TrueBlue, Inc. Q3 FY2023 Earnings Call

Greetings, and welcome to TrueBlue Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Derrek Gafford, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, Derrek. You may begin.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I'm joined by our President and Chief Executive Officer, Taryn Owen. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that today's call and slide presentation contain forward-looking statements, all of which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and we assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties, some of which are described in our press release and in our SEC filings, could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. We use non-GAAP measures when presenting our financial results. We encourage you to review the non-GAAP reconciliations in today's earnings release or at trueblue.com under the Investor Relations section for a complete understanding of these terms and their purpose. I do want to highlight one change involving the tax impact of our adjustments when calculating our adjusted net income measure. We will now be tax-affecting all taxable and deductible adjustments using our statutory rate of 26%, versus our prior method of tax-affecting adjustments using our blended effective income tax rate, as we believe this provides investors with more useful insight. For your convenience, we have provided a reconciliation of U.S. GAAP net income to adjusted net income, and adjusted net income per diluted share using this approach for all prior quarters and years back to 2021 on the financial results page under the Investor Relations section of our website. Any comparisons made today are based on a comparison to the same period in the prior year, unless otherwise stated. Lastly, we will be providing a copy of our prepared remarks on our website at the conclusion of today's call, and a full transcript and audio replay will also be available soon after the call. Okay. Let's now turn the call over to Taryn.

Thank you, Derrek, and welcome everyone to today’s call. We appreciate you being with us. Revenue for the quarter was $473 million, down 18% compared to the prior year. Our results are reflective of a challenging environment in staffing and recruiting. Across most TrueBlue verticals and geographies, our clients remain cost-conscious and selective about the temporary and full-time positions they choose to fill. Our teams are staying highly engaged to help our clients navigate this uncertainty and to ensure we are poised to support them when their staffing needs expand. We are being proactive with our sales approach by leveraging our playbooks and centralized teams to capitalize on every opportunity, and we have a particular focus on high-growth verticals and under-penetrated geographies nationwide. Additionally, we are pursuing shorter-term projects and offering flexible solutions to clients in order to meet immediate needs, while positioning us for future expansion opportunities. Along with our current focus, we remain highly committed to our longer-term strategic priorities, including advancing our digital capabilities to position us to gain market share. For instance, we are enhancing our JobStack and Affinix platforms to drive greater efficiency and improve the client, associate, and candidate experience. We’re also committed to expanding both our scope and our footprint. For example, within staffing, we’re focused on high-growth sectors such as renewables and skilled labor placements. Within RPO, we’re focused on high-growth verticals such as healthcare, as well as diversifying into higher-skill placements and more specialized product offerings. Gaining market share in under-penetrated geographies is also a focus across our driver, skilled trades, and RPO businesses. While industry demand is currently subdued, the long-term outlook for staffing remains positive, and we are well-positioned to capitalize. We have deep expertise in staffing and RPO, a strong footprint, leading technology, and significant resources. Our team is incredibly talented and committed, our values are strong, and we have a compelling mission. TrueBlue provides a vital service, and we remain ready to serve our clients’ immediate and future needs. Before I turn it over to Derrek for further discussion on our results, I want to take a moment to thank him for his leadership and numerous contributions to TrueBlue during his more than two decades with our company. He has built a digital and people-first finance organization with a deep talent bench that will continue to serve us well, and our entire organization is grateful for his contributions. Thank you, Derrek. I’ll pass the call over to you now.

Thank you, Taryn. Demand for our services continues to be soft as businesses of all sorts face a tough balancing act. On one hand, labor pools remain tight, and businesses recognize how critical retaining talent is in today’s environment. On the other hand, businesses have seen significant increases in pay rates, particularly with positions at the lower end of the pay scale. In an attempt to further manage labor costs, businesses are taking action. They are asking their existing employees to do more. They are also being more selective on the roles they choose to fill and more judicious in their use of human capital providers. These factors, coupled with uncertainty about the trajectory of their future workforce needs, are some of the underlying factors impacting our demand, as well as the demand for the broader staffing market in the U.S. Total revenue for the quarter was down 18%. Revenue growth for the quarter came in 4 points short of our midpoint expectation, driven by softer than expected trends in August and the first half of September. Looking at the second half of September and into October, we are encouraged to see that the weekly sequential revenue trends for the staffing side of our business are in line with historical patterns. From a net income and loss perspective, our results were roughly breakeven this quarter, down from net income of $21 million in Q3 last year. Included in our results for the quarter are $2 million of costs associated with our CEO transition. Adjusted net income was $5 million, down from $24 million last year, while adjusted EBITDA declined to $10 million versus $35 million last year. Gross margin of 26.2% was down 90 basis points. This was driven by a revenue mix increase in PeopleReady’s renewable energy business, which carries a lower gross margin than the blended business due to the pass-through travel costs associated with the business, as well as a decline in the revenue mix of our highest margin business, PeopleScout. Workers’ compensation as a percentage of revenue was higher due to less favorable development in prior-period reserves than we received last year. These factors were partially offset by disciplined pricing in our PeopleReady business, which delivered its tenth consecutive quarter of positive spread between bill rate and pay rate inflation. SG&A decreased 3% for the quarter. Adjusted SG&A decreased 5%, which we believe will also be the case for Q4 this year, excluding the impact of the extra week associated with our 53-week fiscal year. We remain focused on managing costs to enhance our profitability while maintaining our operational strengths and readiness to increase our market share when demand rebounds. We recognized an income tax benefit of $2 million this quarter due to the favorable impact of job tax credits. Now, let’s turn to the specific results of our segments. PeopleReady revenue decreased 15%, while segment profit decreased 66%, and segment profit margin was down 520 basis points. The retail, transportation, and service industries continue to be our most challenging verticals, while our renewable energy business continues to have solid growth. We are also seeing greater resilience in our small to medium-sized customers compared to larger national accounts. Being disciplined with our pricing is an important priority to help cover the inflationary pressures in our SG&A expense. The business produced another quarter of positive spread between bill and pay rate inflation with bill rates up 6.9% and pay rates up 6.1%. PeopleScout revenue decreased 32%, while segment profit decreased 41%, and segment profit margin was down 200 basis points. We would characterize the RPO demand environment as soft, with clients continuing to be selective with the roles they choose to fill, some initiating or continuing hiring freezes, and others attempting to use internal resources to fill jobs. Also playing into this are employee quit rates in the United States. Quit rates have consistently drifted lower throughout 2023 as more employees choose to remain in their current jobs, resulting in less employee churn for our customers. Despite the margin contraction, the PeopleScout business produced a healthy segment profit margin of 12%. PeopleManagement revenue decreased 16%, while segment profit decreased 52%, and segment profit margin was down 110 basis points. Now, let’s turn to the balance sheet. Our balance sheet is in good shape. We finished the quarter with no debt, $47 million in cash, and over $120 million of borrowing availability. Before we wrap up, I’d like to take a moment to provide additional color on a couple of forward-looking items. First, similar to 2016, I want to remind everyone that our fiscal fourth quarter this year will include a 14th week, which is expected to add incremental revenue of $17 million to $22 million and a slight headwind on profit due to the low seasonal volume. Second, we expect a revenue decline of 19% to 15% on a comparable 13-week basis. While we are encouraged by the fact that the most recent weekly revenue trends on the staffing side of our business have followed historical expectations, it’s too soon to tell whether the trend has staying power. For additional details on our outlook, please see our earnings presentation posted to our website today. As we think about planning for 2024, it comes down to staying disciplined. We have been focused on our pricing and cost management actions while preserving our operational strengths, and we plan to continue this course in 2024. We are also prepared to take additional cost management actions, should the operating environment become more challenging. Now, on a personal note. While this will be my last month as CFO, I will be staying on through the end of this year as an advisor to help ensure a smooth transition. It has been a pleasure to serve our employees, our customers, and the investment community over my 20-year tenure here. Okay. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the call now for questions.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Jeffrey Silber with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks so much. And before I start, Derrek, I just wanted to wish you the best of luck and thank you for all your help over the past 20 years or so. Wow, it's been a long time. I know there's somewhat of a lack of visibility in your space, but the last couple of quarters seem to have been especially tough in terms of the guidance. Is there anything different going on in the business or the competitive environment that's making it more difficult to provide this guidance?

I don't think so, Jeff. The way we take a look at the guidance, as you've noted, the visibility in our industry, and particularly with some of our staffing brands and our niches, are even less visible than many parts of the staffing market. So the way that we're taking a look at things is, we take a look at the trends that we see coming in to set the guidance right before the conference call. And we just kind of really call the shot on how things are trending. We don't try to build in something extra that might turn up or something that might turn down unless we've got a reasonable probability of something that's kind of on our mind or we're seeing a little sign tick up. And so what we really saw this quarter was that July came out just about like we thought. And then as we went into August, things really kind of took a step down, particularly in PeopleReady, also at PeopleScout. PeopleManagement pretty much hung in there. And so what we saw were the retail industry, the transportation industry, and to a lesser extent, the manufacturing industry verticals, as we came into August, all three of those actually didn't live up to what we would normally see from a sequential step-up perspective. That's really what threw us off the mark, and we didn't see that one coming. That continued a bit into September, and then we really saw things kind of rally back at the end of September. As we went into September, all of those verticals that I talked about that took a step down actually took a step forward above their sequential revenue run rate with the exception of retail. We had a couple of other industries that bounced back nicely as well. And so going into October, we look back at the last five weeks for our staffing businesses; everything has been right on line with historical sequential trends. And as we set the guidance and the outlook for this quarter that we're going into the fourth quarter, we have made the assumption that that is going to continue.

Okay. That's helpful. A few times in the prepared remarks, you talked about cost management. Can we get a little bit more color in terms of where you think that cost management will be coming?

Well, sure. Well, let's talk about what we've done so far this year. And so I'm going to talk about where our cost actions have been this year in comparison with what our budget was coming into the year, which would have been really our outlook that we first shared with you for the year when we talked to you in February this year. We've cut out about $35 million of costs; not all of those costs are running through SG&A, though a fair amount of those are running through cost of sales. In fact, we're down about 1,200 people this year from where we first started, about three-fourths of those in the PeopleReady brand. And keep in mind, when I say some of these costs are running through cost of sales, because if they are recruiting actions, that's a cost of sale item for us. That's where we book it at PeopleScout, not down the SG&A line, so you're not seeing some of those. And then we've had about $10 million of what we would consider unique costs related to the severance and the workforce restructuring actions that we've taken. We also had some CEO transition costs that have negated those. But once we get past those, all those are built into our run rate. We've also had some things with notable inflation that have worked against us, so you're not seeing all of it. But those are the cost actions that we've taken so far this year. As we look forward to 2024, as I alluded to in the prepared remarks, the company is really preparing for it to be a really disciplined planning exercise. And what I mean by that is, there's probably a 50% chance that things get better next year for this industry; maybe there's a 50% chance things get worse. Hard to say. With those kinds of odds though, it just plans to stay really disciplined and focused on the downside plans that are harder to pull together for what the company is doing. We think there can be some more gains made in some of the basics on cost management, like I just recapped for you, that we did in 2023. And also some things in lowering the service delivery costs for the company, some through centralization, some through some process and some technology actions. The company will be able to give you more color on those specifics, though, after we finish our planning for 2024 and come in to talking to you about the fourth-quarter results in February.

All right. Great. If I could just sneak in one more follow-up question. I just want to clarify the guidance. So the $450 million to $475 million is on a 13-week basis, but since there is a 14th week in the quarter, we need to add $17 million to $22 million on top of that to get to $467 million to $499 million. Is that correct?

Yes, that's exactly right. We don't like these 53-week years any more than you do. However, we believe the easiest way to present things is on a 13-week basis, and we will provide it in both formats for better comparison with our other results. From a GAAP perspective, you need to add that 14th week to revenue without adjusting anything else on the bottom line. It's a very low seasonal quarter and may have a slight negative impact on both the quarter and the year.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you, Derrek. I apologize if you already discussed this, but you mentioned that the latter part of September showed some improvement. I'm curious if the trends continued into the first few weeks of October or if you noticed anything different from what you expected.

Let's discuss the year-over-year perspective and the run rate. For the quarter, revenue decreased by 18%, remaining steady across each month. In the first three weeks of October, our staffing businesses reported a 14% year-over-year decline. Although we only bill our PeopleScout business monthly, we observed that from mid-September to the third week of October, the run rate in our staffing businesses was improving according to historical standards. We mentioned in our press release that we are seeing possible signs of stabilization, which is encouraging. While we are not relying solely on this, we remain hopeful about the trends we are currently observing.

And I know you mentioned some of this already, but curious on demand by end market. I know you already talked about a few where things are warrant progressing, but then you also said you had a couple of where things were going well. So just thoughts on the end market.

Well, yes, the question had come up. I believe Jeff had asked it, kind of asking about guidance and kind of what had happened in the quarter. And so that was the explanation of that. And so I think the main takeaway is, what we've seen in the stabilization of our trends from a sequential perspective. Really, all of those are looking good with the exception of retail. We've actually got some that have performed a little better than we expected, most kind of at expectation. The one call out, if we wanted to go on the negative side, would be retail. That one continues to weaken, but we've got some others that are strengthening; and enhance overall, really, the sequential trends are right in line with historical averages.

Perfect. And then just one last question. As you look at your segments, and you talked a little bit about the staffing business being down about 14%. Just expectations of the other two businesses as you look at the segments.

Yeah. Well, if we're talking about the fourth quarter, I'm just going to go off midpoint. We've given ranges, but to quote less numbers, I'm just going to give you midpoints. So the midpoint of our outlook for the fourth quarter is for the company to be down about 17%. That's 15% for our two staffing segments, PeopleManagement, PeopleReady, and about 30% for our RPO business at PeopleScout.

Perfect. Thank you so much, Derrek. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Marc Riddick with Sidoti. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Good evening, everyone. I want to start by thanking you, Derrek, for all your help over the years. I'm looking forward to what lies ahead and hope everything goes well. I would like to discuss the revenue mix mentioned in your remarks. Could you provide more details about the renewables commentary and the impact of the pass-through effect on the revenue mix? I also have a quick follow-up regarding cash flow.

Yeah. Well, when we're talking about the renewable space, that has been a bright spot for us. And so if we're talking on a year-over-year basis, renewable energy for us was up about 80%. And so that's continuing to be a really strong dynamic for us, not just on a year-over-year basis, but each quarter sequentially, we've been building some run rate there. So our renewable energy for the third quarter was about $40 million in total.

Okay, that's definitely helpful. It seems there would need to be a significant gain to have that impact on the mix. I was wondering if we could follow up on cash flow and how we prioritize cash usage. Having a solid balance sheet during times of challenging demand is certainly beneficial. Should we consider any internal investments related to digital capabilities, or are there any significant needs we should anticipate in the coming quarters?

No, there isn't anything significant to mention. From a cash flow and capital usage standpoint, our priority has been reinvesting in the business, particularly in operating expenses and capital expenditures, primarily focused on technology. The company remains committed to digitally transforming the business, with much to be optimistic about regarding ongoing improvements and future developments. While we plan to maintain this focus, we may adjust our investments based on next year's conditions. Additionally, returning capital to shareholders is also important to us, as we believe this year's stock prices have been favorable. So far, we have repurchased about 5% of our market cap, consistent with our historical levels. We aim to keep our balance sheet robust, as our business has significant operating leverage, which can be beneficial in times of revenue growth but challenging during downturns. Therefore, it’s vital for us to avoid financial leverage in conjunction with negative operating leverage. We are not dismissing further share repurchases but wanted to share our perspective. Regarding acquisitions, we are considering future opportunities, especially smaller ones in the RPO sector. However, our main focus right now is on running and recovering the business, particularly in staffing and RPO, with less emphasis on acquisitions at this time.

Okay. Great. And then the last thing I'd be remiss if I didn't sort of ask about the announcement that came out after the close on the addition of the Chief People Officer. So I was wondering if you could maybe shed a little light on that and talk a little bit about that.

Sure. Thank you, Marc. This is Taryn speaking. I would just say, overall, I'm incredibly impressed with the support and strength of our leadership team overall. And certainly glad that you saw the announcement regarding our new Chief People Officer, Greg Netolicky, who joined us today; actually, it's his first day. He brings to us outstanding experience in all aspects of HR, so I'm really looking forward to the contribution he'll make to us as we move forward here.

Right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Marcon with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Good afternoon and let me extend my thanks to Derrek. It's been great working with you over the last 20 years, Derrek. So really appreciate everything that you've done. Can you talk a little bit about the PeopleScout business? There's commentary with regards to some clients have been pulling back, some are pulling resources in-house. Can you talk a little bit about what percentage of the clients are just pulling back their volumes versus what percentage are bringing things in-house? And can you also describe what are you seeing in terms of new RFPs and any line of sight in terms of decisions that could be coming up? And how you're thinking about win rates and your competitive position in that particular space?

Sure. So Mark, in the PeopleScout business, the primary driver here is reduced volumes within our existing customers, and where our customers have relied more on internal resources, it's really around the focus on keeping them busy and retaining that internal talent acquisition team during a time of a hiring slowdown. So we're certainly still engaged with those customers and ready to support them as their needs increase, but they're really focused on ensuring that they're able to keep their internal recruiters retained and busy during this slower time. So we're seeing across the board lower hiring volumes. Some of our customers are on hiring freezes or have initiated additional approval requirements in the hiring process to just slow that overall process down, as they look to gain more insight on what their future needs may be. From a sales perspective, the pipeline, I would say, just from an average deal size perspective, is just down in terms of what we are accustomed to seeing. Last year, our average deal size was about $3 million in the pipeline; it's $1 million now, and the deals are just taking longer to close. We are seeing some activity in our shorter-term solutions with PeopleScout. We offer a service called Recruiter On-Demand, where we're offering recruiters to supplement in-house recruiting teams and project RPO solutions. So we will provide those kinds of solutions to stay engaged with customers and can expand upon those relationships and opportunities when the rebound of their needs arises.

Taryn, what percentage of your current clients is experiencing lower volume, and what percentage has reached a point where they don’t have needs beyond their internal resources but are still keeping you as a vendor for potential future needs? To what extent, if any, have you completely lost any clients?

Yes. It's a small percentage, just a couple of customers with whom we currently have no volume at all.

Okay. Great. It doesn't seem like you're indicating that the environment is stabilizing or improving. Perhaps that's because we usually wait until the end of the month to assess where things stand. You mentioned some positive insights regarding the PeopleReady side, particularly in segments like manufacturing and transportation that show a bit more stability, but you didn’t provide similar comments about the RPO side. If the trend continues to decline, how should investors consider the margin range? And what options do you have for managing costs in that area?

Mark, I'll take that one. Yes, we did talk about seeing some potential signs of stabilization in our staffing businesses. We have not seen that yet with PeopleScout. However, I don't think that we would expect to see it. One, the stabilization, if we want to even call it stable, has been a short period on the staffing side. So as we said before, we're seeing it, now too soon to tell whether it has staying power. However, our experience has been through multiple cycles. This is where we would start to probably see stabilization first, is on the staffing side. Just like we would expect to see staffing kind of go first, and then from placement follow, we would expect to see things stabilize and improve on the staffing side and then PeopleScout tend to follow. When it comes to the margin profile, you can see even with this drop-off, we turned in a 12% segment profit margin. And so out of all of our businesses, this is where it's the most variable from the standpoint that we don't have branch locations here that have to be staffed to keep running. We don't have on-site operations; there are minimums there. Now there are certain minimums, too, when it comes to RPO clients, but there's more flexibility there. So we still turned in a 12% margin. You've heard some of my statistics earlier about the number of folks that we've had to downsize from to protect those margins. And there's more that we think we can do if we need to, both from a people perspective, a service delivery perspective, and a technology perspective, to try to keep that margin from flowing into single digits, at least on an annual basis, quarters can be lumpy, but on an annual basis, we think we got a good shot at keeping that at 10% plus.

Even during 2020 with COVID, you managed to achieve an 11% margin by the fourth quarter. There was a significant downturn in Q2 and Q3 of 2020. When we consider the fourth quarter of 2020, when you were operating at $41 million, does that indicate that the margins won’t drop any lower? Or is there a possibility of them going into single digits?

Well, I guess we'll have to see what happens from an operating environment perspective. If things were to get into another bona fide recession on top of where we're at right now, we could see single digits. I think what we're looking at right now, with the run rate that we've got, and with a little slippage in place, we feel like we can make some adjustments with still positive GDP out there, to do what we've just talked about, keeping it out of the single-digit realm.

Okay. Great. And then with regards to PeopleReady, in terms of the digitization efforts, can you give us an update in terms of JobStack and some of the statistics?

Sure. I'm glad to provide that update. JobStack remains a vital element of our PeopleReady operations. Currently, about 90% of our associates are using the app, and we have 30,000 customers engaging at any time. As Derrek mentioned, we are continuing to invest in JobStack, focusing on enhancing usability and the overall experience for our customers, associates, and internal staff. For instance, clients can now approve time directly in the app, which saves them time and enables our associates to receive payments more quickly after their assignments end. Additionally, we've improved job search capabilities for associates, allowing them to filter by location proximity, which they requested. Our internal staff also benefits from better visibility into orders and available associates that can be matched to jobs, boosting their efficiency. We are committed to making these improvements, always aiming to enhance usability.

Okay, great. Regarding the gross margins, you mentioned that the workers' compensation accruals weren't quite as favorable. Is there anything unusual that you would like to highlight about that?

No, I don't think so, Mark. As you know, that's a significant cost for us. It's a major item on our balance sheet, and it represents a long-term liability. Similar to any other insurance company, there are adjustments that can fluctuate, which can make things a bit uneven at times. That’s really the situation. There were less favorable adjustments to prior year reserves this quarter compared to the same quarter last year. However, if you look at the expense, there's a lot of consistency. Workers' comp as a percentage of revenue was about 1.7% this quarter, 1.7% last quarter, and 1.7% in Q2 of last year. The only exception was Q3 of last year, which was lower due to a significant one-time benefit affecting the workers' comp line.

Okay. Great. And then on the balance sheet and cash flows, when we take a look at the accounts receivables, how are DSOs trending? Because it looked like receivables were a use of funds of cash; we didn't get the normal harvest that we typically get on revenue declines. What's occurring there?

Well, when it comes to accounts receivable, at least for the year, you may be doing your own math on the quarter for the year, it's $35 million to the positive.

Right. But I was talking about, for the quarter sequencially.

For the year-over-year comparison, DSO is up about one day. We're not seeing a significant decline in accounts receivable. From Q2 to Q3, our revenue was fairly consistent this year, with no observed decline during that period. Therefore, we experienced a one-day increase in DSO year-over-year. It was up a bit more than that sequentially, but Q2 was unusually low as well. That's right. That's exactly right.

Okay. Great. Look forward to talking to you on – post call. Thanks.

There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Taryn for closing comments.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I look forward to meeting many of you at investor events over the coming year and keeping you updated on our progress. I also want to thank the entire TrueBlue team for their tremendous efforts and continued focus on fulfilling our mission to connect people and work. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Have a great evening.

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.