin in the Employer Services segment to expand by 100 to 125 basis points. As a reminder, with a difficult compare resulting from our strong margin performance in the first half of fiscal 2019, we continue to expect a much stronger margin increase in the latter half of fiscal 2020.

接下來討論邊際效益。我們仍預期雇主服務業務的利潤率將提高 100 至 125 個基點。提醒大家，由於 2019 財年上半年利潤率表現強勁，導致下半年比較基數較高，我們仍預期 2020 財年下半年利潤率將大幅成長。

Regarding our PEO segment, overall, our outlook remains unchanged. We continue to expect 9% to 11% PEO revenue growth in fiscal 2020 and 7% to 9% growth in PEO revenues, excluding zero-margin benefit pass-throughs, both driven by an anticipated growth of 7% to 9% in average worksite employees. Because of the slower growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019, we continue to expect the growth in our average worksite employees to be at the lower end of our guidance range in the first half of the year with a gradual reacceleration of our growth rate as the year progresses. As we also discussed last quarter, we continue to expect lower workers' compensation and SUI cost and related pricing to pressure our total PEO revenue growth. For PEO margin, we continue to anticipate margins to be flat to down 25 basis points in fiscal 2020, which continues to include approximately 50 basis points of pressure from smaller favorable reserve adjustments in ADP Indemnity in fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2019.

關於我們的 PEO 業務板塊，總體而言，我們的展望保持不變。我們繼續預期 2020 財年 PEO 營收成長 9% 至 11%，不計零利潤福利轉嫁的 PEO 營收成長 7% 至 9%，這兩項成長均由預計平均工作場所員工人數成長 7% 至 9% 所推動。由於 2019 財年第四季成長放緩，我們繼續預計今年上半年平均工作場所員工人數的成長將處於我們預期範圍的下限，隨著時間的推移，成長率將逐步重新加速。正如我們上個季度討論的那樣，我們仍然預計工傷賠償和 SUI 成本及相關定價的下降將對我們的 PEO 總收入成長構成壓力。對於 PEO 利潤率，我們繼續預計 2020 財年利潤率將持平或下降 25 個基點，這其中仍包含約 50 個基點的壓力，原因是 2020 財年 ADP Indemnity 的有利準備金調整幅度小於 2019 財年。

Before I hand the call back over for Q&A, I'd like to share that on February 11, we will be hosting an Innovation Day focused on our technology strategy and showcasing some of our latest innovations. A few of you have had the opportunity to see some of those developments during HR Tech, others may have had a glimpse from some of the industry analyst notes and tweets following our September Industry Analyst Day. The February 11th event will be specifically for the investment community to share our product and service innovations and have a dialogue around the progress that we continue to make, including how these innovations help to differentiate ADP in the market. We look forward to welcoming you then and please be on the lookout for further details in the near future.

在將電話交還給問答環節之前，我想分享一下，2月11日，我們將舉辦一個創新日活動，重點介紹我們的技術策略並展示我們的一些最新創新成果。你們當中有些人有機會在 HR Tech 期間看到這些發展，其他人可能從我們 9 月的行業分析師日之後的一些行業分析師筆記和推文中有所了解。2 月 11 日的活動將專門面向投資界，旨在分享我們的產品和服務創新，並就我們不斷取得的進展進行對話，包括這些創新如何幫助 ADP 在市場上脫穎而出。我們期待屆時歡迎您的到來，請留意近期公佈的更多詳情。

With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator to take your questions.

那麼，我將把電話轉交給接線員，由她來回答您的問題。

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from Ramsey El-Assal from Barclays.

（操作員說明）我們的第一個問題來自巴克萊銀行的拉姆齊·埃爾-阿薩爾。

This is Damian, on for Ramsey. I wanted to ask on the Employer Services bookings guidance. I know you both talked about it at length, but I just wanted to see if you could give any more color on just the quarterly cadence. I know Kathleen, you mentioned difficult comps coming up in Q4, but maybe just any granularity that you could give would be great, and then just your overall level of confidence to kind of get to the midpoint of that 6% to 8% guidance?

這是達米安，他替補拉姆齊上場。我想諮詢雇主服務預訂指南。我知道你們兩個已經詳細討論過這個問題了，但我只是想看看你們能否再詳細說說季度結算的節奏。我知道凱瑟琳，你提到第四季將面臨比較困難的業績基準，但如果你能提供更詳細的資訊就太好了，還有，你對實現 6% 到 8% 的業績指引中點有多大信心？

Damian, I'll let maybe Kathleen make a comment as well. But again, I think if you look at last year's pattern, we -- our second quarter last year was soft. So that would be the easier compare, and the fourth quarter because of the acquisition -- of the client base acquisition from Wells Fargo, I think, will be a little more difficult. But we, obviously, try to apply some judgment on these things, and we obviously have information about individual unit performance and kind of what's happening across regions. And I think what we tried to provide in some of the color of our comments is that this quarter, we had very strong -- what I would call strong results in our core U.S. businesses, SBS, major accounts and national accounts, and where we really had some weakness was in international and multinational, and when we looked into the details of that, there were a few large deals in prior year as well as some deals that didn't close in the first quarter as expected. So that's what gave us some confidence that, I think, we're still on track for the year despite these kind of quarterly fluctuations because I think as Kathleen said and we said many times, for us, bookings is certainly more volatile than revenues. Obviously, we have a recurring revenue model but on bookings, the clock goes back to 0 at the beginning of every quarter. But we see some underlying strength that gives us some optimism. But we did have some weakness in the international, multinational and that's something that we're looking at. I don't think that it's any major change in the economy because it's been kind of a difficult economic climate for a while in Europe where we have a large business. So again, as we look at the details, it just look like typical lumpiness in our bookings.

達米安，我或許也讓凱瑟琳說幾句吧。但是，我認為如果你看看去年的情況，你會發現我們——去年第二季業績疲軟。所以比較起來會比較容易，而第四季因為收購——從富國銀行收購客戶群——我認為會比較困難一些。但我們顯然會嘗試對這些事情做出一些判斷，而且我們顯然掌握了有關各個部門績效以及各個地區正在發生的事情的資訊。我認為我們在評論中試圖表達的是，本季度我們在美國核心業務（SBS、大客戶和全國性客戶）方面取得了非常強勁的業績，而我們在國際和跨國業務方面則存在一些不足。當我們深入研究細節時發現，去年有一些大額交易，還有一些交易未能如預期在第一季完成。所以，這讓我們有信心，儘管存在這種季度波動，我們仍然能夠按計劃完成今年的目標，因為正如凱瑟琳所說，我們也多次說過，對我們來說，預訂量肯定比收入波動更大。顯然，我們採用的是經常性收入模式，但就預訂而言，每季初都會重新開始計時。但我們看到了一些潛在的優勢，這讓我們感到樂觀。但我們在國際化、跨國領域確實存在一些弱點，這是我們正在研究的問題。我不認為這會為經濟帶來任何重大變化，因為我們在歐洲（我們有很多業務）的經濟環境已經持續一段時間比較艱難了。所以，當我們再次查看細節時，就會發現這只是我們預訂中典型的波動。

Yes. I mean just to follow on with that, look, you're always going to have some degree of lumpiness in your quarterly bookings number, right, from at least a couple of things, right? If you've got larger multinational-type deals, that's going to cause some lumpiness. And then you've got the year-over-year comps issue if you've got a tough comp or an easier comp. So you'll always have a little bit of that going on. And so importantly, while the quarterly number is obviously important, it's I think even more important to look at a longer-term trend, right? When you look at how we've been doing in particular with last year having a really strong and, I think record, right, number of $1.6 billion for last year and then 8%, and then on top of that another what we think is a really solid number of 6% in Q1, when you look at that longer period of time, we're actually feeling pretty pleased with the start to the year. Now there is, of course, always pockets that are stronger and others that are maybe a little slower out of the gate, and Carlos mentioned on the outside of the U.S. having a little bit of lumpiness there. But net-net, we're pretty pleased with the start to the year.

是的。我的意思是，接著剛才的話題，你看，你的季度預訂量總是會有些波動，對吧，至少有幾個因素會導致這種情況，對吧？如果是規模較大的跨國交易，那肯定會造成一些波動。然後，如果去年同期比較困難或比較容易，就會出現同比比較的問題。所以你總是會遇到一些這種情況。因此，雖然季度數據顯然很重要，但我認為更重要的是要看長期趨勢，對吧？回顧我們去年的表現，我們取得了非常強勁的成績，我認為創下了歷史新高，去年的收入達到了 16 億美元，成長率為 8%。此外，第一季我們也取得了 6% 的穩健成長。從更長的時間跨度來看，我們對今年的開局相當滿意。當然，總是會有一些地區發展得比較強勁，而有些地區則可能起步稍慢一些。卡洛斯提到，美國以外的地區發展就有些起伏不定。但總的來說，我們對今年的開局相當滿意。

Yes. That makes sense. Great. Then maybe I'll zoom out a little bit and ask on overall sort of product strategy at the large enterprise level. I just wanted to dig in and see how you see your product suite evolving there, just sort of in the context of you continuing to invest in Vantage over time and then your new strategy around the Lifion offering?

是的。這很有道理。偉大的。然後我或許會把視角拉遠一些，詢問一下大型企業層面的整體產品策略。我只是想深入了解一下，您如何看待貴公司的產品套件的發展，尤其是在您持續投資 Vantage 以及圍繞 Lifion 產品的新策略方面？

Don't forget, we also -- again, one of the highlights for the quarter and frankly it's been a highlight and trying to kind of signal this, I'm not sure how it has landed yet, but our decision to use Workforce Now in the lower end of the upmarket, so call it in that 1,000 to 3,000, even though frankly it can go higher. We have a couple of clients that have 8,000, 9,000 employees that are on Workforce Now. But that decision has been great competitively in growth-wise. So we are selling a lot of units in that kind of lower end of the upmarket. So the ability to use Workforce Now for -- and it fits certain types of profiles of clients. And you can probably imagine generally speaking, they are large but simpler and the Vantage clients would be more complex and have more complex needs, like complex benefits and talent requirements and so forth.

別忘了，我們還有——再次強調，這是本季的一大亮點，坦白說，這確實是一個亮點。我想藉此機會表明，我還不確定大家的反應如何，但我們決定在高端市場的低端使用 Workforce Now，也就是在 1,000 到 3,000 美元之間，儘管坦白說，這個數字還可以更高。我們有幾位客戶，他們在 Workforce Now 平台上擁有 8000 到 9000 名員工。但從成長的角度來看，這項決定在競爭中發揮了巨大作用。所以，我們在這種中高端市場中銷量很高。因此，Workforce Now 能夠滿足某些特定類型客戶的需求。你可能可以想像，一般來說，它們規模較大但結構較為簡單，而 Vantage 的客戶則更為複雜，需求也更為複雜，例如複雜的福利和人才要求等等。

And Lifion, it's still obviously an early adopter type of product even though we're getting great traction, and we told you what -- how we've done in terms of new sales. Given the size of ADP, it's really Workforce Now and Vantage now that are affecting the numbers in terms of the bookings and the revenue. And I think -- again, in case I wasn't clear like that we had a good quarter even in national accounts in the upmarket primarily as a result of really good results from Workforce Now.

而 Lifion 顯然仍然是一款早期採用者類型的產品，儘管我們獲得了巨大的發展勢頭，我們也告訴過你們——我們在新銷售方面取得了怎樣的成績。鑑於 ADP 的規模，真正影響預訂量和收入的主要是 Workforce Now 和 Vantage Now。而且我認為——再說一遍，如果我之前表達得不夠清楚的話——即使在高端市場的全國性客戶方面，我們也取得了不錯的季度業績，這主要歸功於 Workforce Now 的出色表現。

So the strategy is the same strategy we've had all along, which is I think we've figured out that we have really a great solution for a segment of the market. I think last quarter I mentioned that we had an external third-party do some analysis for us in terms of segmenting the market. And as usual, one solution doesn't fit the entire market. And what we found was that a pretty good size percentage of the market can be addressed by our Workforce Now solutions, that's what we're doing, and we were right. And the analysis was right. And we think the Vantage still addresses another segment of the market, and Lifion is more of kind of the emerging solution that we, obviously, have placed a lot of confidence and a lot of -- and a big bet on for the future. But as of today, it's really not having a big impact on the numbers.

所以，我們的策略和我們一直以來的策略是一樣的，那就是，我認為我們已經找到了一個非常適合部分市場的解決方案。我記得上個季度我提到過，我們聘請了外部第三方機構為我們進行市場區隔的分析。和往常一樣，一種解決方案無法滿足整個市場的需求。我們發現，我們的 Workforce Now 解決方案可以滿足相當大比例的市場需求，而這正是我們正在做的，事實證明我們是對的。分析結果是正確的。我們認為 Vantage 仍然滿足了市場的另一個細分領域，而 Lifion 更像是一種新興解決方案，顯然，我們對其寄予了極大的信心，並對其未來進行了大量的投資。但截至目前，這並沒有對數據產生太大影響。

And I'd also just add also in terms of just -- to your question about market dynamic, when we had this meeting in Las Vegas for the HR Tech Conference that I mentioned in my comments, again, early positive signs we had for anyone who was there, and I think some of our industry analysts and some financial analysts were there, I think it was pretty clear that we are making an impact in the market. So our lead flow was multiples of what it has been in the past in the upmarket because of the interest in Lifion. But I just want to be cautious in terms of pace here because relative to our $15 billion in revenue, this is not next quarter or 3 quarters from now. But the signs are very, very positive in the long term, as Kathleen mentioned. If you focus on the long term, I think, Lifion -- the traction we're getting on Lifion is very, very encouraging.

關於您提出的市場動態問題，我還想補充一點——正如我在評論中提到的，我們在拉斯維加斯召開了人力資源技術大會，當時我們向所有與會者（包括我們的一些行業分析師和一些金融分析師）發出了一些積極的早期信號，我認為很明顯，我們正在對市場產生影響。由於大家對 Lifion 的興趣，我們在高階市場的潛在客戶數量是以往的數倍。但我希望在速度方面保持謹慎，因為相對於我們 150 億美元的收入而言，這並非指下一個季度或三個季度之後的事情。但正如凱瑟琳所說，從長遠來看，這些跡象非常非常積極。如果著眼於長遠發展，我認為 Lifion——我們在 Lifion 上取得的進展非常非常令人鼓舞。

Our next question comes from Kevin McVeigh from Crédit Suisse.

下一個問題來自瑞士信貸的凱文麥克維。

You're able to reaffirm the revenue despite the lower client interests on kind of funds in extended investment. Was there any kind of offset there, particularly given the incremental headwinds in FX? It seems like you're able to reaffirm the guide despite those couple of headwinds.

即使客戶對這類長期投資資金的興趣較低，您仍能確認收益。是否存在某種抵銷作用，尤其是在外匯市場面臨日益不利的因素的情況下？儘管遇到了一些不利因素，你似乎還是能夠重申指南的正確性。

I think it goes back to what we're saying about some of the underlying performance of the business. So as an example, even though we don't give quarterly guidance on retention, you could tell from our comments, I hope, that we felt pretty good about it this quarter, so that you could probably read into that, that it improved prior -- compared to last year's prior first quarter. And as I mentioned before, retention, if you do the math, has a pretty outsized impact on our business both in terms of our revenue and, frankly, big impact on margin because for equal growth, you don't have to implement as much business. And so there's a lot of different moving parts that go into the pot here. But I would point that one out as an area of strength.

我認為這與我們之前討論的關於公司一些基本面表現的問題有關。舉例來說，雖然我們不提供季度留存率指引，但從我們的評論中，你應該能看出，我們對本季度的留存率感覺相當不錯，所以你可能也能從中看出，與去年同期相比，留存率有所提高。正如我之前提到的，如果你計算一下，你會發現客戶留存率對我們的業務有著相當大的影響，無論是在收入方面，還是坦率地說，對利潤率方面，因為在相同的增長水平下，你不需要實施那麼多的業務。所以，這裡面涉及很多不同的環節。但我認為，這正是我們的優勢。

I think we've talked about the strong performance in our core U.S. businesses. So for the first quarter, we had kind of our 3 core businesses performing very well in terms of bookings as well. So it's a process from the ground up of us building this forecast, first to plan and then now the forecast. And I think we have some optimism that we're still in that range. But I just want to point out the retention story because 3 or 4 years ago, when it was going the other way, I pointed out that it takes 4 to 5 points of sales growth of new business bookings growth to offset 1 point of retention just because of the way the math works. And so now as retention -- as you get a little bit of improvement in retention, that helps a lot in terms of our growth rate.

我想我們已經討論過我們在美國核心業務的強勁表現。所以第一季度，我們的三大核心業務在預訂方面都表現得非常好。所以，這是一個從頭開始建立預測的過程，首先是製定計劃，然後才是現在的預測。我認為我們比較樂觀地認為，我們仍然處於這個範圍內。但我只想指出客戶留存率的問題，因為 3 到 4 年前，當情況相反的時候，我指出，新業務預訂量增長 4 到 5 個百分點才能抵消 1 個百分點的客戶留存率下降，這僅僅是因為數學原理如此。因此，隨著用戶留存率的提高，我們的成長率也會得到很大的提升。

Yes. So as Carlos mentioned, look, there's a couple of things that obviously gave us some headwind or unfavorably versus what we would have been expecting, particularly the FX and the interest from client funds. However, when you look at operationally, the fundamental things look really good. As Carlos said, retention is on a steady track upwards, now it gets harder and harder the higher up you go. But we're happy to see some level of increase in the first quarter here and bookings were solid for the quarter.

是的。正如卡洛斯所提到的，顯然有幾件事給我們帶來了一些不利影響，或者說與我們預期的情況相比出現了一些問題，特別是外匯和客戶資金的利息。但是，從營運角度來看，基本面看起來非常好。正如卡洛斯所說，員工留存率一直在穩定上升，但現在職位越高，留存率就越低。但我們很高興看到第一季出現了一定程度的成長，而且該季度的預訂情況也很穩健。

You know I'd just add that on the client funds interest, we do have some of this -- for the year, it obviously has an impact as we guided. We gave you the information in terms of we're slightly below where we expected to be. But it's not a huge number for this fiscal year.

我還要補充一點，關於客戶資金利息，我們確實有一些——就今年而言，這顯然會對我們之前所說的產生影響。我們已告知您，我們目前的狀況略低於預期。但就本財年而言，這並不是一個很大的數字。

Great. And then just, Carlos, to highlight the retention a little bit more because obviously really nice progress there. Any sense of success across the enterprise versus the mid-market versus kind of downstream a little bit, the range on those?

偉大的。然後，卡洛斯，我想再重點強調員工留存率，因為很明顯，這方面取得了非常好的進展。企業整體、中階市場以及下游市場，在這些領域的成功程度如何？

Yes, I do have some sense. My sense is that we're improving a lot. So we showed some signs in terms of the win-loss, what we call, balance of the trade, some encouraging signs, particularly in our mid-market business. So again, the mid-market now is performing -- you got to be cautious because there's definitely a forward-looking statement, but it's performing according to the script, in the sense if you remember, we took a lot of pain and a lot of effort to migrate all of our clients on to 1 single strategic platform, which is Workforce Now. And when you looked at the history of what happened in our SBS downmarket business, when we did that, we were optimistic and hopeful that we would have the same kind of traction in our mid-market business, and it's beginning to show now. So we have improving retention now for, it feels like, 6 or 7 quarters, somewhere in that range. I'm being told more. So once we kind of finished the migrations and got through that difficulty, I think, our -- we've had steady improvements in retention. This quarter was the second highest retention we've ever had in our mid-market business. And then this quarter, what was very encouraging was to see the level of activity in new business bookings. So the combination of those 2 things give us a feeling of optimism for what is -- one of our biggest and most profitable businesses.

是的，我還有些常識。我的感覺是，我們進步很多。因此，我們在損益平衡方面，也就是我們所說的交易平衡方面，出現了一些跡象，一些令人鼓舞的跡象，尤其是在我們的中端市場業務中。所以，中端市場目前的表現——你必須謹慎，因為這肯定是一個前瞻性聲明，但它的表現符合預期，如果你還記得的話，我們付出了很多努力和心血，才將所有客戶遷移到一個單一的戰略平台，即 Workforce Now。回顧我們 SBS 低階市場業務的發展歷程，我們當時樂觀地認為，我們在中端市場業務也能取得同樣的成功，現在看來，這種樂觀和希望已經開始顯現了。所以，我們現在已經連續 6 到 7 個季度（大概在這個範圍內）保持了較高的用戶留存率。我被告知更多資訊。所以，一旦我們完成了遷移工作，克服了那段困難時期，我認為，我們的用戶留存率就穩步提高了。本季是我們中階市場業務有史以來第二高的客戶留存率。而本季最令人鼓舞的是新業務預訂的活躍程度。因此，這兩件事結合起來，讓我們對——我們規模最大、盈利能力最強的業務之一——充滿樂觀。

Our next question comes from David Togut from Evercore ISI.

我們的下一個問題來自 Evercore ISI 的 David Togut。

Could you comment on the drivers that you expect to move your PEO revenue growth up from 8% in the recent quarter to 9% to 11%, which is your guide for this year? And then just as a follow-up, at your Analyst Day last year, you gave a multiyear guide of 12% to 14% CAGR for your HRO business and you're trending well below that now. Did you anticipate at the time that the growth rates in the earlier years, double digits effectively, would slow toward the end of that period, let's say, mid- to high single digit?

您能否談談您認為哪些因素會推動貴公司 PEO 的營收成長率從最近一個季度的 8% 提高到 9% 到 11%？ 11% 是您今年的目標成長率。另外，去年在分析師日上，您曾給出人力資源外包業務多年複合年增長率 12% 至 14% 的指導，而現在的實際增長率遠低於這個數字。當時你是否預料到，早年兩位數的成長率會在該時期後期放緩，比如說降至個位數中高段？

Well, if I can start maybe with the second one first since I was there at the Analyst Day, it's not fair to ask Kathleen. I think that we -- as we built the guidance for -- or I guess the estimates for our 3 years, we had -- I think, we've mentioned this a couple of times, we had certain expectations around our pass-through revenue and the inflation of those numbers that had some historical precedent both around workers' compensation and health care. And I think literally within 2 months of that, the picture changed and we communicated that very clearly and very transparently and frankly without any anxiety because it doesn't have any impact on our EPS.

好吧，如果我能先回答第二個問題的話，因為我參加了分析師日，問凱瑟琳這個問題不太公平。我認為，我們在製定未來三年的業績指引時，或者說，在製定未來三年的預測時，我們已經多次提到過，我們對轉嫁收入以及這些數字的通膨有一些預期，這些預期在工傷賠償和醫療保健方面都有一些歷史先例。我認為，就在那之後的兩個月內，情況就發生了變化，我們非常清晰、非常透明、非常坦誠地傳達了這一點，沒有任何焦慮，因為這不會對我們的每股收益產生任何影響。

So if you remember, the Investor Day, I think, it was in June, and I think when we had our August earnings call, I think, we brought down significantly for that year, at least, the growth rate for the PEO mainly -- primarily close to almost based on lower inflation. Now on top of that, we have had some slowdown in worksite employee growth, which is the core driver underneath of the real growth of the business. But I think the main driver of this differential from what we communicated at Investor Day has been the lower inflation of the pass-throughs, which again doesn't concern us in a big way because it's 0 margin and doesn't really affect our profitability in terms of dollars.

所以如果你還記得的話，投資者日，我想是在六月份，而當我們八月份召開收益電話會議時，我們大幅下調了當年的增長率，至少，PEO 的增長率主要——幾乎是基於較低的通貨膨脹率。此外，我們的工作場所員工成長速度也有所放緩，而這正是公司實際成長的核心驅動力。但我認為，造成這種差異的主要原因是轉嫁費用的通膨率較低，但這並沒有讓我們感到擔憂，因為它的利潤率為 0，不會真正影響我們以美元計算的獲利能力。

In terms of your question about the behavior of the quarters and so forth, probably beyond the scope of this call, but this is just kind of math in terms of when we have our for open enrollment for health care in kind of the May, June time frame, which we've, again, communicated very transparently when that happens and what happens when that occurs, you tend to have some client churn. So that drops your worksite employee growth and, obviously, the revenue growth for the PEO. And then as bookings continue to -- assuming they continue to be robust, you start to build that up again. And then at the end of the calendar year-end, you have another event at year-end where you have some churn in the client base in terms of clients that choose to leave at the end of the calendar year because that's more natural. But we also have historically a lot of bookings in January as well. So we've been doing this for 20 years, and if we see a difference or a change, we would obviously communicate that. But I think we're just kind of dropping the numbers in as they are supposed to come in, in terms of -- based on historical trends.

關於您提出的季度行為等問題，可能超出了本次通話的範圍，但這涉及到一些數學問題，例如我們在五六月份進行醫療保健開放註冊的時間，我們已經非常透明地溝通了註冊時間以及註冊期間會發生什麼，屆時往往會有一些客戶流失。這樣一來，就會降低工作場所的員工成長，顯然也會降低 PEO 的收入成長。然後，隨著預訂量的持續增長——假設預訂量繼續保持強勁勢頭——你就可以再次開始重建它。然後，在日曆年末，你還會遇到另一個事件，那就是客戶群的流失，因為有些客戶選擇在日曆年末離開，因為這更自然。但從歷史數據來看，我們一月份的預訂量也很大。我們已經做了 20 年了，如果我們發現任何差異或變化，我們當然會及時溝通。但我認為我們只是根據歷史趨勢，按部就班地把數字填進去而已。

David, I would just add, so last quarter we did say that we would expect to start the year from a lower end of the range and then grow into the range as the year progresses because, obviously, we started with a somewhat of a weaker ending worksite employee number in the fourth quarter last year.

David，我還要補充一點，上個季度我們確實說過，我們預計今年年初的員工人數會處於較低水平，然後隨著時間的推移逐漸增長到正常水平，因為很明顯，去年第四季度末我們的工作場所員工人數比較疲軟。

I think it's probably worth asking -- I mean, adding just, again, in full transparency, I think we said at last quarter our health care renewal was slightly higher than the previous year. So I wouldn't -- it wasn't anything out of norm in terms of historical, but it was higher than the previous year. And when that -- when we have that happen, you tend to get more shoppers and more -- health care cost is a large part of what a small business pays in their overall cost structure of their workforce. And so they tend to shop and look around and so forth. And so we had a little bit more churn than I think we had, had in the prior year. The good news, though, for us is that we have that issue, but we've been dealing with that for 20 years, but we don't take any risk on health care. And so whatever we get in terms of price increases through the carriers, we pass those through to 100%, which is what we call zero-margin pass-through. So that eliminates any risk or any surprises in the future, but it also means that you have to have, frankly, the courage to just pass those costs through and let the chips fall where they may. And the chips fell, and I think you can see from the numbers that the chips didn't fall off the table because there wasn't a collapse in the business or a huge slowdown, but we definitely had a speed bump and now it's really through new business bookings that we have to regain the momentum and kind of have that ramp up again and reacceleration of the growth rate.

我覺得這個問題或許值得一問——我的意思是，再次強調，為了完全透明，我想我們在上個季度說過，我們的醫療保健續約費用略高於上一年。所以我不會——從歷史角度來看，這並沒有什麼不尋常之處，但比前一年要高。當這種情況發生時，往往會有更多的顧客，而醫療保健成本是小型企業在其員工整體成本結構中支付的很大一部分。所以他們往往會逛逛街、四處看看等等。因此，我們的人員流動率比前一年高。不過，對我們來說的好消息是，雖然我們有這個問題，但我們已經處理這個問題 20 年了，但我們不會在醫療保健方面冒任何風險。因此，無論我們從營運商那裡獲得多少價格上漲，我們都會 100% 地將這些上漲轉嫁給消費者，這就是我們所說的零利潤轉嫁。這樣就消除了未來的任何風險或意外，但也意味著，坦白說，你必須有勇氣把這些成本轉嫁出去，然後聽天由命。情況發生了變化，我認為從數據中可以看出，情況並沒有徹底惡化，因為業務沒有崩潰，也沒有大幅放緩，但我們確實遇到了一些阻礙，現在我們必須透過新的業務預訂來重新獲得動力，並再次提高成長率。

Our next question comes from Bryan Bergin from Cowen.

下一個問題來自 Cowen 公司的 Bryan Bergin。

Carlos, I wanted to ask your macro view, your outlook on the current employment market. It sounds encouraging based on the performance of the business but I'm curious how much of that is due to the improved competitive product position versus the underlying demand you might be seeing?

卡洛斯，我想問你對宏觀經濟的看法，你對當前就業市場的看法。從公司業績來看，這聽起來令人鼓舞，但我很好奇，這其中有多少是由於產品競爭地位的提升，又有多少是由於您可能看到的潛在需求增長？

It's a great question because it's an important one for us to keep kind of asking ourselves because we do have some things that if they turn on us, would put pressure on us. Interest rates, obviously, is one of them, pays per control, et cetera, but we're also feeling pretty good about our product situation, and I think our competitive situation in the marketplace going forward here. So it is -- that's going to be a very important question for us to stay focused on here for the next few quarters. But as of today, when you look at our -- the lagging indicators. So pays for control it doesn't look like there's a slowdown or a big issue. But if you look at the same things that everyone else would look at, that we have access to and that you have access to in terms of leading indicators like confidence indexes or NFIB, ISM, those types of things, Michigan Confidence, there's some concern there and some reason for caution. In our numbers, the only place where we've seen some -- a little bit of softness in pays per control, and it doesn't get reflected in our -- in what we report because as we've disclosed prior, this is our auto pay base, which is a very large base of both large employers, midsized employers and smaller employers, but we have most of our employers in our run platform. And there, we've seen a slight downtick in pays per control growth over the prior -- over the prior year. It doesn't mean you look at over the 10-year history, I don't think it's anything to be alarmed by. But when you look at other factors, it's certainly a cause for caution. I just happen to look, I think for the last couple of days at NFIB, and that softened significantly, but it's still well above recession levels. And so I think we're all kind of trying to figure out the same thing here, which is, is this a soft patch? Or is it kind of a trend line. But with the Fed easing and the consumer is still strong, like right now, our plans are that we kind of work our way through this soft patch.

這是一個很好的問題，因為這個問題很重要，我們需要不斷地問自己，因為有些事情如果反過來對我們不利，就會給我們帶來壓力。利率顯然是其中之一，還有按控制付費等等，但我們對我們的產品狀況也感到非常滿意，而且我認為我們未來在市場上的競爭情況也很好。沒錯——這將是我們未來幾季需要重點關注的一個非常重要的問題。但截至今日，當你查看我們的——滯後指標。所以，只要付出控制的代價，看起來就不會出現放緩或重大問題。但是，如果你看看其他人都會關注的那些東西，例如我們和你們都能接觸到的領先指標，例如信心指數或 NFIB、ISM 等，以及密西根信心指數，就會發現一些令人擔憂的地方，也有一些需要謹慎的理由。在我們的數據中，唯一出現一些疲軟的地方是——每個控制項的支付基礎略有下降，但這並沒有反映在我們的報告中，因為正如我們之前披露的那樣，這是我們的自動支付基礎，這是一個非常龐大的基礎，包括大型雇主、中型雇主和小型雇主，但我們的大多數雇主都在我們的運作平台上。而且，我們看到，與前一年相比，每項控制的付費成長略有下降。這並不意味著從過去十年的歷史來看，我認為這沒什麼好擔心的。但考慮到其他因素，這無疑是一個需要謹慎對待的問題。我碰巧看了看NFIB的數據，過去幾天它確實有所回落，但仍然遠高於經濟衰退水平。所以我覺得我們都在試著弄清楚同一件事，那就是，這是否只是暫時的平靜期？或者說，這是一種趨勢線？但隨著聯準會放鬆貨幣政策，消費者需求依然強勁，就像現在這樣，我們的計畫是努力度過這段疲軟時期。

Okay, that's helpful. And then Kathleen, on just margin expansion progress. Any further details you can share on the various transformation initiatives as you look across the various sources, where you're seeing the most yield? And anything surprising as you've had just more time in the seat.

好的，這很有幫助。然後是凱瑟琳，關於利潤率擴張的進展。您能否分享更多關於各項轉型措施的細節，特別是您在各個管道看到成效最顯著的面向？隨著你在座位上待的時間越來越長，任何意想不到的事情都會發生。

Yes. No, thanks for the question. Obviously, something that I'm really focused on in the organization is really very focused on as well. I mean just to kind of give some context and kind of big picture when you step back and take a look at what we've done in the last couple of years. I mean remember, back in 2018, we were at a margin rate of 20.7% with a small amount of margin expansion in that year. And then in 2019 - fiscal 2019, when we were executing on some really big and meaningful transformation initiatives. You saw that really outsized margin expansion of 160 basis points. And now as a reminder, the guide for another 100 to 125 basis points for fiscal 2020. So a track record here of really consistent margin expansion. As we start in fiscal 2020 with Q1 that 60 basis points of margin expansion, we're really happy to see that and very happy that we're on track with how we plan the year. Now there's a lot of execution and a lot of work behind the scenes going on, but I'd point out that number one, as I started my comments, there's a lot of energy around it and a lot of alignment, and that energy and alignment is around both executing what I call in-flight projects as well as developing the pipeline for the future. So that's really exciting. I've talked about on the previous call that most of the margin expansion from a transformation perspective, this year is coming from what we're calling workforce optimization and procurement initiatives. Both are very much on track from a workforce optimization standpoint, think about that in terms of a spans and layers exercise, if you will, and particularly targeted to management layers. So that's kind of on track and already executed with most of that benefit being in fiscal '20, not much from that coming beyond fiscal '20. And then procurement transformation, there's a lot of projects there. As we look at across all parts of the organization and spend as we look at volume and we look at policy and we look at our ability to negotiate smartly with vendors and suppliers. There's opportunity there, and there's a lot of execution going on. So a lot of work by the organization. We're happy with what the team has been doing, happy with the progress, but more to do.

是的。不，謝謝你的提問。顯然，我在組織中非常關注的一件事，也是組織非常關注的。我的意思是，當你回顧過去幾年我們所做的事情時，這可以提供一些背景和全局視角。我的意思是，別忘了，在 2018 年，我們的利潤率為 20.7%，那一年利潤率略有成長。然後在 2019 年（2019 財年），我們執行了一些真正意義重大且影響深遠的轉型計畫。你看到了160個基點的超大幅度利潤率擴張。最後提醒一下，2020 財年預計還會有 100 至 125 個基點的增幅。所以，該公司有著持續穩定的利潤率成長記錄。2020 財年第一季度，我們實現了 60 個基點的利潤率成長，我們對此感到非常高興，也很高興我們正按計劃推進這一年的工作。現在有很多執行工作和幕後工作正在進行，但我想指出的第一點，正如我剛才所說，圍繞著這個項目有很多活力和共識，這種活力和共識既體現在執行我所說的進行中的項目，也體現在為未來開發項目渠道。那真是太令人興奮了。我在上一次電話會議上談到，從轉型角度來看，今年利潤率的大部分成長都來自於我們所謂的勞動力優化和採購措施。從勞動力優化的角度來看，兩者都進展順利，可以將其視為一種跨度和層級調整，尤其針對管理層級。所以這方面進展順利，大部分收益已經實現，2020 財年就能看到成效，2020 財年以後應該不會有太多收益。此外，採購轉型方面也有很多項目。當我們審視組織的各個面向和支出時，我們會審視數量，我們會審視政策，我們會審視我們與供應商進行巧妙談判的能力。那裡有很多機會，而且也有很多事情正在執行。所以，這背後凝聚了組織的許多努力。我們對團隊的工作成果和所取得的進展感到滿意，但還有更多工作要做。

Bryan, I just -- one thing just to add, as you think about the margin, because your question, I think, was related to margins, in particular, and obviously, what's driving those. But last year, the first and second quarter, but particularly, the second quarter was a very strong growth in margin in that time. And just a reminder, we also had pressure from M&A at that time. So just layer that one onto it as well as you think about the margin cadence last year versus this year.

布萊恩，我只是想補充一點，當你考慮利潤率的時候，因為你的問題，我認為，尤其與利潤率有關，以及顯然是什麼在驅動這些利潤率。但去年第一季和第二季度，特別是第二季度，利潤率在那段時間內實現了非常強勁的成長。另外提醒一下，當時我們也面臨併購方面的壓力。所以，在考慮去年和今年的利潤率變化時，也要把這一點考慮進去。

Our next question comes from David Grossman from Stifel.

下一個問題來自 Stifel 公司的 David Grossman。

I'm wondering if I could just follow-up with a couple of questions on the PEO. Each of your kind of larger peers in that space have identified some type of incremental issue with their health insurance book in their most recent reports. And I know you mentioned just higher health premiums. And obviously, you pass everything through in your model. But is there anything else you're seeing in the marketplace that may be impacting the cost of delivering health insurance in the PEO industry?

我想就 PEO 再問幾個問題。你們這類規模較大的同業在最近的報告中都指出，他們的健康保險業務出現了一些漸進性問題。我知道你提到了更高的醫療保險費。顯然，你的模型會傳遞所有資料。但是，您在市場上是否也觀察到其他可能影響 PEO 產業提供健康保險成本的因素？

No.

不。

All right. So for you, it's just a straight higher premium and not seeing anything else that -- I guess, you don't really see the claims data. Is that right? In terms of how claims may be impacting cost?

好的。所以對你來說，只是保費更高了，沒有看到其他任何變化——我想，你大概看不到理賠數據。是這樣嗎？就理賠可能對成本的影響而言？

We don't see individual employee claims data, but we, of course, very, very carefully look at claims either to get some sense with our carriers in partnership with our carriers of what's happening in terms of trends. And maybe I should be a little bit more clear on this premium increase issue. So I'm not going to give you the exact numbers. I don't think we want to get down that rabbit hole. But the change from this renewal to the prior renewal was, call it, 1 to 2 percentage points higher on average than the prior year. So if the previous year, the average renewal increase was 6%, then the next year it was 7% or 8%. And that increase that year that was slightly higher was completely in line with the prior 6 or 7 years. So there wasn't -- so there's some ups and downs, but the prior year was the one that was actually exceptional. I think we were very clear about that. I think we talked about that on our calls that we have had a really great renewal on our health care, on average. And remember, this isn't one carrier. These are multiple carriers. We use a number of different carriers to make sure that we have good coverage across the entire country. And so that was unusual and helped us competitively, but I think this renewal was not out of line with historical norms and has nothing to do with any kind of -- I think anything that's happening around health care is -- probably has to do with people's underwriting policies and their own approach to bringing in business and repricing business because it's not just about the business you bring in. But every year, if you're self-insured, or you're taking risk, you have the opportunity or the option of passing through or not passing through health care costs, and you actually have some judgment with your underwriters on what those costs are. And so that's generally -- that's typically what could create a problem in health care, but it doesn't appear to us that there's really anything happening broadly in the health care industry around PEOs.

我們看不到個別員工的索賠數據，但我們當然會非常、非常仔細地查看索賠情況，以便與我們的保險公司合作，了解趨勢方面的情況。或許我應該把保費上漲的問題解釋得更清楚一些。所以我不會告訴你確切的數字。我覺得我們不想陷入那個無底洞。但與上一次續約相比，這次續約的變化平均比前一年高出 1 到 2 個百分點。因此，如果前一年的平均續約成長率為 6%，那麼第二年就是 7% 或 8%。而那一年略高的增幅與前六、七年的增幅完全一致。所以並沒有——所以有一些起伏，但前一年才是真正特別的一年。我認為我們在這一點上已經說得很清楚了。我想我們在電話會議中討論過，平均而言，我們的醫療保健續約情況非常好。請記住，這並非一家運營商的問題。這是多家營運商。我們與多家不同的營運商合作，以確保在全國範圍內擁有良好的訊號覆蓋。所以這很不尋常，也幫助我們提升了競爭力，但我認為這次續保並沒有偏離歷史常態，也與任何——我認為醫療保健領域發生的任何事情——可能都與人們的承保政策以及他們自身拓展業務和重新定價業務的方法有關，因為這不僅僅關乎你拓展了多少業務。但是，每年如果您是自保或承擔風險，您都有機會或選擇是否將醫療保健費用轉嫁給保險公司，實際上您可以與保險公司共同決定這些費用是多少。因此，這通常——這通常可能會在醫療保健領域造成問題，但就我們看來，醫療保健行業中圍繞 PEO 並沒有真正發生任何事情。

And then just on your -- just based on your commentary on workers' comp. I mean I think the whole industry had a tailwind. So if you look at this year's health increase plus the workers' comp at a more normalized level. This is really a more typical year for you then, right? I mean in terms of the PEO in terms of those 2 items?

然後，僅就你——僅根據你對工傷賠償的評論。我的意思是，我認為整個產業都迎來了順風。所以，如果你看看今年的健康保險成長，再加上更正常的工傷賠償。那對你來說，今年確實比較尋常，對吧？我是說就PEO而言，就這兩項內容而言？

I think that's right. That's fair. And I think on the workers' comp, just again to be clear, it was a -- I think we were clear, but I want to make sure we say it one more time, a smaller positive. So we're not having big surprises in terms of losses in workers' comp or any kind of -- and by the way, we have a very tight ship there in the sense that we have as we disclosed in our 10-K, a collar that limits our risk in a fairly significant way. Caps are a downside on workers' comp. So we have reinsurance on individual claims. And then we have a collar around our overall loss estimate. So it's quite limited in terms of the volatility, the -- I think the other thing that I would mention is that our business mix hasn't changed. So we look at that very carefully as well. So we look at the mix of, we'll call it white collar versus gray collar. But within those categories, you have a lot of different industries and a lot of different categories of people, and we don't see any major change there as well.

我覺得是對的。這很合理。關於工傷賠償，我想再次明確一點，這是一個——我想我們已經說清楚了，但我想再說一遍，這是一個較小的積極因素。因此，我們在工傷賠償或其他任何方面的損失方面都不會遇到太大的意外——順便說一句，我們在這方面控制得非常嚴格，正如我們在 10-K 文件中披露的那樣，我們採取了一種限制風險的策略，這在很大程度上限制了我們的風險。工傷賠償上限是個不利因素。因此，我們對個別索賠進行了再保險。然後，我們對整體損失估計值設定了一個限制範圍。因此，就波動性而言，它相當有限——我認為我想提到的另一點是，我們的業務組合並沒有改變。所以我們也對此進行了非常仔細的研究。所以我們來看看白領和灰領這兩種職業的組合。但是，在這些類別中，又包含許多不同的行業和許多不同類別的人群，我們也沒有看到任何重大變化。

Got it. And just the follow-up is kind of a bigger picture PEO question, Carlos, is that given the relatively low penetration rates for the industry and that you get a lot of your new clients from a client that is already using you for payroll. What are the major objections to somebody enrolling in the PEO, particularly if they're an ADP payroll customer, you already have the payroll records of a kind of disruption and transition costs and time and effort are substantially lower?

知道了。卡洛斯，接下來我想問一個更宏觀的 PEO 問題，鑑於該行業的滲透率相對較低，而且你的許多新客戶都來自已經使用你進行工資管理的客戶。對於已經是 ADP 薪資客戶的人來說，加入 PEO 的主要反對意見是什麼？因為您已經擁有薪資記錄，而加入 PEO 可以大大降低中斷和過渡成本、時間和精力。

I think it's -- it goes back to, like, I guess, my first year marketing class in graduate school, which is a high involvement decision, right? So the PEO to go to a small and mid-sized business and tell them that you're going to create a co-employment relationship, you're taking over their health care plan, their workers' compensation. Remember, all along the way, there are, as an example, there could be a relationship with an insurance agent or a broker that's been providing the health care and the workers' comp for the last 10 years, that gets disintermediated. You have to -- payroll is hard enough to convince someone to switch payroll because people worry about, are you sure you're not going to make a mistake, make sure that it's going to go accurately. Like we obviously have an incredibly strong reputation on payroll that helps us. But the traditional business as you're trying to convince someone to give you your payroll. Now you're also trying to convince them to give you everything around their HR department. And so with the higher level of trust, and it's, again, what I remember being taught is called a high involvement decision, which takes longer to make and is more difficult to make. So I honestly don't think that there's really anything that prevents clients from becoming PEO clients. And I think we've demonstrated over 20 years that we've convinced a lot of them. And so our Board asked the same question you're asking, which is, can't you convince even more, and we're trying, like we continue to add improvements in the product. We continue to provide better tools, we continue to enhance our product, and we continue to do all the things we can to make it more compelling and easier to use. As an example, I think we've kind of talked about this in the last 18 months, all new business now and the PEO starting on our Workforce Now platform, which has higher functionality and provides the ability to satisfy slightly larger clients than we could before because it's a mid-market platform. And so there's a lot of things that we're doing to try to convince as many clients to come over to our PEO solution as possible. I think it's good for them and it's good for us, but there's really nothing that I can point to other than kind of the difficulties of the convincing of the sale.

我覺得這要追溯到我研究生第一年的行銷課，那是一個需要高度投入的決定，對吧？所以，PEO（專業雇主組織）會去中小企業，告訴他們你將建立共同僱傭關係，你將接手他們的醫療保健計劃和工傷賠償。請記住，在此過程中，例如，可能存在與保險代理人或經紀人建立的關係，他們在過去 10 年裡一直提供醫療保健和工傷賠償，但這種關係可能會被打破。你必須－薪資發放本身就很難說服別人更換薪資發放方式，因為人們會擔心，你確定不會出錯嗎？確保發放準確無誤嗎？顯然，我們在薪資管理方面擁有非常強大的聲譽，這對我們很有幫助。但傳統商業模式就像你試圖說服別人把你的薪資交給你一樣。現在你還想說服他們把人力資源部門的所有資訊都給你。因此，隨著信任度的提高，正如我之前學到的，這被稱為高參與度決策，這種決策需要更長的時間才能做出，也更難做出。所以，我真的不認為有什麼能阻止客戶成為 PEO 客戶。我認為，過去 20 多年的經驗已經證明，我們說服了他們中的許多人。因此，我們的董事會也提出了和你們一樣的問題，那就是，你們能不能做得更好，而我們正在努力，例如我們不斷地改進產品。我們將繼續提供更好的工具，不斷改進我們的產品，並盡一切努力使其更具吸引力且更易於使用。舉例來說，我認為我們在過去 18 個月裡已經討論過這個問題了，現在所有的新業務和 PEO 都開始使用我們的 Workforce Now 平台，該平台功能更強大，能夠滿足比以前規模稍大的客戶的需求，因為它是一個中端市場平台。因此，我們正在採取很多措施，試圖說服盡可能多的客戶採用我們的 PEO 解決方案。我認為這對他們有好處，對我們也有好處，但除了銷售過程中的困難之外，我真的找不到其他理由了。

Our next question comes from Jason Kupferberg from Bank of America.

下一個問題來自美國銀行的傑森·庫柏伯格。

I just wanted to pick up on some of the margin commentary. I mean as you rightfully pointed out, the comparison there gets quite a bit harder actually in the second quarter. So just -- so that our expectations are properly calibrated. I mean do you expect margins to be up in the second quarter year-over-year?

我只是想補充一些頁邊註解。我的意思是，正如你所指出的那樣，到了第二季度，這種比較實際上變得相當困難了。所以，這樣才能正確調整我們的期望。我的意思是，你預計第二季的利潤率會比去年同期有所成長嗎？

Yes, it's a really tough comp in Q2. Remember, last fiscal year, Q2, we had over 300 basis points of margin expansion. So it's going to be tough to expand in Q2. Maybe it's flat, slightly up, slightly down. Hard to say exactly because there are so many moving parts. But the way I would think about it is that the bulk of the expansion to come this fiscal year will come in the second half of the year.

是的，第二季的競爭確實非常激烈。請記住，上個財年第二季度，我們的利潤率成長超過 300 個基點。因此，第二季擴張將會很困難。或許是平的，略微向上，略微向下。很難確切地說，因為涉及的因素太多了。但我認為，本財年的大部分擴張將發生在下半年。

Yes. Okay, that's fair. And then just on the bookings front, a somewhat similar question, except in reverse, right, because you've got the easy comp there in the second quarter. So do you need to be above the full year guidance range in the second quarter, just to make sure that you stay on track to achieve the full year outlook? Because then, obviously, the comparisons here get a bit harder in the second half?

是的。好吧，這很合理。那麼，在預訂方面，也有一個類似的問題，只不過情況正好相反，對吧，因為第二季度很容易進行比較。那麼，是否需要在第二季就超出全年預期範圍，才能確保實現全年目標？因為很顯然，到了後半部分，比較起來就有點困難了？

Above the bookings guidance number in the second quarter?

第二季預訂量是否超過預期目標？

Should you be above the full year range in Q2 just to keep yourself on track?

為了維持進度，第二季是否應該將目標值設定在全年目標值之上？

Mathematically, yes. So you're absolutely right. I mean it's -- to stay on that for the full year, you'll have more growth in the second quarter and then much less in Q4.

從數學角度來說，是的。所以你的說法完全正確。我的意思是——如果全年都保持這種成長勢頭，那麼第二季的成長會比較大，而第四季的成長則會小得多。

Right. Right. Okay. And then just last quick one for me. What will be the drivers of the anticipated acceleration in the WSE growth during the balance of fiscal '20?

正確的。正確的。好的。最後，我還要補充最後一個問題。2020財年剩餘時間內，WSE成長預期加速的驅動因素為何？

Selling more new clients than losing clients. It really goes back to the -- I mean, I hate to -- I'm not trying to be a smart aleck, but the -- it's really the pattern, I think I talked about it a couple of questions ago that when we have our open enrollment in May and June, we tend to experience some client churn, the sales don't accelerate at the same -- necessarily at the same time. And so you have the same phenomenon happens sometimes at the end of the calendar year where you may lose a group of clients, and then you bring on new clients at the beginning of the year, but then you also bring on you -- so clients tend to not leave at other times of the year other than at calendar year-end and open enrollment, which is May and June. That doesn't mean that none leave, I'm just saying that the skewing is skewed towards those 2 periods, and the sales are skewed differently. And the combination of those 2 things is what causes either growth or deceleration in worksite employee growth.

新增客戶數量多於流失客戶數量。這其實要追溯到——我的意思是，我不想——我不是想賣弄聰明，但是——這確實是一種模式，我想我在前幾個問題中也談到過，當我們在五月和六月進行開放註冊時，我們往往會經歷一些客戶流失，銷售額並不會同時加速增長。因此，同樣的現像有時會在日曆年末發生，你可能會失去一批客戶，然後在年初獲得新客戶，但同時你也會獲得新客戶——因此，除了日曆年末和開放註冊期（即五月和六月）之外，客戶往往不會在一年中的其他時間離開。這並不意味著沒有人離開，我只是說數據偏向這兩個時期，而且銷售額的分佈也不同。而這兩件事的結合，正是導致工作場所員工成長或放緩的原因。

Yes. Look, on any of the -- not any, but like on a lot of these metrics, when you look at a very short period of time, one quarter, you could have some one-off things happening, and that's why, as I said earlier, looking at the trend and the track record over time for things like bookings and worksite employee growth and even margin, right, looking at the trend over time is helpful, I find.

是的。你看，在任何一項指標上——不是說任何一項，而是很多這類指標——當你觀察很短的一段時間，比如一個季度，可能會出現一些一次性事件，所以，正如我之前所說，觀察預訂量、工作場所員工增長甚至利潤率等指標的長期趨勢和記錄，對吧，觀察長期趨勢是有幫助的，我發現。

But again, in this case, we also have -- we have to hit our plan, obviously. I guess as usual, when we have these calls, if -- we're giving you the numbers based on what we expect right now. So if we hit our new business bookings plans and retention stays where we expect it to stay, then you would get the outcomes that you -- that we're talking about. But as Kathleen said, there's a lot of other moving parts, if 3 to 6 months from now, the economies in the tank and pays per control is declining, it's going to decline in the PEO in addition to ES or anywhere else in ADP, and then that would create a headwind. But in the absence of any new information, I think we feel pretty good about the forecast we have.

但是，在這種情況下，我們顯然也必須——我們必須實現我們的計劃。我想和往常一樣，當我們接到這類電話時，我們會根據我們目前的預期給出相應的數字。所以，如果我們實現了新的業務預訂計劃，而客戶留存率也達到了預期水平，那麼你就會得到我們所說的成果。但正如凱瑟琳所說，還有很多其他變數。如果 3 到 6 個月後，經濟狀況惡化，每個控制點的薪資下降，那麼除了 ES 或 ADP 的其他任何地方之外，PEO 的薪資也會下降，這將造成不利影響。但在沒有任何新資訊的情況下，我認為我們對目前的預測相當有信心。

Our next question comes from Steven Wald from Morgan Stanley.

下一個問題來自摩根士丹利的史蒂文·沃爾德。

Just maybe a follow-up on the margin expansion path. Looking beyond sort of the next few quarters or even this year I just wanted to talk about the messaging and make sure we were getting a proper sense of the drivers there? I think a lot of the talk has been around workforce optimization and procurement over the next 12 months or so. But I think one of the things you guys have tried to talk about is the tech improvements, all your investments. As you build more of those into your platform, as you're adding them more into what you're doing on a day-to-day basis. Can you talk a little bit about how that scale that you're adding or that scalable expense base that you're adding will show up in terms of cost reductions or margin improvement?

或許可以對利潤率擴張路徑進行後續探討。展望未來幾季甚至今年，我只想談談資訊傳遞，確保我們能夠正確理解其中的驅動因素？我認為未來 12 個月左右，大家的討論主要集中在勞動力優化和採購方面。但我認為你們一直在談論的一點是技術改進和所有投資。隨著您將更多此類功能建置到您的平台中，隨著您將更多此類功能添加到您的日常工作中。您能否談談您增加的規模或可擴展的費用基礎將如何反映在成本降低或利潤率提高方面？

Well, I think, again, back to like what Kathleen was talking about in terms of the math, some of this is really about the comparisons rather than anything that we're doing, but we have to help you. We understand that it's important for you guys to understand that. So just as a reminder, last year, what happened was we had with the voluntary early retirement program we had a good number of people taking that and then the backfills that we had planned, which was all planned, a certain percentage of backfills were delayed. And so that impacted that year. We also got off to a very strong start for a couple of other reasons. We had other, what we called quick wins at the time around transformation to help us get off to a strong start in the first half. And I think Kathleen talked about we had, for us, like incredibly strong margin improvement. And so it's just a very difficult compare mathematically. As we've been going along, regardless of how the math works, we continue to work on a number of initiatives. This year, obviously, we executed on this spans and layers initiative. And then we have a number of other projects around, procurement is one of them, but we also have a number of kind of automation and digitization projects that I think we're making some progress on, and when we have our industry -- sorry, our Analyst Day in February, we'll probably share a little bit more around some of those things that we're doing because those are around transformation and innovation as well. So it's not just about innovating on the product side, but it's also innovating on the implementation and on the service side, and we've gotten some good traction in some of our businesses, which allows our productivity to improve while still for our associates while still improving our NPS scores and our client satisfaction, which, by the way, were up again this quarter, and no surprise if retention is improving, it's usually a sign that client satisfaction is still high. So again, the trick here is you want to transform your cost structure, but you don't want to like lose all the clients in the meantime. And for now, we've been able to balance both of those, and that's our plan here for the next year or 2.

嗯，我想，再回到凱瑟琳剛才談到的數學方面，其中一些實際上是關於比較的，而不是我們正在做的任何事情，但我們必須幫助你。我們明白這對你們來說很重要。提醒一下，去年我們實施了自願提前退休計劃，有相當一部分人參加了該計劃，然後我們計劃的人員補充計劃（所有補充計劃都已製定）被推遲了一定比例。所以那一年就受到影響了。我們開局非常強勁，還有其他幾個原因。當時，我們還有一些其他的、我們稱之為快速勝利的轉型舉措，幫助我們在上半年取得了強勁的開局。我認為凱瑟琳說過，對我們來說，我們的利潤率有了非常強烈的提升。因此，從數學角度來看，這很難進行比較。一直以來，無論數學結果如何，我們都在繼續推進多項計劃。今年，我們顯然執行了跨度和層級計劃。此外，我們還有一些其他項目，採購是其中之一，但我們也有一些自動化和數位化項目，我認為我們在這方面取得了一些進展。當我們在二月份舉辦行業——抱歉，是我們的分析師日——時，我們可能會分享更多關於我們正在做的事情的信息，因為這些也與轉型和創新有關。所以，創新不只是產品方面的創新，還要創新實施與服務的創新。我們在一些業務方面取得了一些不錯的進展，這使得我們的生產力得以提高，同時員工的工作效率也得到了提升，淨推薦值 (NPS) 和客戶滿意度也得到了提高。順便說一句，本季淨推薦值和客戶滿意度再次上升。如果客戶留存率提高，這並不奇怪，這通常表示客戶滿意度仍然很高。所以，關鍵在於你想改變成本結構，但同時又不想失去所有客戶。目前，我們已經能夠兼顧這兩者，這也是我們未來一兩年的計畫。

Yes, fair enough. And then maybe just one quick follow-up. I noticed the buyback a little bit higher than we've seen in the last year or so, just could you provide any commentary on how you're thinking about the pace there going forward?

是的，說得有道理。然後或許只需要一個簡短的後續問題。我注意到此次回購規模比過去一年左右的水平略高，您能否就未來回購速度的考量發表一些看法？

Yes. So really, no change in terms of how we're thinking about that and our strategy. We've talked about the intent to buy back 1% of the share base. And we've been executing along those lines. So really no change. We look all the time at the market conditions and look, if there is some opportunity, where there's a big downturn in the market, and we want to become more active, maybe we'll do that. I don't know, but we constantly -- we watch that. We look at it, we talk about it all the time. But as of now, no particular change.

是的。所以，就我們對此的看法和策略而言，實際上沒有任何改變。我們已經討論過回購1%股份的意圖。我們一直按照這些思路執行。所以實際上沒有任何變化。我們時時刻刻關注市場狀況，如果出現機會，例如市場大幅下滑，而我們又想更積極參與其中，我們或許就會這麼做。我不知道，但我們一直在關注這件事。我們一直在關注它，一直在談論它。但就目前而言，尚無任何特別變化。

Again, one little statistic because we happen to notice these things when we prepare for these calls because now I get like -- it seems like 20 years of information. So we've reduced our share count by 30% since the early 2000s. And so we intend to continue to stay on that on that pace. And so obviously, it's a marathon for a company like -- we're kind of proud that it's a marathon. We've been around for 70 years. And at 1% per year, it adds up, and it certainly has added up in the last 20 years to the tune of 30% share reduction. And I think that companies are in a different stage of development where they're getting dilution and adding shares to their share count, we think we're going to win this marathon.

再說一點統計數據，因為我們在準備這些電話時碰巧注意到了這些事情，因為現在我感覺——好像有 20 年的資訊量。因此，自 2000 年代初以來，我們的股份數量減少了 30%。因此，我們打算繼續保持這個速度。所以很顯然，對於像我們這樣的公司來說，這是一場馬拉松——我們為此感到自豪，因為這是一場馬拉松。我們已經成立70年了。每年下降 1%，累積起來就相當可觀了，而且在過去的 20 年裡，市佔率確實下降了 30%。我認為，那些正在經歷股權稀釋和增加股份數量的公司，正處於不同的發展階段，而我們認為我們將贏得這場馬拉松。

And we'll take our final question from Bryan Keane from Deutsche Bank.

最後，我們來聽聽德意志銀行的布萊恩‧基恩提出的問題。

Just 2 quick clarifications. On the PEO margin, it was below Street, but it didn't sound like it was really below your expectations. And it sounds like there was a tougher comp to the ADP indemnity. So could you maybe just talk to that and how that looks going forward on the margin side?

僅需兩點澄清。PEO利潤率低於華爾街預期，但聽起來並沒有低於你的預期。聽起來ADP賠償金的比較標準更嚴格。那麼，您能否談談這方面的情況，以及未來利潤率的情況如何？

Yes. No, I think that's a fair characterization. I think that, as usual, there's a -- we try to obviously be as straight as we can be because sometimes there's a slight disconnect between what we're expecting versus -- since we don't give quarterly guidance, but the results, I think, were on that specific topic. I think we're in line with our expectations.

是的。不，我認為這個描述很貼切。我認為，像往常一樣，我們當然會盡量坦誠，因為有時我們的預期和實際情況之間會存在一些脫節——由於我們不提供季度業績指引，但我認為，這次的結果正是針對這個特定主題而言的。我認為我們符合預期。

Yes. It was definitely in line with how we expected to start the year.

是的。這完全符合我們對年初的預期。

And then just the cadence, how we think about that going forward on the margin for PEO?

然後就是節奏問題，我們如何看待未來 PEO 的邊緣化發展？

That's a good question. I think that if you -- when you look at the annual guidance, which I think was down flat to 25% down...

這是個好問題。我認為，如果你看年度業績指引，我認為是持平或下降25%…

Down to 25 basis points.

降至25個基點。

Down to 25 basis points. I think that was the guidance. If you take our first quarter number, I would, for now, assume ratably margin improvement over the course of the rest of the year because these quarterly fluctuations in ADP indemnity are not something that is something that we can -- we don't have any real visibility into that. And again, just as a reminder, part of why we've done this is, if you remember a couple of years ago, we had some criticism around our disclosure. So we had our client funds interest and indemnity being handled in the kind of other category, which allowed us to not have these questions and not kind of mix up the results of those businesses. But as usual, there are 2 sides to every story. And so I think the criticism was, those things really belong in the results of the business unit. Fair enough. So we made that change. And now we are saddled with every quarter, having to explain any kind of fluctuations here because what really matters is the underlying health of the business. We don't take enough risk in that business for it to matter. But you can get, because of the size of the business, if you get a $5 million fluctuation, which is what we had this quarter, up or down, it affects the numbers, but it doesn't really say anything about what's happening in the underlying business. But it is what it is. We now report indemnity in the PEO, and we're going to have to every quarter, be able to give you that kind of color. And likewise, in employer services, we now have client funds interest. And so now that creates some variability in that business as well.

降至25個基點。我想這就是指導意見。如果以我們第一季的數據來看，我目前會假設今年剩餘時間的利潤率會逐步提高，因為 ADP 賠償金的季度波動是我們無法預測的——我們對此沒有任何真正的了解。再次提醒大家，我們這樣做的部分原因是，如果你還記得的話，幾年前，我們的資訊揭露受到了一些批評。因此，我們將客戶資金的利息和賠償金歸入其他類別來處理，這樣我們就不會遇到這些問題，也不會把這些業務的結果混淆起來。但通常情況下，每件事都有兩面性。所以我認為批評的焦點在於，這些因素其實應該反映在業務部門的表現上。很公平。所以我們做出了改變。現在，每個季度我們都必須解釋任何波動，因為真正重要的是企業的基本健康狀況。我們在這項業務中承擔的風險不夠大，所以影響不大。但是，由於業務規模龐大，如果出現 500 萬美元的波動（就像我們本季遇到的情況一樣），無論上升還是下降，都會影響數字，但這並不能真正說明公司內部業務發生了什麼。但事情就是這樣。我們現在會在 PEO 中報告賠償情況，而且我們將每個季度都必須能夠向您提供這類詳細資訊。同樣地，在雇主服務方面，我們現在也有客戶資金利息。因此，這也給該行業帶來了一些變數。

Yes. So with that down -- with a flat to down 25 basis points and down 70% in Q1, you'll see that just mathematically it ramps. But again, it's going to depend on the ADP indemnity and how that comes through during the balance of the year.

是的。因此，隨著利率下降——第一季持平或下降 25 個基點，下降 70%，你會發現，從數學角度來看，利率會不斷攀升。但同樣，這取決於 ADP 賠償金以及該賠償金在今年剩餘時間內的發放。

It was certainly easier when we didn't have ADP indemnity in the PEO. But nothing -- again, we've been doing that for 20 years. We handled it. We -- by the way we're handling exactly the same way as we've always handled it. It's just a different accounting for it. That's all.

當我們的 PEO 沒有 ADP 賠償責任時，事情肯定容易得多。但什麼也沒發生——我們已經這樣做了 20 年了。我們處理好了。順便說一句，我們處理這件事的方式和以往完全一樣。這只是不同的解釋方式而已。就這樣。

And this does conclude our question-and-answer portion for today. I am pleased to hand the program over to Carlos Rodriguez for any closing remarks.

今天的問答環節到此結束。我很高興將節目交給卡洛斯·羅德里格斯，請他作總結發言。

Well, thanks very much. As you can tell, we feel pretty good about the start to 2020. We're obviously trying to change a lot of things. We've talked a lot about transformation. We'll share more with you when we have our Innovation Day here in February, but we're focused on execution as I think Kathleen alluded to, there's still a lot of execution in front of us. But we're still -- we try to continue to be focused on our clients and our associates. And our associates are doing a phenomenal job as evidenced by our continuing improvements in our NPS scores. Obviously, we feel good about what happened with HR Tech, with our Lifion debut. So I think that gives us some optimism. We're very excited about what's happened in the mid-market business here in the first quarter. So I mean, I continue to be very proud of our organization and the resiliency of the organization and the transformation efforts that they continue to execute on. So we look forward to giving you more updates in the time to come. And we thank you for joining our call today. Thank you.

非常感謝。正如你所看到的，我們對2020年的開局感覺相當不錯。我們顯然正在嘗試改變很多事情。我們已經談了很多關於轉型的話題。我們將在二月份的創新日上與大家分享更多信息，但正如凱瑟琳所暗示的那樣，我們目前專注於執行，我們面前還有很多執行工作要做。但我們仍然——我們努力繼續專注於我們的客戶和合作夥伴。我們的員工表現出色，NPS評分的持續提升證明了這一點。顯然，我們對人力資源科技領域的成就，以及我們首次亮相 Lifion 的表現感到非常滿意。所以我認為這給了我們一些樂觀。我們對第一季中端市場業務的發展感到非常興奮。所以我的意思是，我仍然為我們的組織、組織的韌性以及他們不斷推進的轉型努力感到非常自豪。因此，我們期待在未來為您帶來更多最新消息。感謝您今天參加我們的電話會議。謝謝。

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program, you may all disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.

女士們、先生們，感謝各位參加今天的會議。程式到此結束，請各位斷開連線。祝大家今天過得愉快。