CSG Systems International, Inc.

quarter 2020 earnings announcement. All participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow today's presentation and instructions will be provided at that time. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. John Ray, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator, and thanks to everyone for joining us. Today's discussion will contain a number of forward-looking statements. These will include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our projected financial results, our ability to meet our clients' needs through our products, services, and performance, and our ability to successfully integrate and manage acquired businesses in order to achieve their expected strategic, operating, and financial goals. while these statements reflect our best current judgment they are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this call and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new or future events In addition to factors noted during this call, a more comprehensive discussion of our risk factors can be found in today's press release, as well as our most recently filed 10-K and 10-Q, which are all available in the investor relations section of our website. Also, we will discuss certain financial information that is not prepared in accordance with GAAP. we believe that these non-GAAP financial measures, when reviewed in conjunction with our GAAP financial measures, provide investors with greater transparency to the information used by our management team in our financial and operational decision-making. For more information regarding our use of non-GAAP financial measures, we refer you to today's earnings release and non-GAAP reconciliation tables on our website, which will also be furnished to the SEC on Form 8K. With me today on the phone are Brian Shepherd, Chief Executive Officer, and Raleigh Johns, Chief Financial Officer. With that, I'd like to now turn the call over to Brian.

Thanks, John, and thank you all for joining us today. Glad to be here. To start, the entire CSG family hopes that all of you are staying healthy and safe. The pandemic reminds us every day to put our people and our priorities first. It has also changed the way we in the world do business, and we couldn't be more grateful for everything our 4,800 dedicated global employees do to put our customers first and propel our business forward. As challenging as 2020 was, Team CSG had a very strong Q4 2020 finish, which created momentum heading into 2021. We're fortunate to have a resilient SaaS-based business model that generates strong recurring cash flows with high revenue and earnings visibility. I couldn't be prouder to announce that COVID notwithstanding, our 2020 financial performance finished at the high end of our guidance ranges. These good results were underpinned by the strength of our customer relationships with leading global brands in many different industry verticals. Our clients know that they can trust CSG to help them better acquire, monetize, engage, and retain their customers. As CEO, I'm honored to lead CSG and our committed employees into the next phase of our growth and our evolution. Specifically, my team and I look forward to building a bigger, better, and more future-ready CSG. We will accomplish this by having every one of our CSG employees working towards our common goals. And we will accomplish this the CSG way, where our culture, our people, and doing business the right way are at the heart of everything we do. With that in mind, I wanted to take a moment to highlight three key strategic pillars that will underpin our shared vision for the future of CSG. First, we will continue to invest and relentlessly defend our position as an innovative and industry-leading technology provider. The world is now digital. Cloud and edge computing are here to stay. Data and real-time insights will pave the way for extraordinary advancements in customer experiences in every industry all around the world. And CSG innovation and technology advancements will lead the way for our customers, as we've done for over three decades. Our broad portfolio of cloud, on-premise, and pre-integrated solutions give our customers a competitive advantage by allowing them to more quickly deliver new digital services with an even more personalized experience. Second, we will continue to link and strengthen our relationships with our existing customers, but we also diversify our revenue base into new, higher growth industry verticals via our customer engagement and payment product offerings. Our relentless focus on enabling an exceptional customer experience, delivering on our customer commitments, and being easier to do business with than our competitors will continue to set CSG apart in the market. Every day, our employees, our market-leading product platforms, and our world-class operations help customers solve their toughest challenges. And with respect to diversifying our revenue streams, as we grow in new industry verticals like retail, healthcare, and government, we will also continue to win big in our existing cable, satellite, telecom, and media customer base. And third, we will focus on unleashing the power of our employees to drive growth, innovation, and customer centricity. We know that our corporate culture is one of our key competitive advantages, and we will protect, nurture, and evolve our culture and our values. With respect to diversity and inclusion, while we still have much work to do, we are committed to reflecting the global communities where we work and serve. embracing seeking and elevating our people that represent our global diversity will make us a stronger more agile and more competitive csg to help us accomplish our goals we recently hired our new chief diversity and social responsibility officer whose main goal is to partner with me and the csg leadership team to embed diversity equity and inclusion into the core of who csg is Before we turn to our 2020 financial highlights, I want to extend a huge thank you to every CSG employee who did so much to move the business forward and serve our customers so well in 2020. To thank our employees, we recently gave every single CSG employee a special one-time $500 cash COVID thank you bonus in addition to our standard incentive programs. And with that, I'll highlight a few financial achievements from 2020. First, for the full year, even with the COVID headwinds, CSG generated $923 million of adjusted revenue, up slightly year over year on a constant currency basis. CSG also generated $173 million in cash flow from operations and $144 million of free cash flow. And finally, we make good on our promise of returning money to you, our shareholders, with $57 million spent on dividends and share repurchases in 2020. Raleigh will go into more detail on the financial results momentarily. Changing gears, let me share with you some highlights from the various parts of our business. As we've highlighted in our last two earnings calls, our CSG sales pipeline is significantly larger than it has ever been, and you're seeing our previous optimism turning into won and closed deals as our global sales team continues to compete and win in the market. When we talk about growth being our number one priority, consistently strong sales, customer wins, and delivering exceptionally well in our customer commitments are keys to sustained growth and business momentum. First, in our North American cable and satellite business, CSG is seeing ongoing strength. We continue to deepen and strengthen our relationship with Charter as evidenced by our 10th consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth with this great customer. We have deployed solutions that help deliver a differentiated customer experience, including enhanced kiosk solutions, expanded university on-campus offerings to college students, and a variety of customer marketing and communication programs. As the world continues to go digital, we look forward to expanding our relationship with this industry-leading broadband and entertainment provider. CSG also won two deals in the cable market, increasing our market share in this vertical. The first is with Zeto Media Group, a provider of television, high-speed Internet, and digital phone services to customers across 19 states to deploy industry-leading customer engagement solutions. The second is with Hargrave Communications, a regional leader providing advanced communications and entertainment services to customers in the southeastern United States to deploy our revenue management and field management solutions. And in our global telecom wireless and wireline business, we made significant sales progress that clearly positioned CSG as the number one challenger brand in the wireless and telecom revenue management market space, as illustrated by our Q4 wins. CSG signed an exciting new deal with Mobily, the second largest wireless provider in Saudi Arabia, with nearly 14 million subscribers. Mobiley was looking for a partner to future-proof their business, accelerate their innovation, all while improving their customer experience. Demonstrating our strength as a technology leader in wireless, CSG was selected as the prime systems integrator to deploy our full revenue management platform for this digital leading wireless service provider. We expect big growth to continue in our MIA telecom business. In South America, we completed Telecom Argentina's Paraguay implementation of our field management service solution. This was a nice win as it showcased how our relationship with Telecom Argentina has grown beyond our initial deployment and into their surrounding operating units across Latin America. The last Telecom win I want to highlight is with Airtel Africa, where CSG will provide managed services, including customer relationship management and convergent charging and revenue management solutions to support Airtel Africa's growth across its 14-country footprint. These solutions will help bring consistency and scalability across business operations, enabling Airtel Africa to bring new services to market quickly, boost operational efficiency, and reduce cost. Next, consistent with our goals to diversify and grow our new industry vertical revenue, I wanted to highlight some key wins in other industry verticals as companies around the world look for new ways to communicate and engage with their customers. In Q4, we signed a contract with one of the nation's largest drugstore chains to provide customer engagement messaging for the retail and clinic operations in order to enhance their customers' experience. This solution is increasingly important with unprecedented inbound requests to healthcare providers, retail pharmacies, and government agencies related to COVID vaccinations and appointments. And finally, an update on our payments business. While we saw a moderate downturn in transaction volumes on our payment solutions during the middle of 2020, as small to mid-sized businesses experienced impacts from COVID, our payments business is weathering the storm extremely well. As we've mentioned on previous calls, we are not experiencing the severe declines that other global we serve, which includes government agencies, early education services, retail, and small to medium businesses. Overall, I'm pleased with the success we've had and the progress that we're making in the payment space. In closing, we are extremely proud that CSG is doing what it takes to navigate and deliver in these difficult times. Thank you to our customers for your ongoing trust in us. Thank you to our talented and dedicated employees across the globe who are committed to helping our customers and CSG achieve our fullest potential. And last but not least, thank you to our shareholders for believing that we will deliver for you. We are as committed as ever to distribute capital to our shareholders while we invest in new initiatives and acquisitions to drive long-term top and bottom line growth. Put simply, 2020 results prove that CSG's business is as healthy, resilient, and strong as it has ever been, and this management team is laser focused on accelerating our growth and diversifying our revenue. With that, I'll turn it over to Raleigh to review the details of our financial performance and our 2021 guidance.