National Research Corp (NRC) 2016 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second quarter 2016 conference call.

(Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, Wednesday, August 3, 2016.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Hays. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Tia, and welcome, everyone, to National Research Corporation's 2016 second quarter conference call. My name is Mike Hays, the Company's CEO. Joining me on the call today is Kevin Karas, our Chief Financial Officer.

Before we continue, I asked Kevin to review 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 the actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those currently anticipated. These forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions 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'll turn it back to you, Mike.

Thank you, Kevin, and again, welcome everyone. With our new sales over the past few quarters, we're beginning to see real movement from the most progressive healthcare organizations in the country in how they think about their customers and the importance they're placing on customer loyalty to derive not only fee-for-service revenue, but more progressive value-based and risk-based arrangements.

Before commenting on how we're responding to these emerging trends, I will turn the call back over to Kevin to review our financial performance for the quarter and year-to-date. Kevin?

Thank you, Mike. Net new sales of $5.8 million were added in the second quarter and those are comprised entirely of organic growth from adding new clients and increasing contract value for existing clients.

Total contract value at the end of the second quarter of 2016 was $114 million, an increase of 8% in total contract value compared to the second quarter of 2015 after adjusting for the sale of our clinical workflow tool. Contract value growth was driven by new sales and consistent, strong contract renewal rates. Subscription-based revenue agreements at the end of the second quarter of 2016 represented 90% of total recurrent contract value.

Our second quarter 2016 revenue was $26.1 million, an increase of 7% over the second quarter of 2015. Revenue for the second quarter of 2016 adjusted for the sale of our clinical workflow solution grew at a 9% rate over the second quarter of 2015. Consolidated operating income for the second quarter of 2016 was $7 million or 27% of revenue compared to $6.4 million or 26% of revenue for the same period last year. Our total operating expenses for the second quarter of 2016 were $19.1 million compared to $18.1 million in the second quarter of 2015.

Direct expenses increased to $10.7 million for the second quarter of 2016 compared to $10.4 million for the same period in 2015. Direct expenses as a percent of revenue for the second quarter were 41% in 2016 compared to 43% in 2015. The increase in direct expenses on a dollar basis in 2016 is attributed to the incremental variable cost of product expenses from revenue growth in the quarter, which were partially offset by increased efficiencies in our survey operations. For the full year 2016, direct expenses are expected to be 42% of revenue.

Selling general and administrative expenses increased to $7.3 million or 28% of revenue for the second quarter 2016 compared to $6.6 million or 27% of revenue for the same period in 2015. The increase in SG&A expenses is primarily a result of increased share-based compensation and marketing expenses. SG&A expenses are expected to be 27% of revenue for the full-year 2016. Our depreciation and amortization expense for the second quarter increased to $1.1 million in 2016 compared to $1 million in 2015 as a result of increasing technology investments in 2016. Depreciation and amortization expenses as a percent of revenue is expected to be 4% of revenue for the full-year in 2016.

Our provision for income taxes totaled $2.5 million for the second quarter 2016 compared to $2.3 million for the same period in 2015. The effective tax rate was 35.2% for the second quarter 2016 compared to 35.7% in the second quarter of 2015. This decrease was primarily due to the reduction in income tax expense from the early adoption of ASU 2016-09. The effective income tax rate is expected to be in the 35% to 35.5% of revenue range for the full-year of 2016.

Net income for the second quarter was $4.6 million in 2016 compared to $4.1 million in 2015. Our combined non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $0.18 for the second quarter of 2016 compared to $0.16 in 2015.

With that, I'll turn the call back to Mike.

Thank you, Kevin. The increasing importance being placed on understanding and enhancing customer loyalty has been very timely for the Company, given our investments over the past few years. Bundling voice of the customer use cases across service settings, thus creating enterprise wide value has shipped our product mix and expanded our margins, while most importantly, adding incremental value to our clients; clearly a win-win.

The outcome of more focus being placed on customer loyalty, we believe, will impact traditional spend for single-point solution such as basic satisfaction measurement. That spend will be increasingly re-deployed to more contemporary approaches that improve service quality, drive revenue, and enhance customer loyalty for our client organizations.

As this trend accelerates, we are well served by a recurring revenue business model, which drives excellent cash flows for continued investment in technology, people and growth opportunities. All of this will be necessary as we shift the organization to create a very different way healthcare listens and responds to what's most important to its customers.

Tia, with that I would like to open the call to questions, please.

(Operator Instructions) Rob Munnings with William Blair.

I noticed that new sales were a bit slower year-over-year. Is anything in particular in the end market, or is that mostly just timing?

I would say it's mostly timing and we had a very large sale come in on a comparable quarter period. So, we're seeing actually the pipeline increase and intake rates improve. So if anything, I would suggest timing.

Okay, great, thanks. That's very helpful. And then looking at the gross margin, I know you guys came in above target there. Is that mostly just mix shift, or is there something more specific going on?

It's both. We have some cost reductions in some of our direct cost related to postage, some rate decreases this year, which have helped along with a shift in mix. So it's some of both.

And then would you be able to give us an updated number of clients with more than one offering, and I guess maybe talk a little bit about the aggregate cross-sell opportunity you guys are seeing in the existing base.

From a pure measurement standpoint, we track the number of clients that have acquired more than one product offering from us. So that as a percent of our total client-base still represents approximately 15% of our clients that have acquired more than one product. It's growing, and I think as Mike mentioned on the last call, is we're bundling more of our products and moving in the direction of some product unification. That metric is a little less comparable over a longitudinal period of time, but to answer your direct question, it still represents somewhere in the 15% to 20% of our client-base that have more than one product.

Okay, great, thanks. That's all for me. Thanks again for taking the questions.

Frank Sparacino with First Analysis.

I was hoping you could just give some color; if we look at the four major solution areas that you have, experience, market insights, transparency and governance, maybe just give some color around how those different areas are performing?

The siloness of the way that you're categorizing the product offering is becoming a little harder on a go forward basis to split apart. The reason being is we're taking -- with the exception of governance, we're taking a very aggressive tact on taking market insights, which is the voice of the customer relative to brand, behavior and needs in the marketplace along with our measurement products, which is in and about the experience in the service setting as well as transparency and reputation management and bundling that together into a single offering.

So it's very rare hoping never, but very rare, I'm sure, that point of sale we aren't introducing an integrated package with bundled pricing. So all that to say is the take rate on any individual product we aren't necessarily focused on. So I would look at our overall growth in contract value attributed to the bundles, all of which represent some component, if not all, of our historical offerings.

And along those lines, Mike, I would assume the average deal for a new client has been increasing. I don't know if you have any metrics around the relative increase today versus a year ago.

It definitely is. We're seeing contract values in the bundled fashion upwards of 20% to 40% over what they may have represented on a single-point solution sale. So there is a marked improvement or increase in the depth and breadth of the relationship, which results in obviously a greater recurring contract value.

If we look at net new sales this year, would you expect -- I mean, based on the pipeline that on a year-on-year basis 2016 versus 2015 that we'll see growth?

Yes, I believe we will. We're seeing some pretty interesting traction, again, in and around value proposition when we bundled our products and services together. So historically, any particular sales endeavor for a single-point solution, say patient satisfaction alone, went up against some fairly embedded competitors, whereas in the bundled offering, the competitive landscape is very different. So hopefully, that will shake loose and create more market share shifts than we've seen historically, perhaps even over the last few years. So, long way to answer your question, but yes; we would see that improvement continue through the back half of the year and into 2017.

Then maybe lastly just, Mike, I'd be curious on some of the anecdotes or conversations with the hospitals and health systems as you talk about moving that traditional spend into new areas, how they're thinking about it in terms of -- I assume it's not dollar for dollar, but just where you think people are at in those conversations along that transformation?

Well, it is healthcare so it's slow, but the majority of new wins that we are getting would be reflective of an attitude at the C-suite level of trying to find additional used cases of the data to which they're already collecting. So if you can imagine an organization that embarks on patient experience measurement and uses it in a historical or traditional fashion to look at nurse unit improvement in terms of service quality. Now they're saying, well, we're spending this money, why can't we use it for driving the topline of our company, why can't we use it to increase loyalty, why can't we use it to better the service experience for that same patient next time they have an interaction with our brand?

So really, what we're seeing is if we're going to spend the money, why don't we get multiple uses to leverage that investment. And when you get to that type of dialogue, it's really the intersection of real time data over the continuum over all service settings that are creating an exponential value proposition. So in summary, it's really we're spending the money why not get greater use and why not look at things other than only service quality improvement.

Great, thank you. I'll jump back in the queue.

(Operator Instruction) It looks like we have no further questions, unless Mr. Sparacino has more questions.

All right. I'll turn the call back over to you.

Thank you, Tia. And again, thank you, everyone, for your time today. Kevin and I, as always, look forward to reporting our progress next quarter. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does concludes our conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that please disconnect your line.