Quad/Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:QUAD) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Quad/Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:QUAD) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 21, 2024
Quad/Graphics, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good morning, and welcome to the Quad's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Conference Call. During today’s call all participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. A slide presentation accompanies today's webcast and participants are invited to follow along, advancing the slides themselves. To access the webcast, follow instructions posted in the earnings release. Alternatively, you can access the slide presentation on the Investors section of Quad's website under the Events and Presentations link. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, that this event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Katie Krebsbach, Quad's Investor Relations Manager. Katie, please go ahead.
Katie Krebsbach: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. With me today are Joel Quadracci, Quad's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Tony Staniak, Quad's Chief Financial Officer. Joel will lead today's call with a business update, and Tony will follow with a summary of Quad's fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results, followed by Q&A. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being webcast and forward-looking statements are subject to safe harbor provisions as outlined in our quarterly news release and in today's slide presentation on Slide 2. Quad's financial results are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. However, this presentation also contains non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted diluted earnings per share, free cash flow, net debt and debt leverage ratio.
We have included in the slide presentation reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures. Finally, a replay of the call and the slide presentation will be available on the Investors section of quad.com shortly after our call concludes today. I will now hand over the call to Joel.
Joel Quadracci: Thank you, Katie. And good morning, everyone. Beginning on Slide 3, I am pleased to report we delivered solid 2023 results, meeting our guidance across all metrics. Our results included adjusted EBITDA above the midpoint of our guidance range, and adjusted EBITDA margin consistent with 2022, despite an 8% decline in annual net sales, created by a significant postal rate increase that was well above the rate of inflation, ongoing economic uncertainty, especially in early 2023 and the impact of elevated interest rates on the financial services sector, leading to reduced direct mail budgets. I will share our share more detail on our net sales breakdown shortly. We ended 2023, with strong free cash flow, that was near the high end of our guidance range, and used our cash generation to further strengthen our balance sheet, reducing our net debt leverage to two times, our lowest leverage levels since 2017.
Since January 1 2020, we have paid off $564 million in debt, a 55% reduction over four years. Through 2023, we also continue to return capital to shareholders through share repurchases, we will continue to be opportunistic in terms of our future share repurchases. And, as we announced last week, we have reinstated a quarterly dividend of $0.05 per share. We remain confident in our ability to address business impacts, including long term expected organic declines in large scale print, due to our well established and disciplined approach to managing all aspects of our business. This includes treating all costs as variable, aligning our cost structure to revenue opportunities, and optimizing our print manufacturing platform by consolidating work into plants, where we can achieve the greatest manufacturing efficiencies, and subsequently selling assets no longer required for business operations.
At the same time, we continue to aggressively push forward on our growth strategy, is a marketing experience or MX company. The three pillars of our growth strategy are outlined on Slide 4, and include delivering integrated service excellence, which we achieve by focusing on solving problems, removing pain points and sources of friction from the marketing process, and providing transparency on clients marketing expenditures. Accelerating market penetration in key verticals and product lines, with the greatest expansion opportunities, and continuing to leverage our unique company culture, which is based on honesty and transparency to grow as an MX company. On Slide 5, we show how we continue to make progress in our revenue diversification strategy into higher value higher margin offerings.
Between 2018 and 2023. integrated solutions and targeted print increased as a portion of total net sales, and now represent 63% of net sales, an increase from five years ago when they accounted for 54% of net sales. Our integrated solutions include agency solutions, while targeted print comprises catalogs, direct mail, packaging, and in-store signage and displays. Large scale print which includes retail inserts magazines and directories, and continues to decrease as a percentage of total net sales due to organic declines. The increase in our international locations is primarily driven by stronger sales in Latin America, especially in Mexico, a strategic extension of our U.S. platform. Moving on to Slide 6, we achieved client service excellence and distinct competitive advantage through our suite of flexible, scalable and connected MX solutions.
These solutions span every facet of the marketing journey, from offline to online, across creative production and media and supported by data driven intelligence and state of the art technology. We tailor each of these solutions to client objectives driving cost efficiencies, improving speed to market, strengthening market effectiveness, and delivering value on investments. Quad's data driven intelligence solutions and power smarter decisions to maximize marketing effectiveness and generate quantifiable impact, while our client facing AI driven technology solutions remove friction in the marketing process, by helping clients connect marketing strategy, global content creation, analytics and personalized communications across online and offline channels.
We have long employed artificial intelligence and robotic process automation and cognitive insights, and continue to explore new ways to apply generative AI across internal workflows and client facing solutions. Our creative solutions help clients increase engagement, with their brands to accelerate business growth support all channels through every step of the creative process, including strategy, brand design, campaign ideation, free media, adaptive design, and content creation. As far as production, Quad offers a wide range of production solutions for deploying content to all channels offline and online. This is a major point of differentiation among our competitive set. Traditional agencies or agency holding companies develop creative and then outsource production, while traditional consulting firms provide strategy and then outsource implementation.
Quad however, is able to strategize, create and execute all campaign elements across all channels, using our own internal resources, providing a more efficient marketing experience for our clients and a better experience for the consumer. And lastly, through our media solutions, we provide strategic omnichannel media planning and placement, managing hundreds of millions of dollars of media billings annually. All our media solutions prioritize transparency and neutrality. So our clients can feel confident that their media spend is supported by the best data, platform and partners, for their unique needs to generate measurable impact. As I shared with you on last quarter's call Joshua Lowcock, a well-respected and experienced leader in global media and data, joined Quad, as President of Media.
Since joining us a few short months ago, he is quickly set about implementing the next evolution of our audience targeting and media engagement offering, which will improve our competitiveness and drive revenue growth. This next evolution aligns our data and analytics offering, with our media and planning offering, as shown on Slide seven. By doing this, we're integrating audience identification abilities, anchored on Quad's, proprietary household data offering, with planning and measurement across all forms of client media, online, offline in-home or in-store. The value to our clients will be superior audience identification, and fully integrated planning, placement and measurement to optimize spend in almost real time. This integrated offering is the foundation of a new Quad media offering grounded in our unique household insights and data capability that we will be bringing to market soon.
Another area in which we are strategically investing is retail media networks. Earlier this month, we announced our acquisition of DART Innovation, an in-store digital media solutions provider to further build on our retail expertise and offerings, as shown on Slide 8. With DART's capabilities and technology, we aim to revolutionize the shopping experience for retailers, consumer packaged goods companies and consumers by delivering targeted promotions on digital screens right at the store shelf, the most critical moment in the purchasing decision. This strategic investment expands and seamlessly integrates into our suite of MX solutions, and enables an integrated consumer purchasing journey across home, online and in-store. Retailers are highly interested in our offerings in this space and we are already leveraging DART's capabilities to launch the first phase of our rollout with the Save Mart companies, the largest private grocery retailer on the West Coast.
Turning to Slide 9. We also continue to innovate solutions in our core print business, especially postage optimization programs to help offset ongoing significant postal rate increases. Postage makes up the largest portion of cost for our print clients as compared to paper and manufacturing. The U.S. Postal Service continues to pursue what we believe is a flawed strategy of implementing enormous postal hikes in attempt to make up for billions of dollars in annual losses. This strategy is driving away the very volume that supports its existence. In the last year alone, mail volumes are plummeted by 11 billion pieces according to the USPS data. This is primarily due to the cumulative effect of postal rate hikes. We expect to see additional volume reductions if this unsound strategy is not fixed, as our clients cannot continue to absorb massive rate increases, some of which have totaled as much as 57% over the last three years, more than triple the rate of inflation.
We are urging swift action to preserve the affordability of the printed mail channel before it potentially has to undergo a massive tax bailout. We have been working with members of Congress, White House staff and our client base to moderate these increases. This effort is important as the postal services at the core of a $1.9 trillion mailing industry that provides family supporting jobs for 7.9 million Americans and is the backbone for a large portion of the private sector. We will share updates on our efforts to address this crisis, including the launch of a new dynamic postal optimization program at our 23rd Postal Conference next month. Turning to Slide 10. We are pleased to show how we're growing our presence with well-known brands with a particular focus on commerce which includes retail, consumer packaged goods and direct-to-consumer, financial services, health and publishing.
These reputable well-known brands include Amazon, Walmart, Red Bull, American Express, Abbott Labs and more, and are all admired for their excellence and the loyalty they have built with consumers. We take great pride in knowing they trust us to help deliver in their marketing vision. On Slide 11, we show an example of how we are using our connected solutions to improve consumer response rates and revenue for leading brands and marketers. Wolverine Worldwide, one of the world's leading marketers and licensors of branded footwear and apparel, including Merrell, Saucony and Wolverine had used direct mail successfully for many years. But over time, started seeing a decline in its effectiveness. The company had considered reducing or altogether eliminating direct mail to focus exclusively on digital campaigns for growing and strengthening consumer connections.
We partnered with Wolverine Worldwide to optimize its direct marketing performance, conducting premarket testing and integrated campaign support. We used accelerated marketing insights, our proprietary premarket testing platform to research different messages and creative treatments for consumer preference and to build an audience influence messaging hierarchy. Our testing included multiple variables in more than 1,400 different combinations to assemble the optimum content and design for a challenger direct mail piece to outperform existing content already in market. We also leveraged Informed Delivery, a U.S. postal service solution that lets consumers preview upcoming mail deliveries in e-mail to send digital challenger ads to the same target audience online and via social media.
The results were exceptional. Year-over-year, we were able to help Wolverine achieve nearly double its response rate. The client also doubled conversion rates, thanks to more effective digital creative and messaging, accomplishing twice the click-through rate and increasing sales, an incredible 261% per buyer. We look forward to continuing to work with Wolverine to increase engagement between its brands and consumers to accelerate business growth. On Slide 12, we show an example of how our flexible, scalable and connected solutions are helping Rural King, a farm and home retailer with 135 stores across 13 states, increased marketing efficiency and effectiveness. We have been steadily expanding our relationship with Rural King's since 2016 when we started printing its retail ad inserts.
Soon thereafter, we added media planning and placement for inserts, eventually become the retailer's full media agency of record in 2020. Since then, we have expanded our relationship to include creative development and execution for all channels, including linear and connected TV, radio, display, YouTube and social. Robust data and analytics solutions, including the use of our proprietary tool for optimizing cross-channel marketing spend, a custom dashboard for tracking real-time channel performance and media mix modeling services that transparently detail marketing return on investment and our proprietary content management system that enables content at scale across marketing channels. Rural King also uses our data and analytics capabilities to conduct brand health measurement, tracking perception and reputation among consumers along with performance in the marketplace.
Our data and analytics expertise is important to Rural King, as is our integrated service approach which includes a single point of contact for all Quad services. This offering removes the complexity of working with multiple vendors and partners, enabling Rural King to focus on delivering the best consumer experience. We value our relationship and look forward to continuing to partner on new initiatives, including brand positioning work this spring. Turning to Slide 13. For more than 52 years, Quad has worked to create positive sustainable impact at our company and in the communities where we live and work. Recently, our work on our two notable recognitions. Quad was a finalist in the Greater Good Awards presented by Digiday, Glossy, modern retail and Worklife, for ongoing support of social causes, including staff empowerment, extracurricular programs and community partnerships.
And members of our corporate responsibility team were recently recognized by Milwaukee-based Uplifting Impact for their efforts to advance inclusive leadership at Quad. Before I turn the call over to Tony, I would like to thank our employees for their commitment to performing well for our clients, while we proactively manage all aspects of our business for long-term strength and stability. I have great confidence in our team and continue to be enthusiastic about our growth opportunities as an MX company. I'll now turn the call over to Tony for a financial review.
Anthony Staniak: Thanks, Joel, and good morning, everyone. Slide 14 provides a snapshot of our fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results. Net sales were $788 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, down 11% from 2022. For the full year, net sales were $3 billion, down 8% from 2022. The net sales decline was primarily due to lower print, paper and logistics sales as well as the 2022 divestiture of our Argentina print operations. Print volumes were negatively impacted by ongoing external headwinds, including significant postal rate increases, economic uncertainty and the effect of elevated interest rates on specific clients. Adjusted EBITDA was $66 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 as compared to $79 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, and adjusted EBITDA margin declined 8.3% in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to 8.9% in the fourth quarter of 2022.
For the full year, adjusted EBITDA was $234 million in 2023 compared to $252 million in 2022. However, adjusted EBITDA margin improved from 7.8% to 7.9%. The decrease in full year adjusted EBITDA was primarily due to $11 million of lower pension income as well as the impact of lower sales partially offset by benefits from improved manufacturing productivity and savings from cost reduction initiatives. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.23 in the fourth quarter of 2023 as compared to $0.41 in the fourth quarter of 2022. For the full year, adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.52 in 2023 compared to $0.89 in 2022. The decline was primarily due to lower adjusted net earnings and was partially offset by the positive impact from share repurchases.
In the fourth quarter, we continued to return capital to shareholders through share repurchases. And since the second quarter of 2022, we have repurchased 5.9 million shares or approximately 11% of our outstanding shares for a total purchase price of $23 million. Free cash flow was $77 million in 2023 compared to $94 million in 2022. The decline in free cash flow was primarily due to an $11 million increase in capital expenditures as we continue to invest in innovation and automation initiatives. During 2023, we invested $71 million in capital expenditures to drive efficiencies. In addition to free cash flow, we also continue to generate significant cash from asset sales, as shown on Slide 15. During the 5-year period from 2020 to 2024, we expect we will generate over $700 million of free cash flow and proceeds from asset sales.
These sales include divestitures of certain non-core portions of our business as well as sales of property, plant and equipment from closed facilities, such as our Merced, California print building that we sold in 2023 for net proceeds of $19 million. Beginning in the fourth quarter of 2023 and into the first quarter of 2024, we have announced the closure of an additional four owned facilities from which we will generate further proceeds from asset sales. This strong cash generation fuels our capital allocation strategy, as shown on Slide 16. Our capital allocation priorities include using free cash flow and cash proceeds from asset sales to invest in scaling our offerings as a marketing experience company, such as the acquisition of DART, continued debt reduction and return capital to shareholders.
As announced last week, on February 16, our Board of Directors reinstated a quarterly dividend of $0.05 per share or $0.20 per share on an annualized basis. We are pleased to return capital to shareholders through the quarterly dividend, and we also expect to continue to be opportunistic in terms of our future share repurchases. We saw our commitment to debt reduction on Slide 17. As part of a multiyear debt reduction strategy, at the end of 2023, we reduced net debt by $564 million, a 55% reduction from over $1 billion of debt we had on January 1, 2020, and we reached 2.0 times debt leverage, which was the low end of our previous long-term targeted leverage range. We intend to further reduce debt leverage to approximately 1.8 times by the end of 2024.
We also are lowering our targeted debt leverage range by a 0.25 turn to now be 1.75 times to 2.25 times. Slide 18 includes a summary of our debt capital structure. At the end of 2023, our net debt was $470 million, our blended interest rate was 6.9%, and our debt was 44% floating and 56% fixed. In early 2024, we generated $53 million of cash by successfully increasing the commitment with one of our banks to add $25 million to our term loan and by entering into $28 million of leases for two large printing presses instead of purchasing those presses outright. We then used our revolving credit facility and cash on hand to repay an $88 million term loan maturity, and at that same time, the total capacity under our revolving credit facility decreased by $90 million to $343 million.
With the step-down in debt complete, our next nearest significant debt maturity is now November of 2026. On Slide 19, we have included our 2024 financial guidance. Annual net sales are expected to decline 5% to 9% compared to the prior year. The decline in net sales is primarily due to expected organic declines in certain product lines heightened by significant postal rate increases. In addition, our net sales guidance will be impacted by the ending of a long-standing relationship with a large grocery client. Our relationship with this client concludes at the end of this month, and represented approximately 3% of our 2023 net sales. While the loss of any client is disappointing, our revenue is highly diversified with no single cloud client representing more than 5% of our annual revenue.
We have a large base of over 2,700 clients that provide sales growth opportunities as we continue to expand our offerings as a marketing experience company. Full year 2024 adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $205 million and $245 million with $225 million at the midpoint of that range, representing a $9 million decline from 2023 adjusted EBITDA, but a 28 basis point improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin to 8.2%, due to benefits from improved manufacturing productivity and savings from cost reduction initiatives. These cost reduction initiatives include the closures of our Sacramento, California; Ethingham in Bolingbrook, Illinois; and Saratoga Springs, New York facilities as well as other labor reductions in production and SG&A. These decisions, while difficult, are expected to result in $16 millions of annual cost savings.
From a quarterly perspective, we anticipate our lowest adjusted EBITDA to be in the first quarter of 2024 as the benefits from the cost reduction actions will reach their full annualized amount late in the second quarter of 2024. We then expect improved adjusted EBITDA in the second half of 2024 due to the full benefit of the restructuring actions combined with higher sales during our seasonal production peak. We expect 2024 free cash flow to be in the range of $50 million to $70 million, with $60 million at the midpoint of that range, representing a $17 million decline compared to 2023. In 2024, free cash flow will be most impacted by higher restructuring payments, particularly in the first half of the year due to the recent plant closures and other labor actions.
The higher restructuring payments and the reduction in cash flow from lower net sales will be partially offset by improvements in working capital, lower interest payments due to our debt reduction and lower capital expenditures. Capital expenditures are expected to be in the range of $60 million to $70 million, approximately $6 million lower than 2023 at the midpoint of our 2024 guidance range. We expect our free cash flow to be augmented by cash proceeds from asset sales. The extent of which will be based on the timing of selling the buildings that were recently announced for closure. With our strong cash generation, we will continue to prioritize debt reduction and expect to further reduce our net debt leverage ratio to be approximately 1.8 times by the end of 2024, near the low end of our new long-term targeted net debt leverage range of 1.75 to 2.25 times.
Slide 20 includes our key investment highlights as we continue to build on our momentum as a marketing experience company. We believe that Quad is a compelling long-term investment maybe even more compelling with the recently announced quarterly dividend, and we remain focused on growing net sales and driving higher profitability through continued diversification of our revenue and clients. With our expanded offerings as a marketing experience company, including investments in new offerings such as in-store digital promotions with the DART acquisition. There is a significant addressable revenue opportunity with both our large base of existing clients as well as new clients. In addition, our successful multiyear debt reduction strategy, including achieving 2.0 times debt leverage at the end of 2023, provides us increased flexibility in capital allocation.
Our focus on debt reduction will not change as that is in the best interest of Quad and its shareholders as we reduce interest costs in this high interest rate environment and further strengthen what we believe is an industry-leading financial foundation. While continuing to reduce debt, we also now have the capital flexibility to add to the ways we provide returns to shareholders with the reinstatement of the quarterly dividend. With that, I'd like to turn the call back to our operator for questions.
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