Barrett Business Services Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
February 28, 2024

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss BBSI Financial Results for the Q4 and full year ended December 31, 2023. Joining us today are BBSI's President and CEO, Mr. Gary Kramer and the company's CFO, Mr. Anthony Harris. Following their remarks, we will open the call for your questions.

Operator

Before we go further, please take note of the company's Safe Harbor statement within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The statement provides important cautions regarding forward looking statements. The company's remarks during today's conference call will include forward looking statements. These statements, along with other information presented that does not reflect historical facts, are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those implied by these forward looking statements.

Operator

Please refer to the company's recent earnings release and to the company's quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for more information about the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied by the forward looking statements. I would like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay through March 28, 2024, starting at 8 pm Eastern Time tonight. A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in today's press release as well as available on the company's website at www.bbsi.com. Now, I would like to turn the call over to the President and Chief Executive Officer of BBSI, Mr. Kramer.

Operator

Sir, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. We had another strong quarter, capping off an equally strong year, and I am pleased with our results. Before I speak about our financial performance, I would like to recap some of the key operational and strategic accomplishments for the year. We are successfully selling and servicing BVSI Benefits in every one of our markets. Our existing clients are buying and so are new clients.

Speaker 1

On the new clients, we are seeing success in white collar verticals that we previously had a difficult time penetrating. Our strategic sales initiatives have been operationalized and are resulting in consistent and predictable acquisition of new clients and new referral partners. We continue to invest in our asset light model and have successfully expanded into new geographies and are gaining momentum. We continue to invest and perfect our other new products with BBSI U and BBSI Recruiting. We continue to invest and bolster our tech stack with enhancements to MyBBSI.

Speaker 1

And we also made further advancements on Employer of Choice initiative and earned the Great Place of Work designation for the 3rd year in a row. Our client retention continues to trend better than the pre pandemic era. Every year we conduct a survey of our clients to evaluate customer satisfaction and needs. This year we modified our survey some so that we could calculate a Net Promoter Score, which is an evaluation of how many of our clients would be willing to recommend and refer BBSI. I am pleased to say that we scored a 64.

Speaker 1

To put this in perspective, a Net Promoter Score above 0 is considered good and anything above 50 is exceptional. This gives us great confidence in the value our clients place on the services and solutions we provide. Our clients love what we do and they are ready and willing to spread the word about BBSI. 2023 was a great year for BBSI and I am proud of what our team accomplished. Moving to our financial results for the quarter.

Speaker 1

We surpassed our gross billings estimate for the quarter by continuing to execute on our various strategies to increase the top of the sales funnel. In 2023, we added 6% more WSEs from new client adds versus the prior year. I am pleased to say that we once again exceeded our controllable growth expectations in the quarter for net new clients. We finished the year with more WSEs than we forecasted, which sets us up well for the start of 2024. As discussed previously, we have been able to sell and support larger clients with our upgraded technology stack, national PEO licenses along with BBSI benefits.

Speaker 1

This continues to progress favorably and the average size of the clients that we are adding are larger than the average size of the clients that are running off. Regarding our client runoff, our retention in the quarter continues to remain stronger than pre pandemic levels. I'd like to attribute that to the work we do with our clients and the value our teams provide. The result of all these efforts or what I refer to as our controllable growth is that we added approximately 3,800 Worksite employees year over year from net new clients. To summarize for the year, we grew our Worksite employees by 2.2%.

Speaker 1

Year over year, we sold and retained more business, which was partially offset by reductions in WSEs at our existing clients. We started to see client workforces stabilize in Q3 and that trend continued in Q4. Moving to our staffing operations. Our staffing business declined by 22% over the prior year quarter and was in line with our forecast. We mentioned previously that we repriced the portfolio and jettisoned clients where we were not achieving an adequate return.

Speaker 1

We also shifted our strategy to recruit for our PEO clients and placed 83 applicants in the quarter. We are also experiencing macroeconomic factors, including supply and demand imbalances, which varies by geography. We expect our staffing revenue to stabilize in 2024. Moving to the field operational updates. We are very pleased with our entrance into new markets with our asset light model.

Speaker 1

We have 15 total new market development managers in various stages of their development. They are doing well and largely achieving their goals of adding and servicing new clients and new referral partners. Some of these will graduate to a traditional BBSI branch in 2024 as we are actively searching for real estate and recruiting locally to support the business. Our next class is in training and will begin selling in their markets in March. We anticipate that we will have 3 classes this year depending upon the talent in the marketplace.

Speaker 1

Regarding our product updates, We continue to execute on the sales and service of BBSI Benefits, our new health insurance offering. We had a successful year end selling season and I am pleased to report that through January, we have approximately 275 clients on our various plans with more than 6,800 total participants. Our value proposition resonates well and we are having success with small and large clients in white and blue collar industries in every state we operate and with a diverse distribution channel. We are pleased with these results and this product will be accretive to earnings in 2024. We are in a great position and will now reap the benefit of leverage through scale.

Speaker 1

For BBSI Benefits, we have operational plans in 2024 to enhance our tech, refine our processes and add additional carriers to our offering. We think that additional carriers will be attractive and compelling in certain markets and may further accelerate our growth. We are estimating that we will double our participation by January of 2025. Next, I'd like to shift to my view of 2024. We have consistently achieved strong controllable growth by focusing on the needs of our clients and by adding new clients.

Speaker 1

These actions more than outweighed our clients' workforce reduction in 2023. We have more product to sell, more folks selling it and more referral partners recommending DBSI. We will have additional health insurers to offer and we'll have additional client focused advancements in IT that are going to make our value proposition more compelling. If there is no dislocation in the economy, then we expect to see greater gross billings growth in 2024 than in 2023. Now I'm going to turn the call over to Anthony for his prepared remarks.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Gary. Hello, everyone. I'm pleased to report we finished the year with strong results and strong momentum in our sales pipeline. Gross billings increased 4% to $7,700,000,000 in 2023 versus $7,400,000,000 in the prior year, while diluted earnings per share increased 13% to 7 point $3.9 compared to $6.54 in the prior year. Looking at Q4, our gross billings increased 5% to $2,050,000,000 versus $1,950,000,000 in Q4 of 2022.

Speaker 2

Our diluted earnings per share increased 32% to $2.16 compared to $1.64 in the prior year quarter. PEO gross billings increased 6% in the quarter to $2,000,000,000 while staffing revenues were $22,000,000 in the quarter, representing a modest increase on a sequential basis, but a decline year over year of 22%. Our PEO worksite employees grew by 2% in the quarter, which was the result of strong controllable growth from net new PEO clients, offset in part by slower hiring within our existing customer base. Looking at trends in client hiring more closely, we continue to see hiring stabilize in the quarter with most of the year over year WSE reductions occurring early in 2023. The pace of hiring remains broadly slower than historical trends, but we continue to see the largest impacts concentrated in the construction sector and in our Northern California region.

Speaker 2

Average hours worked and overtime hours per employee have also remained stable in the quarter. And for the first time in over a year, total overtime hours worked were higher than the prior year quarter. Average billing per WSE increased 3% in the quarter, driven by higher average client wage rates, which remain resilient and which will continue to be a source of billings growth going forward. Looking at PEO gross billings growth by region versus the prior year Q4, the East Coast grew 16%, Mountain States grew 10%, Southern California grew 6%, the Pacific Northwest grew by 3% and Northern California was flat. Turning to margin and profitability.

Speaker 2

Our workers' compensation program continues to perform well and benefit from favorable claim frequency trends and favorable claim development. This strong performance has once again resulted in favorable adjustments for prior year claims. In Q4 2023, we recognized favorable prior year liability and premium adjustments of $5,400,000 compared to favorable adjustments of $600,000 in the Q4 of 2022. As a reminder, our client workers' compensation exposure is now primarily covered by our fully insured program with no retained liability by BBSI. Our gross margin rate improved in the quarter due to the cost savings from lower workers' compensation expense and our ongoing focus on pricing discipline.

Speaker 2

Our overall profitability has continued to benefit from operating cost management. For both Q4 and the full year 2023, SG and A expense increased by approximately 3%. As a result, SG and A for the year grew slower than our billings growth rate, and we expect this trend to continue in 2024, providing ongoing operating leverage. Moving to investment income. Our investment portfolios earned $1,700,000 in the 4th quarter, and our investment portfolio continues to be managed conservatively with an average duration of 3.1 years, average quality of investment at AA and average book yield of 2.8%.

Speaker 2

Our balance sheet remains strong with $152,000,000 of unrestricted cash investments at December 31 and no debt. Our philosophy for capital allocation remains unchanged. We continue to prioritize our investments back into the company on strategic value add initiatives. Over the last several years, these initiatives included expanding our IT capabilities with the launch and continued enhancement of MyBBSI, the launch of new products, including our health benefits offering, our client learning management system and improved system integrations among others, and geographic expansion, which has been accelerated by our asset light approach in new markets. We expect our level of investment in these areas to remain similar going forward as we continue to enhance our product and expand our reach.

Speaker 2

Beyond these investments, our next priority is to distribute capital to our shareholders. Continuing under the Board's July 2023 repurchase program announced last year, BBSI repurchased $5,000,000 of shares in the 4th quarter at an average price of $111 per share with $59,000,000 remaining available under the program at year end. In total in 2023, we repurchased over 5% of the company's shares outstanding through purchases of more than $34,000,000 We also paid over $8,000,000 in dividends for the year, bringing total capital return to shareholders in 2023 to $42,000,000 Looking ahead to 2024, we expect to continue to generate excess available cash and to continue these capital allocation strategies. Now turning to our outlook for 2024. We expect gross billings and average WSEs to strengthen from 2023, with 20 24 gross billings expected to increase between 6% 8% and average WSEs to increase between 4% 5%.

Speaker 2

As a baseline, we expect client wage inflation to continue at a similar to 2023. But for 2024, we now also expect a return to positive net client hiring. While 2023 had net negative client hiring, most of the reductions occurred early in the year with trends improving as the year progressed. While only modestly factored into our outlook, we are also starting to see signs of residential construction spending improving, benefiting our construction sector clients, which were a primary driver of declines in 2023. Beyond our client hiring, we are optimistic about the momentum we see in our sales pipeline, and 2023 has shown that even in a year with negative client hiring, we were able to grow our total WSE stack by adding new customers more consistently.

Speaker 2

This improvement in our ability to sell and service through economic fluctuations will bring even more stability to our long term growth. For 2024, we expect gross margin as a percent of gross billings to be between 2.95% and 3.15%, in line with our 2023 rates with pricing adjustments being matched to ongoing cost savings. Finally, we expect our effective annual tax rate to be between 26% 27%. I will now turn the call back to the operator for questions.

Operator

Thank Our first question is from the line of Chris Moore with CJS Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hey, it's actually Lee Jagoda for Chris this evening. Good afternoon.

Operator

Hi, Lee.

Speaker 3

So Gary, I guess just starting with healthcare first. Some of your healthcare competitors obviously take underwriting risk on the healthcare, but you don't. Can you talk a little bit about the puts and takes? And clearly, there's less risk for you all, but what are you giving up as a result?

Speaker 1

Yes. Good question. I mean, we've over the years, we've evolved our model on the workers' comp side so that we no longer take the workers' comp risk. We lay it all primarily all of it off to the insurance and reinsurance market. So when we brought on the healthcare, we didn't want to have the perceived underwriting risk on the healthcare side.

Speaker 1

So we made sure that when we partnered with our partners, they were going to be long term strategic plays. We think of it as we get a seller's fee and arguably we're able to charge more for our product. So that's really if you give it as a fixed fee type business that we're getting. The economics that we give up is the risk first reward as far as the underwriting on the health side that our competitors do, right? Some years they're making money.

Speaker 1

Some years they're losing money. We just want to have a consistent cash flow and earnings pattern.

Speaker 3

And then in terms of the geographic bias, once this is fully rolled out, how should we think about geographies in the sense that like obviously most of your workers' comp today is in California. Is it going to be a similar geographic split? Or is there any other moving parts there?

Speaker 1

We have workers' comp in every state, not just California. I would say it's pretty well distributed based upon the way the payroll operations are. California is our largest market. We've got 20 branches there. It's I'd rather be big in California than big in Rhode Island, right?

Speaker 1

So but when we look at the map, we're able to sell this product everywhere and we're able to bring on white collar business. I think it was about 25% of the new business we brought on for the healthcare was in the white collar space, which is fun and exciting for us, right? That was an industry that was a little more challenging for us to penetrate because of being heavy blue gray with the workers' comp. But we're filling in the map with our market development managers, but as we grow outside of California, we grow in California. So our plan is to ultimately be a national player and be big everywhere.

Speaker 3

And then one more for me and I'll hop back in queue. So gross billings this year around 4% and you're guiding to 6% to 8% in 2024. Is there a scenario or what would it take to sort of approach double digit gross billings at some point? Or have you just gotten too large and it's the law of large numbers preventing that?

Speaker 1

No. So we grew in 2023 when our clients were reducing their workforce, right? So as we think of 2024, we think our clients are modestly going to hire and we have that model that it's going to be more in the back half of the year starting in Q2. But realistically, if our clients hire, we could easily get into the double digit range.

Speaker 3

Great. Thanks very much. I'll hop back in queue.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Jeff Martin with ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thanks. Good afternoon. So Kramer, I wanted to get into the renewal season. A lot of the portfolio of clients renew in the 1st 2 months of the year, even some in December, I would assume November, December, I would assume. Just curious how that renewal period has gone and how the pricing environment is within new and existing clients?

Speaker 1

Yes. So this good question. So there was

Speaker 2

a couple of firsts for us, right?

Speaker 1

So the first was this was our first oneone selling season in California. And I can say I'm pleased with what we did in California. The other first was this was our first renewal. So clients that we brought on outside of California for 1, 1 23, this was our first renewal. I can tell you that our carriers are happy.

Speaker 1

Our carriers are honestly ecstatic and that's why we're able to bring on more carriers this year. They're ecstatic about how well we've done. They're ecstatic about our loss ratio and how good our underwriting is. But this was our 1st renewal season and we renewed I want to say it was 94% of the benefits. So we only had a couple that fell out and they fell out for either an under primarily they were for underwriting reasons that we that they fell out.

Speaker 1

But pleased with the operations for what we got done for both new and renewal.

Speaker 4

And in terms of the pricing environment on new and renewals?

Speaker 1

Inflation is everywhere, right? So you're seeing on the benefit side the medical cost trend and some of the other drugs that are coming out and driving up the Rx prices. So there were some markets that were up 20%, but us being new being a new entrant into the game, we didn't have to try to push those 20% rate increases to our clients. What we're able to do is be an alternative for them. And we saw because of the I'll say, we're still new at this, right?

Speaker 1

We don't have a lot of years of experience to talk about it, but I can tell you that we had more submissions and more transactions coming through because the market was charging a higher rate and folks were shopping around.

Speaker 4

Makes sense. It sounds like you're looking to continue to kind of bolster up the technology platform for clients. Just curious if there are specific things that you can enlighten us with in terms of strategically what you're doing there and is this client driven, What is the underlying driver behind further enhancements?

Speaker 2

Yes. I would say it's

Speaker 1

predominantly client driven. As we think of our enhancements to my VBSI, it's really think of that client first and think about the employee lifecycle that they have with their employees. And then how do we fill that employee lifecycle better, number 1. And then number 2, how do we push and pull data via APIs and things like that with other sources. So that's kind of the focus of Think of the Client First as far as specifics.

Speaker 1

I don't want to give products that we're launching later in the year.

Speaker 4

Okay. And then last one for me, if I could. On the adjustments prior year workers' compensation, liability and premiums, dollars 13,000,000 last year, roughly $15,000,000 this year. I assume that's going to tail off at some point. How should we think about that for maybe 2024 and 2025 in terms of a potential range?

Speaker 4

I know it's hard for you to predict, but just in terms of how to think how people should think about it from a modeling standpoint?

Speaker 1

We're We're conservative by nature when we set our current year loss rates. And then sorry, this is a I'm going to give you Kramer answer. I'm going to wander on this one, Jeff. So we have what I call best in class structural partners. We've got best in class risk managers, underwritings, claims folks, operation, actuarial.

Speaker 1

We are a very mature organization. We have tech and we have AI that we adopt to help us with all of this. And then we have about 200 folks either directly or indirectly that work on workers' comp at our organization. We structured these new programs so that the interest is aligned with the market. If things are favorable, the market makes money and then we as BBSI and as shareholders get money back.

Speaker 1

We did that because we thought this would be more attractive to investors because it's a derisk model and we thought that we would get multiple expansion with it. Our conservatism in our results, you have to fact check me on this, but I think we've had 20 plus quarters, Anthony, 20? 20 quarters of favorable changes in estimate for prior year liabilities and for premium adjustments. 2024 was our largest in our history. So if you just look at the trend, the trend for that aspect is our friend, right?

Speaker 1

So we feel like we've set ourselves up that this trend is going to continue. And if you look at 2023, that was the largest number we've had in our history.

Operator

That's helpful. Thank you. Thank Our next question is from the line of Vincent Colicchio with Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Yes. Good afternoon, Gary. I'm curious how your view of the economy has changed since last quarter. I assume it's a bit better. If I heard correctly, you're assuming that existing clients will hire people, will expand their roles in 2024?

Speaker 1

Yes. If you just think about, call it our last 18 months of experience right from just a payroll exposure, we started to see our clients pull back at Q4 of 2022 and they pulled back in Q1 of 2023, pulled back some in Q2. The nice thing was in Q3 of 2023 was when we started to see it stabilize, slight hiring. In 2024 or Q4 of 2023, we saw slight hiring as well, right? So we're seeing stability in Q3.

Speaker 1

We see stability in Q4. And then the numbers that we're seeing so far through January February is more stability. So we when we look at the business that reduced their workforce that was primarily in the construction and trades. And if you look at the construction trades,

Operator

if you just look at

Speaker 1

the housing starts, things are coming back now and that's what gives us kind of more optimism for our workforce that our clients are going to resume hiring into 2024.

Speaker 5

And if you double your healthcare clients by next year, the amount of income that comes in from that, is that what you would have let me ask what I'm trying to say is, will that be a meaningful amount of income to the company if you hit that goal?

Speaker 1

We're not going to guide to just the product line, but we're not doing this for pennies. We're doing it for dollars.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then you said you have 15 asset light programs in place currently. Curious if some of those have already converted to physical locations and how do you feel about opening additional physical locations this year?

Speaker 2

Yes, we are in a couple of

Speaker 1

the markets we're actively searching looking at local HR because we're doing pretty well in those spots. We anticipate that we'll probably have 3 markets that go brick and mortar in 2024 and then more to that to follow in 2025.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Gary. I'll go back in the queue. A nice quarter.

Operator

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Marc Riddick with Sidoti and Company. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hi, good evening everybody.

Speaker 6

So I was wondering if with this being the 1st selling season for the 1st key selling season for BBSI, if you could talk a little bit about the benefits, I'm sorry, for the were there any particular learnings

Operator

or things that

Speaker 6

have taken place as you've gone through this process thus far that have been slight positive surprise, slight negatives, anything as part of that process that was outside of expectations?

Speaker 3

I'd say

Speaker 1

I'm glad I lost my hair prior to this rollout. It was not a straight line. It was we learned a lot of things along the way. Part of what we're doing right now is while it's still fresh, we're having a whole continuous improvement team to go through and understand what do we need to do better on the sales service underwriting for new and renewal. We I could say I'm proud of the team, I'm proud of the company, I'm proud of the

Speaker 6

Okay. Excellent. Then the other thing was shifting gears a little bit. I wanted to sort of go back to your commentary around the NPS exercise that you did. I thought I was kind of messaging, 1, maybe you could maybe talk a little bit about what led you to do that?

Speaker 6

And 2, was there any sort of differentiation of certain industry or client verticals that maybe scored higher than others? Or was there any or is that generally across the board with those scores?

Speaker 1

Thanks. Good question. I mean part of this was every year we do a survey and we get surprisingly we get a lot of folks that utilize it. We get a good sample, right? And we use that to understand what are we doing well, what do we need to do better, what our clients asking for.

Speaker 1

And that's how we shape some of the directions that we go with our IT products. It's really we're listening to the clients and they're telling us that. The net promoter score was a good thought from some of our Board. They said, if you're doing this, why don't you do the net promoter score? So I honestly didn't know what it was.

Speaker 1

I had to read it up. But I'm pretty pleased with the results of the survey. I mean, it's pretty remarkable to have a score that high. I'm really proud of the work we're doing.

Speaker 6

No, I'm glad you actually called that out, because that was pretty interesting to hear. So I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, this concludes our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Kramer for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Yes. I just want to thank all of our BBSI employees for a great year and I want to thank all of our clients for partnering with BBSI. Appreciate your time. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The conference of BBSI has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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Key Takeaways

  • Strong financial performance: Q4 gross billings grew 5% to $2.05 billion and full-year billings rose 4% to $7.70 billion, while diluted EPS increased 32% in Q4 to $2.16 and 13% for 2023 to $7.39.
  • PEO and benefits expansion: Launched BBSI Benefits in every market, reaching 275 clients with over 6,800 participants, expected to be accretive in 2024 and to double participation by January 2025.
  • Controllable growth and client retention: Added approximately 3,800 Worksite employees from net new clients in 2023, achieved 2% WSE growth in Q4, and earned an NPS of 64, above pre-pandemic retention levels.
  • Asset-light geographic expansion: Deployed 15 new market development managers, with plans to convert three into full branches in 2024 and pursue further market entries using an asset-light model.
  • Optimistic 2024 outlook: Forecasting 6–8% gross billings growth, 4–5% average WSE growth, 2.95–3.15% gross margin, and a return to positive net client hiring barring economic dislocation.
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Earnings Conference Call
Barrett Business Services Q4 2023
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