The Brink’s Company (NYSE:BCO) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
The Brink's Company (NYSE:BCO) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 9, 2023
The Brink's Company misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $1.18 EPS, expectations were $1.38.
Operator: Hello, and welcome to the Brink's Company Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. This morning Brink's issued a press release detailing its second quarter 2023 results. The company also filed an 8-K that includes the release and the slides that will be used in today's call. The release and slides are available in the Investor Relations' section of the company's website at investors.Brinks.com. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and will be available for replay. This call and the Q&A session will contain forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from projected or estimated results.
Information regarding factors that could cause such differences are available in the footnotes of today's press release and in the company's most recent SEC filings. Information presented and discussed on this call is representative of today only. Brink's assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. The call is copyrighted and may not be used without written permission from Brink's. I will now turn the call over to your host, Jesse Jenkins, Vice President of Investor Relations, Mr. Jenkins you may begin.
Jesse Jenkins: Thanks and good morning. Joining me today are Brink’s CEO, Mark Eubanks, and CFO, Kurt McMaken. This morning we reported second quarter 2023 results on a GAAP, non-GAAP and constant-currency basis. Most of our comments today will be focused on our non-GAAP results, because we believe these results make it easier for investors to assess operating performance between periods. Reconciliations of non-GAAP results to their most comparable GAAP results are provided in the press release, the appendix of the presentation, and in this morning's 8-K filing. I'll now turn the call over to Brink's CEO, Mark Eubanks.
Mark Eubanks: Thanks Jesse and good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us. Starting on slide three, we delivered record revenue and operating profit in the second quarter. Total revenue was up 7%, including organic growth of 8%. Our cash and valuables management business grew organically by 5%, and the ATM Managed Services and Digital Retail Solutions customer offerings were up 19% organically. Operating profit was up 6% in total, and 13% organically for a margin of 10.8%. Adjusted EBITDA of $194 million was up 4% with a margin of 16%. Cash generation remains a key focal point of the business, and I'm pleased to report an improvement of 233% or $115 million in free cash flow year-to-date, as we made meaningful progress this quarter towards our cash conversion target for the year.
Looking at the performance drivers, we remain vigilant in our pricing efforts in our cash and valuables management business, and delivered another quarter of strong price realization in excess of inflation across all of our segments. With inflation down from a year ago in most of our markets, pricing growth has moderated from the highs we saw in the previous periods, but remains a key part of our plans going forward as we drill down to a more strategic approach to pricing. The strategic growth engines of AMS and DRS continue to bolster our results, with 44% growth year-to-date, and positive momentum in the back half, with good customer interest creating actionable pipelines. Our increased focus on free cash flow at the local level has generated strong results, as we've ingrained these cash discussions into our normal operations with our country leaders, and are starting to make real progress on cash conversion.
As a reminder, 2023 was the first year we've added free cash flow targets to our annual management incentive plan, which applies to the roughly top 200 global leaders across Brink's. Working capital improvements, along with the EBITDA growth, has generated $115 million more cash than this time last year, well on our way to delivering the approximate $150 million year-on-year improvement that we laid out with our full-year guidance. On the operating margin side, we continue to drive costs out of our business, with the rigorous implementation of lien through the Brink’s business system, the execution of our 2022 global restructuring plans, and the revenue mix benefits of AMS and DRS growth. These gains were offset by a $12 million year-on-year increase in security losses, primarily from a single event in our global services line of business.
Kurt will have more on the loss and its impact later in the presentation. But these large losses can be lumpy in nature quarter-to-quarter, but due to the way that we budget and the way that we manage risk, we do not expect this loss to have an impact on our full-year guidance. Now, halfway through the year, we remain firmly on our plan and have affirmed the full-year guidance for revenue and free cash flow, and affirmed the guidance that we increased last quarter for operating profit, adjusted EBITDA, and earnings per share. Turning to slide four, I'd like to provide a few more details on the customer offerings that are driving our performance. The cash and valuables management line of our business grew 5% organically in the quarter. We remain focused on managing inflation in the business and are seeing positive results in our pricing initiatives.
As expected, pricing growth is moderating to more historic levels from the peaks that we saw last year in several of our key markets as we lapped historically high inflation coming out of COVID last year. We continue to see pricing opportunities across all services as we deliver a more consistent customer experience and shift our offerings to provide more additional value-added services. The Brink’s business system is our framework for business excellence and operational improvements across all areas of the business. Commercially, we're focused on improving our customer experience with an increasing value proposition related to cash payment efficiency, accurate reconciliations, and working capital transparency. We're developing solutions for a broader set of customers by reducing our cost to serve while driving service and quality improvements.
On the cost side of our business, we're driving meaningful productivity. By leveraging best practices, we've been able to drive efficiencies in labor management and fleet utilization in all of our segments. The results of our efforts are translating to the numbers, with year-to-date operating margins in North America improving by 190 basis points. European margins improved by 90 basis points, and our rest of world segment improved by 110 basis points. I'm encouraged by the progress, but I'm confident that we're just scratching the surface on the potential we have for efficiency gains as we share best practices from the top performers across the globe within our business. Let's discuss some of the visible improvements specifically in our North American segment, resulting from the Brink’s business system.
Year-to-date service metrics have improved to roughly 98% on-time delivery and our quality and accuracy metrics which is measured by our customer SLAs have improved greater than 30% versus year-end 2022. Both service and quality improvements across the year are being recognized by the market as we complete our mid-year discussions and hear from our top customers. We also continue to make meaningful progress in employee relations as we focus on the health and safety of all Brink’s colleagues. In the area of safety, we see a greater than 25% improvement in our recordable incident rate and we're also seeing a continued reduction in frontline turnover. Our North America human resources team has done a great job understanding all of the drivers of employee turnover and have recently improved our training and interviewing procedures for our leaders, to ensure that we're onboarding the right employees and training them effectively for their job.
With longer tenured employees, safety, customer service, quality and efficiency metrics continue to improve. Now turning to Digital Retail Solutions and ATM managed services. We delivered 25% organic growth and 44% total growth year-to-date. On a trailing 12-month basis, we now have 19% of our total revenue represented by these higher growth, higher margin businesses, up from 18% last quarter and 16% at the end of 2022. The conversion is also helping our impressive cash flow conversion where we see meaningful DSO improvement, particularly in Europe, driven partially by the DRS, AMS revenue growth we've seen across the segment. In DRS, our sales team is gaining momentum and customers are responding to our solutions-based sales approach. In the U.S., June was the best month that we've had this year for DRS contract bookings and that momentum has carried into the early part of the third quarter.
As we continue to improve our operating cadence around DRS, we've increased our focus on shortening the period from contract signing to installation and the associated revenue recognition that comes with those agreements. This is a natural extension of our focus on customer loyalty as we work closely through the sales and onboarding process to collaboratively set rollout plans that align with our customer expectations. We continue to see demand for DRS across a wide range of retail verticals. In addition to the success in the Quick Serve Restaurant vertical I mentioned last quarter, in Q2 we closed several significant deals, representing hundreds of locations each. These customers were represented by a large arts and craft retailer, a publicly traded entertainment company, and a large multinational fashion retailer in Mexico.
We continue to find success with our DRS offerings in these new verticals by targeting individual customers with application-specific value propositions. In AMS, we've completed the rollout of the BPCE network in France at the end of 2022. Recently, we signed two additional banks that will leverage the same infrastructure. We're currently in the project planning phases and expect to have these two networks online and integrated by the end of 2024. The team is working on optimizing routes around the new locations and integrating the new endpoints into our technology stack and workflows. We also continue to make progress integrating the capabilities of note machine into the broader business, but particularly in Europe. Having already developed the infrastructure and logistical footprint needed for a holistic AMS experience, we remain uniquely positioned to help our customers reduce their cost of ATM ownership.
We're engaging with many financial institutions and independent ATM operators around the world who are interested in the AMS offering, as well as our expertise in the area. We recently added two additional banks to our AMS portfolio in Jordan and have initiated several new customer pilots in Latin America, as well as continue to work a robust global pipeline of AMS deals in all segments. Turning to slide five and starting on the left, total revenue was up 7%. The organic growth of 8% I mentioned earlier was supplemented by 3% growth from acquisitions, primarily from the note machine acquisition in Europe we completed in Q4 of last year. And currency translation was a 4% headwind in the period. Looking at the segments, we drove continued AMS DRS growth in Europe and delivered 21% organic growth across the Latin America region.
In North America, revenue was slightly down due to lapping of prior year equipment sale to a large DRS enterprise customer, as well as the continued optimization of our customer portfolio profitability. These results were in line with our expectations and with good progress on DRS and another 90 basis points of margin expansion in the segment, we remain confident in our outlook for the year. The reported operating profit was $132 million with a margin of 10.8% and adjusted EBITDA was $194 million with a margin of 16%. Excluding the timing related impact of the security losses from the reported numbers, we would have generated a $20 million increase in both operating profit and EBITDA year-on-year, with operating margin expansion of 90 basis points and EBITDA expansion of 60 basis points.
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As I previously mentioned, the margin expansion was driven by strong productivity, the execution of our restructuring actions, and the revenue mix benefits as we shift to higher margin AMS and DRS revenue. The Brink’s business system continues to deliver results and consistency across our commercial, operations and technology organizations. Earnings per share results include increased interest expense from higher year-on-year rates of our floating rate debt and would have been up an additional $0.02 versus 2022, excluding the impact of the one-time security loss. The growth in profits as well as the working capital lifts are driving improved cash conversion with adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion up to 53% in the quarter. Despite the impact of the one-time revenue items in North America and the increased security losses in the period, we remain firmly on our plans for the year and continue to build momentum with DRS and AMS volume and 120 basis points of profit margin expansion versus last year.
I remain encouraged by our progress and excited about the future as we shape the business around these two accretive services. I'll now hand it over to Kurt, who will lead us through the revenue, operating profit, EBITDA and EPS bridge, in addition to providing some more details on our strong free cash flow performance, as well as our capital allocation plans. I'll return with guidance and a few closing comments. Kurt.
Kurt McMaken : Thanks Mark. Beginning on slide six, revenue is up $122 million or 11% on a constant currency basis, primarily from 8% organic growth, which benefited from AMS and DRS organic growth of 19% and price realization across all segments. We achieved record revenues in the quarter, highlighted by 21% organic growth in Latin America and strong AMS, DRS growth in Europe. As Mark mentioned, North America revenue was down 1% organically, which was in line with our expectations. The decline was driven by the impact of one-time items in the period, primarily from equipment sales in the prior period related to onboarding a large DRS enterprise customer. The decline also included the continued rationalization of our customer portfolio to optimize profitability.
We remain confident in our progress in North America, supported by the strong DRS sales pipeline Mark mentioned earlier, and the 90 basis points of margin expansion we delivered in the quarter. Acquisitions added 3% to total company revenue and FX translation was a headwind of $40 million or 4% versus the prior year, primarily due to the Argentine peso. Reported revenue was $1.2 billion, up 7% versus last year. Second quarter operating profit and constant currency was up $22 million or 18% versus last year, primarily from organic growth of 13%. Organic profit growth across each of our segments was driven by profitable growth and higher margin lines of business, disciplined pricing that offset inflation, cost productivity leveraging the Brink’s business system, and the execution of our 2022 global restructuring plans.
Segment profit growth was partly offset by $6 million and higher unallocated corporate expenses, including a $12 million increase in security losses, primarily stemming from a large loss event in our global services line of business. As part of our normal budgeting process, we analyze years of historical information to create an estimate for the upcoming year that we budget to occur evenly over the course of the year. As we saw in the second quarter, occasionally large losses occur that extend beyond our budget and discrete quarters. Due to the way that we manage risk, we see the second quarter increase as a timing matter that is not expected to have an impact on our full year profit guidance. Excluding the impact of security losses, unallocated corporate expenses were down by $7 million, and our organic incremental margins were approximately 33%.
Acquisitions added another 5% to operating profit, and foreign exchange was a 12% headwind, resulting in reported total operating profit of $132 million, up 6% versus last year. Next, we will turn to EBITDA and EPS on slide seven. Starting with our operating profit and walking left to right, second quarter interest expense was $51 million, up $19 million versus last year, primarily due to increased rates year-over-year as well as increased debt from the NoteMachine acquisition. Tax expense was $25 million, $4 million lower than last year from lower profit before taxes in the quarter. As a result of tax planning actions, we were able to lower our forecasted 2023 effective tax rate by 100 basis points to 30%, 30 basis points lower than last year's rate.
In total, $132 million of operating profit less interest expense, taxes and non-controlling interest and other generated $56 million of income from continuing operations, which generated $1.18 of earnings per share. Excluding the impact of the $12 million increase in security losses, EPS would have been $1.36 per share. Depreciation and amortization were $54 million, up $6 million versus the prior year, due primarily to the NoteMachine acquisition. As discussed, interest and taxes were $51 million and $25 million respectively. Non-cash stock-based compensation expense and other were $9 million, down $5 million versus last year. The reduction was in line with expectations, and the $9 million run rate is roughly the expectation for the remaining quarters of the year.
Second quarter adjusted EBITDA of $194 million was up $8 million versus last year, primarily due to the flow-through of higher operating profit. Now, turning to slide eight, I'd like to spend a few minutes on capital allocation. I'll start with a few highlights on free cash flow on the left-hand side of the slide. Year-to-date, we have generated $66 million of free cash flow, representing $115 million increase over last year, and a significant portion of the $147 million increase we're targeting for the full year, at the midpoint of our guidance. The year-to-date increase was primarily from adjusted EBITDA growth and sustainable working capital improvements. The working capital result was driven by DSO improvements across the business, including continued accounts receivable recovery in Mexico, where our teams continue to make solid progress following last year's regulatory change to invoicing requirements.
We're also starting to see working capital benefits from our shift to subscription-based DRS AMS offerings. Adjusted EBITDA and working capital improvements were partly offset by higher cash interest, primarily due to higher variable interest on our floating rate debt, as well as a one-time payment for the previously discussed security loss. As a reminder, our floating rate debt makes up about 40% of our total debt. Looking at our capital allocation priorities, our first priority remains organic investments in our business. We continue to make investments in the business that will drive growth, and as Mark discussed in detail, we're driving productivity gains through investments in the Brink’s business system. These investments will largely be OpEx related and managed within our operating profit and EBITDA guidance.
Turning to leverage, our second quarter leverage ratio remained at 3.2x. We're firmly on track to achieve our targeted leverage of between 2x and 3x by year-end. In capital returns, we have $180 million in remaining capacity on our existing share repurchase plan after purchasing approximately $18 million of shares year-to-date through June 30. Coming up, the strong free cash flow performance, we saw year-to-date, and with better visibility into performance in the back half of the year, we expect to accelerate share repurchases in the third quarter and beyond. We remain focused on the capital allocation priorities in our business that drive profitable growth and compound cash generation and ultimately return excess cash to our shareholders. I'm encouraged by our start to the year and look forward to continued growth, margin expansion and cash generation in the back half of the year.
Now, I'll hand it back over to Mark to discuss guidance.
Mark Eubanks : Thanks, Kurt. The table on the left provides a summary of our affirmed full-year guidance. We're off to a strong start so far in 2023 and on track to achieve revenue growth of 6% to 9%, driven by organic growth of 7% to 11%. We expect AMS DRS revenue to make up approximately 20% of our base by year-end. We also expect operating profit and adjusted EBITDA to grow by approximately $100 million each, with margin expansion of approximately 120 basis points and 90 basis points respectively. Free cash flow is expected to improve by approximately $150 million year-on-year to $350 million at the midpoint. With year-to-date improvement of $115 million in the first six months, we're well on our way to achieving this step change in cash conversion for the business.
Earnings per share is still expected between $6.45 and $7.15 per share with 14% growth, approximately double the rate of our revenue growth. Given our strong performance in the first half and with line of sight to our leverage targets and accelerating free cash flow conversion, we plan to increase share repurchase activity starting in the third quarter as Kurt mentioned. I'm pleased with our performance to this point and we remain on track with our full year expectations. Our AMS and DRS growth strategy, underpinned by improving operating productivity through the Brink’s business system, is generating margin expansion and compounding free cash flow. Through the hard work of our teams, we've made meaningful progress in these areas and continue to gain momentum for the future.
I'm confident these sustainable improvements in the business will drive meaningful shareholder value as we move forward in the year and beyond. Now, let's open up for questions. Operator.
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