IBEX Ltd Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call

Welcome to the IBEX First Quarter FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call. There is an accompanying earnings presentation available on the ibex Investor Relations website. I will now turn this conference over to Mr. Michael Darwal, Head of Investor Relations for ibex.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I want to remind you that matters discussed on today's call may include forward-looking statements related to our operating performance, financial goals and business outlook, which are based on management's current beliefs and assumptions. Please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinion as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to revise this information as a result of new developments, which may occur. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expected and described today. For a more detailed description of our risk factors, please review our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on September 11, 2025, and any other risk factors we include in subsequent filings with the SEC. With that, I will now turn the call over to IBEX CEO, Bob Dechant.

Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today as we share our first quarter fiscal year 2026 results. Before I speak to our first quarter results, I want to start by saying that our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Jamaica who are dealing with the devastation left behind by Hurricane Melissa. I would also like to say how proud I am of our ibex Jamaica team who has shown enormous courage and resilience through this tragedy and have worked tirelessly to care for our employees while getting us operational within 24 hours of the hurricane in our Portmore and Kingston sites and as of Monday this week in our Ocho Rios site. I would also like to highlight the great support we have received from our clients who have offered assistance alongside our ibex Cares initiatives to help those who are significantly impacted. Lastly, the BPO community in Jamaica is a tight-knit community, and our thoughts and prayers go out to our Jamaican BPO peers and their people. I am pleased to report that ibex carried the momentum we built throughout fiscal 2025 into 2026, delivering an outstanding first quarter with revenue growth of 16.5% and adjusted EPS growth of 74% as we continue to separate ourselves from the pack in the BPO market. Our sustained double-digit revenue growth highlights our competitive differentiation in the CX space. We continue to drive exceptional operational delivery for our existing clients, enabling us to win significant market share from our competition. I am equally proud of our new logo engine that continues to win trophy clients, positioning us well for continued growth and margin expansion. And I'm excited about the progress we have made in our AI automate and translation deployments for our clients. Collectively, this continues to validate our position as a leader in the CX space. Q1 was a very strong quarter. Even more impressive is the performance we continue to stack quarter-over-quarter, leading to powerful momentum into the balance of FY '26. Over the last 12 months, our results have shown explosive double-digit organic revenue growth, which is well above market growth, consistent margin expansion and significant growth in EPS and free cash flow. For the last 12 months, we delivered organic revenue growth of 13% fueled in large part by revenue growth approaching 20% in our high-margin offshore regions and digital-first services. We delivered record adjusted EBITDA of nearly $76 million for the trailing 12 months, up more than 13% from the prior 12-month period, while making key investments for future growth and differentiation. We achieved record adjusted EPS of $3.17 on $31 million, up from $25 million in the prior 12 months while investing meaningful CapEx in support of our growth. These results are an output of our sizable and distinct competitive differentiation that we have built and the strength of this leadership team to consistently execute quarter-over-quarter. Paramount to this differentiation is our best-in-class blend of culture, engagement and branding. Our purpose-built Wave iX technology and integrated AI solution suite, connecting seamlessly AI to human agents. And our deep analytics and business insights capabilities. The ibex leadership team is able to consistently execute against these points, outperforming the competition and setting ibex apart as a trusted partner. This playbook was key to us delivering one of the most impressive starts to a fiscal year in our history and has us well positioned to perform throughout FY '26. The ibex brand is stronger than it has ever been. Highlighting this is our most recent employee Net Promoter Score of 77, an all-time high, and our client Net Promoter Score of 71, up impressively from 68. It is important to note that anything above 70 is considered world-class. These metrics play a critical part in our outstanding client revenue retention of over 98% and validate that our competitive moat is deep and wide. These metrics are also viewed by prospective clients as best-in-class, giving them confidence in choosing ibex as their go-forward partner during the RFP process. We are very excited with the wins we have had in the last 2 quarters, where over this time frame, we have won seven high-profile new opportunities, facing off against our much larger multibillion-dollar competitors. At the core of ibex is our new logo engine that continues to win trophy new clients and our ability to land and expand with these clients. As compared to 2 years ago, our number of clients making up more than $1 million per annum in revenue is up nearly 24%. Clients representing $1 million to $10 million per annum are up over 21% during the same time frame. And the number of clients generating $10 million to $20 million per annum is up nearly 67%. And the average revenue generated by clients with annual spend over $20 million during these periods is up approximately 14%. This powerful combination of winning blue-chip trophy clients and growing significant market share with them, parlayed with our outstanding client retention rates has us on an amazing trajectory of double-digit growth. Q4 of fiscal 2025 marked the shift from proof of concept for our AI solutions to full-scale deployments for several of our key clients. We continue to invest in bolstering our team supporting this critical vector for growth, most recently with the addition of Michael Ringman as CTO. We are in an exciting time in the industry with the intersection of AI and CX. Mike brings an enormous amount of experience in both areas and will help accelerate our leadership position. I am confident that under Mike's direction, our AI technology roadmap will help further separate ibex from the pack. Coming off a statement year in fiscal 2025, I am proud of our start to fiscal 2026, and I am confident that ibex is very well positioned for success this year and beyond. With that, I will now turn the call over to Taylor to go into more details on our first quarter results and FY '26 guidance.

Thank you, Bob, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining the call today. In my discussions of our first quarter fiscal year 2026 financial results, references to revenue, net income and net cash generated from operations are on a U.S. GAAP basis, while adjusted net income, adjusted earnings per share, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow are on a non-GAAP basis. Reconciliations of our U.S. GAAP to non-GAAP measures are included in the tables attached to our earnings press release. Turning to our results. Our first quarter results marked our strongest start to a fiscal year. We achieved record first quarter revenue, adjusted EBITDA, EPS, adjusted EPS and free cash flow. First quarter revenue was $151.2 million, an increase of 16.5% from $129.7 million in the prior year quarter. Revenue growth was driven by vertical growth in retail and e-commerce of 25%, HealthTech of 19.5% and travel, transportation and logistics of 15.4% and was partially offset by an expected decline in telecommunications, our smallest vertical, of 22.5%. Importantly, our fintech vertical reached an inflection point in the first quarter and grew 3.4%. And with recent wins, we are confident in the positive trajectory of fintech going forward. Our focused efforts to grow our higher-margin delivery locations and services continues to have a favorable impact on bottom line results. We are really excited that we're winning in all markets and as a result, growing revenue in all geographies. Our highest margin offshore revenues grew 20% in the quarter. Our nearshore locations grew 7% and our onshore region grew 21%, driven by growth of our high-margin digital acquisition services. Revenue mix in our higher-margin digital and omnichannel services continues to strengthen, growing 25% to 82% of our total revenue versus the prior year quarter. We expect that we will continue to be successful driving growth in these higher-margin services and regions as we continue to land and expand new clients from our strong pipeline as well as win further share with our embedded base clients. First quarter net income increased to $12 million compared to $7.5 million in the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily driven by the meaningful growth of work in higher-margin offshore regions of 19.5% and operating leverage gained from SG&A expenses as they went from 20.2% to 17.5% of revenue. Fully diluted EPS was $0.82, up from $0.43 in the prior year quarter. Contributing to the EPS growth was the impact from fewer diluted shares outstanding as a result of our ongoing share repurchase program and a lower tax rate. Diluted shares for the quarter were $14.6 million versus $17.5 million 1 year ago. Our tax rate was 11% versus 21% in the prior year due to a discrete tax benefit related to stock-based compensation. We expect our effective tax rate before discrete items to remain consistent at 20% to 22% for the remaining quarters. Moving to non-GAAP measures. Adjusted EBITDA increased 24.9% to $19.5 million or 12.9% of revenue from $15.6 million or 12.0% of revenue for the same period last year. The 90 basis point improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin was primarily driven by growth in our higher-margin offshore locations during recent years and stronger operating results. Adjusted net income increased to $13.1 million from $9 million in the prior year quarter. Non-GAAP fully diluted adjusted earnings per share increased 74.1% to $0.90 from $0.52 in the prior year quarter. As a company, we are pleased with the client diversification we have established over the last several years. For the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, our largest client accounted for 10% of revenue and our top 5, top 10 and top 25 client concentrations represented 37%, 55% and 79% of overall revenue, respectively, as compared to 36%, 51% and 77% of overall revenue in the prior year, representative of a well-diversified client portfolio. Switching to our verticals. Retail & E-commerce increased to 26.3% versus 24.5% in the prior year quarter. HealthTech increased to 14.5% of first quarter revenue versus 14.1% in the prior year quarter, and travel, transportation and logistics remained relatively flat at 14.1% in the quarter. These results were driven by continued growth in multiple offshore geographies and our continued ability to win significant new clients in these verticals. Conversely, our exposure to the telecommunications vertical decreased to 10.2% of revenue for the quarter versus 15.4% in the prior year quarter as we see lower volume from legacy carriers. Revenues from the fintech vertical represented 11% versus 12.4% of the prior year quarter, though, as I mentioned earlier, grew 3.4% year-over-year and 6.8% sequentially, marking a return to growth and the lapping of prior impacts we had noted at fiscal year-end. Moving to cash flow. Net cash generated from operating activities increased to $15.7 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to $7.8 million for the prior year quarter. The increase in net cash inflow from operating activities was primarily due to higher revenues, which drove increased profitability as well as a lower use of working capital. We have seen a notable improvement in our days sales outstanding with DSOs for the quarter at 71 days, down from 75 days a year ago and 72 days as of June 30. We expect our DSOs to remain relatively stable on a go-forward basis. Capital expenditures were $7.6 million or 5.1% of revenue for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 versus $3.6 million or 2.8% of revenue in the prior year quarter. This increase was primarily driven by expansion in our offshore regions to support growth in these higher-margin geographies. Free cash flow was a first quarter record of $8 million compared to $4.1 million in the prior year quarter. The increase was driven by increased revenues during the current quarter and the aforementioned shorter DSOs. During the quarter, we repurchased 92,000 shares for $2.7 million. We have $10.6 million remaining on our current share repurchase program. We ended the first quarter with cash and net cash balances of $22.7 million and $21.1 million, respectively, an increase from $15.3 million and $13.7 million as of June 30, 2025. To summarize our first quarter of fiscal 2026, we achieved outstanding revenue growth and profitability and once again, allowing us to build on our existing momentum entering the fiscal year. Our revenue growth drove increased operating leverage and positioned us to post record first quarter adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.9%, adjusted EPS of $0.90 and free cash flow of $8 million. Our continued strong financial results and healthy balance sheet are enabling strategic investments in our growing AI capabilities and sales resources as well as further expansion in strategic markets and in our top-performing geographies. Importantly, with our outstanding start to the fiscal year, we have the confidence in our business to raise our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance for fiscal year 2026. For fiscal year 2026, revenue is expected to be in the range of $605 million to $620 million, up from $590 million to $610 million. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $78 million to $81 million, up from $75 million to $79 million, and capital expenditures are expected to be in the range of $20 million to $25 million. Our business is well positioned for today and the years ahead, and we are excited about the future of ibex as we head into the second quarter of fiscal year 2026 and beyond. With that, Bob and I will now take questions.

Our first question comes from David Koning with Baird.

Great job again, and you're doing exactly what you said, winning share with some of the new offerings. So congrats on all that.

Thanks, Dave. Yes, we're really proud of the quarter, proud of the role we're on.

Yes, great. First off, what have you observed regarding Gen AI, which has been a topic for a few years? Is it serving as a catalyst for both the industry and your company, or is it impacting you more significantly? Additionally, can you share what portion of your revenue it represents now and where you see it heading in the next few years?

Sure. Let me break that down into two parts, Dave, if that's alright. From the perspective of ibex, the impact of AI has been largely positive, despite the excitement and risks others in the industry have mentioned. We have adopted AI more aggressively than anyone else in the industry. There are two main aspects to this. First, we are using AI internally to improve our execution, equipping our agents with better tools and capabilities, enabling our teams to operate more effectively and efficiently, and enhancing our performance on client KPIs. We are ahead of the competition in this area, which is one reason for our continued outperformance and significant market share gains. This gives ibex a strong advantage because we are doing more than anyone else. The second aspect involves leveraging AI for customer experiences, such as automating interactions and utilizing AI for language translation. Again, we are further advanced in this area than others. Unlike much of the market, which is cautious about fully embracing AI, we are fully committed, and our clients recognize that we offer a unique end-to-end model that integrates AI with human agents for a seamless solution. This positioning makes us an attractive partner for clients, as we not only excel in BPO today but also have a future-proof model that can evolve as AI continues to develop. This creates a significant competitive edge for us, Dave. The results we are achieving, including our growth rates and margin increases, reflect this advantage. To address your question about the current revenue impact, we are still in the early stages. AI hasn't significantly affected our revenue and margin growth yet, but we are well-positioned. We expect that by the end of the fourth quarter this year and into FY '27, AI will become a meaningful factor in our growth and margin expansion.

Yes. I understand. I have a follow-up. Gross margins decreased slightly in Q1, and it seems like you're maintaining the full year margin. You are increasing revenue and EBITDA, but the margin remains stable. Is part of this due to the investments in AI? I know that the long-term benefits from offshoring and AI should improve margins, but could it be that current investments are causing margins to be lower right now?

Yes, Taylor, I'll throw that over to you.

Yes, you're correct. We are projecting our EBITDA margin for the year to be around 13%, which is a slight increase from the previous year. We're experiencing significant operating leverage from our SG&A costs since we're managing to keep those costs relatively stable while our revenue is growing at a much faster rate. This is providing good leverage on the SG&A side. Our gross margins have decreased slightly, especially in the first and second quarters. This decline is due in part to our ongoing investments in India as we ramp up operations, which means we haven't yet reached the long-term margins we expect for that market. Moreover, in the first and second quarters, we've had greater success leading to more training revenue. Since we defer recognizing that revenue while incurring costs upfront, it has introduced some pressure on our gross margins. However, we remain optimistic about gross margins in the long term as we anticipate growth from offshore opportunities and a significant positive impact from AI investments.

I would now like to turn the call back over to Bob Dechant for any closing remarks.

Josh, thank you. I appreciate everyone for listening. I’m very proud of this team and the consistent performance we deliver quarter after quarter as we distinguish ourselves from the industry and our competitors. I am also proud of how they have responded to emergencies, such as the situation we faced in Jamaica with Hurricane Melissa. In addition, in places like the Philippines, where we dealt with typhoons and earthquakes, my team has shown remarkable resilience. I want to thank them all because they are the best in the industry. Thank you all for listening, and we look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Good night.

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.