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Text: pb.com and by clicking on Investor Relations.
Additionally, we have provided slides that summarize many of the points we will discuss during the call.
These slides can also be found on our Investor Relations website.
We got off to a solid start to the year with every business making an important contribution to the quarter.
Overall, revenue at constant currency grew 14% and every business improved their EBIT performance.
For the second consecutive quarter, SendTech improved EBIT on a year-to-year basis.
As I mentioned before, the transformation of SendTech from a business in secular decline to a business well positioned to capture new value in the shipping market is one of the most impressive transformation I've ever seen.
The business has leveraged digital technologies to transform our offerings and our go-to-market strategy.
SendTech's platform is built on IoT technologies that are delivered on a fast chassis and this business is very well positioned going forward.
Our Presort business continued with the momentum we saw at the end of last year with both revenue and EBIT improving on a year-to-year basis.
Global Ecommerce revenue at constant currency grew 40% for the quarter and EBIT margins improved nearly 400 basis points on a year-to-year basis.
Importantly, profit performance improved throughout the quarter as our labor model continued to mature and pricing changes kicked in.
In the month of March, Domestic Parcel Services per unit labor cost delivered the best performance compared to any quarter since second quarter of last year.
We expect unit labor cost to continue to improve and transportation and automation efficiencies are primarily still in front of us.
Transportation cost remain high in both our Ecommerce and Presort businesses.
So further insourcing our transportation, as well as the deployment of automation will benefit both businesses.
A lot of opportunity in front of us as we continue to invest in areas that will yield future productivity benefits.
We also made several important additions to our Global Ecommerce team.
While I'm sure the team will continue to evolve, we have a group of professionals and consultants guiding our business who have built business to consumer networks centered on induction to the USPS system.
Cash performance for the quarter was also relatively strong compared to prior year off of an improved working capital performance.
The team continue to demonstrate strong operational discipline.
We also executed a successful refinance in the quarter.
There are two objectives to the refinancing.
First, we wanted to push out the maturities, further decreasing our refinancing risk.
Secondly, and more important in my perspective, we created strategic flexibility.
We achieved both those objectives.
I've described four chapters of transformations, quick wins, sustained investment, revenue growth and finally, profitable revenue growth.
Last quarter, I said we are poised to enter that fourth chapter, profitable revenue growth.
It's hard to call the first quarter an inflection point given the nominal EBIT increase but revenue and profit did increase and are very much like our position going forward.
Each business is poised to continue to make progress during this year and for that matter, going forward beyond this year.
All in all, I'm quite pleased with the quarter.
It turned in another strong revenue performance and improved EBIT across each segment compared to the prior year.
As the revenue compares get more difficult as the year goes on, growth will inevitably moderate but the trend is quite clear and are very much like the way we are positioned.
Before I get into the details of the quarter, this being my first earnings call with the team, I want to share with you a few thoughts on what attracted me to Pitney Bowes.
The first thing that attracted was the growth trajectory.
Now that I have had a chance to go deeper into the business, I am confident that we are on the right path of achieving what Marc referred to as the fourth chapter of our transformation, which is profitable revenue growth.
The second item is culture.
I can feel a true sense of team, pride and passion for continuously innovating and winning in the marketplace.
These are concepts that you cannot necessarily teach, they are ingrained and I consider them to be imperative to our success.
And last, what I did not realize or quickly learned is how much technology is deeply needed in everything we do.
It's not as evident when you look at the business from a distance, but I believe it's one of the major enablers to the company's transformation.
Now, let me turn to our first quarter results.
Revenue was $915 million and grew 14% over prior year.
Adjusted earnings per share was $0.07 and GAAP earnings per share was a loss of $0.18.
GAAP earnings per share includes a $0.22 loss on the refinancing of our debt as well as a $0.02 loss from discontinued operations and $0.01 on restructuring charges.
Free cash flow was a net use of $1 million and cash from operations was $66 million, both an improvement from prior year due to favorable working capital changes largely around the timing of accounts payable and accounts receivable along with improved collections.
This was partially offset by lower customer deposits at our PB Bank.
During the quarter, we paid $9 million in dividends and made $4 million in restructuring payments.
We invested $43 million in capex as part of our plan to drive future operational efficiencies.
We ended the quarter with $697 million in cash and short-term investments.
Total debt was $2.4 billion.
We took several actions during the quarter to refine our capital structure along with reducing overall debt by $126 million from prior year.
These actions further reduce refinancing risk with the reduction of our near-term bond maturities.
We also improved the pricing up and substantially paid out our term loan B, improved our covenants which provides us greater strategic flexibility and extended the duration across our capital structure.
When you take our finance receivables and cash into account with our debt, our implied operating debt is $690 million.
Looking at the P&L, starting with revenue versus prior year.
Business services grew 28%, equipment sales grew 12% and rentals were flat to prior year.
We had declines in Support Services of 4%, supplies of 10% and financing revenues of 14%.
Gross profit was $299 million and gross margin was 33%, which was down from the same period last year largely due to the mix and shift of the portfolio, but is an improvement from the fourth quarter.
SG&A was $238 million or 26% of revenue.
This is an improvement of $10 million and 5 points respectively from prior year.
Within SG&A, corporate expenses were $57 million which was up about $14 million over prior year largely due to benefits recognized last year around employee variable-related costs and a sales tax credit.
R&D was $11 million or 1% of revenue and down slightly from prior year.
Adjusted EBIT dollars were $50 million, which was a slight improvement over prior year.
Adjusted EBIT margin was 5%.
Interest expense, including finance interest was $37 million.
Our tax provision on adjusted earnings was a benefit of about $400,000 and includes a benefit associated with an affiliate reorganization.
Compared to prior year, our tax provision benefited earnings per share by about 1.5%.
For purposes of determining adjusted EPS, shares outstanding are approximately $179 million.
Let me now turn to each segment's performance starting with Ecommerce.
Revenue for the segment was $413 million and grew 40% over prior year.
Revenue continues to benefit from the strong demand along with the pre-pandemic comparison.
Volumes grew year-over-year across all lines of service.
Domestic Parcel Services volumes grew 23%, Cross Border volumes were more than doubled and our Digital Services volumes grew 36%.
EBIT was a loss of $26 million and EBITDA was a loss of $8 million.
Compared to prior year, EBIT improved $3 million and EBIT margin improved nearly 400 basis points.
We made progress through the quarter where earlier on we were still dealing with the receivable of peak holiday season.
We continue to work to improve service levels in our Domestic Parcels Network balancing cost and quality which are all headed in a positive direction.
As with the industry, we all continue to see relatively high transportation costs and a competitive labor market.
However, as we move through the quarter, our Domestic Parcel Network improved parcel process per hour by approximately 45% as our labor model continued to mature.
Margins continue to be healthy in our Digital and Cross Border services.
Of the $26 million EBIT loss in the quarter, we saw a loss of $4 million in March and reported positive EBITDA for the month.
Within our Domestic Parcel Service, our initiatives to improve productivity are still largely in front of us.
As we have discussed in the past, investments will include new automated sorters along with streamlining our processes to improve productivity.
We placed one new sorter in a high volume site in the first quarter and expect to roll out more over the next 12 to 24 months.
In addition, we are implementing modern sortation processes in each of our facilities before the upcoming holiday peak season this year.
This investment and related productivity actions are expected to more than double our [Indecipherable] process per hour our over time.
In addition, our transportation team continues to execute on the strategy of migrating outsourced lane into our own PBC.
In the first quarter, we insourced several of these lanes with more plans for the second quarter, all which will improve cost and service.
We also brought in third-party industry expertise to help support our execution in the area of transportation.
We believe that optimizing our transportation will yield significant productivity benefits.
Finally, we are in the process of opening two new sites and upgrading another which we expect to have completed prior to the peak season.
This will allow us to handle volumes more efficiently and deliver deeper into the USPS network.
Ultimately, we expect transportation and labor productivity along with optimizing final mile solutions to be critical drivers in obtaining our long-term e-commerce margins.
We expect these to account for approximately 75% of the margin improvement.
Our Presort Services saw the momentum from the second half of 2020 continue into the first quarter.
The business turned in a solid performance growing revenue, EBIT and EBIT margin over prior year.
Revenue was $143 million and grew 2%.
Overall, average daily volumes were flat to prior year where First Class Letter Mail declined 2%, Marketing Mail grew 11% and Marketing Mail Flats and Bound Printed Matter grew 30%.
EBIT was $19 million and EBIT margin was 13%.
EBITDA was $27 million and EBITDA margin was 19%.
EBIT and EBITDA improved from prior year due to both revenue growth and lower expenses.
We have been able to maintain double-digit margin in the Presort Business even as we continue to invest in our talent and equipment.
Compared to prior year, we improved pieces fed per labor hour by 4% resulting in 85,000 less processing hours.
Within SendTech, we also picked up on the momentum from the second half of 2020 as we continue to soften the decline in our revenue and maintain strong EBIT margins.
Revenue was $359 million and declined 3%.
We continue to differentiate ourselves in the market with our end-to-end mailing and shipping offerings to enterprise and small office providers that are attractive to both existing and new clients.
We have a growing revenue stream around office shipping that carries with it high margins approaching that of our legacy mailing business and a software business.
And like the legacy mailing business, the shipping opportunity in SendTech provides multiple paths for us to add profit and revenue like supply, financing and professional services.
SendTech's shipping related revenues grew at a low double-digit rate to approximately $30 million in the quarter.
The number of labels printed through our shipping offerings grew over 40% and paid subscriptions grew approximately 80%.
Additionally, we are seeing good growth in shipping volumes that our US clients are financing which grew nearly 80% over prior year.
These positive metrics show that our clients are adopting and using these new offerings as they see the value it brings to their business.
Equipment sales grew 12% over prior year driven by strong placement of our SendPro C, which include a large government deal and we continue to see good placements of our new central mail station, multipurpose device.
It is important to point out that like others, we have experienced transportation issues related to our supply chain.
We have been able to properly manage our inventory and grow our equipment sales despite these challenges and it is an area that we are closely monitoring.
We are also keeping a close eye on the semiconductor industry and are looking to mitigate any potential second half supply shortage by repositioning our solutions as necessary.
We turned in a strong EBIT performance of a $114 million which represents growth of $8 million over prior year and is the second consecutive quarter of EBIT growth.
EBIT margin was 32%, which improved 250 basis points over prior year.
EBITDA was $122 million, EBITDA margin was 34%, both improving over prior year.
As you may recall, prior year included an increase to our credit-loss provision to reflect macroeconomic conditions resulting from COVID-19 in connection with the application of the CECL accounting standards.
One other point that I would like to make is that this team has done a tremendous amount of work, not only to transform its products and offerings, but also its channel.
Today, about 80% of all US sales transactions are happening through our web or inside sales channel.
This has allowed our field team to concentrate on larger enterprise deals and this has been a great contributor to maintaining the very healthy margins that we see in this business.
I am pleased with the performance of our key trend in the first quarter.
We entered the year with good momentum and continued to concentrate on the opportunities in front of us, and we expect to make good progress throughout the year.
As discussed during our last earnings call, we continue to expect annual revenue at constant currency to grow over prior year in the low to mid-single digit range making this our fifth consecutive year of constant currency revenue growth.
We also continue to expect adjusted earnings per share to grow over prior year.
Free cash flow is expected to be lower from prior year primarily due to specific items which benefited 2020 such as higher customer deposits, lower finance receivable and lower capex, which are not expected to continue at the same level in 2021.
Within our segments, we expect Global Ecommerce revenue growth to be stronger in the first half compared to the second half as the revenue comparisons will get more difficult as we move through the year.
We also expect e-commerce to demonstrate significant profit improvement and deliver positive EBITDA for the full year.
Within SendTech, we expect the momentum we saw in the second half of 2020 and first quarter to continue, particularly around our shipping capability and new multipurpose devices and help partially offset the decline in reoccurring related revenues.
We also expect the improvement in volume trends we saw in Presort in the second half of 2020 and first quarter to continue through 2021.
There are a few headwinds to be aware of on a year-to-year basis that will partially offset the overall business unit improvements.
In 2020, we recorded write [Phonetic] insurance proceeds.
In 2021, we expect higher employee-related costs as it relates to variable compensation.
Additionally, we expect a higher tax rate in 2021.
Looking at the timing through the year, our portfolio continues to shift to markets that are growing particularly around shipping.
As a result, the fourth quarter will continue to be our largest quarter of the year for revenue and earnings.
For the second quarter, we expect revenues to grow in the mid to high single-digit range.
Similar to first quarter, we also expect adjusted earnings per share to grow modestly over prior year.
That concludes my remarks.

user
q1 adjusted earnings per share $0.07.
q1 gaap loss per share $0.18 including items.
q1 revenue rose 15 percent to $915 million.
full year 2021 expectations are consistent with what was communicated last quarte.

assistant