Ebix, Inc. (NASDAQ:EBIX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript
Ebix, Inc. (NASDAQ:EBIX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript March 15, 2023
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. My name is Abby and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Ebix Incorporated Annual Results Investor Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded and all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. And I will now turn the conference over to Darren Joseph, Corporate Vice President. You may begin.
Darren Joseph: Thank you. Welcome everyone to Ebix Incorporated's 2022 annual results earning conference call. Joining me to discuss the annual results is Ebix Chairman, President, and CEO, Robin Raina; President, Insurance Services North America, Ash Sawhney; and Ebix, EVP and CFO, Steve Hamil. Following our remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Now, let me quickly cover the safe harbor. Some of the statements that we make today are forward-looking, including among others, statements regarding Ebix's future investments, our long-term growth and innovation, the expected performance of our businesses, and our use of cash. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that might cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statement.
Please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements made today are contained in our SEC filings which list a more detailed description of the risk factors that may affect our results. Our press release announcing the 2022 full year and Q4 2022 results was issued today this morning. The audio of this investor call is also being webcast live on the web at www.ebix.com/webcast. You can look at Ebix's financials beyond what has been provided in this release on our website www.ebix.com.
The audio and the text transcript for this call will be available also on the investor homepage of the Ebix website after 4:00 PM Eastern Time today. Now, let me discuss the quarter and the full year. This has been a record year in terms of revenue performance for the company, with the company reporting more than $1 billion in annual revenue for the first time. Fiscal year 2022 GAAP revenues increased 6% to $1.05 billion as compared to $994.9 million in fiscal year 2021. On a constant currency basis, fiscal year 2022 revenues grew to $1.1 billion, an increase of approximately $113 million or 11.3% over 2021 revenues. The increase is primarily due to growth in the EbixCash business, as well as our year-over-year growth in the company's core life and annuity exchange platforms, BPO and IT outsourced services originating in India, foreign exchange business, travel business, e-learning and financial technologies businesses, and growth in revenues in nine of the company's 11 major geographies.
These increases were offset primarily by a decline in the EbixCash pre-paid card business, besides declines in revenue within our U.S.-based Consulting, Employee Health and Wellness and Health Exchange businesses, and the negative effect of substantial strengthening of the U.S. dollar on our revenues in the year 2022. Q4 2022 revenue decreased 4% to $255.2 million compared to $266.8 million in Q4 in 2021. The decrease is primarily due to the negative effect of the substantial strengthening of the U.S. dollar on our revenues in Q4 in 2022, as compared to the previous year. On a constant currency basis, Q4 2022 revenues increased 5% year-over-year and would have been $23.8 million higher in the quarter but for foreign exchange rate changes during the quarter.
On a constant currency basis, eight of the 11 major geographies worldwide had year-over-year revenue growth in Q4 2022. In Q4 2022, Insurance Exchange revenues worldwide decreased year-over-year by 2%, but grew around 1% on a constant currency basis, while Risk Compliance Solutions revenue increased 14% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2022, and EbixCash revenue increased 7% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2022. Excluding the Prepaid Gift Card revenues, EbixCash revenues increased year-over-year by 30%. Exchanges, including EbixCash and the Insurance Exchanges worldwide continue to be Ebix's largest channel, accounting for 92% of our fiscal year 2022 revenues. For the 2022 fiscal year on a constant currency basis, nine of the 11 major geographies experienced year-over-year growth in revenues.
For the full year 2022, EbixCash GAAP revenues grew 6%, RCS revenues grew 10%, while the Insurance Exchange revenues were essentially flat on a year-over-year basis. On a constant currency basis, Insurance Exchange revenues increased by 2% in 2022 as compared to 2021. On a constant currency basis, RCS revenues for fiscal year 2022 increased by 11% as compared to 2021, while EbixCash's revenues increased 14% year-over-year . On a constant currency basis, fiscal year 2022 worldwide revenues grew 11.3% over 2021 revenues. I will now turn the call over to Steve.
Steven Hamil: Thanks, Darren. The U.S. dollar strengthened against most currencies during 2022 as pretty much everyone on this call knows. After experiencing the largest quarterly negative impact from foreign exchange movements in the third quarter of 2022, the fourth quarter of '22 actually eclipsed Q3 2022. For the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022, the negative impact from foreign exchange movements reduced our reported revenues by $23.8 million and $57.6 million respectively. Q4 and full year 2022 have been the largest quarterly and year-to-date negative impacts from foreign exchange movements in at least the past eight fiscal years for Ebix. Darren has already discussed the Q4 and fiscal year revenue figures. So, let me focus a little bit on the numerical drivers of those results.
In 2022, the 5.5% revenue growth year-over-year was driven by growth in EbixCash's Travel, Foreign Exchange and Outward Remittance businesses, which on a combined basis grew 118% year-over-year. The BPO and IT services revenues in India grew 47% in 2022 versus 2021. Our EbixCash e-learning revenue growth was 160% in 2022. And in Latin America, our year-over-year revenue growth was 42%. These strong growth results were offset in part by the Prepaid Gift Card business in India, which declined 3.5% year-over-year and I will note, generates little profit for Ebix. And Australia had a revenue decline of 15% in 2022. About half of that was FX-related based on changes in currency rates. U.S. revenues for the year decreased less than 1%. While our core Life and Annuity Exchange revenues increased 5% year-over-year, our Consulting, Health Exchange and EHAE revenue declines offset the solid growth in those core Life and Annuity Exchanges.
Our operating income in Q4 2022 was $29.8 million, that's an 8% decrease from Q4, '21 operating income of $32.4 million, and 2% lower than Q3 2022 operating income of $30.4 million. Our operating margin of 11.7% in Q4 compares to 11.8% in Q3 2022 and 12.2% in Q4 2021. The decrease year-over-year in our operating income relates primarily to increased personnel costs and rent expense, both primarily in India, as well as incremental sales and marketing expenses to continue to build EbixCash brand in India. Employee-related expenses for salary and benefits increased $4.1 million in Q4 2022 versus Q4 2021, while rent expense increased $3.5 million year-over-year in Q4 2022, as the Company continues to reopen international airports and ports of entry locations as the negative impacts from COVID-19 subside.
In India, our sales and marketing expenses increased by over $2.5 million in Q4 2022 as compared to Q4 2021. Excluding the impact of the Prepaid Gift Card business, Q4 2022 operating margin was 26.4%, which compares to 26.3% in the sequential Q3 2022 quarter and 30.9% in Q4 of 2021. For fiscal year 2022, in total, our operating income was $120.3 million versus $119 million in 2021, an increase of 1.1%. But, on a constant currency basis, our operating income grew by approximately 5% year-over-year for the full year 2022. During the year-to-date period of 2022, we had the following major cash uses: $33.2 million of cash interest paid, $24 million for income-related taxes paid globally, a combined $21.5 million expended on capital expenditures and software development costs, $23.5 million used to reduce the principal outstanding on our corporate credit facility, and $9.3 million for dividend payments.
The company had liquidity on hand which -- which includes cash, cash equivalent, short-term investments, and restricted cash of $136.3 million as of December 31st, 2022 versus $125.2 million at 12-30-21. However, I want to note that, at December 31, 2022, on that date, the Company had interest and principal repayments under our credit facility due of $22.9 million, $7.5 million of which was principal repayment under the term loan. Because of an oversight in our agent bank, this payment was not taken from our account until the first business day of January 2023. Thus, our liquidity on hand at 12-31-22 would have been $113.4 million as the payment that affected as of 12-31-22 and that would compare to the $125.2 million at 12-31-2021. Our total debt on December 31, 2022 was $647.3 million, a reduction of $13 million from total debt of $660.2 million as of 12-31-21.
And as I just mentioned, the debt would have been $7.5 million lower at 12-31-22 had that principal payment been processed timely. The company also paid down $5 million of principal on our debt in February of 2023 as part of the recent extension of our credit facility to mature in May 2023 and we will repay an additional $5 million under that facility on March 31, 2023. Our current corporate credit facility contains two financial covenants, a consolidated net leverage covenant and a fixed charge coverage covenant. Our consolidated net leverage ratio was approximately 3.6 times at 12-31-22 versus 4.2 times at 12-31-21. So, during 2022, we delevered approximately 0.6 times. Our consolidated net leverage covenant at 12-31-22 was 4.5 times. So, we were comfortably under that covenant level.
Our fixed charge coverage ratio was approximately 1.5 times at 12-31-22 versus our covenant level of 1.25 times. We were in compliance with our credit facility financial covenants at 12-31-22. Robin will provide a further update on the efforts that are ongoing to address the impending maturity of the credit facility in May 2023 during his remarks. We are appreciative of the syndicate of banks that are working with us as we continue to pursue the refinancing of our credit facility into a capital structure that is both longer in tenure and with more globally oriented investors. Ebix continues to generate significant adjusted EBITDA despite global economic stress, including inflation and a rising rate environment and lingering impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2022, the company generated $142.8 million of EBITDA plus non-cash stock comp expense, that's an increase of $3.2 million or 2% over 2021 levels. Reaching pre-COVID-19 operating levels in the negatively impacted businesses is a goal we are continuing to move towards. While we saw a rebound in activity in most of these businesses beginning late in 2021, Q4 2022 revenues remained depressed from pre-COVID-19 levels. Q4 2022 revenues from travel, foreign exchange, remittance, financial technologies, and e-learning businesses at EbixCash were 27% lower than Q4 2019 revenues, which is the last quarter prior to the beginning of the negative impact from COVID-19 on our Company. However, just one year ago, these business lines were approximately 53% lower than Q4 2019 revenues.
In 2022, we made significant progress in returning to pre-COVID-19 operating levels and our goal is to return quarterly revenues for these businesses to those pre-19 -- pre-COVID-19 levels in late 2023 or early 2024. While we have some important hurdles to clear in the coming months, most notably, changing our capital structure to address the corporate credit facility maturity, we continue to believe that the market positions we have obtained through years of service to our customers will over the long-term lead to a strong and successful Company that will provide value to all of our stakeholders. Our employees work hard every day to deliver for our customers and I want to thank the over 10,000 folks that really define Ebix to the marketplaces that we serve.
Finally, Ebix's Form 10-K will be filed later today, and I would like to now turn the call over to the President of our North American Insurance businesses, Ash Sawhney, for his remarks on our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 operations.
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Ash Sawhney: Thank you, Darren, and Steve. I will now talk about the Q4 2022 and full year 2022 analysis of the North American business. The Q4 2022 revenue was up 6% compared to Q3 of 2022 for North America. This was enabled by a cyclical increase in our Medical Certification business and the strong performance of our Life and Annuity Exchanges. On a full year basis, the 2022 revenue for North America was relatively flat compared to 2021, while our worldwide Insurance Exchange business grew by around 2% in 2022 as compared to 2021. In 2022, our core Insurance Exchange, which constitutes roughly 70% of our revenue, continued to grow to show steady growth. The Life Annuity, Property and Casualty, and Health Exchanges were up 3.5% in aggregate.
The Q4 revenue in aggregate was down 3% compared to Q4 of 2021, largely on account of softening in the Medical Certification division. This group was up 50% sequentially in Q4, but down 11% over the same quarter in 2021. I will now provide a more granular analysis of our various business units. The Life and Annuity Exchanges, including Life and Annuity order entry, illustration, CRM, and underwriting exchanges were up 4% in Q4 compared to Q3, up 7% in Q4 compared to the same quarter in '21, and up 5% on a full year basis comparing 2022 to 2021. The Annuity Exchange, which is the largest of all our exchanges continued its strong run. Revenues were up 8% in Q4 '22 sequentially, up 23% compared to Q4 of '21, and on a full year basis, the revenue was up 20%.
Q4 '22 was the highest revenue quarter on record, 2022 was the highest year on record, and November 2022 was the highest month on record. Total number of carriers now exceeds 57. Total transactions processed exceeded 580,000 and the total premiums processed through the platform now exceeds $98 billion in 2022. These were all record numbers. Approximately half of the Annuity growth in 2022 came from increased business from our existing customers and the other half came from new clients added to the platform over the past 18 months. We added CNO and Ohio National to our client list in Q4. Our Life Exchanges comprised of Life order entry, illustration, and CRM were collectively up 2% in Q4 compared to Q3 and also up 2% for the year. The platforms collectively processed over $50 billion in premiums.
The number of carriers on our various Life platforms now exceeds 100 and the number of distributors exceeds 100,000. We ran over 13 million illustrations on the Life platform in 2022 and processed over 1.3 million applications. These were all record numbers. The underwriting division was flat in Q3 compared to Q -- sorry, in Q4 compared to Q3. On a full year basis, the business was down 5%. We are seeing signs of the division starting to recover from the resource constraints discussed previously. We have added several new capabilities to the platform, which will provide incremental revenue streams in the future. These include a reinsurance module, processing for annuities, and processing capabilities for Bermuda and Singapore businesses. Last year, we embarked on an effort to restructure and reposition the Ebix CRM division.
More specifically, we increased our focus on the retail market segment, particularly in the mid-tier BGA segment. We repositioned the platform as a one-stop gateway for advisors to conduct all their business such as managing customer data and communication, submitting new business, getting case status updates, managing commissions, and conducting other day-to-day functions. The platform is now tightly integrated with all Ebix tools, including quoting, illustration, and order entry. In addition, the platform provides integration with overs 10 -- 74 third-party systems, enabling a vast ecosystem accessible through a single gateway. We are starting to see a turnaround in this business. Retail sales were up 21% in '22 compared to 2021. Revenue was up 3% and attrition rates were reduced by 50% during the same period.
Our Health Benefit Administration business was down 8% sequentially in Q4 of '22, largely because Q3 left a high watermark in terms of quarterly revenue. The business was flat in Q4 compared to the same quarter the year before and on a full year basis was up 3.5%, delivering the highest yearly revenue this group has ever recorded. This business continues to generate steady revenue with over 77 large payor customers servicing over 43,000 employer groups and covering over 9 million lives. We are on track to rebound -- to onboard Aon in Q2 of this year, which will provide an uptick in our subscription revenue. Our Medical Certification business Oakstone was up 50% sequentially in Q4 compared to Q3 of 2022. This cyclical spike was expected as the division derives approximately a third of its business in Q4.
Compared to Q4 '21, the revenue was down 11%. This decline was partly due to the changing dynamics in the Gift Card incentives that are bundled with the subscription offers and partly due to the lifecycle decline of the audio content product which typically gets 60% of the revenue in the first half of a full year life cycle. That product happens to be in the second half of its life cycle. We are working on several initiatives to increase revenue, including targeting products towards younger physicians and also adding new mobile-enabled capabilities. Oakstone remains a strong brand in the continuing medical education space with over 50 years of history. We service two out of every 10 physicians in 30-plus medical and dental specialties. Our content is created in partnership with leading medical institutions such as Harvard Medical, Cleveland Clinic, Brigham and Women, Dana-Farber, John Hopkins, and 20 other such institutions.
The consulting business was up 3% in Q4 compared to Q3 and down 2% for the full year. As was outlined in Q3 of '22, we are now packaging our consulting services for our new and existing Exchange customers. Packaged under a program called Accelerated go-to-market, AGM, we now offer strategy, product design, onboarding support, testing, and training services to our Exchange customers. Most new clients will be availing of the service including CNO and Ohio National, who was signed-on in Q4 and will be receiving several of these services in the coming quarters. We also signed new contracts with Equitable, Symetra, and RW Baird in Q4. Our P&C business, the smallest of our vertical business units, was down roughly 6% in '22 compared to '21. In Q4, we rolled out a new release of the RiskEnvision product, one of the main product lines in this group.
We are seeing a healthy pipeline and expect '23 to show growth over 2022. The Risk Compliance business was down 8% in Q3 -- sorry, in Q4 compared to Q3, which was a strong quarter for us. On a full year basis, the business was up 3%. This business continues to be a steady performer for us with a 28 year history, serving over 600 customers, including 70 of the largest Fortune 500 companies. Looking forward, we feel optimistic about the path we're on. Several factors contribute to our optimism which are outlined as follows: The current macroeconomic environment is favorable to several of our core units such as Annuities. The high interest rates are providing a strong tailwind for the industry. This is increasing the number of Annuity transactions and also bringing new entrants to the market, both these are favorable trends for our business.
We are seeing an uptick in transactions continuing into the early months of 2023. More on this when we report our Q1 '23 earnings. The jobs market is continuing to cool off in our industry. Over the past few months, we have seen a marked progress in filling our backlog and have also seen a drop off in attrition rates. We also reorganized our delivery organizations and Exchange division in 2022. We were previously organized by product line which had limitations and redundancies. We have now aligned ourselves with a centralized customer focus operating organization, including client services, product strategy and development, and production support. This structure will be important as we see ourselves selling and servicing comprehensive digital solutions that encompass several of our products.
We are excited about our new sales organization. We fully rebuilt our sales organization in 2022, with a majority of the sales organization having been hired within the last 12 months. These newly hired experts service client partners and are viewed by our clients as solutionists for helping them find the right fit for their technology needs. This setup allows us to better serve our customers and optimizes the penetration of our products within our existing client base. We are already seeing positive results. The number of customers using free or more of our products and services has improved by 20% in the past year. The pipeline going into 2023 is healthy. Ebix has always been at the forefront of product innovation. In line with its legacy, Ebix is launching the Super Highway, it's most advanced Exchange to support Life and Annuities processing.
This new Super Highway is designed to significantly unify and enhance the advisor experience in selling Life and Annuity products. It is a well-known fact that selling -- that the selling process across the industry is fairly disjointed, where-in the advisor has to navigate through multiple subsystems across the life cycle of selling a policy. Super Highway will solve that problem. From customer needs analysis, product research, quoting, illustration, order submission, policy issuance, and post-issue policy maintenance, the advisor will be able to navigate through a unified and streamlined user experience, an experience that will be aided by data-driven artificial intelligence, guided user activity, machine learning, and natural language processing.
The Super Highway was unveiled at the recent Ebix Exposition in Orlando. We believe, the expansion of the annuity sales will also increase the need for post-issue policy servicing. This includes both financial and non-financial transactions such as policy changes, withdrawals, fund transfers, dollar cost averaging, and asset rebalancing. Ebix has already developed a solution called Annuity Maintenance Platform, called AMP. We believe the adoption of AMP increased considerably as the market for annuities in general continues to expand. Overall, we are excited about the outlook for our North American business. As some companies brace for an uncertain economic environment, our business in North America will continue to be resilient. This stems from a wide array of products that collectively provide a natural hedge in any economic climate.
Our strength is also founded on a very diverse set of customers, which includes hundreds of insurance companies and banks, 10s of thousands of advisors, dozens of top medical institutions, and several of the top Fortune 500 companies. Our pricing model which is largely recurring in nature, adds to the solidity of our business model. We are mindful of the important part we play in running some of the largest exchanges in the industry. This is a responsibility we take very seriously. I'm grateful to all the Ebix employees who work hard to make it all happen. I will now pass it along to Robin for his comments.
Robin Raina: Good morning. This has been a record year for Ebix in terms of revenue, with the Company clocking approximately $1.05 billion in GAAP revenues. For me, a few things stand out as regards the annual performance. Constant currency revenues of $1.1 billion with 11.3% year-over-year growth. On a constant currency basis, all three channels of the company showed year-over-year growth. Constant currency Insurance Exchange revenues increased by 2% in '22 versus '21. On a constant currency basis, RCS revenues increased by 11% as compared to 2021. On a constant currency basis, EbixCash revenues increased 14% year-over-year. On a constant currency basis, nine of the 11 major geographies experienced year-over-year growth in revenues.
In 2022, the company generated $142.8 million of EBITDA plus non-cash stock compensation expense, an increase of $3.2 million or 2% over 2021 levels. I compare the 2022 numbers to 2020 fiscal year numbers to get a perspective on the overall business growth. Between 2020 and 2022, worldwide GAAP revenues have grown up -- have grown by 68%. Between 2020 and 2022, EbixCash GAAP revenues have grown by 112%. While comparing 2022 fiscal year numbers with '21 fiscal year numbers, the performance of a few international operations, in addition to US and India, was especially noteworthy. Latin America year-over-year grew by 42%. Singapore year-over-year grew by 10%. Indonesia year-over-year grew by 261%. Philippines year-over-year grew by 91%. Middle East year-over-year grew by 30%.
As regards the quarterly Q4 '22 year-over-year performance, a few things to note. On a constant currency basis, Q4 '22 revenues increased 5% year-over-year and would have been $23.8 million higher in the quarter, but for foreign exchange rate changes during the quarter. On a constant currency basis, eight of the 11 major geographies worldwide had year-over-year revenue growth in Q4 '22. In Q4 '22, Insurance Exchanges worldwide increased 1% on a constant currency basis. Risk Compliance Solutions' constant currency revenue increased 14% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of '22. EbixCash constant currency revenue increased 7% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of '22. Excluding the Prepaid Gift Card revenues, EbixCash revenues increased year-over-year by 30%.
I'm also pleased with the operating cash flow performance in the quarter, with the Company reporting $32.5 million of operating cash flow in the fourth quarter of '22. We started the year with cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, and restricted cash of $125 million -- of $125.2 million as of 31, December '21. And as of 31, December '22, we still had net cash of $113.4 million after accounting for the $22.9 million late withdrawal by the bank. This was after the company cumulatively spent $111.5 million in '22 just on a few key areas, $33.2 million of cash interest paid, $23.5 million used to reduce the principal outstanding on our corporate credit facility, $24 million for income-related taxes paid globally, a combined $21.5 million expended on capital expenditures and software development costs, and an additional $9.3 million for dividend payments.
We had $98.7 million of cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, and restricted cash as of 30, September '22. And as of 31, December '22, we still had net cash of $113.4 million. All of that speaks to the cash generation abilities of the company. At the present minute, I have limited ability to speak on the debt refinancing front, as we are governed by tight confidence -- confidentiality agreements with any and all entities involved. Management continues to work with the Company's Board of Directors and outside financial and legal advisors, to address the refinancing of its credit facility, which the company in cooperation with the syndicate of banks extended to May '23 -- 2023 in order to give the company time to continue to pursue alternatives that will refinance the credit facility.
The company has multiple options that it is exploring to ensure that the credit facility is largely or wholly refinanced as quickly as possible. Rest assured that we are fully aware that while our operating income continues to be strong, our net income is getting negatively affected by the high cost of bank interest and associated legal and advisory fees associated with the refinancing and extension exercise. We also believe that once the EbixCash IPO is carried out successfully, it is expected to reduce our interest cost substantially. In the meanwhile, we are working with our financial adviser, Jefferies on a number of possible options. Our goal remains to seek a structure that is in the best interest of all of our stakeholders. Our business is thriving an healthy worldwide.
Our operating metrics are strong and our senior management convinced about the opportunity ahead of us. In the long term, we are focused on resolving the non-operating metrics like interest cost and some of the non-recurring cost that we are presently incurring on advisors, of that sector (ph) associated with the refinancing. We have a plan in place to grow our operating income further and client -- and client reduce extraneous costs, but our first priority is to handle the debt refinancing in the short-term and then have a cost structure that ultimately is set for income maximization. We would like to get to that ultimate plan in 2023 itself and are working towards it. Success isn't always about greatness, it's about consistency. At Ebix, we are firm believers in this cohort from and we will continue to strive to deliver consistent revenue growth and results that we can be proud of.
After 23 years of consistency in terms of growth and other operating metrics, Ebix has proven that it is completely committed to achieving greatness on the foundations of consistency. We are thus committed to creating a capital structure that maximizes value for our stockholders. In closing, as always, I want to thank our customers, our partners, and our employees for their continued trust in us and for contributing to an outstanding fiscal 2022. With that I will now pass the call over to the operator and open it up for questions. Thank you.
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