PC Connection Inc (CNXN) 2015 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the second-quarter 2015 PC Connection, Inc. earnings conference call. My name is Valerie and I will be the coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks there will be a question-and-answer session.

As a reminder, this conference call is the property of PC Connection and may not be recorded or re-broadcasted without specific permission from the Company.

On the call today is Tim McGrath, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Joe Driscoll, Chief Financial Officer.

Any statements or references made during the conference call that are not statements of historical fact, may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Various remarks that management may make about the Company's future expectations, plans, and prospects, constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements, as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the risk factors section of the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2014, which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission; as well as in other documents that the Company files with the Commission from time to time.

In addition, any forward-looking statements represent management's view as of today and should not be relied upon as representing views as of any subsequent date. While the Company may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, even if estimates change; and, therefore, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing views as any date subsequent to today.

Today's call is being webcast and will be available on PC Connection's website. Their earnings release is also available on the website.

I would now like to turn the call over to Tim McGrath. Please proceed, sir.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today to review the Company's second-quarter financial results.

We had solid second-quarter performance in a challenging IT environment. Although we experienced a slight decline in revenues on a year-over-year basis in Q2 of this year, we were able to increase net income and diluted earnings per share due to cost controls, while still making important investments in sales and technical resources.

As a reminder, in 2015 our growth is being compared to our strong sales in Q2 of 2014. We grew revenue by almost 14% and net income by 25% in Q2 of last year, significantly above industry growth rates. As we review our results, please note that unless otherwise stated all of our second-quarter 2015 comparisons are being made against second quarter of 2014.

Consolidated net sales decreased year-over-year by $6 million or 1%, to $628 million. April was a slow month for our business units, but we ended the quarter with great momentum, as June was the largest revenue month in Company history.

Gross profit dollars in the quarter decreased by 1% to $83 million. Consolidated gross margin was basically unchanged at 13.22%.

SG&A decreased by $1.2 million in the quarter. We knew the quarter would be challenging from a revenue perspective, so we continued hiring critical in areas, but we implemented strong cost controls throughout the organization in order to deliver an increase in net income.

We incurred $271,000 in startup costs for the new advanced configuration and distribution center. That will be opening later this year. There will be additional startup costs of approximately $900,000 for the remaining two quarters in 2015, as we transition out of the other DCs. The new facility will significantly increase our capacity to deliver advanced configuration, which is the cornerstone for delivering business outcomes.

Net income for the quarter increased by 2%, to $11.6 million, and diluted earnings per share increased from $0.43 to $0.44. Year-to-date net income increased by 9%, to $20.2 million compared to the prior year.

And now I will turn the call over to Joe Driscoll to discuss the results of our business segments and financial highlights.

Joe?

Thanks, Tim. Sales for our SMB segment, which serves small to medium-sized businesses, decreased by 3.3%, to $259 million, with a double-digit percentage decrease in the desktop category, partially offset by increases in the storage, software, and notebook categories. The decrease in desktop sales is consistent with recent news releases from manufacturers and industry research firms.

Gross margin increased by 11 basis points, to 15.4%, led by solid performance in advanced solutions categories. Sales by our large account segment increased by 4.3%, to $232 million. We experienced double-digit percentage sales growth in servers, software and networking. Gross margin also increased to 12.4%, a 12-basis-point improvement.

Sales in the public sector segment, which includes sales to government and education customers, decreased by 5%, to $136 million. Sales to state and local governments and education customers decreased by 6%, whereas sales to the federal government increased 1%.

The public sector segment had a very challenging comparison to 2014. In Q2 of last year, sales in this segment grew by over 20%. In Q3 and Q4 of 2014, our public sector business grew 21% and 19%, respectively. So these challenging comparisons will continue for the balance of 2015. Gross margin for the public sector segment decreased from 10.8% to 10.5%.

Our healthcare vertical, which includes customers in all three of our business segments, had a strong quarter with 11% growth in revenues and 16% growth in gross profit dollars. Several healthcare customers had large project rollouts this quarter, which has resulted in significant IT investments in data center products and other product categories in this highly specialized market.

Overall, our bottom-line performance was in line with our expectations. In addition to increasing diluted EPS to $0.44 per share, we increased our trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA to $84 million. Also, our operating income as a percent of sales increased from 3.03% to 3.13%.

Our balance sheet is in very good shape, as well. The Q2 2015 cash balance of $72.5 million is well above the year-ago amount of $60 million. We regularly assess how to best deploy our excess cash, and our goal is to maximize shareholder value while maintaining financial flexibility.

I will now turn the call back over to Tim to discuss current market trends.

Thanks, Joe. Consistent with the outlook provided by many companies in the IT supply chain, we believe that 2015 will continue to be a relatively low-growth environment, especially given the decline in desktop PCs and related categories. In addition to the overall industry outlook, PC Connection will continue to compare against the growth that we experienced in 2014. Q3 and Q4 of 2014 were strong quarters; we experienced 10% and 9% growth, respectively, in those periods.

Based on our current estimates, we feel that Q3 of 2015 should be a solid quarter, as we are seeing improvement in the demand environment. Looking ahead to next year, current industry growth projections for 2016 are consistent with 2015, in the low-single-digit range.

We are highly focused on continuing to grow the bottom line faster than the top line. To accomplish this, we must continue to take market share, increase gross margins, and control costs. We want to deliver strong financial performance while making the investments we need in order to remain one of the leading national solution providers in the country.

We are focused on advanced technologies, and we're investing in complex areas in order to help our customers drive their business outcomes through IT investments. Our business model is more relevant than ever, as technology is more complex and more disruptive.

For example, some of our recent successes include: at a professional sports arena, we designed and implemented a best-in-class wireless and digital experience. This included a complex networking project which provided high-density Wi-Fi throughout the arena, including hotspot antennas embedded in the dasher boards to improve wireless streaming capabilities. That was an industry first.

At a premier e-commerce company we implemented a world-class datacenter, pulling together all of the major components to enable the company to split into two separate companies. The solution included servers, storage, services, and software. It was truly a mission-critical implementation.

As changes in the market continue to unfold, we feel it's critical that we manage our growth appropriately with a focus on expanding margins, investing in solution capabilities, and keeping our balance sheet strong. We also believe that our balanced portfolio of customers, suppliers, products, and solutions has helped us to deliver solid results. Our goal is to continue to deliver sustained and consistent performance.

We'll now entertain your questions.

Operator?

Thank you. (Operator Instructions).

Prab Gowrisankaran, Canaccord.

A couple of questions. One on the positive side: the large accounts saw good strength. If you can add more color, you talked about the server, software and networking were all up. Was this -- did you benefit from the 2003 expiry, and how sustainable is this growth at large accounts?

Well, thanks Prab; it's Tim. And we're excited that we're really starting to see that the project business come back into the large-account space. It is true, a year ago, we had a large system rollout that was based on the XP expiration and the refresh. But we're continuing to drive large rollouts, and really deliver that end-to-end solution.

Notebooks were a strong growth category. Software was a very strong growth category; so were servers. So overall, we're pretty bullish on the enterprise segment, and think the team is doing a great job there.

And then, switching over to the SMB weakness, you talked about desktops dragging that segment down, right? Apart -- if you take out the desktop side, was the rest to your expectations? How should we think about Q3 and Q4?

When we look at the SMB category, the value proposition is strong. The margins and the ability to sell across the solution stack have been very consistent. In fact, their margin is actually up this quarter. But no doubt about it, we can't hide from the fact that the desktop business had an industry-wide decline. But again, in this segment, we did grow the notebook business, and Q2 was our toughest compare. So, frankly, we've turned that corner.

Okay. So do you expect -- is it too early to tell? And do you expect to grow in this segment to return in September?

Yes. You know, last year this segment grew 8%, the SMB segment. So that's a little -- it's still a very strong compare that we're going up against, but it's a little bit easier than the Q2 compare we had in SMB from last year. So I don't think you'll see huge growth, but we are expecting growth to come back. The SMB space is where our manufacturing partners really need and want our help to really reach that sort of sub-1,000-seat business. So we are confident that SMB is going to bounce back.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Jeff Martin, ROTH Capital.

Hi there, Tim and Joe; this is [Rob] on for Jeff. Just a couple questions.

One, your stated goal is to get to 50% of revenue from advanced technology solutions. Could you review the past 12 months and the progress you've made towards striding to that goal? And once you achieve that goal, whether it's short- or intermediate-term, what does the margin profile of the Company look like at that point?

So, there's a lot to cover there; I'll take a stab at it, then I'll let Joe hit the margin area.

So, internally we have a Company-wide focus on that goal. And that means that we measure it, we scorecard it, and we look at it very closely. And yet we have seen good growth in the quarter, in categories like servers. In legacy storage, we actually saw a little decline, which doesn't delay or change our goal in any way; it's just sort of the market conditions that we're in right now.

But overall we've seen a slight improvement since we began this initiative. However, Q2 overall was a tough quarter in that we continued to drive the growth in some key areas. And, as you know, it's the end of Microsoft's year, so we focused a lot on software for the quarter and certainly had great growth there.

So we are not at that goal, but we're not going to let up until we get there and beyond.

Some categories like legacy storage, I think if you look across the board you'll see many companies sort of struggling in that area. And that is one of the areas that is in what we're calling our advanced solutions. So if that overall category is sort of bumping along, that's going to hinder our efforts. So right now we're sort of in the low-40% range in terms of advanced solutions as a mix of our total business.

As that profile changes, you could see -- easily see a 50-basis-point improvement in gross margins, maybe more. Some of our competitors that only sell data center products have overall gross margins in the high teens or low 20s, as compared to our 13%-plus. So the upside is there. And so as we continue this journey, every year we're hoping to do more and more on the advanced technologies. And we're trying to get that gross margin bumping up every year, another 20 basis points a year, or something like that.

So we're confident that we're going to get there. We think we have a good strategy in place to get there.

Great; and, a couple follow-ups.

Do acquisitions play a role in achieving that 50% of the business to advanced technology? And overall, could you provide an update on the current acquisition strategy, and any potential for other planned uses of excess cash?

Sure, so acquisitions -- that strategy is not dependent upon acquisitions. Overall we think we've got a really solid strategy, good business plan, and we've got the right team wrapped around that. So we don't feel a need to do an acquisition; however, if you look at the consolidating market we're always evaluating what the best use of our capital is. And toward that end, if we did see an acquisition that would help us round out a solution area and that would be accretive, we'd look at that. But at this time, we have no plans for an acquisition.

And just in terms of other uses of cash, then, so I guess acquisitions would be number-one on the list if we have excess cash. If there's nothing really imminent on that front, what we have done in the past is, we've done special dividends four years in a row; we've done some stock buybacks. So I guess everything is on the table. Acquisitions would be our first plan. But if there's nothing really hot, then we would look at some of these other ways to deploy some of our excess cash.

All right, great. Thanks, guys, and good luck in the back half of the year.

Anthony Lebiedzinski, Sidoti & Company.

So, with the pending opening of your new distribution center, how should we think about the inventory? And also, what do you expect as far as benefits from this new facility?

Yes, good questions. Let me start with the benefits, and we'll come back around to the inventory.

The benefits are going to be in a lot of different areas. One is, we're going to be able to handle -- just on a capacity basis -- way more in terms of advanced configurations than what we have today. We're going to be tripling the size of our advanced configuration area. We really believe that is a true value-add that our customers look to us to provide. And just by having all of the activity in one building -- right now, we are in two buildings, so there's a lot of built-in inefficiencies there, just from moving product back and forth and things like that. So having it all under one roof is going to be tremendously efficient for us.

There's a number of cost savings throughout the building, just in terms of things like security. You only need one set of security staff instead of two; hundreds of thousands of cost savings there.

So the benefits are going to be tremendous, we believe, when this is up and running.

And then from an inventory perspective, we don't see a dramatic change in our inventory levels. I guess right now we have about 70% of our business going through distribution; about 30% coming out of our own facility. You might see that number, the inventory number, tick up a little bit, but I don't think there will be a dramatic change there.

Thanks. And Anthony, think about our overall value proposition as a national solution provider. The ability to do advanced configurations and the ability to deliver that end-to-end solution is dependent upon our ability to really, to build it out, to burn it in, to get all the configurations done ahead of time. And this facility will enable us to do that in a much more efficient way, with much more capacity. So it really is perfect timing to be opening the new facility.

Got it. Thanks for that detailed explanation. And as far as your SG&A expenses, certainly a good job there in the quarter. Now, can you comment on the sustainability of this? Was there perhaps any big changes to incentive compensation? How should we think about that for the balance of the year?

Yes, so really what we're trying to do is, we want to continue to invest in mission-critical areas -- things like salespeople and technical people that are really going to help us move the needle on the top line, and really help our customers solve their most complex issues. We're going to continue to do that.

What we have done throughout the rest of the organization is really try to hold the line on hiring and all other expenses. We're renegotiating our telephone contracts. We're renegotiating Internet connectivity contracts. Everything we can lay our hands on, we're trying to reduce costs so that we can afford to invest in the areas that are really critical to the future of the business.

So I think you're going to see some quarters, we're going to invest a little bit more; and some quarters, we'll scale back. It's sort of dependent upon what we perceive the revenue profile of each quarter. As we size up each quarter, we can sort of make our investment decisions at that time.

Okay, thank you very much.

Adam Tindle, Raymond James.

I just had a question on the networking space, specifically. It's kind of surprisingly down 14% year-over-year, and wasn't really a difficult comp, I think up 2% last year. Also had some weakness in the public sector, and you specifically cited state/local education; with a lot of the dollars for education, specifically budget dollars, going to networking. Do these two things tie together? And what kind of competitive environment are you seeing in that space?

So actually, for us, that space is very strong. It's an important part of our business. We had some large projects. And those projects, as you know, can be -- they ebb and flow. There are a number of factors driving those. But I think what we really saw in Q2 was simply the result of some large networking projects not rolling in the quarter. That was the main driver of the decline.

Yes, just to expand on that, in the public sector there were some big pops that we received last year, but it didn't always come every quarter. So if you look at growth in networking in the public sector last year: 59% growth in Q1 in 2014; 23% growth in Q2; flat in Q3. So it's very lumpy in terms of the public sector and the networking projects that we've been able to win.

Okay. And I guess circling back to kind of the dynamic between SNB and large enterprise, we've kind of heard similar commentary from a competitor last night, that SNB seems to be a bit weaker, and large enterprise somewhat strong. You also had mentioned that you had a record month in June, so maybe a big pickup in enterprise towards the end of the quarter.

But could you give us a little bit more commentary specifically on the SMB space: demand there, demand environment? Is it a function of that, or is it a function of maybe losing share?

Thanks. I really don't think it's a function of losing share. In fact, if you look at the SMB space, I think we're very strong, and have been for over 30 years. It's a core competency for us and we do it real well. I'm really proud of what that team has accomplished.

With that said, we do not think we're going to see a sustained slowdown in SMB. We feel like, right now, our orders are very strong, our backlog is very strong, and we're pretty optimistic as we go into Q3 with our SMB team.

Okay. Thanks, guys.

(Operator Instructions).

Scott Tilghman, Riley.

Thanks. That's B. Riley. I wanted to follow up on a few of the questions that have already been asked, just with a little more detail, and starting with the balance sheet. Is there a cash level where you think you're just overweight and need to pare back? It seems like the cash balance, even with some of the special dividends, just keeps building.

Yes, great question. Our cash balance is actually pretty volatile during the course of a quarter. It kind of goes up and down; it's not like there's $70 million in cash just sitting in the bank every day in the quarter. So when we've got big inventory purchases and buy-ins, the cash goes way down. It can go down by $40 million within a quarter. So the end-of-quarter balance can be a little bit misleading at times. Our working capital does fluctuate pretty significantly during the quarter. It ended up at a good place at the end of the quarter, but as I said, it does fluctuate pretty significantly on a weekly basis.

So, given those types of swings, probably something in the $60 million to $70 million range is where you want to maintain it?

Yes, yes; I think that's a reasonable -- we obviously want it to go up. But some of the interesting pieces of our world is that as customers want more and more project rollouts, which require configuration of product -- where it takes a little bit longer to actually bring in inventory, have the work done in our DC, and then ship it out the door, and then obviously collect the money. So there's going to be a little bit more of a working capital build in our balance sheet I think as this configuration work continues to grow.

Makes sense. Second, just following up on the conversation regarding desktops, I was wondering if you could provide some color around units and pricing as it pertains to the decline.

So they were both down. I mean, if you want to -- I guess the first place to start would be, how did we do in the prior year? So desktops as a category, on a consolidated basis, were up 15% in Q1; 14% in Q2; 11% in Q3. So, a very solid performance there.

This year what we're seeing is that both the units and the pricing has gone down. It's down; units are probably down 10%, and pricing is down a little bit, too. So I guess it's a combination of both those factors.

That's helpful.

But we are pleased with the notebook growth that we've achieved kind of in this environment, and also the Chromebook growth that we are seeing in the K-12 in the [sled] environment.

Right. Next, just again following up on some of the questions around G&A, it sounds like there's some absolute savings and some deferral of spending. And I was wondering if maybe you could give us an idea how that played into this quarter. Is it roughly 50/50? Or is it more just deferred spending that will come back when we have a higher-revenue quarter, absent the other investments that you plan on making?

Yes, so, not a tremendous deferral of spending. I guess what we've challenged all of our internal departments with is to really take a hard look at each of their businesses, and not just hold off on hiring today, but really look at sort of reorganizing what they have today, to make it more efficient. So we are hopeful that it's not just a deferral of spending; it's a permanent saving in some of our functional areas.

So I think we're continuing to, as I said, hire salespeople and hire technical people, and we're going to continue to do that. And really we have to hold the line on everything else; that's the reality. In order to deliver a meaningful bottom line, you've got to make some hard choices.

I'll leave it at that and jump back in queue. Thank you.

I'm showing no further questions at this time.

I would now like to turn the call back to Tim McGrath for any further remarks.

Well, thank you, operator. I'd like to thank all of our customers, vendor partners, and shareholders for their continued support, and our dedicated co-workers for their efforts. I would also like to thank those of you listening to our call this afternoon. Your time and interest in PC Connection are appreciated. Have a great evening.

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