HCKT - NASDAQ

Welcome to the Hackett Group Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Hosting tonight's call are Mr. Ted Fernandez, Chairman and CEO, and Mr. Rob Ramirez, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Ramirez, you may begin

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss the Hackett Group's second quarter results, speaking on the call today I'm here to answer your questions, are Ted Fernandez, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Hackett Group, and myself. Robert Ramirez, Chief Financial Officer, a press announcement was released over the wires at 4:05PM Eastern Time. For a copy of the release, please visit our website at www.thehackettgroup.com We will also place any additional financial or statistical data discussed on this call that is not contained in the release on the investor relations page of our website. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that in the following comments and in the question and answer session, we will be making statements about expected future results, which may be forward looking statements for the purposes of the Federal Securities Laws. These statements relate to our current expectations, estimates and projections and are not the guarantee of future performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions are difficult to predict and which may not be accurate. Actual results may vary. These forward looking statements should be considered only in conjunction with the detailed information, particularly the risk factors that are contained in our SEC files. At this point I would like to turn over to Ted.

Thank you, Rob, and welcome everyone to our second quarter earnings call. As we normally do I will open the call with some overview comments on the quarter. I will then turn it back over to Rob to comment on the detailed operating results cash flow, as well as comment on outlook. We will then review our market and strategy related comments, after which we will open it up to Q&A. This afternoon, we reported total revenues of $77.7 million and revenues before reimbursements of $75.9 million, which was above the high end of our guidance and adjusted earnings per share of $0.39 cents, which was at the high end of our guidance. Our results were driven by the overperformance of both our Oracle and SAP sectors. Oracle's overperformance is consistent with the momentum that it has experienced in the second quarter of last year, a recent important development is the notable increase in the demand we continue to experience in our historically strong Enterprise Performance Management offerings. Oracle has reemphasized its sales commitment to this area, and we are clear beneficiaries of this strategy. Our SAP solution segment also performed above our expectation as it closed several value added reseller transactions which benefited the quarter, we are seeing some of the sales investments we made in this segment last year start to pay off. Our global strategy and business transformation segment was down 3% when compared to last year, as we have seen, economic headwinds continue to result in extended decision making, as I mentioned last quarter that has been particularly noticeable in our e-procurement area. On the positive side, we are continuing to see increased activity from companies considering GenAI investments. We have conducted hundreds of meetings with global 1000 organizations as a result of their interest in our recently launched GenAI ideation and design platform, AI Explorer that's capital, XPLR, these meetings have provided us with a unique detailed exposure to these organizations GenAI adoption plan, implementation concerns as well as their limitations. Given this unique perspective, we have continued to make significant enhancements to our platform's Version 1 capability, and plan to release an AI Explorer Version 2 this month. The most important enhancement is our ability to simulate enterprise use cases for our clients by utilizing Hackett IP and utilizing our strong business process knowledge. This can only happen because of our ability to identify task automation opportunities at a detailed level, which also enables us to design meaningful use cases using our AI Explorer's GenAI assisted capabilities. Our AI projects have also exposed us to significant implementation assistance our clients require to successfully implement sophisticated GenAI use cases and solutions. Given the strategic access and the platform enhancements we think it is only natural for us to extend our AI implementations capabilities to be able to fully develop and implement GenAI use cases, but although the project conversions from our hundreds of meetings are still low at this point, we expect our sequential revenues in this area to continue to increase strongly. We also believe that our new AI Explorer Version 2 capabilities will improve our conversion rate and also expand downstream opportunities on our existing engagements, there is no doubt that in just six months, our aggressive pivot to become the architects of our client's GenAI journey is being well received and has extended our branding in GenAI. This has been enabled by our unique ability to identify meaningful AI use cases, determine their feasibility and also assess their benefit realization potential by utilizing our benchmarking database. On the Executive Advisory front, we continue to invest in our growing IP based programs. We believe our move to fully integrate GenAI content into all of our advisory programs, which began in April, will be responsive to our client's strong interest in this area. On the balance sheet side, you will hear from Rob that the short term, in the short term, you can expect us to use our strong cash flow and operations to continue to pay down our outstanding balance of our credit facility. Longer term, we plan to use our balance sheet to fund acquisitions and to buy back stock while continuing to invest in our business. With that said, let me ask Rob to provide details on our operating results, cash flow, and also comment on outlook. I will make additional comments on strategy and market conditions following Rob's comments, Rob?

Thank you, Ted. As I typically do, I'll cover the following topics during this portion of the call, I'll cover an overview of our 2024 second quarter results, along with an overview of our key operating statistics. I'll cover an overview of our cash flow activities during the quarter and I will then conclude with a discussion on our financial outlook for the third quarter of 2024. For the purposes of this call, I will comment separately regarding the revenues of our global S&BT segments, our Oracle solution segment, our SAP solution segment and the total company. Our global S&BT segment includes the results of our North America and international benchmarking and business transformation offerings, Executive Advisory and iPaaS programs and our OneStream and Coupa implementation offerings. Our Oracle solutions and our SAP solution sections include the results of our Oracle and SAP offerings respectively. Please note that we will be referencing both total revenues and revenue before reimbursements in our discussion, reimbursable expenses are primarily project travel related expenses passed through to our clients and have no associate impact on their profitability. During our call today, we will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information to investors. We have included reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures in our press release filed earlier today, and we'll post any additional information based on the discussions from this call on the investor relations page of the company's website, As Ted mentioned for the second quarter of 2024 our total revenue was $77.7 million. Our revenues before reimbursements, were $75.9 million, which was above the high end of our quarterly guidance. The second quarter reimbursable expense ratio on revenues before reimbursements was 2.3% as compared to 1.9% in the prior quarter and in the same period of the prior year, total revenues from our global S&BT segment were $42.3 million for the second quarter of 2024. Revenues before reimbursements for our global S&BT segment were $41.6 million for the second quarter of 2024, a decrease of 3% when compared to the same period in the prior year. As Ted mentioned, the segment has been impacted by extended climate decision making in our business transformation engagements, particularly impacted by our e-procurement offerings. Total revenues from our Oracle solution segment were $23 million for the second quarter of 2024. Revenues before reimbursements for our Oracle solution segment were $22.2 million for the second quarter of 2024, an increase of 9% when compared to the same period in the prior year. These results continue the momentum we've experienced since the second quarter of 2023 with strong growth over the last five quarters when compared to prior year periods. Total revenues from our SAP solutions segment were $12.3 million for the second quarter of 2024. Revenues before reimbursements for our SAP solution segment were $12.2 million for the second quarter of 2024, a decrease of 2% when compared to the same period in the prior year. Approximately 22% of our total company revenues before reimbursements consist of recurring, multi-year subscription based revenues, which includes our research advisory, IP as a service, multi-year benchmarks and application managed services contracts. Total company adjusted cost of sales, which exclude reimbursable expenses and non-cash stock based compensation expense totaled $43.8 million in both the second quarter of 2024 and 2023 representing 57.7% and 57.9% of revenues before reimbursements respectively. Total company consultant headcount was 1145 at the end of the second quarter of 2024, as compared to 1154 in the previous quarter, and 1148 at the end of the second quarter of 2023. Total company adjusted gross margin on revenues before reimbursements, which exclude reversible expenses and non-cash, stock based compensation expense was 42.3% in the second quarter of 2024 as compared to 42.1% in the prior year. Adjusted SG&A which excludes non-cash, stock based compensation expense was $16.8 million or 22.1% of revenues before reimbursements in the second quarter of 2024. This is compared to $16.3 million or 21.5% of revenues before reimbursements in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes non-cash, stock based compensation expense, was $16.3 million or 21.5% of revenues before reimbursements in the second quarter of 2024 as compared to $16.4 million or 21.6% of revenues before reimbursements in the prior year. GAAP net income for the second quarter of 2024 totaled $8.7 million, or diluted earnings per share of $0.31 cents, as compared to GAAP net income of $8.7 million, or diluted earnings per share of $0.32 cents in the second quarter of the previous year. Adjusted net income which excludes non-cash, stock based compensation expense for the second quarter of 2024 totaled $10.9 million, or adjusted diluted net income per common share of $0.39 cents, which is at the top end of our earnings guidance range. This compares to adjusted net income of $10.8 million, or adjusted diluted net income per common share of $0.39 cents in the second quarter of the prior year, The company's cash balances were $19.1 million at the end of the second quarter, as compared to $13 million at the end of our previous quarter. Net cash provided from operating activities in the quarter was $13.7 million, primarily driven by net income adjusted for non-cash activity increases in accrued expenses and income taxes payable partially offset by an increase in other assets and decreases in accounts payable and contract liabilities. Our DSO or day sales outstanding was 68 days at the end of the quarter, as well as at the end of the previous quarter and as well as the prior year. During the quarter, we repurchased 6000 shares of the company's stock from employees to satisfy income tax we're holding triggered by the vesting of restricted shares for an average of $22.94 per share at a total cost of approximately 144,000. Our remaining stock repurchase authorization at the end of the quarter was $12.9 million. During the second quarter, the company paid down $4 million on its credit facility. The balance of the company's total debt outstanding at the end of the second quarter was approximately $27 million. During the third quarter of 2024 the company has paid down an additional $5 million. At its most recent meeting, subsequent to quarter end, the company's Board of Directors declared the third quarter dividend of $0.11 cents per share for its shareholders of record on September 20, 2024 to be paid on October 4, 2024. I will now discuss our guides for the fourth quarter, consistent with seasonal for the third quarter, excuse me, consistent with seasonal third quarter trends. We expect the impact of the additional U.S. holiday and the typical increase in time off due to summer vacations in the U.S. and in Europe to unfavorably impact available days by approximately 2% on a sequential basis. The company estimates total revenues before reimbursements for the third quarter of 2024 to be in the range of $74.5 million to $76 million. We expect global S&BT segment revenue before reimbursements to be downside to compared to the prior year, but up on a sequential basis. We expect both Oracle solutions and SAP Solutions second revenue before reimbursements to be up when compared to the prior year. We estimate adjusted diluted net income per common share in the third quarter of 2024 to the range of $0.39 to $0.41, which assumes a GAAP effective tax rate on adjusted earnings of 27.7%. We expect the adjusted gross margin as a percentage of revenues before reimbursements to be approximately 43% to 44% We expect adjusted SG&A and interest expense for the third quarter to be approximately $17 million. We expect the third quarter adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenues before reimbursements to be in the range of approximately 22% to 23% Lastly, we expect cash flow from operations to be up on a sequential basis. At this point, I would like to turn it back over to Ted to review our market outlook and strategic priorities for the coming months.

Thank you, Rob. As we look forward, let me share our thoughts on the near and long term demand environment and the growth opportunity it offers our organization. Although demand for digital transformation remains strong, it continues to be impacted by extended decision making as organizations assess competing priorities created by high interest rate and the demand disruption, which it is intended to affect, digital innovation across all areas of enterprise, cloud applications, analytics, workflow automation are dramatically influenced, influencing the way business compete, deliver their services. However, there is a clear, major change which is rapidly emerging, and that is the demand for GenAI solutions. Its unlimited potential will define an entirely new level of what we describe as GenAI enabled, digital world class performance standards, driving all software and services providers to extend the value of their existing offerings. We believe this will result in unprecedented innovations, which all organizations will have to consider. Strategically we continue to focus on recurring, high margin IP related services what is new is the accelerated focus and investment we are making in our GenAI capabilities. The most significant investments have been the development of our AI explorer platform and the training and development of our associates. Although they are consuming our organization, I'm also very proud of the way we are making this pivot in a highly efficient way, whether you look at profitability, cash flow, or any other aspect of our performance. This could only be done because of our IP and the talented individuals we continue to attract as well as retain. We are utilizing the AI explorer platform as the vehicle to integrate the GenAI impact across all of our offerings. We also continue to hire and upgrade our skills and critical data and depth tech architecture resources to further support our efforts. These efforts will allow us to become key architects, advisors and consultants of our client's GenAI journey. We also continue to see strong downstream revenue from our benchmarking and executive advisor clients to our business transformation and cloud application consulting services. This table effect, which has been approximately 40% over the last several years, continues. We believe that this will only be expanded by our AI explorer offering and the broad and strategic access it provides. Organizations who rely on our IP -- AI assessment solutioning and marketing intelligence platforms are also more likely to utilize our advisory and other consulting services. We also continue to publish our market intelligence reports. We have started to publish our research reports on GenAI and key solution providers in the space which is important to the content of AI explorer and our Executive Advisory programs. On the tablet side, competition for experienced executives continues. Overall we saw turnover continue to moderate and remain low during the quarter, and we expect that train to trend to continue. Longer term, we have transitioned to a hybrid sales and delivery model, which provides us with effective access to our clients and their respective teams. This hybrid model provides our associates with greater personal flexibility perform their defined responsibilities remotely, which is very valuable to them. This should allow us to attract and retain talent. We also continue to explore strategic partnerships that will allow us to extend our AI capabilities and sell our IP through new channels that will allow us to reach beyond the current global 1000 focus in an efficient manner. We also continue to redefine our global benchmarking leadership through enhancements in quantum leap which has been not entirely integrated, but obviously all the benefit realization capabilities of explorer are fully enabled through the quantum leap and some of the benefit case assessments that exist inside of our digital transformation platform. These platforms allow clients to leverage our IP to create compelling benefit case assessments, accelerate process flow and software configuration decisions and track the value realization of transformation initiatives over the life of their respective effort. We believe the integration of these platforms with AI explorer significantly enhances the value of our IP, it fully aligns with our perspective on the emerging GenAI world class performance standards which will be achieved due to these new AI technologies. As I have mentioned on previous calls, we are adding videos of our platforms on the investor relations page of our website. You can expect to see more of that in a new website before the end of the quarter, investors will be able to utilize these videos and access we're providing through the investor portal to become more familiar with our new capabilities. Lastly, even though we believe that we have the client base and offerings to grow our business, we continue to look for acquisitions and alliances that strategically leverage our IP and add scope scale and capability, which can accelerate our growth. As always, let me close by congratulating our associates on our performance and by thanking them for their tireless efforts, and always urge them to stay highly focused on our clients and our people, no matter what challenges they may encounter. Those conclude my comments, let me turn it over to our operator and movement to move on to the Q&A section of our call. Operator?

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from George Sutton with Craig Hallum

Thank you, Ted, you mentioned you've had hundreds of meetings relative to the Explorer offering, and you have thus far had low project conversions but expect that to increase strongly. I wondered if you could put a little bit more detail around those comments.

Well, I think what we're seeing is that the education side of our clients, which appear to be probably driving half of the calls that we were executing over the first three months since launching AI explorer, are really now changing clients. We're now engaging clients who have dedicated some capabilities to AI may have made some commitment to some GenAI development platform to develop their use cases, try to identify areas of the business which it wants to pursue, but the overwhelming majority is simply, I'll say, testing or trying to develop their capabilities in very narrow areas in order to prove both their capabilities and then also the value realization from this effort. So we now believe we've moved from primarily education, if you take, say, the first couple 100 calls, and to then more meaningful client conversations, let's say the next 200 calls. The conversations now include a more complete conversation of both ideation, design, develop of the solution and full deployment. That is why AI Explorer was built. It was to be responsive to a couple of things that we saw were critical to the clients. One, they wanted a better indication of the opportunities available to them, since many of them were highly focused in some narrow areas, or call them favored areas, and we have been a strong proponent that you should be considering making these investments with a much broader context, which means understanding what your enterprise opportunity is. That's what led to the simulation capability that we're now introducing in Version 2. So what does that mean that instead of talking educating a client about how we ideate and design solutions, we will now be engaged in the engaging them in an M1 with a full simulation of their opportunity full let's call it as complete as it can be, utilizing what we're using as industry process flows and in all of the client information. We have available to us before meeting with that client, we find that engagement where we were able to speak to specific numbers of opportunities across areas of the business and speak not only to how they are identified and how they're designed. We've also developed skills around making sure that the handoff meaning functional other the requirements, data sources, both public and private, all those considerations are addressed in a more detailed level. We believe all of that is more highly responsive to the issues that the clients are facing, and because of all of those things that I'm discussing, where they were starting, where they're now moving to, relative to understanding their commitment to time in dollars. How we believe that we can be more compelling and engaging clients. We believe we do that by presenting them with a broader use case number and opportunities that have been assimilated inside of our AI explorer platform. All of these changes, we believe will allow us now to walk into a client opportunity, no matter whether they're starting or sophisticated talking about where they are relative to the ability to assess enterprise opportunity, define their use cases, and also talk about some of the deployment and implementation considerations. So as they've developed capabilities, we've developed capabilities. The engagement of the clients, I'm going to say, with the exception of, I'm going to say a max of 20% of those clients where maybe there was not a direct fit relative to the requirements they were seeing, they seem to be looking at versus where we were developing capabilities are. We believe those are clients that understand the Hackett capability and how it's changing. So I believe, not only do we have a more complete way and extending the way to serve clients, I believe that our opportunity to go back to these clients and now reengage them with more capability all of those, when we see what they're doing and how they're doing it, we believe that our offering is going to be competitive and so it's all of the above And, yes, when you mentioned the fact that we believe the revenues is going to be strong, well, the dollar amounts of our entry points have changed because they become more customized to the client reaction or request. By the way, with more I'll call it customized or higher amounts come also longer times to kind of validate the opportunity and close those engagements. But we've had enough success in what we call Phase 2 that our revenues will continue to increase strongly sequentially.

One other question, relative to implementations, just thinking through, you mentioned strength in the Oracle practice, and I believe that's because of a push in part from their sales force. And I just want to confirm that. And then relative to, you know, the IPO of OneStream and your success in growing that practice. Can you just give us an update there? Do you benefit from the IPO and the focus there? And then lastly, you called out e-procurement, which is, I believe, predominantly Coupa, they've pulled back on their sales resources. Is that what's driving that area? That's a bit of a challenge.

Well, I'll simply say that excluding the performance of that group, our S&BT practice was probably up 3% or better, instead of down 3% just to give you some perspective and respond to that, respond to that question without providing individuals numbers about that practice. So I agree with your observations. How do we benefit? Look we benefit when both OneStream is successful and Oracle successful. We believe they are the Top 2 EPM or CPM providers in the marketplace, we have this very strong capability in the EPM, both in the transformation as well as the software implementation side, and that relationship emanates from the very strong relationship we have with the CFO community. So we really like the fact that Oracle's reemphasize every emphasize that area, and we're benefiting from it. And yes, we also believe that the OneStream IPO only benefits and creates an opportunity for OneStream to continue to grow its business, and if they do so, we're going to be an active participant in that growth.

Our next question comes from Jeff Martin with ROTH Capital.

Ted wanted to dive a little deeper on AI Explorer 2.0 you mentioned that'll be available later this month. How much do you think the new features, particularly a simulation, make a difference in open close conversions, and have it.

I believe it's two-fold, Jeff. I believe that clients are listening to our capabilities that are considering that within the context of their plans, and they're becoming more informed, and the more detail we provide on how, I think, how strong we are in that ability to identify and design, which includes driving all the way through functional requirements and data sources, we believe extends our capability and provides more value and capability that we're offering our clients. So one, those two things are important, I think, also so we're that's also extending our capabilities all the way through to proof of concept and validation, and again, those the more we extend our capabilities and directly respond to what the clients need help with. We believe for example, some of the things that are in the pipeline now our clients that we made early presentations to, we didn't hear much from, we thought they were educational. They picked up the phone, called us back. When they called us back, we were demonstrating greater credibility. That greater credibility has given us a chance to present a larger scope, which they now accept. So you got to consider this somewhat of a startup. I mean, clients are learning how to do the work, engage the services, compare the capabilities, and we're aggressively building capabilities where we believe the client limitations and capabilities are. So you can just expect us to continue to extend those capabilities, and we just believe that all of the above will give us a chance to compete for that work further. And I still don't know if somebody has had the volume of calls we've had with clients and the detailed level of discussions around GenAI adoptions, the underlying GenAI development platforms, they're considering, and again, some of their issues and limitations and we're trying to go back and kind of respond to it all through both platform and internal capabilities. You'll see us continue to do that aggressively.

The point I was trying to get at was simulation seems like it's a huge value add for the client. I was just curious how long it might take to do a simulation for a client, and what all does that entail in terms of pulling data from their systems?

Well, first, the first thing is to get them to believe that we can. So we've just started doing our first demos, and the reaction is, their reaction is, how are you doing it? And it may be hard for you to believe, but Explorer and the capabilities inside of Hubble [ph] when we provide Explorer with the right level of information that correlates to that client's industry, and more specific client information that we may get publicly or as a result of setting up the call is allowing us to get in front of the client, apologize for the fact that we did this without any direct involvement from them or direct information in the areas we're going to cover. But we think it's incredibly compelling for us to be able to turn to any or most, let me not say any, because it varies so much by district most areas of the business and have a conversation about the use cases there are available, and what we believe is the feasibility of the use cases. And as you know, we break down use cases as breakthrough, transformative and incremental. So then we also correlate to the benefit. So to some extent, I think that we're catching some of our clients a little bit off guard with the capability we've developed as quickly as we have, but I think that the conversations we're having and we've had are clearly extending our branding, and if we continue to build capabilities, whatever opportunities emerge in this space, in the areas we're covering, I just believe we're going to be highly competitive.

Okay, one more for me, if I could you mentioned strategic partnerships. Just curious if you could help us understand the overarching strategy there. Is that to penetrate more than middle market, you mentioned you're intending to extend reach beyond the Global 1000 just curious, if you kind of give us the strategic viewpoint of how you're?

Well first beyond the Global 1000 as you know, we also have have had vendor strategies in our iPaaS program, so we've had an initial conversation where we're trying to determine whether we can take some of those relationships and support their AI, either extended or offerings by sharing our capabilities with their channel. So the answer is, yes, we you know, we've initiated those conversations, so we'll see where they go. So relative to extending capabilities because of the success of AI Explorer and the fact that you know all the work that we pay by giving these clients these one hour, or in some cases, more than one session and review of AI explorer and discussion around GenAI adoption and related issues, it has attracted some of the -- I'll call it some of the some of the firms that are now trying to transition their skills or build some new skills in the AI implementation area. And as we walk into clients, sometimes we get introduced to some providers, so we're kind of developing a good understanding of the ecosystem who's out there in figuring out the best way to work with them.

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question comes from Vincent Colicchio with Barrington Research.

Yes, Ted shifting gears here a bit. With your heavy focus on the AI consulting. Is there less emphasis currently on the market intelligence programs?

No, we just - it's interesting. We just don't believe that you -- obviously there are requirements to help clients with organizational and enterprise app issues and areas that they want to continue to address. But when you engage a client more strategically or broadly, and when you look at how we believe the spend dollars will shift over time. We don't believe that you can separate our existing capabilities with the new capabilities. So what we've done is we've enveloped all of our I'll call it traditional capabilities, with AI explorer or GenAI capabilities, so that any conversation can result in either a) A AI Consulting opportunity, or a, I'll call it downstream or more traditional or legacy opportunity, for lack of a better term. So to me, it's, it's the ability to turn left or right as the client needs your assistance. I just believe that the trend and the demand that will build around GenAI is so significant that to not emphasize it and use that as a primary go to market, as we look out several years, would not benefit our organization the same way.

And then SAP, you said you closed some business towards the end of the quarter. Is this momentum shift sustainable? What are your thoughts on SAP?

Look, both Oracle and SAP have performed pretty well throughout this if you want to call it economic cycle right, and now you got to call it economic and emerging GenAI cycles. So now you got two cycles going at the same time. So Oracle out is really, obviously, Oracle's outperforming the other groups. The SAP group is performing well, and we think it's and both have an opportunity to continue to perform where they're at or better, just given how successful they've been through what I believe, you know, has not been the best economic cycle. And when you also consider the new distraction that clients have now, because everyone is offering them to implement some use case or presenting some new AI embedded opportunity for them to consider. So there's a lot of competing wins it all leads to the deployment of technology and change, and the deployment of technology and organizational change is good for our business.

And lastly, what is driving the strong growth in your top client? I see some impressive growth there.

Well, obviously it was a very meaningful Oracle implementation, but it's probably expanded into four of our groups, including our AI group.

At this time I show no further questions, I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Fernandez.

Well, thank you operator. Let me thank everyone for participating in our second quarter earnings call. We look forward to updating you again when we report the third quarter. Thank you.