National Research Corp (NRC) 2014 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second-quarter 2014 earnings release conference call. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Wednesday, August 6, 2014.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Hays, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chris, and welcome, everyone, to National Research Corporation's 2014 second-quarter conference call. My name is Mike Hays, the Company's CEO, and joining me on the call today is Kevin Karas, our Chief Financial Officer.

Before we continue, I would ask Kevin to review with us conditions related to any forward-looking statements that may be made as part of today's call.

Kevin?

Thank you, Mike. This conference call includes forward-looking statements related to the Company that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those currently anticipated.

These forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. For further information about the facts that could affect the Company's future results, please see the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

With that, I will turn it back to you, Mike.

Thank you, Kevin. And, again, welcome, everyone. Overall I was pleased with our performance in the second quarter. Net new sales, which of course is a key driver for future revenue growth, increased 25% over the first quarter in 2014, and net income increased a very healthy 18% quarter over quarter.

I will return here in a minute, but first let's have Kevin review our financial performance for the second quarter.

Kevin?

Thanks, Mike. Net new sales of $4.1 million were added, as Mike said, in the second quarter of 2014, including $562,000 of net new sales for Customer Connect. Total contract value at the end of the second quarter was $99.5 million, which includes $1.3 million of total contract value for Customer Connect.

The revenue for second-quarter 2014 was $24 million, an increase of 7% over the second quarter of 2013. Revenue growth for the quarter was comprised entirely from organic growth, which is driven by a combination of continued gains in market share and vertical growth from cross-selling, and increase in contract value in our existing client base. The second-quarter 2014 results include $154,000 of revenue from Customer Connect.

The consolidated operating income for the second quarter of 2014 was $6.3 million or 26% of revenue, compared to $5.5 million or 25% of revenue for the same period last year. The 2014 second-quarter operating income includes $389,000 in operating losses from Customer Connect.

Operating income for the second quarter without Customer Connect losses was $6.7 million, which represents a 28% operating income margin, an increase in operating income of 20% over the second quarter of 2013.

The total operating expenses for the second quarter increased from $16.8 million in 2013 to $17.7 million in 2014. Direct expenses were $10.8 million for the second quarter of 2014 compared to $9.5 million for the same period in 2013.

Direct expenses as a percent of revenue were 45% for the second quarter of 2014; and are expected to average, for the full year of 2014, 42% of revenue.

The selling, general and administrative expenses decreased to $6 million or 25% of revenue for the second quarter of 2014, compared to $6.4 million or 29% of revenue for the same period in 2013. The second-quarter 2013 expenses did include $250,000 of costs related to the recapitalization. The SG&A expense for the second quarter of 2014 without Customer Connect was $5.6 million or 23% of revenue. Including the incremental expenses that are projected to be incurred for Customer Connect through the remainder of the year, consolidated SG&A expense is expected to average 25% of revenue for the full year of 2014.

The depreciation and amortization expense for second-quarter 2014 was $927,000 compared to $932,000 on the second quarter of the prior year. This decrease is attributed to declining intangible asset amortization expense. Depreciation amortization expense was 4% of revenue for the second quarter, and is also expected to be 4% of revenue for the full year of 2014.

The provision for income taxes totaled $2.2 million for the second quarter of 2014 compared to $2 million for the same period in 2013. Our effective tax rate was 35.3% for the second quarter of 2014 compared to an effective tax rate of 37.1% in the second quarter of 2013. The effective tax rate has decreased this year as a result of reduced expense from state income taxes. We expect that our effective tax rate for the full year of 2014 to be 35%.

And then, finally, net income for the second quarter of 2014 increased by 18% or $0.1 million compared to $3.4 million in 2013. Our net income margin for the second quarter increased to 17% of revenue compared to 15% in 2013. And for the second quarter of 2014, our combined non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.16 a share, compared to $0.14 for the second quarter of 2013.

With that, I will turn the call back to Mike.

Thank you, Kevin. As referenced, new sales are improving, and are doing so for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is that healthcare organizations are placing increased value on the voice of the customer. This is a driving increased demand for our product portfolios, in turn. Let me provide you a few examples. One is our patient experience product portfolio, where we are witnessing increased demand driven by the additional CAHPS type requirements, value-based purchasing programs, and a growing number of other financial incentives and/or penalties tied to the patient experience.

We're also seeing increased international interest for our Picker patient experience measurement tools. As you are aware, Picker tools are the basis of the required HCAHPS measures in the United States. And we have recently signed an intellectual property license with the Australian government that now joins the UK and several other countries in standardizing their nationwide measurement on Picker.

Interest in the voice of the customer is also growing, regarding brand equity. As healthcare systems acquire acute-care hospitals, and other providers across the continuum, how best to manage the brand becomes a boardroom debate. In fact, in a recent released paper on mega challenges for healthcare providers, brand strategy and management were high on the list.

Our Market Insights product has been tracking healthcare brand equity for 27 years. And across all of healthcare, we are the recognized measurement standard for all things brand. Tracking and understanding the impact of social media was also cited in the same report as a key challenge for healthcare. Our Market Insights product was early in monitoring social media impact, and we are now looking at a product roadmap to add additional tools to address this growing challenge as identified by healthcare providers.

In summary, brand and social media are two examples of why the demand for our Market Insights products, which is all about listening to the customer, is increasing materially.

We don't talk about Market Insights product as often as we should. And it may surprise many that for 365 days a year, in each of the largest 250 markets in the United States, we capture the consumers' health related attitudes, preferences and behaviors. In fact, Market Insights has become the largest consumer tracking study in the country, independent of industry.

Clearly, this is a powerful and likely insurmountable barrier to entry. And we are maximizing the opportunities we have with this product, as the appetite for the voice of the customer is actually increasing. As well, voice of the customer is core to driving the need for Customer Connect, as we all have talked about in the past.

In summary, NRC is the voice of the customer for growing number of healthcare organizations. And we have a product roadmap to drive those voices into a far greater number of hallways and boardrooms of healthcare organizations, going forward.

Chris, I would like to now open the call to questions, please.

(Operator Instructions). Ryan Daniels, William Blair.

Thanks for taking the questions. Kevin, let me start with one for you. In discussing the gross margin profile for the year, you indicated it should trend at about 42%. And I know that's right about where you are, year-to-date, but in Q2 you were closer to 45%. So, I am curious if there was anything unique this quarter that pushed it up that, in turn, will normalize in the back half of the year?

Hi, Ryan. There was something somewhat atypical in the second quarter. Going into the quarter, we do typically see a slightly higher variable cost of product due to mix in volumes and in Q2 compared to Q1. So, we had expected about a 1% increase to about 42.5% for the quarter. We ended up closer to -- I'm sorry, around 43.5% -- and we ended up closer to 45%. We experienced some incremental expense related to outsourcing a number of our mail surveys for processing. And that was really related to building some backlogs in our print mail operations and to keep up with our service level agreements we outsourced some of that work, which really is atypical for us, and that's a higher per unit cost.

So, that generated some unexpected incremental expense in Q2. Now we have addressed that by investing in some additional equipment. And we have that in place, and have increased our capacity to mitigate finding ourselves in that situation again.

So, we do not expect that that incremental expense that we saw in Q2 to have an impact for the remainder of the year, and that our variable cost as a percent of revenue for the last half of the year should be consistent with what we saw in 2013.

Okay, that's helpful. And then is there any potential to further reduce cost by moving those from mail-based to web-based or -- phone-based is probably more expensive -- but to find alternative means to do that surveying?

Ryan, this is Mike. I guess the short answer is yes, and it's really dependent upon two things: one, the market appetite and acceptance to move from what has been a historical legacy traditional mail out, mail back mindset. And the other is to be able to have data collection methodologies that really are at a lower cost, quicker turnaround, producing higher value.

And, clearly, the Customer Connect platform was actually thought about and created to do just that. So, once Customer Connect -- obviously, it has the use case now in transition management -- but we clearly see the perfection of that platform coming back into the organization to reduce the variable cost of goods sold. But, again, we have to have market acceptance, and healthcare is fairly slow.

Okay, that's helpful color. And then maybe two more quick ones. Kevin, during your comments, you talked about some good growth rates in several of your offerings, but obviously overall sales in the 7.5% range is still a bit below your longer-term target. So, are there any specific areas where either market demand trends or competitive changes have impacted growth to keep the overall corporate growth a little lower? Or is this still a residual of kind of lower bookings in the quarters prior to this?

I think we both could weigh in on that. From my side, I think a lot of it is the filling the pipeline back up from perhaps three to four quarters ago. And the pipeline growth we are seeing in particular in what historically have been the softest area, post-acute, is actually ramping back up. In fact, I think the pipeline, again, increased fairly materially this last quarter, but we haven't harvest a lot of that from a number of days the decision perspective.

So, I think we got behind the eight ball over the last year. And I think we are working our way out of that, in particular within the post-acute world.

Kevin, I don't know if you want to add anything to that?

I think the other piece, Ryan, specific to Q2, is that we had discussed previously the impact of contract value reductions in our health risk assessment business.

Yes.

So that segment in particular, their revenue in Q2 was down 18% over prior year. And then the other area -- and again, this speaks to the value our subscription model which, again, 86% of our contract value is still subscription-based -- but the pieces that are not are the health risk assessment business, and then our Canadian business. So the other segment that had a weak quarter was in Canada, where one of our provincial clients surveyed less. Their volumes were quite a bit done over prior year.

Now, again, some of that is timing. But just again the volatility, where we have businesses that are not subscription-based -- that can have an impact quarter to quarter. So the other area that did have some weakness in Q2 was in Canada.

Okay. And then just lastly, you mentioned a new contract with the Australian government for your intellectual property. When is that going to start coming through the income statement? Is that a 2015 item, or will we see that sooner? Thanks.

I don't know the exact start date, but it didn't have any impact within Q2. I don't know whether it will in Q3 or not. I'm not sure of the start date. But it will be likely fourth quarter, for sure, and some of it might creep into third quarter.

Okay, thanks, guys.

(Operator Instructions). Frank Sparacino, First Analysis.

First, maybe to start with -- just curious, on the Market Insights product, you talked a little bit about social media and some development efforts. I was wondering if you would just go into more detail in terms of what that would entail, timelines and required investment.

All of that is not 100% clear yet, Frank. We have just finalized, I guess I'd say, a fairly deep dive with clients and prospects in the marketing and planning space to identify what adjacencies we could dip into, given the footprint we have within the marketing and planning world. And that produced a long list of opportunity -- social media probably at the top one or two.

We are, right now, investigating a series of partnerships. I doubt whether it would be an acquisition. It doesn't make a lot of sense, also, for us to build it from ground up. So, I would say towards the end of the year, going into the renewals on the subscription products toward 2015, we will have some significant added value to which will represent incremental increase in the annual license fees.

Okay, and just following up on the Australia contract, when you say they have licensed the IP, what is the structure of that from a revenue standpoint? Is it just a one-time transaction in nature, or is it ongoing? Just some more color there would be helpful.

It's an annual license. So it is ongoing, fairly modest in the total scheme of $100 million contract value company; but, nevertheless, fairly significant in terms of the acceptance of our intellectual property. But we will bring it in ratably over the course of each and every month, as they utilize those tools to measure satisfaction across their country.

We are not engaged and did not participate in the bidding of the fieldwork in Australia. We felt that there is quite a bit of opportunity right here in our own backyard, and we didn't have to go that far away and set up a service team and production outfit. So, it's purely an intellectual property license. It will be recognized in the revenue stream ratably over the course of months, over the course of each month within each annual period of the contract.

Okay, thank you, guys.

There appears to be no further questions on the phone lines at this time.

Great, thank you, Chris. And thank you again, everyone, for joining us on time today. And Kevin and I look forward to reporting our progress next quarter. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation, and ask that you please disconnect your lines.