Rollins Inc (ROL) 2016 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and welcome to the Rollins, Inc. fourth-quarter 2016 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. (Operator Instructions).

I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Marilynn Meek. Ms. Meek, you may begin.

Thank you. By now, you should have all received a copy of the press release. However, if anyone is missing a copy and would like to receive one, please contact our office at 212-827-3746 and we will send you a release and make sure you are on the Company's distribution list. There will be a replay of the call which will begin one hour after the call and run for one week. The replay can be accessed by dialing 1-888-203-1112, with the passcode 226-2830. Additionally, the call is being webcast at www.viavid.com and will replay for available -- will be available for 90 days.

On the call with me today are Gary Rollins, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Rollins' President and Chief Operating Officer, John Wilson; and Eddie Northen, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Management will make some opening remarks and then we will open up the line for questions, at which time all three gentlemen will be available to take your questions.

Gary, would you like to begin?

Yes, thank you, Marilyn, and good morning. We appreciate all of you joining us for our fourth-quarter and year-end 2016 conference call.

Eddie will read our forward-looking statement and disclaimer, and then we will begin.

Our earnings release discusses our business outlook and contains certain forward-looking statements. These particular forward-looking statements and all other statements that have been made on this call, excluding historical facts, are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. And actual risks may differ materially from any statements we make today. Please refer to today's press release and our SEC filings including the risk factors section of our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, for more information on the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ.

Thank you Eddie. We are extremely pleased to have posted record results for the quarter, as well as our 19th consecutive year of improved revenues and profits. For the quarter, revenue increased 6.4% to $385.6 million compared to $362.5 million in last year's fourth quarter. Net income rose 19.7% to $38 million or $0.17 per diluted share compared to net income of $31.7 million or $0.15 per diluted share, the same quarter last year.

Revenues for the full year increased 5.9% to $1.573 billion compared to $1.485 billion for the same period last year. Incidentally, the 5.9% increase was the greatest percent increase since 2010.

Income, before income taxes, grew 7.2% to $260.6 million compared to $243.2 million in the prior year. Net income rose 10% to $167.4 million, with earnings per share -- diluted share -- of $0.77 compared to $152.1 million or $0.70 per diluted share last year. All of our business lines experienced growth during the quarter, with residential pest control up 7.9%; commercial pest control grew 5.5%; and termite rose 5.7%.

We are also pleased with the growth experienced by our specialty brands and international and wildlife brands, all of which reported impressive growth for the year. Stated previously, I believe it bears repeating that we think the results underscore the value that we are experiencing in selectively acquiring market-leading specialty pest control and wildlife companies. At the same time, our ancillary businesses, although a relatively small part of our total business, continued to perform well.

Bedbugs have certainly not gone away, although we believe we will experience a slower growth rate in this business, going forward. Earlier this month, we released Orkin's top 50 bedbug cities based on the services provided this past year in the leading US metro markets. While these 50 cities had the most treatments last year, our Orkin technicians treated for bedbugs in all 50 states as well as internationally. This past year our bedbug revenue increased 10% over last year.

We also experienced growth in our mosquito business. As we have discussed in the past, mosquito-borne diseases continue to be an increasing threat around the world. We continue to provide educational materials on the precautions that can be taken to protect against mosquito bites, infestations, and how mosquito populations can be controlled. Revenues for our mosquito business increased over 20% this past year.

We continue to make inroads in expanding Orkin's brand recognition through growing our international presence this past year; both through Orkin's expansion in Australia, and our entry into the United Kingdom. Also, as announced earlier this month, in the last quarter of the year, we created 17 new international franchises. 12 of these franchises were located in China, while the other five are located in Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Malaysia, and in the Kingdom of Cambodia. All of these franchises will offer commercial and residential pest control as well as termite services, where applicable.

With the addition of these new franchises, we now have established Orkin's presence in 45 countries through 70 international franchises. Our international expansion is an excellent example of our culture of continuous improvement; or, in this case, continuous expansion.

The core element of our culture is a deep commitment to build long-term relationships with our customers based on our quality of service. One means of how we accomplish this is our Listen360 customer feedback surveys where we generate thousands of customer email surveys daily for each of our 600-plus Rollins locations, to enable us to obtain real-time feedback on how our customers view what we're doing. Listen360 organizes customer feedback in the three categories: promoters, customers who would recommend us to family and friends; passes, who are neutral; and detractors, those with negative feedback.

These scores and rankings by location are shared throughout the Company, and our people take them very seriously. We are committed to turn any customer with a negative survey to become a promoter, and we respond accordingly. Our survey results are provided monthly, and we closely monitored our progress from the latest survey results to previous survey findings.

We are pleased that in three years that we've had the Listen360 program in place that we have made improvements of over 20% on the positive scores which translates into better customer retention and customer referrals. Our objective is to have over 85% positive promoter scores and retention of customers for all of our brands. We have a number of operations that are at 85 or better now, and are striving to expand that number.

As Jerry Gahlhoff, President of Specialty Brands and the pioneer of this program has stated, the feedback we get, both good and bad, keeps us humble about our service and focused on ways to improve the customer's experience. We can see exactly what and where our successes and failures are so we can build on our triumphs and improve on our shortcomings.

To further help ensure that we provide the best customer experience as we grow our business, we continue to make it a key objective across our organization to identify and hire the best employees. We bring them along through our extensive and award-winning training, thereby providing them the opportunity to build a satisfying and rewarding career at Rollins.

2016 was a momentous year for our Company, one in which employees in North America and around the globe continued to advance our mission to be the best service company in the world. We are even more excited about our prospects for the new year and beyond. We will continue to make strategic acquisitions that meet our criteria, as well as adding international and domestic franchises.

At the same time, we will be benefiting from the investments we've made, specifically BOSS, our new branch CRM and operating system. BOSS's primary objective is to enable us to improve our customers' experience for the benefit of all of our constituencies. We look forward to sharing our progress with all of you throughout the year.

I will now turn the call over to Eddie, who will provide you with more details on our financial results.

Thank you, Gary. 2016 was another incredible year on a lot of fronts, which included record-setting financial results during a time of significant change. We successfully wrapped up our CRM BOSS and virtual route management rollout; made several acquisitions, both inside and outside of the US; and made promotional changes in our executive ranks. I cannot be more proud of our sales, operations, and support teams for their resiliency during 2016 and their ability to produce these results.

Each of our service lines showed sustained growth, and key to the quarter, included the best growth rate since 2010, cost-savings based on safety improvements, and a reduction in medical claims, and continued maturity of our new technology in the operations.

Looking at the numbers, the Company reported fourth-quarter revenue of $385.6 million, an increase of 6.4% over the prior year's fourth quarter's revenue of $362.5 million.

Before I go through the income results, I want to bring you up to date on a change we've made in Canada concerning tax planning. In 2004, Kinro Investments was created as part of Rollins' tax planning strategy. However, recent changes in Canadian tax law eliminated the benefit of this strategy, and we dissolved Kinro before the end of 2016.

As a result, a one-time withholding tax expense had to be recognized. This expense, which reduced income before tax by approximately $9 million, was offset by a tax credit of approximately the same amount. Had we not removed Kinro from Canadian taxation, the Company would pay approximately an additional $100 million of taxes over the next 10 years. Rollins' after-tax income and earnings per share for 2016 were not affected by the dissolving of Kinro. For the quarter, the pretax margin of 13.6 would have been 16.0 without the one-time withholding tax expense, an 11.9% improvement over 2015.

As a result, for the quarter, income before income taxes only increased 1.4% to $52.5 million. Net income was not impacted by the tax charge, and increased 19.7% to $38 million, with earnings per share of 13.3% to $0.17 versus $0.15 per diluted share last year in the fourth quarter.

Our operations performed very well through the quarter. But as an organization, we also received the benefit of lower personnel-related expense, primarily healthcare; and casualty costs, due to improved safety results.

At the beginning of 2016, we restructured our risk and our safety groups and are benefiting from those changes. Outside of the cost savings, we believe our improved safety in the area of accidents and injuries will create other opportunities such as improved customer experience with fewer absences of our technicians, less negative impact to the brand and the P&L through decreasing vehicle damage. Additionally, we saw a reduction in personnel-related expense, primarily healthcare, as we experienced fewer claims than expected during the year.

Both of these items are encouraging, but as we continue to mature on our virtual route management path, we also know that reduced miles will further help us with our safety and casualty expense.

Let me expand a little about the early positive operational results of our Boston VRM investments. Even with the historically high conversion and training expense pushed into the first two quarters of the year, our year-to-date net margin has expanded 70 basis points. However, the Q4 -- taking out the impact of the tax withholdings -- the net margin improved 140 basis points, which we were pleased to see partially as a result of our related gains from BOSS and VRM. Also included in this improvement were gains in our casualty and healthcare expenses, as I mentioned earlier.

As you may recall, the January is the month of our annual leadership meeting where our top 100 leaders throughout North America come together in Atlanta to recap 2016 and get the new year kicked off. With all of the Orkin branches now on BOSS and VRM, we were able to take quality time to discuss pest control route management best practices, and align our priorities for the Orkin operations related to the customer with the use of this technology.

For the 12 months, our revenue grew 5.9% from $1.485 billion in 2015 to $1.573 billion in 2016. Income before income tax grew 7.2% from $243.2 million in 2015 to $260.6 million in 2016. Net income grew 10% from $152.1 million in 2015 to $167.4 million in 2016. Again, as I explained, the full-year income before taxes was impacted by our one-time tax charge to dissolve Kinro. And net income and earnings per share were not negatively affected.

Let's take a look at revenue, and revenue by service line for the fourth quarter. Our total revenue increase of 6.4% for the quarter included 1.2% from major acquisitions. And the remaining 5.2% was from pricing and organic growth.

In total, residential pest control, which made up 42% of our revenue, was up a very strong 7.9%. Commercial pest- control, which made up 41% of our revenue, was up 5.5%. And termite and ancillary services, which made up approximately 17% of our revenue, was up 5.7%. Again, total revenue, less acquisitions, was up 5.2%. And from that, residential was up 7.7%, commercial was up 3.7%, and termite was up 3.9%.

When you take a look at the quarter, taking out the impact of foreign currency, in total we grew 5.4%. Residential grew 7.8%, commercial pest control was up 3.7%, and termite was up 4.2%. Commercial and termite were most impacted by the weak Canadian and Australian dollars as most of our business in these countries is commercial.

When looking at revenue and its service lines for the full year, our total revenue increased 5.9% and included 0.7% from acquisitions; and the remaining 5.2% was from pricing and organic growth. In total, residential pest control was up 7.3%, commercial pest control was up 4.4%, and termite and ancillary services was up 6.3%.

For the full year, total revenue, less acquisitions, was up 5.2%. From that, residential was up 7.2%, commercial was up 3.5%, and termite was up 4.8%. When you take out the impact of foreign currency for the year, in total we grew 5.8%. Residential grew 7.2%, commercial pest control was up 4.7%, and termite was up 5.1%.

Many of you have inquired about our mosquito business. And even though this is still a relatively small base of revenue compared to our total, as Gary mentioned, we grew well for the quarter and for the year. When we look back over the past five years, we've grown in the mid-teens range. However, we have not and will not market in a way that will be perceived to prey on public fear related to well-known Zika and West Nile virus transmission.

Our marketing team will continue to explore ways to solicit and provide this service to our existing customer base. At extremely high retention rates, the benefits of the service speak for themselves, from a quality of life and safety perspective. We look forward to continued positive results in this area.

In total, gross margin for the quarter increased to 50.0% versus 49.7% in the prior year. The margin for the quarter benefited from improved efficiencies in pest control customer routing and scheduling, increased technician productivity, and reduced miles driven.

Additionally, personnel-related expenses were down as a percent of revenue as group health insurance and auto liability expenses were down, quarter over quarter. This was offset by an increase in maintenance agreements and software costs related to BOSS.

Depreciation and amortization expenses for the fourth quarter increased $2.5 million to $13.8 million, an increase of 21.9%. Depreciation was $6.9 million, increasing $1.8 million, with most of that increase related to our BOSS software, iPhone, and printer depreciation. Amortization was $6.9 million, which increased $648,000 with amortization of intangible assets increasing, due mostly to amortized customer contracts of the acquisitions of Murray Pest Control and Scientific Pest Control in Australia, as well as various Orkin acquisitions throughout the year.

Sales, general, and administrative expenses for the fourth quarter increased $8.7 million, or 7.4%, to 32.8% of revenues, up 4/10 of 1 percentage point from 32.4% for the fourth quarter last year. The increase in the percent of revenue is due mostly to our one-time tax event to dissolve Kinro, which impacted us for the quarter by $9 million and increased SG&A by 2 percentage points.

This was partly offset by lower administrative salaries and overtime as a percent of revenue, which has been helped by the BOSS implementation. Personnel-related expenses as group insurance expense was down, and telephone costs as we saw decreases with a change of data service providers.

As for our cash position for the 12 months ended December 31, 2016, we spent over $46 million on acquisitions, up 38.4% year-over-year, and included the charge -- the change of our special dividend for a total of $109 million paid in dividends, which is up 18.8% over the last year.

We were active with share repurchase in the open market during the year, but not in Q4, and purchased for the year a total of 835,559 shares for $22.7 million. We have $33.1 million of capital expenditures and ended with $143 million in cash, up 5.7% from last year.

Last night, the Board of Directors declared a regular cash dividend of $0.115 per share that will be paid on March 10, 2017, to stockholders of record at the close of business February 10, 2017. The cash dividend is a 15% increase over the prior year. This marks the 15th consecutive year the Board has increased our dividend by a minimum of 12% or greater. We are encouraged with the results of 2016 and look forward to 2017.

I will now turn the call back over to Gary.

Thank you, Eddie. Well, Eddie, John, and I are happy to answer your questions, and we are glad to proceed accordingly.

(Operator Instructions). Joe Box, KeyBanc Capital.

So just from a high level, obviously 2016 was the strongest growth rate that we've seen since 2010. I'm curious your thoughts as we get into 2017. Ex- the 1.2% from acquisitions that you had -- and actually that might have just been for the quarter -- but ex- the M&A, do you think that these are sustainable growth levels, or should we expect some level of moderation as we finalize our models?

So Jamie, I'll take that. This is John Wilson. That is certainly our plan is for them to be sustainable. We don't start any of our years without our plans to get better. We maintain a continuous improvement mindset. So that is certainly our plan. We think there is ample opportunity out there to continue growing our three service lines of business the way we have.

Okay. And then I guess maybe just a follow-up on that, then. You called out bedbugs as theoretically growing at a lower rate. And I get that that is just a small component of your business. But if you look at a lot of the other big drivers for your business, whether it be the HomeTeam deployment or mosquito deployment, are there any big one-time drivers that might not step up in 2017? Anything that we should just be aware of?

I don't know of any single one-time driver. Eddie mentioned, and Gary did too, about our mosquito business -- our bedbug business. They are both growing faster than our regular service lines, but they are not that large. So I don't know of any single thing.

We don't -- weather-wise, we had our share of bad weather. So I think as Eddie shared with you, these different segments of our businesses grow at different rates at different times. And -- which complement each other, frankly. We don't have them all down, and all of them are up, but to different degrees. So we don't see any big obstacle out there that's going to knock us off of our plans.

Got it. One quick one for you. Eddie, you mentioned increased tech productivity. Can you just put some numbers around the average stops per technician, or maybe revenue per tech, just to give us a sense of how much it was up in 4Q?

No, Joe, we don't break that out. We will have technicians that will be in a range of 8 to 10 jobs or so in a day. It will depend on density and rural versus urban areas. But we are continuing to see better stops per mile from our virtual route management system, and we are able to see better productivity that is kind of a byproduct of that. So that's what we are -- as we continue to have BOSS become more mature; our last regions went on in August of last year. So as those become more mature, and as virtual route management becomes more fully adopted, I think we will see those numbers continue to incrementally get better.

Thank you.

Jamie Clement, Macquarie.

Gary, I don't recall ever seeing a press release announcing 17 franchise starts in a single press release. Can you give us a little bit more color on that? And the follow-up question to that would be is -- are creating new franchise, is that more of a point of emphasis now? And maybe fill us in on some of the economics. Do you get an upfront from these folks? How does it all work?

Well, we do get a kind of initiation fee. Depending on the population, we have a formula that bases what that first major payment is. We have minimal requirements as far as the payments going forward. We certainly don't want to get involved in having to audit the books of 50 different businesses. So we have a percent that we get, and then we have a minimum. So we feel like we are kind of protected as far as the accounting is concerned. There is accounting standards that are different from country to country.

We have done very well in China. We have a very good relationship with the head of the Chinese pest control authority, which is a government employee. In fact, she came over and visited about a month ago. And I think that has been helpful. But we have been working -- this has not been a quick thing because we've been working in China for, I would say, five or six years. So it's just that they all are kind of -- came to a head at the same time.

As you know that there are like 15 or 20 cities over there with 5 million plus people, and most of them -- most of us don't even know their names. We think there's going to be a lot of potential. It won't be a much residential business. But commercial-wise, China is really growing by leaps and bounds. And we think it's going to have a very beneficial commercial pest control market.

Now -- did you all -- the announcement came, I guess, a week or so ago. But I think, in your prepared remarks, you said these were actually created in the fourth quarter. Was this a 4Q event or a 1Q event?

Jamie, this is a Q4 event.

Q4 event. Okay.

And 17 were added in Q4, which took us to a total of 70.

Okay, and then just follow-up question. When you say most of it is commercial, are you -- you are -- presumably, these big cities -- you've got a lot of apartment buildings. So are these residential apartment buildings that you are all just defining as commercial? Is that how we should think about it? Or am I wrong?

Yes. So, Jamie, in most areas outside of the US, residential pest control is not necessarily a service. There are not a lot of countries that look at residential pest control as something that they would pay for. There are some exceptions. The UK is an exception. Australia is an exception, and there are a few others that are out there. Canada is an exception. But most of the other countries, it's all do-it-yourself from a residential, from a personal perspective. So some of the markets are making some slight changes with that.

But for the most part, when we say commercial, we're talking about food; we're talking about hospitals; other different areas, purely from a commercial perspective. There may be a sprinkling in of those buildings that are like that. But for the most part, it would be purely commercial, outside of residences.

Okay. Well, I appreciate the clarification.

Joan Tong, Sidoti.

Very good quarter. Just have a couple of questions here. Eddie, for the VRM -- or maybe Gary -- for the VRM, we are talking about last quarter. You said you optimized half of the [roads]. Can you give us a quick update in terms of -- are you making any progress like maybe you having that module or that platform to optimize more routes? And you talk about improvement in productivities and all that. Can you just kind of sort of give us an update?

So that number of 50%, Joan, has moved closer to 75% of the routes being optimized on a daily basis. And again, this is just us going through and getting everybody more comfortable with not only the technology itself, but with the use of the technology, and have that become part of the daily routine. So as we are able to continue to do that, we will be able to get more of the routes optimized up front.

And then the next step from there is to take the steps that we can to not disrupt those optimized routes as best as possible. So we're going to continue to see incremental gains that are going to occur, I think, quarter by quarter by quarter, with that as the branches learn and understand better ways of being able to keep those routes that have been optimized, run, in the best way that they can.

I see, I see.

Joan, if I may add; so the savings there with optimizing is a 20% to 25% reduction in miles driven. So the benefit to the Company will show up with our improved fuel costs, and wear and tear on our fleet. The big bang for the buck, we feel, is an improved customer service and attention to our customers. And what we are really working with our teams in the field now is to improve the amount of service time they spend, and quality time they spend with that customer. So that's what that's all about.

Right. I'm just wondering, is there any way to sort of -- seeing some sort of -- if you can talk about any tangible results like how we measure customer service. And Gary, obviously you mentioned the positive promotion score, and that's one thing. And also the 300 -- customer 360 and maybe you can incorporate some of those survey results back to the analytics you have, and drive better improvement -- a customer experience, going forward. Can you just give us a little bit more color?

Yes; so that's exactly right. The Listen360 survey scores really -- we see that correlating with our customer retention metric. And improving that can be big for our Company, no question.

Got it, got it. And then obviously very strong operating margin. If you exclude that $9 million one-time item there, you talked about [16%] like -- operating margin for a seasonally weak quarter. Very strong results. And then, Eddie, you mentioned that some of the reasons behind that other than the BOSS benefits. But also you'd get some reductions or some gain in the -- the group health, insurance costs, and all of that.

Can you sort of quantify how much of that expansion -- margin expansion is related to healthcare costs coming down, and how much is more the benefit that we are actually seeing from the BOSS system?

So, Joan, we -- Q3, we saw an expansion of about 90 basis points. We think that we are continuing to see maturity in the Boston VRM. We think that's going to continue to get a little bit better, which is helping with that total net margin number, operating margin number that you see. Those are dollars that really -- arguably, they could have been pushed back into previous quarters.

So when you look at the full-year margin of the 70 BPs, I think that is really representative of where we are with it. So I think -- take that Q3, and we add a little bit more maturity in the Boston, the VRMs, and improve that 90 basis points; I think that's probably more representative of where the quarter would be, outside of the casualty and the medical.

Got it. I see, got it. I got it. And then finally for next year, for -- I would say for 2017, I think in the past you mentioned that you would continue to spend in technology to stay ahead of the competitors, and making sure good customer experience, and all that. And just want to see if you have any initiatives you can call out that you are planning for 2017 in terms of technology spending. And maybe you can quantify that in terms of maybe the impact to operating expense. Thank you.

Yes, Joan, thanks. That's a good question, and we are still getting down the path of that. We are -- from a strategy perspective, we've narrowed down about three or four items that we want to continue to spend our time and our energy on; and, ultimately, our dollars on. Part of that is focused on customer experience, but we have not finalized exactly what that is going to be -- the time, nor the dollar amount, at this point. So we will keep you informed as we talk through this and as we figure out next steps.

The good news is we feel like we have some good opportunities in a few different areas. And we've got some good folks with some great expertise that I think can help us get down this path. So we will share more once we get that narrowed down.

All right. Thank you, guys.

(Operator Instructions) Sean Kennedy, Instinet.

My question also concerns growth. How are you finding the current hiring environment in terms of attracting enough quality employees necessary to sustain your growth? Has it become more difficult since we've been hearing that it's been challenging for other companies, as employment has gotten tighter generally? Thanks.

Yes. Sean, this is John Wilson. It is difficult, but it always has been. I don't think our industry jumps out at -- whether it's college graduates, recent college graduates, or people seeking to leave where they are today, to go -- to come work in our industry. So what we try to do is have a very defined process around the hiring process. And our operations and our branches are taught to follow that pretty rigorously. And they turn over a lot of rocks to find those good quality people.

And I think the final thing I would say is our greatest source of new employees has been our current employees. We get somewhere near 40% or so of our -- of new employees from referrals of our current employees. And we have a reward system in place that pays them for bringing forward those good people. But that's our best source.

Got it, thanks. But have you -- has it been more difficult lately? Have you seen that, just as employment has gotten tighter? Or has it just generally been the same?

I think it's generally the same. We still have to turn over a lot of rocks to find the ones we want, but I think it's still the same.

Sean, I would just add to that, when we take a look at our retention -- our employee retention rates and how they have trended and we compare that to the overall unemployment rate, we've trended better than the overall employment rate. So I think to John's point, we are not going to work a little bit harder, but once we're finding those employees, we're able to retain at least better than the overall unemployment rate has been moving.

I think I could add one thing to that as far as the VRM. We are creating a better job for our service technicians. There's been a tremendous amount of frustration from the technician to get himself organized. And quite often, he is in an unfamiliar area. He doesn't live in his territory. He has more capacity because of being better organized. Most of our technicians are on a productivity pay plan, so they can make more money. And if you have a more satisfied employee with better work experience, earning more, then you are going to have less turnover.

Great. Yes, got it. Thanks for the detail, guys.

(Operator Instructions). Alex Ciarnelli, SM Investors.

I have only one question left at this point, which is just modeling-related. You're talking about a $9 million charge for the Canadian entity. That's in SG&A. I'm assuming that the contract -- or the credit -- that is in provision for income taxes. Is that correct?

That's correct. It would impact the overall tax rate which was lowered, and ultimately had no impact on [the net] income. So that's exactly right.

Thank you so much.

And at this time, we have no further questions. I will turn it back over to management for closing remarks.

Well, thank you for joining us today. And we look forward to our new year, and we will continue to work hard to grow and improve our business. Thanks again.

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.