BGSF, Inc.
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 11 Mar 2021

[Operator:]

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the BGSF Inc. Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2020 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Now I will turn the call over to Hala Elsherbini, Investor Relations, to provide instructions and read the safe harbor statement. Please go ahead.

[Hala Elsherbini:]

Thank you, and welcome to the BGSF fourth quarter and year-end 2020 earnings results conference call. With me today are Beth Garvey, President and CEO; and Dan Hollenbach, Chief Financial Officer. After the speakers' opening remarks, there will be a Q&A session. As noted, today's call is being recorded and webcast live. A replay will be available later today and archived for 90 days on the company's Investor Relations page.

[Beth Garvey:]

Thank you, Hala, and thank you to everyone for joining today's call to discuss our fourth quarter results and a very eventful 2020. First, I hope everyone has remained healthy and safe. I'll begin today's call with a review of our operational highlights and segment performance. I will then turn the call over to Dan to discuss our financial results and return at the end with some closing remarks on our general outlook. I'd like to start by taking a moment to acknowledge all our team members at each of our BGSF business units for their continued hard work and dedication, especially during such a tough year. Our business continuity plan executed mid-March has been the bedrock of our resiliency and fortified our ability to support our team members and continued servicing our field talent and class partners. We are in a fortunate position as a stronger company today and with more purpose.

[Dan Hollenbach:]

Thank you, Beth, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We filed our Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 27, 2020, earlier today, so I'll focus remarks on the key financial highlights for the quarter and the fiscal year period. We ended the year on solid footing, supported by our diversified business model. As Beth mentioned, we leveraged several IT road map projects that were well underway at the onset of pandemic, and this put us in a much better position to navigate the year. While we are maintaining the conservative approach to expense management, we are reserving our remaining IT road map projects.

[Beth Garvey:]

Thanks, Dan. I'm extremely pleased with how our entire company is executing. 2020 was a year of resilience, preparation, automation and restructuring for BGSF. We executed well to optimize our operational structure, and we are already off to a strong start to the year. We were also honored with several industry awards in 2020, including the #7 top staffing agency by the Dallas Business Journal, 70th largest staffing agency and 50th largest IT staffing agency in the U.S. by Staffing Industry Analysts. And we received accolades from Smart Resources and Accountable Search for best of staffing in client and talent satisfaction. From an outlook perspective, our teams have aligned strategic plans to drive improvement results for 2021. Our Real Estate segment is working to relaunch markets after the 2020 pandemic created a pause. With the moratorium in place, there is still some level of uncertainty for another extension, but we anticipate a better second half as delayed capital projects should come back online. For our professional group, we anticipate strong synergies from the Momentum Solutionz acquisition in addition to follow-on project activity. We also see our cross-selling focus drives higher demand for our differentiated solutions offerings. Lot industrial continues to execute well, strengthening existing client relationships and building new engagements. The M&A pipeline remains fairly robust with a steady flow of acquisition opportunities. We have a disciplined approach focused on quality companies that offer geographic and brand diversification within our sector specialties. We seek new or complementary high-growth areas and those that are synergistic to margin enhancement, quickly accretive to EBITDA and a strong cultural fit. We believe continuing to build our IT solutions metrics will further scale our offerings and expertise in our Professional segment. Our Momentum Solutionz acquisition is a great demonstration of our M&A strategy to enhance and expand our portfolio of service offerings and capabilities. From an industry perspective, we are encouraged to see that Staffing Industry Analysts forecast for overall industry growth of 12% for 2021. Additionally, labor market reports and temporary staffing volumes point to improving employment trends from the trough of the pandemic. Within workforce solutions, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed solid improvement with February 2021 temporary penetration rate at 1.94%. Compared to the April 2020 trough of 1.57%, which is above the February 2020 pre-pandemic level of 1.93%. We are very well positioned to improve our market share and leverage our diversified offerings. In summary, we turned the disruptions we faced in 2020 into a positive force to reset our opportunities for growth and to seek ways to empower our team members. In turn, this drives innovation, ideas and promotes overall value creation for our stakeholders. It also believes that the hallmark of our success relies on a strong corporate culture. And holding true to that philosophy has kept our teams engaged, supportive and invigorated as we manage through the crisis. We emerged stronger with higher conviction to deliver improved results as we enter our next phase of long-term growth. I'm truly excited about the year ahead and remain highly confident in our ability to take advantage of the many opportunities in front of us to build long-term shareholder value. With that said, I will open the call up for questions.

[Operator:]

. Our first question comes from Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

This is Jacob on for Brian. Earlier this week a federal judge in Texas declared the CDC's eviction moratorium unconstitutional, and now the CDC will need to either comply or there could be a junctive - injunctive relief. What's your view on when the moratorium might end? And when it does, can you quantify the step-up in revenue and DV Staffing's business? And how long it might take after that moratorium is lifted?

[Beth Garvey:]

Well, I think that I would be better able to answer that question at the end of this week. So National Apartment Association actually has their lobbying week. It's actually happening right now. So they are in front of a lot of the lobbying people. They're in front of a lot of the government people. They're in front of a lot of the people that are making these decisions on moratorium. So there's articles flying around everywhere. There's speculation flying around everywhere. So I'm not really sure how to answer that today, but I feel like we would be in a better position after the NAA week when they, on the - the NAA week on the heel, I should say. And what that means to us, there are a lot - there is a lot of movement right now with rent relief. And those things do give a positive spin to the management companies now that they're getting something because before they weren't getting anything. So now if there's some sort of rent relief that they can manage to, we do see that the - we do feel like there'll be opportunities for us in the future. It just depends on how quickly that rent relief starts to hit the management company.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Okay. I know most of the M&A is around adding more geographies and logos. But has the company thought about any tuck-in acquisitions on the payment side of the real estate business?

[Beth Garvey:]

And I'm sorry, on what side of the real estate business?

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Payments.

[Beth Garvey:]

We have not.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Any tuck-in acquisitions in general?

[Beth Garvey:]

Well, in that sector, we are the largest. We've had several that have been brought to us for real estate. They did the same thing. But if we - there are always end markets that we're already in, and we already have the bulk of the business. So there's really no reason for us to buy an acquisition of some place that we're already in. We are the largest, as far as we know, in real estate supplier. So I just don't think that an acquisition in that area is in the works for us. Now that doesn't mean that we wouldn't look at other opportunities that help support the real estate business. And we have launched a supplier project right now. So people who are suppliers to multifamily, we have started to help in those areas. And I think that, that could be an expansion for us as well. But as far as doing payments side of it, no, we have not looked at that.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Okay. And just 1 more for me. As more businesses open up, can you talk about any challenges on staffing delivery, such as in person versus remote delivery? Do you expect there will be a hybrid model going forward? Or will that be determined on a customer-by-customer basis?

[Beth Garvey:]

There already is a hybrid model out there, and it is on a customer-by-customer basis. So there's a lot of people that are adopting, they work from wherever forever model. And then there's some that are starting to think about how they may want to do their new hires. So if you are being onboarded and you're a new hire, then you would come in for a while and then be able to have some kind of opportunity to go out. There's people who are looking at it from a perspective of whether or not someone is successful and being able to work from home. And if they're not successful being able to work from home, bringing them in for additional coaching. So there's different models in that regard. But for the most part, I don't think that everybody is really decided how that's going to shake out. And I believe as the shots start to be more and more prevalent around the U.S. I think that people are still at the point right now where we're getting ready to start really looking at it. A matter of fact, I'm on a call this next week for the Dallas Regional Chamber in regards to what some of the businesses around Dallas are doing now that Texas has opened up , and people are starting to be able to get shot. So I think still evolving. I don't think that we're there yet, but I think that - I don't know that it will ever go back to everybody who has to be in the office. And there are very few companies that have decided to do that. But I do think it'll be more of a hybrid model.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Jeff Martin with ROTH Capital.

[Jeffrey Martin:]

Beth, I was hoping you could speak to the larger geographies with which you're in, I know you touched on it a little bit from the real estate side. But curious if you're seeing different business dynamics within your different markets, given each state kind of has its own different sets of guidelines and timing of loosening restrictions. I know you're not exposed much to California, but curious about some of the other major geographies that you're in, what the trends you're seeing are lately.

[Beth Garvey:]

We have a lot of our markets that kind of went on pause during COVID. So keeping in mind that if we have 1 person in a market and that person leaves, then we're not actually in that market right now, right? So we had about 18 locations that came off-line during 2020. We are in the process of really bringing back 10 of those this year slowly. We're not seeing any - every market is a little bit different. The markets that are more suburban kind of away from the New York cities or the DCs or the Chicagos, we're seeing a little more activity in those than we are in the larger markets. But again, I think we're still early in that. I will say in the last 2 days, we have hit our headcount on our budget, which is the first time we have done that since February of last year.

[Jeffrey Martin:]

And that's across all three business lines? Or that's just .

[Beth Garvey:]

That's just real estate.

[Jeffrey Martin:]

Okay. And then relative to the SIA industry growth estimate of 12% for this year, not counting the real estate segment. How do you feel about that type of growth rate potential for your Light Industrial and your professional units?

[Beth Garvey:]

That's a combined percentage, Jeff. I believe that our IT professional is right around that 12%. I think they're predicting something around 2% to 3% for Light Industrial. So I think it's just what the net is. It's a combined rate. So - and we feel good about and overall growth along those lines, if you roll this all together.

[Jeffrey Martin:]

Got it. Okay. And then with respect to your IT road map, I mean you've made tons of progress. I think you've done a lot of heavy lifting. What does it look like for this year? And how does that impact EPS? I know you've quantified that in the past. I was curious if you could do that for us again this year.

[Dan Hollenbach:]

Probably about the same as it was last year. In terms of the P&L impact cash flows, it will be about the same because CapEx is around the same. So I think shouldn't be much different this year. So we'll see a tail off beginning in the latter half of 2023.

[Jeffrey Martin:]

Got it. And in terms of the initiatives, what are some of the bigger pieces that are going on now? And what's the timing in terms of completion on those this year?

[Beth Garvey:]

Well, we actually have some pretty big ones that are going on right now. The ones that we initially worked on all the things that were going to be behind the scenes, the ERP, the Power BI and things like that. So we've now moved into the things that are more front office related. So we're working on payroll, billing, HR, our applicant tracking system and our CRM. So all of those things are now - the IT department has done an amazing job in doing information gathering as to what we are looking for and what we need. They've put together a spreadsheet and they're using a tool called Olive to go through and send out the RFPs and get the gathering back in. They're supposed to present to us in April, what their suggesting that we do for those technologies and then launching it this year, which - with a go-live date in April of 2022. So it's a very big initiative, but we've done a lot of work in making sure that we can line them up together so that when we have our front office capabilities with our applicant tracking system that it lines up well with our payroll billing so that all launches out at the same time seamlessly.

[Operator:]

. Our next question comes from Howard Halpern with Taglich Brothers.

[Howard Halpern:]

Congratulations on the fourth quarter, guys. What do you believe the impact from momentum will be? First, in terms of what did they generate in revenue last year? And what are they going to bring to the table in terms of cross-selling or enhancing your current operations?

[Dan Hollenbach:]

They're about - they were running about $3 million in revenue. A portion of that was through - being marketed basically through EdgeRock. So a couple of things

[Beth Garvey:]

And if you think about in project management tools, so they have technologies that they're putting in a PeopleSoft platform. So with us, we now are going to be able to have them go through and project manage in Oracle and in Workday and in ServiceNow. So we can really build out the technologies that we have and have their project manage it for us. So there's huge opportunities for us. And they're coming on strong and we've already put them in front of several of our customers that we have, and they're already winning deals across the board for us. So we're super excited about them.

[Howard Halpern:]

Okay. And you had mentioned early in the call, about entering Canada. What do you view the short and long-term opportunities are in Canada?

[Beth Garvey:]

It's hard to tell. It's early. We don't know. But I mean, these are a lot of our bigger companies like the consulting companies that we would do business with and ask us to guide you.

[Dan Hollenbach:]

Like Amazon.

[Beth Garvey:]

Amazon. And Amazon, too. And so these are bigger companies in there. So we don't really know. We just have had a lot of people ask us to go and a lot of business that we've had to turn down because we weren't there. So we'll see what happens. We're just putting the word out now that we're ready to go and bring it, we're ready.

[Dan Hollenbach:]

We have the structure in place. Yes.

[Howard Halpern:]

And I guess you had mentioned also CapEx should be in that low $2 million area for this year?

[Dan Hollenbach:]

Yes. About - I think we're at two - $1 million to $2 million this year, we should be right on that number again.

[Howard Halpern:]

Okay. And just 1 final one. I mean, hopefully, you survived the Texas storms, but did that disrupt any business for a couple of weeks down in Texas for you?

[Beth Garvey:]

It did.

[Dan Hollenbach:]

Yes. 1 week was totally not good.

[Beth Garvey:]

Yes, it is...

[Howard Halpern:]

Okay. But everybody survived it?

[Beth Garvey:]

We're seeing a nice bounce back from it. So business still has to happen. So some of those companies that didn't necessarily get to work that week are doing double duty to make up for it. But it was a tough week.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Michael Taglich with Taglich Brothers.

[Michael Taglich:]

I'm sorry, it's Mike Taglich. I had a mute button on like an idiot. I just want to thank you guys for working. Last year wasn't the year you wanted to be when you started the year, but that's true for everybody, but thanks. I just have 1 follow-up question, if you will, because most of my questions are answered. If you had a guess about the coming real estate recovery and what the backlog of activity might be? I mean, how - from the hip, how do you feel to the leg up this year?

[Dan Hollenbach:]

We anticipate remaining relatively flat through the first 2 quarters, Mike. So - and I guess hoping is the word. Forecasting, expecting that as the openings develop and as the shops become more prevalent, that we should see some ramp-up in the third and fourth quarter.

[Michael Taglich:]

Okay. Good. And I guess we'll find out like everybody else.

[Dan Hollenbach:]

Yes.

[Operator:]

And our next question comes from Daryl Davis, Private Investor.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Congrats on setting yourself up for a successful future and closing the door on 2020. My question here focuses on SG&A, but I have 2 apologies. First off, I was disconnected during this call. So if this has already been hit, I missed it. Second, I'm only on Page 26 of the 10-K, and I haven't seen the answer yet, so it might be in there. So historically, you have maintained SG&A expenses, and I mean, going back 5, 6 years, 7 years that were non-intuitive. I mean, like lower as a percentage of revenue, though, your operating margins were higher as a percentage of revenues, and I can give companies names, but just think of some low-margin peers, they run tight SG&A, but also low operating margins. Their SG&A might be in 12%, 13%, 14% range. And in some of your higher end peers, and you could think of those or I could name them, more in the IT space. They run operating margins like 8%, 9%, 10%, but they might have SG&A, 22%, 26%, 32%. You also have been weird because you're like teens, 14%, 16%, 18% for SG&A, but your operating margins have really been like cream of the crop, really impressive. So it's not intuitive, and that's what I mean when I say nonintuitive. I'm curious, this past year, you jumped about 200 basis points, and you explained that in your release that going from about 19% to about 21% was attributed to the 2 acquisitions, both of them in the IT space. I'm wondering, generally speaking, looking forward, we probably should expect similar things going forward as you expand in IT. And more specifically, looking backward at legacy, this is really aimed at Dan. If we just looked at legacy SG&A year-over-year, 2019 versus 2020, were they essentially the same?

[Dan Hollenbach:]

No. As a percent?

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Yes.

[Dan Hollenbach:]

They probably were up slightly because we couldn't deleverage it, in particular, in real estate, we couldn't deleverage it, excuse me, as fast as revenues were dropping. Because you just can't cut out all of your headcount and you do have your fixed salary cost. A big portion of their numbers, which are commission driven, we're obviously affected and bonuses were affected. And we dropped out travel and entertainment, and I haven't seen a meal come through in forever. So I think across the operational divisions, we could probably say that. On the home office side, we started investing 1.5 years ago in our IT. And you see that both in the IT road map numbers as well as our IT team and our HR team. When Beth took over 3 years ago, we have 1 benefit an analyst in our HR team. So we've been investing heavily in that HR team as compliance changes, as we expand into now 44 states in Canada. And our risk from not only a labor standpoint, but from an insurance standpoint, becomes higher. So we've made significant adjustments there.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Got you. I do want to just mention 1 thing. Just for anybody who've been listening or going to read this tomorrow regarding the eviction moratoriums. I think a lot of investors might think they come and go. They are historically singular. You don't have to take my word for it. Anyone who's just curious can read Emily Benfer of Wake Forest, her research has been very helpful. These don't come around. These should not be associated with regular recessions. There's been 3 in the past on the history of our country. They're not usual.

[Beth Garvey:]

We agree. But nothing . Our industry is helpful for everything moving forward. So I mean we had our staffing industry conference this week, and we're definitely in a V recovery for us. And I think that that's a good thing.

[Operator:]

. Showing no further questions. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Beth Garvey for any closing remarks.

[Beth Garvey:]

Thank you, Sarah. We appreciate you taking time to join us for our call today, and we appreciate your continued support. We look forward to updating you on our first quarter results in May. Please stay safe and healthy.

[Operator:]

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.