Harte Hanks Inc (HHS) 2011 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day and welcome to the fourth-quarter 2011 earnings conference call hosted by Harte-Hanks. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Larry Franklin. Please go ahead sir.

Good morning. On the call with me today is Doug Shepard, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Robert Munden, Senior Vice President and General Counsel; Jessica Huff, Vice President of Finance Controller; and Gary Skidmore, Executive Vice President and President of Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing.

Before I begin my comments, Robert will make a few statements.

Thanks Larry. Our call may include forward-looking statements. Examples may include statements about our strategies, initiatives and business plans, adjustments to our cost structure, financial outlook and capital resources, competitive factors, business and industry expectations, legal and regulatory developments, economic conditions in the United States and elsewhere, and other statements that are not historical facts. Actual results may differ materially from those projected or implied in these statements because of various risks and uncertainties, including those described in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC and in the cautionary statement in today's earnings release.

Our call may also include non-GAAP financial metrics. Please refer to today's earnings release for the required reconciliations and other related disclosures. Our earnings release is available on the Investor Relations section of our website at Harte-Hanks.com.

I'll now turn the call back over to Larry.

Thanks Robert. Before talking about the individual businesses, a couple of comments about Company results.

For the quarter, revenue decreased 4.8%, operating income was down 5.1%, net income was down 5.6%, and earnings per share of $0.23 was down $0.042. I'll add some more detail about performance as we discuss each of the businesses and then when I am finished, Doug will provide additional details.

Let's look at Shoppers first. The senior leadership changes that we announced back in the second quarter are going extremely well. In a moment, I'll update you on the many initiatives underway that we remain convinced will increase efficiency and performance in both the short and long-term.

Shopper revenues of $56.1 million for the quarter was down 8.3%, slightly worse than the decline in the previous quarter. OI for the quarter was a loss of $67,000 compared to a profit of $887,000 in the same quarter of last year.

Looking at the more important industry SIC codes for revenue color, real estate continues to struggle with double-digit declines. However, the decline in Q4 is slightly less than in the previous quarter. The broad services category declined from Q3 due to reduced spending by career colleges, while health services continued to do better than the category as a whole. Consumer spending categories held flat with Q3 but declined from last year from the loss of the large grocery account that we've talked about this year.

Furniture and retail continue to grow on the strength of the recent wins. Automotive was down slightly to last year, caused by declines in auto services. Dealers continue to have good results, growing in each quarter in 2011. Distribution revenue declined at a slightly faster rate than the book, the ROP revenue.

One of our 2011 initiatives was to increase our account penetration. In Q4, we saw a slight decline in the average weekly territory accounts compared to last year, and a very slight decrease in revenue per account. That trend had been improving each quarter.

Inside sales, which are primarily sales to the real estate and real estate services clients, continues to be more challenging than the outside or territory sales. We also continue to be the champion of small and local businesses online by helping customers find these businesses online and improving responses through our digital initiatives.

Our PowerSites, the centerpiece of our Web strategy, have continued to grow in popularity with Internet users and results for our customers. We have just implemented a rate increase in our PowerSites category.

Our PennySaverUSA.com site experienced 34% growth in visits year-over-year for the full year in 2011 and for the quarter, our mobile traffic to the site was 16% of our total visits. As we will celebrate in 2012 our 50th anniversary at the PennySaver, we continue to look for new and better ways to connect buyers and sellers at the local level.

Turning to cost, consistent with recent trends, we've experienced a low double-digit increase in paper costs for the quarter. The USPS recently implemented a 2.1% postage increase effective January 22. At the current postal distribution level, this will add about $1.7 million of postage costs annually in 2012.

Some comments on the initiatives from Q3, the order entry system in California is complete and fully implemented, allowing reductions in IT staffing in early 2012. Obviously, we're still working out some of the bugs. The California pre-press consolidation is nearing completion. Ad composition will occur in one plant instead of four at the -- where -- instead of four that we had at the beginning of 2011. That will allow us to reduce both fixed and variable costs, but in the quarter, it caused some duplication of cost as we hired and trained in the location that was being consolidated into while maintaining redundancy in the locations that we were leaving.

Similar to Florida, inside sales consolidation discussed last quarter, inside sales consolidations, we completed the ones from California and in Southern California again that will allow us to reduce fixed costs going forward. We continue to estimate annualized $7 million to $8 million of savings in 2012 from these initiatives and from the restructuring that was discussed back in -- or executed back in the second and third quarters.

As we have said, we don't expect to see significant improvement in California and Florida economies in the near term. While unemployment rates remain high in both states, we are seeing some slight improvement. With the changes that we are making and those being planned, we are building a solid foundation for our Shopper business going forward. None of us underestimate the job ahead, but I am confident of this leadership group and our people's ability, dedication, determination for improving our financial performance in 2012, and I am excited about the year.

Our direct marketing business had another good quarter. Adjusted revenue growth of 2.2%, that's excluding the large project for one of our former customers last year. On an adjusted basis, this quarter was our highest revenue quarter in three years.

Our agency business had a really good quarter, both top and bottom line. Our contact center business had strong holiday call volume and great performance on the service we provide for the eReader client and other consumer electronics. Our mail business did very well in the quarter.

During the quarter, we continued to invest in our database businesses. We are investing in our pharma agency solution and new Trillium solutions. We are creating these new solutions and adding some exceptional people as we executed our multichannel strategy.

In the quarter, we consolidated our market intelligence data business in Europe with our Information Arts business that we acquired in 2010. This will allow us to have a more powerful data and database offering in Europe.

I continue to have great confidence in our ability, and in our people who are effectively and aggressively implementing our inside-driven multichannel digital and direct marketing strategy. There are a number of examples in the highlights section of the release, and I'd like to mention just a few of them that we executed in the quarter.

We provided additional services for a global digital program for one of the largest beverage companies in the world. We are rolling out programs for multiple brands in countries around the world. We expanded our multichannel initiatives for L'Oreal and other global consumer brands, including strategy, building marketing databases, insight, and deploying traditional and digital communications programs.

We had a strong quarter. The work we do and for the work we do in the automotive industry, selling multiple Trillium licenses, and growing existing multichannel engagements.

The launch of Demand Curve, our powerful demand generation and lead management system for tech companies is going very well. We have several current engagements and a healthy pipeline. All of these are big global brands. All of these cases and many others are leveraging the investments that we have made in new solutions that we've talked about in previous calls like Momentium, QuickStart and others.

During this era of big data, no company is better prepared to help clients with their data challenges than Harte-Hanks. We continue to win with Trillium, the world's leading data quality software platform. John Nicoli and his team are doing an amazing job leading this business. We are making significant and very important investments to further develop the core Trillium system and some very unique solutions, like those that we announced for banking and the insurance industry.

At the end of the quarter, we were told by one of our large department stores that they were changing their marketing strategy, therefore reducing their spend with us. They will continue to be a large and important customer that we expect to grow from this point by providing them new service -- services. But the event will reduce our revenue and growth in the first half of the year and will impact our profits.

As we said in the press release, we expect the Quarter 4 revenue trend to continue into 2012 and that our profits are likely to be flat to down slightly in the first half of 2012, but we expect to grow both revenue and profits for the full year.

In spite of the occasional setbacks, we continue to have great confidence in our HCM strategy. We have an amazing list of customers, hundreds of the world's leading brands, and we have exceptionally talented people. We are strong financially, and we are excited about our future.

I'll turn it back to -- or turn it over to Doug.

Thank you Larry, and good morning.

Here's a Company-wide overview of the fourth quarter and full-year 2011. Consolidated revenues decreased 4.8% for the quarter, and 1.1% for the year. Direct Marketing decreased 3.6% for the quarter and increased 2.2% for the year. Excluding the non-recurring pharmaceutical recall in last year's fourth quarter, Direct Marketing's revenue increased 2.2% for the quarter and 5% for the year.

Shoppers decreased 8.3% for the quarter and 8.8% for the year. Consolidated operating income decreased 5.1% for the quarter and 17.2% for the year.

For the quarter, Direct Marketing declined 1%, while shoppers decreased $1 million. For the year, Direct Marketing decreased 1% and Shoppers decreased 79.8%. Consolidated operating income margin was 10.6% for the quarter, consistent with last year's fourth quarter. For the year, our operating income was 8.9% versus 10.6% for 2010.

For the quarter, our free cash flow was $16.2 million versus $17.3 million in 2010. For the year, free cash flow was $47.4 million as compared to $62 million in 2010.

We ended the year with $21 million in capital expenditures, $3.5 million more than the $17.5 million we spent last year. For 2012, we again expect our capital spending to be approximately $20 million.

Turning to our two businesses, in the quarter, Direct Marketing revenue decreased 3.6% and operating income decreased 1%. Operating income margins increased to 15.8% compared to a margin of 15.4% in the 2010 fourth quarter.

For the year, operating income margins finished at 13.6%, a decrease from the 2010 margins of 14.4%. Our margin increase was driven by strong quarters in our agency and contact center businesses.

In the quarter, our retail vertical market represented 31% of Direct Marketing revenue. High-tech was 24%, black markets were 23%, healthcare/pharma was 11%, and financial was 11%. For the year, retail represented 28% of Direct Marketing revenue, black markets were 25%, high-tech was 24%, financial 13%, and healthcare/pharma 10%. Our top 25 Direct Marketing customers represented 46% of Direct Marketing revenue for the quarter.

Moving over to Shoppers, Shoppers fourth-quarter revenue decreased 8.3% and 8.8% for the year. Shoppers operating income for the quarter decreased $1 million. For the year, operating income margin was 1.3% as compared to 6% in 2010. Revenues were relatively flat in communications and decreased in the remaining sectors.

Distribution revenues decreased more than ROP revenues and we experienced a bigger decrease in the number of accounts we published for than in the revenue per account. The low operating income will have a large gain in the other income section of the P&L for $2.1 million. In most quarters, our gain/loss on foreign currency translation would account for most of the amount in this line. But this quarter, the largest impact is the gain from a sale of vacant land we owned for a long time next door to our Brea, California plant. The pretax gain for this transaction was $2.3 million.

Our fourth-quarter effective tax rate was 40.9%, which was higher than the 2010 fourth-quarter effective tax rate of 34.6%. Lower state taxes during 2010 drove the increase. Our 2011 effective tax rate was 40.3%, compared to 37.9% for 2010. The rate increase is primarily due to favorable tax settlements we received in 2010. For 2012, we expect our effective tax rate to be approximately 38% to 40%.

On the balance sheet, net accounts receivables were $146.4 million versus $151 million at year-end 2010. Days sales outstanding at the end of December was 64 days compared to 59 days at last year's December.

At December 31, we reduced our total debt balance by $13.6 million to $179.4 million compared to $193 million at the end of 2010. Our net debt balance was $92.7 million versus $107 million at 12-31-10, a reduction of $14.3 million. We currently have $70 million available under our revolver, excluding outstanding letters of credit, in addition to a cash balance of approximately $87 million at the end of the year. In early March 2012, we have a term loan of $60 million maturing, and we plan to retire it with cash on the balance sheet and we will have our fully available revolver flexibility as we accumulate cash throughout the remainder of 2012.

With that, operator, we will turn the call over for questions.

(Operator Instructions). Edward Atorino, Benchmark.

I am never first. Good morning.

You're always first, Ed.

Not on these calls. Could you go through the dynamics of the loss of that business? I know you can't go into a lot of detail, but is it sort of a lot in the first half and then it comes back, or does it sort of get stretched out, the big account that's cutting back?

No, it will be -- it will be, when you say stressed out, it will affect the entire year. And so, whatever, we'll try to grow it from where it's going, but it's -- it will be, at this point anyway, we are planning for it to be at a permanently reduced level.

Okay.

Anything to add?

They will continue to be a very large customer.

Absolutely.

On the Shopper business, did they get any help from the big promotions in the holiday season last year, or did that sort of fade? Sort of what's -- I don't know if you went into the current trend, is it sort of hanging in there or is it continuing to fade away (multiple speakers) advertising is?

No, it's -- yes, it was, as I said, the quarter was at 8.3%. I think the third quarter may have been 7.5% down, and we cycle against the big grocery account that we lost in the -- it was the first -- in January of last year. And so it will, it will I think stable out from here.

Again, cost savings frontloaded or will that be spread out a little?

In fact, some of the cost savings that I was trying to explain there was they will -- some of them obviously are already being realized. There are others that will be realized at the beginning of the year. Then as we further -- or get further away from the consolidation of those for pre-press reduction processes and locations into one, we believe that we will continue to have increased efficiencies there which will help on the cost side. We feel good about where our cost structure is now and that, with revenues reasonably close to where they are, we should have some good profit growth throughout the year. It will be obviously you'll see more of it in the second, third quarter, because the fourth quarter is a seasonally low revenue quarter --

Right, right.

-- and then January is seasonally low, but we feel good about where the -- what the bottom line can be. We just want to get the growth on the topline.

Mail costs are going up. Are your paper costs fairly stable?

Paper costs in the fourth quarter were mid -- actually low double-digit increases in price.

Wow.

We are looking at mid single digits?

Yes.

We still -- they will still be up in 2012 from where they are in -- or where they were in 2011.

Because of reduced volume?

Yes. Well, because of -- yes. There's supply, a lot of (multiple speakers)

(multiple speakers) demand with the paper suppliers and providers out there, and competition, etc. As Larry said, it was double digits for most of '11, but we do expect it to be up mid single digits in '12.

Okay, thanks.

Carter Malloy, Stephens Inc.

Thanks for taking my questions. So first off, I wanted to go back and get a little more color if we could on your outlook for 2012, the increase in the back half of the year more or less. Could you talk up the mix of the two businesses? You are saying carryout current revenue trends, but even assuming that I lift those up, I could, in the back half, might have a tough time getting an absolute year-over-year growth for total revenue.

Before Doug talks to that, when we say we are going to continue the revenue trends into 2012, that's the HDM revenue trends, which is the 2.2% that we came out of the half with, which is slightly below where we had been running for the year. So --

Then obviously we have reiterated that we are comfortable on the Shopper side with the savings and the changes that we've made there and achieving the $7 million to $8 million in savings and efficiencies that we took an action on during the summer and late fall.

Right, right, so that's on the cost side. I certainly want to get to that in a moment, but as I look at the Shoppers business overall this year, I still have to assume that it's closer to flat growth in the back than the decline we are currently seeing in order to get to revenue (multiple speakers)

You're talking about the revenue numbers, right?

Correct. I'm still sticking on revenue if that's okay.

Yes, you are right.

Okay. Then, on the expense side, you've got $seven million or $8 million, it was pretty big on the savings side. You guys are investing a little bit on the direct side of your business. As an overall, just looking at it on an absolute basis, if we are having revenues up a little bit this year, and profits up a little this year, then that would indicate to me that our expenses are actually going to be flat or even down a little bit on an absolute basis. That takes into account inflation, wages, anything else. Is that a correct assumption on my part?

Yes.

All right. That's easy. Thank you.

Then on the paper cost side as well, I wanted to get some help with cost modeling. You guys called out $1.7 million in annual postage. Can we assume the paper cost is a little bit greater than that on an absolute impact for the year?

No, our paper cost was about 10% of our --

Total Revenue.

-- total revenue and postage is about 38% --

35%, 40% range.

Yes, so 2.1% on the 40% would be greater than the 5% (multiple speakers) on the paper side.

(multiple speakers)

Got you. When you talk about percent of total rev, you're looking at just within the Shoppers business, correct?

Yes, yes.

Got it, very helpful. The department store that got back, I assume they are a top 10 client but they are not going way, right? You just said they're just reducing some?

That's correct.

They are a top 10 client.

And will continue to be.

Okay. One more and I'll get out of your way. Free cash flow used for the year, you guys are still turning out quite a bit of free cash. Is the lean there to continue on buyback, or are you guys looking at any strategic M&A?

Right now, we have a $6 million balloon payment coming the first week of March.

Oh, that's right. Okay.

We will use our free cash flow and everything to retire that debt. Then we'll use the remainder of '12 to accumulate cash. Obviously, we have our large revolver out there as a backstop, if M&A opportunities, stock repurchases, those type of things, arise, we will have more than enough cash to address it.

Okay. This may be a little bit off question, but as you look at M&A opportunities, there are actually some very interesting, it would seem smaller, extremely inexpensive opportunities on the print side of the world. Is that something you would evaluate, or are you still leaning towards expanding the direct marketing business?

No, it would be expanding in the Direct Marketing business.

All right, thanks so much guys.

(Operator Instructions). Alexia Quadrani, JPMorgan.

Thank you. Just a couple of questions. First, on the Direct Marketing side, sort of a bigger picture question, but Larry, could you maybe talk to us? I know it's very difficult to figure out what normal times will be given where we are, but is there any color you can give us on what we should expect from the Direct Marketing business, maybe in year two or year three when we see a more normalized environment, you don't have the hit of this client pulling back, and a one-time comp that you're circling and stuff like that. Like how should we view this business longer-term?

The --

The Direct Marketing side.

On the Direct Marketing side.

Yes.

With the businesses that we own, we -- are the parts of the Direct Marketing business where we own businesses. We think we -- we think on a more normal revenue topline growth rate ought to be above mid single digits and below double digits. We are firmly committed over time to improving the profitability on the revenues that we have.

Now, as you well know, that's going to be lumpy and it's going to be -- when you have the good things happen, you have the bad things happen. But it's an attractive industry, simply because there is opportunity for share. It's an attractive industry because, as we build out solutions that address these changing marketing challenges that our clients have, and we really are and do become more critical to them, then it allows us, we believe, to -- or will allow us to increase our ongoing probability. So somewhere in the mid-single to whatever is between mid-single and double-digit revenue growth, and improving profits. Anything you want to add, Gary, or --?

So the struggles I guess that you're seeing now in the business seem to be more economic related versus really competitive. Would you say that's a fair statement? I may have missed it, but did you say that the pullback in the client, id you say if that was sort of a pullback because of their own issues or are they moving some business (multiple speakers)?

No, no, no. No, it's a strategic change in their marketing.

Okay, okay.

Some of what we are facing is economic, obviously, and then some of it is where we are electing to spend our dollars to be able to accelerate the growth rate in the future. So, it's a combination of our investing, our managing our internal operations, and getting the growth in the business in those categories where there is the higher value, bigger opportunities for growth.

As the market goes from -- toward, more toward the digital space, if you will, those are lower dollar, the revenue opportunities than the more traditional space. So there is a shifting of the revenue streams that can take place, and we intend to aggressively participate in the traditional and the -- I don't like the word "traditional", but -- in that business as well as the digital space.

Great. Just to follow-up on the Shopper side of the business, I think you mentioned that there was a bigger decrease in the number of accounts you worked for in the quarter. Is that, again, is that you're still seeing pains of the California economy and some of these accounts going out of business, or is that more of a competitive issue as well?

No, and the ones that I'm talking about with the territory accounts, I think it's more the economy. As I said, the revenue per account, the trends, while still very, very slightly negative from last year, they are improving a little bit. In fact, in our California business or in our Shopper business in California, we have added some really talented new and additional sales talent there, and we have a very talented sales organization in California. When we talked about the restructuring that took place back in June, when Mike Paulsin took over from Pete Gorman, Mike's been with us for, I don't know, 20-plus years, and just very, very talented, knows this business cold, and we brought over on the print side Loren Dalton who will continue to lead the Web initiative along with So Young Park, but will also have total responsibility for revenues in the California market. Then we hired a new national sales leader and a new leader for our normal California operation, so we are putting new talent on the street out there, and it will pay off for us.

Thank you very much.

(Operator Instructions). Michael Kupinski, Noble Financial.

Thank you for taking the question. Just one follow-up question on the department store retailer that you lost there, or a portion of their business. Can you just -- what was the percentage of revenues for the Direct Marketing? You said top 10, but can you identify what the actual dollar amount might be that they accounted for?

Yes, Mike, we don't, on individual clients, disclose that.

I thought I'd try. Could you talk about -- certainly with some of your larger retailers, they have a lot of add-on products and so forth. Can you talk at least about the margins, was it above or below the corporate direct marketing rate?

Just about any incremental customer dollar of revenue we have is above our overall Direct Marketing profit rates. As clients within an industry change their marketing strategy, then there are other clients in that industry that will determine how they will respond to a change in the strategy of --

The competitive environment.

-- the competitive environment, so that can be a plus. So it will be interesting to watch it play out here over the next coming weeks and months. But as we have emphasized, a longtime excellent customer, still a good-sized customer. We have other really, really top notch customers in that same category.

In terms of at least your (multiple speakers)

-- and those are actually growing.

Thanks. In at least your thoughts in terms of the guidance and looking for growth for the year, your thoughts are that business has just gone away, it doesn't replace it in terms of your -- the competitive landscape. You're not really factoring that in, in terms of prospect of gaining some clients, or additional work.

We'll continue to have the clients that we onboarded this year and the ones that -- and this is a lot of customers that are growing, but when this first occurs, and you've got to ratchet down over time, we'll fill in and continue to grow. If we had kept that business, then our growth rate obviously would've been -- our level of revenue would've been higher. But -- and while it's disappointing, it's not -- we are impressively working it.

Okay. Doug, can you identify what were the international sales in Direct Marketing in the quarter and what did they do?

They were essentially flat. They are always in the 2% range of total Direct Marketing revenues.

Okay.

We should have some growth there because of the new national database clients that we have won and are onboarding, but I think it was, it was flat for the quarter, I believe, something.

Okay. You've given us some guidance in terms of the expenses, and payroll expenses were lower than expected on my model. I assume that came from Direct Marketing because of the added expenses that you had in Shoppers due to the consolidation. I was just wondering. Where are you seeing the expense savings in payroll and Direct Marketing?

Are you comparing it to last year?

Yes.

We had, as you recall --

I know you had the pharmaceutical thing.

Last year, we had a very outstanding fourth quarter, and we talked about the cost of the incentive comp. That was last year, so last year's numbers were, on the payroll side, were higher than would typically be the case in the fourth quarter.

Okay. Then in the Shoppers, just going back to that, did you see some progression in the quarter, or was this in terms of the pace of revenues? You're saying you saw some improvement. Was that at the end of the quarter, or was it a steady progression or was it --?

We saw improvement in the territory revenue per account. Actually, in the quarter, October -- November was the real soft quarter, a soft month for us. If you look at December, coming out, it was actually a little better than -- slightly just a little below last year in December, but November was the tough comparison, or our performance was not good.

Okay. I was interested in your talk a little bit about Trillium and some opportunities there. It seems like you're kind of breaking into new fields with the software sales. And I noticed your Medicare claims data in the medical field. I may have missed this, but is this an expansion in the I guess categories for Trillium in terms of software sales? Because it seems to be they're breaking into new areas. I was just wondering if you can maybe size the opportunities that you see for software sales.

in the past we have talked about some new solutions that we are able to build around the core product of Trillium for the banking and insurance industry. What's driving this is the growth of big data through all industries, the enormous amounts of information that companies have to manage to do well in their business. And there are regulatory environments that also help us find opportunities to solve problems for customers in other industries. So while the product has been initially developed to help with customer data in the marketing space, and we still have good growth there. Because the tool is so good at dealing with unstructured data, it creates some new opportunities for us across industries who have big amounts of data like those that we mentioned in the press release, and those that we mentioned in the new applications that we are building.

Great. I appreciate the color. That's all I have. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions). Dan Salmon, BMO Capital Markets.

I'll actually pick up on that last question, in the area of doing this sort of regulatory type work for the finance industry, are you bumping in more to what I would think of as traditional IT services companies, like a Sapient and seeing a different competitive set there?

Those companies are typically our partners in these kind of engagements. As large banks, insurance companies have to deal with these data problems, there's usually a master contractor or consulting firm that brings in specialists. So we see them as channels for our products and solutions, and we have the unique ability to meet certain requirements of the engagements of these large consulting companies with their customers. So we have great relationships there.

Okay, that's great. Then on the investments, just I guess as a broader question across the database products and Trillium more broadly, you mentioned also, Larry, I think in your prepared remarks, about how a lot of this was, at least a significant part, was to improve your offering in Europe. I'm just wondering if there's a time line you have for seeing either margin or revenue improvement there because of these investments?

The investment in Europe is about taking two businesses that have a lot of synergy and bringing them together so that the services that they both currently provide can be leveraged more. That's our information, Arts business that we bought in third quarter 2010 and our market intelligence business that we have had there for some time. So that's what the European thing is about.

Okay.

The products and solutions that we are developing across the rest of the business are to take advantage of market growth. Pharma is one where we are investing to have a more robust and broader solution for our pharma business and our agencies especially. In the database business where we host and manage marketing databases for our customers, we are building improved CDI, customer data integration, products that deal again with this idea of unstructured data. If you think about what happens with data from social media for example, the data doesn't come to you in fields as has been the traditional case, so our tools and our services are not only well equipped but are being developed more to respond to that opportunity with customers so that they have a better -- the point of the debt marketing database is for our customers to have a better understanding of their customer base and then to use that information to market more precisely and with better success. We're also building solutions for other vertical markets like pharma where there are growth opportunities for us.

That's great, thanks. That's helpful color.

Then just one last question is on the tech vertical. Specifically in the prepared remarks, you mentioned the demand curve is having a good pickup, but we are still seeing a bit of pressure there. When do you expect to see that relieved any time here in 2012?

Demand Curve has actually taken off probably faster than we thought it would; it's doing very well. We have many engagements with large global technology companies. The number one requirement, if you look at spending plans and spending needs of high-tech markers is to find prospects to manage them from, again, the vast amounts of transactions. When you have hundreds of thousands and millions of visitors to a website, how do you know which ones is a great opportunity and how do you put your resources against that to win? Our demand curve helps our customers do that, manage the data, understand the customers, get leads, and then grow their business.

The decline in the quarter with the tech business really is not in that sector but more in the consumer products sector with a couple of customers that were down year-over-year and maybe a Trillium license here or there. But the larger trends in the tech space are very -- look very good for us.

Great, that sounds positive. Okay, thanks very much guys.

Edward Atorino.

Two comments -- one, corporate expense sort of held up. With the cost reductions, is that going to come down a little bit year-over-year in 2012? You're running about $2.8 million, $2.7 million a quarter.

No, it won't come down. It's driven primarily by pension expense and non-cash comp. So it will be about the same (multiple speakers).

Got you. With the $6 million payment to the bank, the debt interest expense would be down year-over-year, right?

$60 million -- but it will be down, but you've got to remember today (inaudible) LIBOR at about, what, 25, 50 basis points plus 100, 200. I mean, interest expense is so cheap. But yes, it will be down because we will have a $60 million reduction in debt the first week of March.

it was $60 million or $6 million?

$60 million.

Oh, sorry. It's a little different than $6 million. Sorry about that.

We have the increased rate from --

Yes, from the new -- from the old debt (multiple speakers)

The old debt [should] be new debt.

but it will -- obviously we'll get rid of a third of the debt, yes.

So something like under $3 million, $2.5 million, $3 million?

Yes, just a little bit higher.

Okay, thanks.

It appears there are no further questions.

Thank you very much and we appreciate your interest. And to all of our Harte-Hanks people, let's make 2012 a great year.

That does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation.