IBEX Limited

Welcome to the IBAC Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are listening on the phone. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question at that time, please press star then one on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Brinley Johnson, with the Blue Shirt Group.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I want to remind you that the matters discussed on today's call may include forward-looking statements related to our operating performance, financial goals, and business outlooks, which are based on management's current beliefs and assumptions. Please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions as of the day of this call, and we undertake no obligations 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 that that 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 20F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, I'll turn it over to Bob Deccan, CEO.

Thanks, Brindley, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm incredibly proud and excited to share with you our fiscal 2021 results and outlook for the future. With our 16th consecutive quarter of organic revenue growth, I am pleased to announce that we achieved a record year of revenue, EBITDA, and new client wins in both quantity and in-year bookings. And we did this in the face of a once in a century global pandemic. COVID-19 forced companies to accelerate their digital transformation to thrive or survive. As a result, they looked aggressively to key partners to support their digital-first businesses. And I am proud to say that IBEX has won on a big stage with digital-first blue-chip businesses, leading new economy companies, as well as hyper-growth iconic fintech and health tech. We had a record number of of new logo wins that more than doubled our previous high for in-year revenue. And once again, we had 100% retention within our top 20 clients, which accounts for more than 90% of our revenues. Overall, we retained 99.5% of our clients on a revenue basis, comparing from FY20. IBEX is winning as a result of the many key attributes we have built over the last six years. At the forefront is our tech-led solutions in our WaveX platform that drives innovation and performance. Equally important is the culture that we have built, our speed and flexibility, our unique and best client branding, and the strength of our leadership. This, as you have heard me say multiple times, is BPO 2.0. It is differentiated, it is disruptive, and it is very difficult to replicate. Our results are the proof points. As we walk through our results today, you will see our transformation as a company is clearly working. And while I'm extremely proud of our FY21 results, I believe that the best is yet to come. Before we dive into the most recent business results, I want to take a moment to share my look back at what we've accomplished in my own personal scorecard that I hold myself accountable to. I have now completed my sixth year at the helm of IBEX. In FY 2016, we started the transformation from a traditional labor arbitrage-focused business to a digital-focused business. The results of this initiative are nothing short of spectacular. Revenue from clients won since 2016 are now approximately $230 million, up 40% from prior year, and at a five-year CAGR of 84%. This is made up of over 60 new clients. Approximately 75% of this business is integrated omnichannel and digital, while the remaining 25% are with great brands that are investing heavily in and placing a priority on delivering great customer experiences. As the momentum continues to build, The result is great diversification across our client base and strategic verticals, but most importantly, with a differentiated customer value proposition leading the way. Our top three clients represented nearly 70% of our business in FY 2015. Twelve months ago at our IPO, those three legacy clients were at 44%. We exited Q4 of this year where these clients are now down to 28% and trending lower. Again, this is driven primarily by the explosive growth of our high margin digital first business, choosing IVEX as its CX brand partner. The demand for our digital first services led to an increase in over 3,300 new seats. 34% increase to our near shore and offshore locations, which are our highest margin regions. And we established a strong backlog of an additional 3,200 seats that will be launched in the first half of fiscal year 2022. In addition to our new domestic location in Pittsburgh, we just announced our entry into the Honduras market with initial plans to hire more than 400 people. Our goal is to become the leader in Honduras, just as we did in Jamaica and Nicaragua, while growing our Honduran workforce to over 2,000 employees within the next two years. In two and a half short years, we will have seen our near shore and offshore capacity grow by 125%. while the domestic capacity has been reduced by 25%. By December, 77% of our seats will reside in our high margin nearshore and offshore locations. This has helped position IBEX as the number one provider of BPO and CX services across Nicaragua, Jamaica, provincial Philippines, and Pakistan. What matters most here is that our returns on this spend, since I have joined, have been stellar. We track our returns on invested capital and new seat capacity to meet client demand in our near-shore and offshore centers typically have a payback of less than two years. So while we have record revenues up nearly 10% and record EBITDA up nearly 20%, which we're extremely proud of, there's something even more powerful forming underneath. Let me review my perspective on some industry trends that are accelerating the need for our differentiated solutions. Competition for wallet share has never been higher. Demand for everyday products has increased exponentially, and consumers are switching brands at unprecedented rates. As consumers flock to new shopping strategies, brand loyalty has been tested like never before. Beneficiaries of this shift are trusted brands that provide their customers with high-quality, customer-obsessed support and innovative solutions. As volumes of interactions increase, we see a growing need for superior, differentiating service and support. speed and precision of artificial intelligence technologies and analytics, in addition to human insight, has become the focal point for shaping the customer journey and provides the intelligence needed for the customer experience of the future. The current shift is galvanizing companies to rethink the traditional customer delivery platforms and organize their business around a broader multi-channel approach. The desire for convenience and simplicity with each consumer connection is driving the need for automation that will quickly solve customer inquiries and the need for expertly trained contact center personnel. AI automation is the key to supporting both the non-voice channel support and the interaction with frontline personnel. Whether we are supporting a digitally transforming blue chip or digital first company, the option to support consumers when and how they desire is paramount to the success of the overall service strategy. Companies are turning to IBEX because of our acute focus on the customer experience. Our ability to enhance our client brands and our ability to deploy technology and AI across the customer and agent lifecycle. Now to our greatest asset, our people. To help protect their health and safety, we continue to put our employees first in all the markets we operate as it relates to COVID-19. We invested close to $13 million in our people to keep them and our centers safe and COVID-19 free. This is one of the many costs that have been added to our current P&L today in a COVID environment. So the attractive margins and cash flows we see today will only be up and to the right in the future. These investments in our people are paying off. Our team has been performing amazingly. We have passed all of our health audits, and we have had no site shutdowns. Today we are proud to say that we have over 70% of our people vaccinated in the Philippines and over 95% in Pakistan. As a comparison, the current vaccination percentage in the Philippines is 14%. Without question, we are the gold standard in these markets. for our vigilance against this terrible virus. This is the type of track record that truly delights our clients and builds loyalty with our employees. Additionally, we recently conducted our I-voice employee satisfaction survey, and I am proud to say that we have a best in class employee net promoter score of 71. and our great employee base are providing an astounding 40-plus percent of referrals for our new hires. In addition, through our ongoing investment in our ESG programs, we continue to support and enrich the lives of our employees and their families. In the past year, we have provided essential services in areas who have been most challenged with the ongoing spread of COVID-19. We are reshaping social dynamics in many countries we operate in. We provide equal opportunities and an exciting career for women and many minorities in parts of the world where that simply does not exist. Coming to work every day, I am beyond excited to see the sheer talent, energy, and customer-first mindset that our culture breathes and our employees thrive upon. Now let me touch a minute on work at home. Work at home capabilities have been a great vector of resiliency to enable us to offset the loss capacity and keep our pipeline of agent candidates strong in all markets. However, despite our record margins, some of our contact centers are currently at 50% capacity with COVID restrictions in place, showing how much earning potential is left in front of us with our existing footprint alone. We have built the operational platform now that post COVID-19 has the ability to scale to approximately 650 million in revenue in today's footprint, complimented with work at home. This will position us for a very meaningful inflection of free cashflow. In closing, IBEX has become a partner of choice for some of the world's most well-known brands across our strategic verticals, which continues to be an important driver and key strategic element of our accelerated growth. These strong client partnerships, industry-leading CX models, and innovative technology continue to generate a strong recurring cash flow with high earnings visibility. We are extremely excited about the opportunities in front of us. Now, before I turn the call over to Carl for the financial update, I would like to introduce Dan Bellison, EVP of investor relations and corporate development. This was a strategic hire by me and the board, not just in the area of significantly improving our investor relations function, but across corporate strategy, and capital allocations. Dan joins us from Columbia Threadneedle, where he was a portfolio manager and shared the responsibility for the firm's IBEX investment as one of our largest shareholders. Dan believed so strongly in our business and his investment that we were able to convince him to join us. I had the opportunity to establish a close working relationship with Dan over the past 14 months, and I've quickly come to respect his return-oriented mindset and passion. We are excited for you all to meet him. Dan, we'd love for you to say a few words.