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Text: I'm joined by our Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Beharelle.
We use non-GAAP measures when presenting our financial results.
Any comparisons made today are based on a comparison to the same period in the prior year, unless otherwise stated.
Our first quarter results are a tale of two quarters.
Compared to our December exit rate, year-over-year revenue trends improved in January and February with particular improvement in our largest segment, PeopleReady.
However, those trends reversed course in March and the second half of March saw a significant drop in demand associated with government and societal actions to address the COVID-19 threat.
For the quarter, our total revenue was down 11% and we posted a net loss of $150 million or $4.04 per share, which included a pre-tax non-cash impairment charge of $175 million.
Many of the customers we serve have been deemed essential and we continue to support these clients.
We've seen increased demand from grocery and e-commerce retailers.
On the other hand, many of the businesses we serve are completely shut down, which is significantly impacting the demand for our services.
Examples include sports venues, automotive manufacturers and non-essential retailer operations.
In total, declining clients have outpaced growing clients and we expect this will be the case for some time.
In response, we have taken decisive and significant actions that will reduce our operating expenses by approximately $100 million this year.
To ensure we are well-positioned when business conditions improve, we continue to invest in client and candidate facing technologies and are keeping our branch footprint fully intact.
Turning to our business segments, PeopleReady is a leading provider of on-demand labor and skilled trades in the North American industrial staffing market.
PeopleReady's revenue was down 8% during the quarter, which was lower than our outlook of minus 7% to minus 4% due to the effect of COVID-19 late in the quarter.
PeopleManagement is a provider of contingent on-site industrial staffing and commercial driving services in the North American industrial staffing market.
Revenue was down 10% during the quarter, which was lower than our outlook of minus 5% to flat, also due to the effect of COVID-19 late in the quarter.
PeopleScout is a global leader in filling permanent positions through our recruitment process outsourcing and managed service provider offerings.
Revenue was down 21% during the quarter, which was within our outlook of minus 26% to minus 18%.
The results were adversely impacted by COVID-19 beginning in March.
Now I'd like to shift gears and talk in more detail about our operations and strategic focus in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.
The health and safety of both our employees and our clients remains front and center in everything we're doing right now.
We implemented comprehensive measures across our brands to keep our workers and clients healthy and safe, including adherence to guidance from the CDC, World Health Organization, OSHA and other key authorities.
We formed a specialized task force tracking the most up-to-date developments and safety standards, as well as created an internal information hub with safety protocols, dashboards, FAQs, and daily reporting by location on COVID-19 impact.
In addition to posting TrueBlue's action plan on our external websites, we are actively sharing information on how companies and workers can protect themselves via ongoing emails, social outreach, webinars and other digital communications.
We are fully leveraging our JobStack app to help companies and workers connect safely through a digital environment and are testing and rolling out a new virtual onboarding capability to minimize in-person branch visits.
We are also leveraging our Affinix technology to enable companies to connect with permanent talent through virtual hiring and sourcing.
Working closely with clients to enforce safety standards, we are supporting efforts in providing masks for associates, hand sanitizers, workplace disinfecting, social distancing and infrared temperature checks.
We instructs all of our workers to stay home if they are not feeling well or have been exposed to COVID-19.
Immediate notification and self-quarantine protocols are in place if a staff member, an associate or a client's employee is exposed to COVID-19.
And our field safety specialists closely evaluate any assignments related to cleanup of potentially infectious job sites.
To ensure business continuity and support for our clients who need workers for essential services, we set up a Centralized Branch Support Center and are ready to implement regional command centers as needed to service back-up for our 600-plus branches.
Our branches follow strict sanitation and social distancing guidelines.
In addition, across the TrueBlue organization, we suspended all international travel and restricted non-essential domestic travel for our employees and are providing remote work capabilities for our Tacoma and Chicago support centers, as well as other location.
The progress we've made on our digital strategies are more important than ever to helping us serve our clients by connecting people with work.
We filled 785,000 shifts via JobStack in Q1 2020, representing an all-time high digital fill rate of 51%.
Our client users also hit all-time high of 23,500, up more than 50% compared to Q1 2019.
JobStack has the obvious advantage of allowing us to remotely dispatch workers, straight from home to the job site.
But it also has become a cornerstone to keep our contingent employees safe by providing routine and job-specific health and safety notifications.
Throughout the current economic crisis, and especially as the world begins to emerge, TrueBlue's underlying mission-connecting people with work, is as important as ever.
As we manage through this challenging time, I'd like to emphasize the following points.
First, employee and client safety are our top priority.
How we operate and how we relate to workers and clients matters more than ever in a world where profit, principle and sheer trust are inextricably linked.
We will continue to work with stakeholders to ensure the strongest safety measures for all involved.
Second, through careful planning, we exited 2019 with no net debt, allowing us to enter this crisis from a position of considerable balance sheet strength.
Third, we have taken thoughtful cost management actions to preserve liquidity, which will continue to be a top priority this year.
Fourth, the sales and operations team have developed formal bounce back strategies to ensure we are well positioned when our economies begin their reopening efforts.
Finally, we have a deep leadership team that understands the key levers to flex the business based on the economic conditions.
Derrek and I both sat in CFO and CEO positions, respectively during the last recession and are surrounded by a seasoned team of operating leaders.
I'll now pass the call over to Derrek, who will share greater detail around our financial results.
Total revenue for Q1 2020 was $494 million or down 11% in comparison with our outlook of $503 million to $528 million.
There are two stories in our first quarter results.
The first is the story that covers the first two months, with revenue for January down 9% and February down 6%, which was on track with our expectation.
The total company revenue trend during these months was driven by PeopleReady which posted a 7% decline in January and a 3% decline in February with growth of 2% in the last week of February.
The second story is with the month of March during which we experienced the swiftest revenue deceleration in the company's history as society sheltered itself from COVID-19 and businesses shuttered.
For March as a whole, total revenue was down 16%.
For the first three weeks of March, for our staffing businesses, which make up 90% of total company revenue were down approximately 6%.
During the last week of March, revenue was down about 30%.
Turning to April, staffing revenue for the first four weeks was down 41%.
There are possible signs of stabilization with April weekly revenue results falling within a range of minus 43% to minus 38% but it's admittedly hard to make a call on stabilization at this point.
We posted a net loss of $150 million or $4.04 per share in comparison with our outlook of a loss of $0.07 to $0.00.
Included in our results is a non-cash impairment charge of $175 million or $152 million net of tax, which translates to $4.08 per share.
About $120 million of the pre-tax charge was in PeopleScout and $55 million in PeopleManagement.
Adjusted net loss per share was $0.01, which is less than our outlook of net income per share of $0.04 to $0.11 as a result of revenue falling short of the midpoint of our revenue outlook.
Adjusted EBITDA was down 73%, primarily due to lower revenue and gross margin, which in combination with the operating leverage in our business, contributed to a drop in adjusted EBITDA margin of 210 basis points.
It's also important to note that the sharp decline in profitability is also due to the fact that Q1 is our seasonally lowest revenue quarter.
Consequently, the decline in revenue has a more pronounced impact on year-over-year profitability.
Gross margin of 25.5% was down 110 basis points.
About 100 basis points of the decline came from our PeopleScout business due to a previously disclosed client headwind and overall volume declines which outpaced the timing of reductions to our recruiting staff.
Our staffing business contributed 50 basis points of headwind from a change in revenue mix associated with larger declines in our higher margin local accounts in comparison with our lower margin national accounts.
This was offset by 40 basis points of net benefit from lower Affordable Healthcare Act costs which we do not expect to reoccur, which was somewhat offset by a workers compensation benefit in Q1 2019 associated with prior insurance carriers.
SG&A expense improved by $11 million or by 8% compared to Q1 2019.
We had an income tax benefit this quarter of 14% as compared to our expectation of income tax expense of 12% due to the pre-tax loss and permanent differences associated with certain aspects of the impairment charge.
Turning to our segments, PeopleReady, our largest segment representing 63% of trailing 12-month revenue saw an 8% decline in revenue and segment profit was down 33%.
March revenue was down 14%.
Revenue declined significantly during the last two weeks of March due to COVID-19 with revenues dropping 20% for the week ended March 22, 32% for the week ended March 29.
PeopleManagement, representing 27% of trailing 12-month revenue and 8% of segment profit saw a 10% decline in revenue and segment profit was down 114%.
March revenue was down 14%.
Revenue declined significantly during the last two weeks of March due to COVID-19 with revenues dropping 15% for the week ended March 22, and 30% for the week ended March 29.
PeopleScout, representing 10% of trailing 12-month revenue and 25% of segment profit saw a 21% decline in revenue and segment profit was down 76%.
March revenue was down 28%.
The decline in revenue for the quarter was a carry over from the trend in Q4 2019, associated with client losses and lower same customer volume as well as the impact of COVID-19.
As previously discussed, the client headwind created 8 percentage points of drag on revenue and 25 percentage points on segment profit.
Now let's turn to the balance sheet and cash flows.
We entered 2020 from a position of strength, given the fact that our balance sheet has a zero net debt at the end of 2019.
In March, we drew substantially all of the remaining availability on our $300 million revolving credit facility to further enhance our liquidity position.
At the end of Q1, we had $265 million of cash on the balance sheet and total debt of $294 million.
Our debt-to-capital ratio was 41% or 4% on a net debt basis and our total debt to adjusted EBITDA multiple stood at 3.0, which is higher than the ratio defined by our lending agreement, which includes some different adjustments, including the add-back of stock-based compensation resulting in a ratio of 2.7.
While we experienced a significant decline in adjusted EBITDA this quarter, cash flow from operations increased by roughly 25% compared to Q1 last year due to the accounts receivable based deleveraging, which will continue to be a source of capital with future revenue declines.
We dedicated $52 million of cash toward the repurchase of common stock in February, $12 million through open market purchases, and $40 million through an Accelerated Share Repurchase program or ASR.
On February 28, we executed the ASR and $40 million of cash was provided to an investment bank.
In return, $32 million of stock was delivered to the company at a price of $14.88 and these shares were removed from our outstanding share count.
But the full weighted impact will not be present until Q2.
The remaining $8 million of stock will be delivered no later than July 2 and the total number of shares repurchased will be trued up based on the volume weighted average price over the four-month term of the agreement, less a discount.
We do not plan to repurchase additional shares until market conditions improve.
Now, I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss our future outlook.
Given the uncertainty of when societal and business restrictions will be lifted, we're not able to provide a customary outlook for the next quarter with an appropriate amount of precision.
I'll provide some highlights on this information starting with the top-line.
TrueBlue revenue has historically fluctuated along with changes in gross domestic product.
Regression analysis suggests that TrueBlue revenue would be down approximately 9% if GDP was flat and would decline approximately 7 percentage points for every additional point of year-over-year GDP decline.
For example, if the year-over-year decline for GDP was 5% for a particular quarter, this would imply a decline in TrueBlue revenue of roughly 44%.
It's important to note that these are year-over-year GDP rates, not seasonally adjusted annualized rates.
In addition to GDP, there are a multitude of variables that can impact the demand for our services.
Consequently, we can't assure you these relationships will be indicative of future results.
Also there could be additional variation in our future results as the historical company results using this analysis did not include periods with such swift and significant revenue declines that have occurred in the current environment.
But we are using this analysis as a source of direction in our own planning and we have provided it with the hope that it is helpful.
As Patrick mentioned, we took swift and decisive action to reduce our expected operating expenses in 2020.
Given the current environment, we chose to take significant action to quickly adjust the company to a new normal and reduce the risk of organizational fatigue that can ensue from round after round of cost cuts.
We also attempted to be thoughtful in our actions to not only preserve our financial strength, but also preserve our operational strength, so that we are well positioned when business conditions improve.
Based on these actions, we expect SG&A to be about $100 million less in 2020 in comparison with 2019 including a workforce reduction charge of $1 million in Q1 and about $8 million in Q2.
All in, this would produce a SG&A decrease of about 20% in 2020.
Turning to fiscal year 2020 gross margin, we expect a contraction of 180 basis points to 120 basis points.
This gross margin headwind is associated with a mix shift in the PeopleReady business based on an assumption that our higher margin local account business will see bigger declines than the national account business.
Pricing pressure will occur in our staffing businesses, lower volume will occur in our PeopleScout business and the fact that our previously disclosed customer headwind at PeopleScout will not anniversary itself until Q3.
For capital expenditures, we expect about $22 million for the full year.
Please note that our outlook is net of $8 million in build out costs for our Chicago headquarters that will be reimbursed by our landlord in 2020.
Our outlook for weighted average shares outstanding for fiscal year 2020 is 35.7 million shares.
Turning to our tax rate for the year, we're not able to provide an effective income tax rate outlook due to uncertainty surrounding the amount of pre-tax income or loss we will incur.

user
q1 adjusted loss per share $0.01.
q1 loss per share $4.04.
q1 revenue $494 million versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $498.9 million.
for q1 took a non-cash goodwill and intangible asset impairment charge of $175 million.
ot providing customary quarterly guidance.
covid-19 pandemic is creating a material impact on demand for our services.

assistant