IBEX Limited

Thank you for standing by. My name is Hermione and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to IBEX Limited First Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. To note, there is company earnings deck presentation available on the ibex investor relations website at investors.ibex.com i will now turn this conference over to mr michael darwell head of investor relations for ibex please go ahead 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 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 10-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on September the 12th, 2024. With that, I will now turn the call over to IBEX CEO, Bob Deccan.

Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today as we share our first quarter fiscal year 2025 results. Let me start my remarks by thanking my team for their continued fantastic performance. I believe they are the best in the industry. With our performance in the first quarter, we have now improved adjusted EBITDA margin over the prior year in nine out of the last 10 quarters. And in an industry that has recently been challenged growing top line, IBEX is one of the first BPOs to return to meaningful organic revenue growth, where we grew at 4.1% in the quarter. On top of that, the first quarter of FY25 was another record-setting quarter for IBEX, where we achieved first quarter bests across a number of key financial metrics, including revenue, net income, EPS, and EBITDA. Our growth was driven by great performance from our new logo team and new wins within our embedded-based clients as we outperform our competition and take market share. I am excited to report that our growth vector continue to be our margin expansion drivers as we grow our higher margin services and geographies, which represent nearly 80% of our overall business. As a result, we are confident in our ability to continue to drive top-line growth and margin expansion. We have built a culture of winning, one where we continue to demonstrate our unique ability to successfully punch above our weight and beat our much larger competitors. We have also differentiated ourselves from the competition by leveraging an unparalleled agent-first culture, paired with our award-winning Wave IX technology stack and our deep analytics capabilities. We are now extending our competitive moat with cutting-edge AI solutions. Let me highlight some of the key results we delivered in Q1. We delivered record Q1 revenue of $129.7 million, up 4.1% from a year ago. This was driven by market share growth in many of our top clients and scaling many of the 18 new logo clients we won last year. On top of that, we won and launched three new client relationships in the quarter and are having early success in the current quarter. The signature win was with one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, where we are rapidly scaling global English support for their customers worldwide out of our offshore footprints. We expanded year-over-year adjusted EBITDA margin for the ninth time in the last 10 quarters, delivering a 12% adjusted EBITDA margin while setting record Q1 net income of $7.5 million. We achieved record adjusted EPS of $0.52, up 30% from $0.40 a year ago. And with our strong free cash flow and balance sheet, we were able to repurchase more than 280,000 shares at a cost of $4.7 million in the quarter. Again, I am so proud of the results that this team continues to deliver. We are having great success with our customer-facing Wave IX solutions we call AI Automate, AI Translate, and AI Authenticate. Last quarter, I announced our first significant win with AI Automate, for a leading mobile carrier. I'm excited to announce that we have won two additional AI opportunities this quarter. The first is a deployment of AI Automate to transform the customer experience for a new client. Our new client is also having us displace one of our largest competitors for their traditional BPO, agent-led customer support. we now have a tightly integrated end-to-end solution for them. Our second AI win is with a leading travel-related client where we are providing AI Translate to do language translation services for a broad range of foreign languages. This solution will transform their customer experience from old-world, third-party language translation to a new cutting-edge solution. I'm also proud to report that our AI Translate solution has recently earned the 2024 Generative AI Product of the Year Award. Lastly, I'm also proud to report that IBEX was named number two for America's Best Employers for Tech Workers by Fortune Magazine, beating out companies like Salesforce, Microsoft, and many others. In summary, We are excited with our trajectory as we move forward into FY25. We believe our business is positioned for consistent growth, continued strong EPS, and free cash flow, and one where we lead the competition from an AI perspective. As I have previously stated, our ability to win big with high-profile brands is the staple of IBEX. We expect this to continue throughout FY25 and beyond. With that, I will now turn the call over to Taylor to go into more details on our first quarter FY25 financials and guidance. Taylor?

Thank you, Bob, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining the call today. In my discussions of our first quarter fiscal year 2025 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 are among the strongest in our history. We achieved record first quarter revenue, net income, EPS, adjusted net income, adjusted EPS, and adjusted EBITDA. First quarter revenue was $129.7 million, an increase of 4.1% from $124.6 million in the prior year quarter. Revenue growth was driven by vertical growth in health tech of 23.4%, retail and e-commerce of 8.6%, and travel, transportation, and logistics of 10%. It was partially offset by decline in the FinTech vertical of 13%. Our focused efforts to grow our higher margin nearshore and offshore delivery locations are having a favorable impact on bottom line results. Offshore nearshore revenues now comprise 76% of total revenue versus 75% in the prior year quarter. Our lower margin onshore region decreased to 24% of total revenue versus 25% in the prior year quarter. Revenue mix in the higher-margin digital and omnichannel services continued to be strong. Digital and omnichannel delivery represented 76% of our total revenue, consistent with 77% in the prior year quarter. We expect that we will continue to be successful driving growth in these higher-margin services. As Bob mentioned, we're seeing our pipeline, particularly in higher-margin services, strengthen, leading to an acceleration of new client wins. First quarter net income increased to $7.5 million compared to $7.4 million in the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily driven by the meaningful growth of work and higher margin offshore regions of 12% year over year for the quarter. The site and cost optimization efforts completed over the past year and further leverage from revenue growth partially offset by higher income tax expense. Fully diluted EPS was $0.43, up from $0.39 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. Diluted shares in the quarter were $17.5 million versus $18.9 million one year ago. Moving to non-GAAP measures, adjusted EBITDA increased to $15.6 million, or 12% of revenue, from $13.7 million, or 11% of revenue, for the same period last year. The 100 basis point improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin was primarily driven by growth in our higher margin offshore locations during recent years, growth in key verticals from existing and new clients launched throughout fiscal year 2024 and the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, and stronger operating results due to site optimization efforts. Adjusted net income increased to $9 million from $7.6 million in the prior year quarter. Non-GAAP fully diluted earnings per share increased at 52 cents from 40 cents in the prior year quarter. The increases were driven by the higher EBITDA and fewer diluted shares outstanding due to our ongoing share repurchase program, offset by higher taxes. We expect our tax rate to track toward 21% to 22% for the year. As a company, we're pleased with the client diversification we've established over the last several years. For the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, our largest client accounted for 11% of revenue, and our top five, top 10, and top 25 client concentrations declined slightly compared to the prior year to 36%, 51%, and 77%, respectively, of overall revenue, representative of a well-diversified client portfolio which continues to become more diversified. Switching to our verticals, Health tech increased to 14.1% of first quarter revenue versus 11.9% in the prior year quarter. Retail and e-commerce increased to 24.5% versus 23.4% in the prior year quarter. And travel transportation logistics increased to 14.2% versus 13.5% in the prior year quarter. These increases 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 FinTech vertical decreased to 12.4% of revenues for the quarter versus 14.8% to the prior year quarter, impacted by the changing landscape for some client payment support models and geographic shifts from onshore to offshore delivery. Net cash generated from operating activities was relatively constant at $7.8 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2025 compared to $8.7 million for the prior year quarter. A slight decrease in net cash inflow from operating activities primarily due to longer DSOs for our receivables offset by higher revenues and stronger operating results. Our DSOs were 75 days, up from 72 days at the end of the year, and in line with industry average. DSOs increased slightly this quarter due to late payments from certain clients, which we received early in the second quarter. We expect our DSOs to remain stable on a go-forward basis. Capital expenditures were $3.6 million, or 2.8% of revenue for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025. versus $2.1 million, or 1.6% of revenue, in the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily driven by expansions in our offshore and nearshore regions to support growth in these higher margin geographies. Free cash flow is $4.1 million in the current quarter, compared to $6.6 million in the prior year quarter. The decrease was driven by increased capital expenditures during the quarter and the aforementioned longer DSOs. Our end-of-quarter cash and net cash balances were relatively constant versus the end of our fiscal year, June 30, 2024, at $62.3 million and $60.8 million versus $62.7 million and $61.2 million. We repurchased approximately 282,000 shares for $4.7 million in the first quarter, which offset our free cash flow. We have $22.2 million remaining to repurchase under our current share repurchase program. To summarize our first quarter of fiscal 2025, we further built our top-line momentum in the quarter with 4.1% revenue growth. This is a result of our focused effort to win new logos and deliver superior service, allowing us to expand with our embedded client base. Importantly, our profitability continues to improve. This was our ninth of the last 10 quarters where we delivered year-over-year adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, creating a strong cash flow that we're using to further invest in AI capabilities and sales resources. As we look ahead, we remain confident in our strategy to drive revenue growth throughout 2025 and continue to return value to shareholders. For fiscal year 2025, revenue is expected to be in the range of $515 to $525 million, raising the lower end of the previous range from $510 million. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $67 to $69 million. Capital expenditures are expected to be in the range of $15 to $20 million. Our business is well positioned for today and the years ahead, and we're excited about the future of IBEX as we head into the second quarter of fiscal year 2025 and beyond.

With that, Bob and I will now take questions. Operator, please open the lines.

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of David Koning with Baird. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Great job. I guess my first question, just the inflection in revenue, you've been kind of flat to down for a few quarters, probably four or five quarters just with macro. And now all of a sudden, you hit a pretty nice inflection in growth. And I guess twofold question. One is 4% first quarter of the year, your full year is one to three. So is there a reason to think that you could actually keep this momentum up around mid-single digits? And then I guess secondly, is it more... the backdrop is getting a little better, or is this a lot of just client signings just all hitting and driving a lot of the growth?

Yeah, Dave, hey, thanks for the question. Actually, thanks for joining. I know you've got a busy schedule this week and all, but, you know, so let me touch first on the, you know, on the growth. If you think about it, you know, we had a and a strong year in FY24 of winning new logos that all kept scaling ramping. And so, you know, as we share it, as you get into FY25, we think that those are going to be all kind of hitting full stride and maybe even, you know, continue to grow. So we had good visibility of that. And that was, you know, kind of the first part of the equation and, The second part of the equation on growth was market share gains in the base. And we had, especially in our top five clients, we won a lot of business. We won new LOBs, new geographies, a lot of launches in markets, offshore markets, et cetera, taking market share away from our competitors. And so we had two really strong vectors that we feel really good about, we could see all that coming together in FY24, especially in the back half of 24. Now, the third variable is really kind of the rest of the base. And, you know, we still think of that as a little bit choppy, you know, a little bit of, you know, still some challenges around the, you know, around the macros. And so when you put those together and we look out, we're hopeful that, and our goal is to keep driving this and keep signing new logos and keep growth accelerating. Knowing that there's still some choppiness in the business, I think, you know, we'll kind of sit and say those could, you know, those variables and how they play out could be, you know, there could be some, you know, headwinds that we don't necessarily see right now. And so we're trying to be a little bit conservative on, you know, on guidance, but our goal is to certainly, you know, certainly, you know, kind of keep that, keep the momentum going. Nice.

Yeah, no, that's great. And maybe just more on follow-up, health tech looked like the one place where growth kind of disconnected from kind of recent levels in a really nice positive way. Was there one or two clients added in the quarter or was it just existing clients, just something happening to kind of inflect their growth?

A little bit of both. So some nice wins on the new logo side. Really, if you think about starting in the second half of our FY24 season, those things start hitting stride. We also had, you know, I think just we're doing really good with those clients. And so we've won a lot of, you know, kind of a lot of market share away from our competitors. You know, we call it, you know, with those clients, it's like, well, take the IBEX challenge, we're going to outperform. And, you know, and then we're going to keep the, you know, keep the numbers moving, you know, up and to the right, you know, around, you know, our delivery for them. And that's what we've been doing. And they reward you with, you know, with new geos and, you know, new LOBs. And, you know, it's a recipe for success. And we have a long, you know, honestly, we have a long track record of doing that here. Great. Well, great job, guys. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate it, Dave. And, yeah, we're, you know, we just, you know, really feel good about the business here.

Yeah, great. Thank you.

There are no further questions. I will now turn the call back over to Bob Deccant, CEO for Closing Remarks.

Thanks, Hermione, and appreciate it. So, look, we all are proud of what this team did. The results are great. We've got a lot of momentum as we move for the rest of the year. Thank you all for delivering and look forward to our discussions over the next quarters and appreciate your confidence in IBEX. Thanks. Have a good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.