Below is the transcript of the Volt Information Sciences, Inc. (NYSE:VISI)‘s Q4 2014 Earnings conference call, held on January 16, 2015, at 11:00 a.m. EST.
Volt Information Sciences, Inc. (NYSE:VISI) comprises complementary business units that offer customized talent, technology and consulting solutions to a diverse client base. Founded in 1950, Volt services worldwide industries including aerospace, automotive, banking & finance, consumer electronics, information technology, insurance, life sciences, manufacturing media & entertainment, pharmaceutical, software, telecommunications, transportation and utilities.
Participants:
Julie Prozeller, Investor Relation
Ron Kochman, President and Chief Executive Officer
James Whitney, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Joe Gomes, Wm Smith & Co
Matt Sherwood, Cooper Creek Partners
Paul Latta, Glacier Peak Capital
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to the Volt Information Sciences’ 4th Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on you touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question press star, then 2. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Julie Prozeller. Please go ahead.
Julie Prozeller, Investor Relation
Thank you, Operator. Good morning and thank you for joining us today for Volt Information Sciences’ 4th Quarter and fiscal 2014 year-end Earnings Conference Call. On the call today will be Ron Kochman, President and Chief Executive Officer and James Whitney, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin today’s call, let me remind you that some of the statements made today will be forward-looking and are made under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those projected or implied due to variety of factors. We refer you to Volt Information Sciences’ recent filings with the SEC for more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact the company’s future operating results and financial condition. Also on today’s call our speakers will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe will provide useful information for investors. A reconciliation of those measures to GAAP is included in the earnings release issued January 15, 2015. Now I would like to turn the call over to Ron Kochman, President and Chief Executive Officer. Ron.
Ron Kochman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Julie. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin I want to make clear that we will not be discussing or taking questions on matters related to shareholder nominations or the annual meeting. Our focus today is on our results for the 4th Quarter and the year and our outlook. As you can see from our progress over the year and the actions that we have taken over the last several months, the Board of Directors and the management team are focused on doing what is in the best interest of all Volt shareholders.
In fiscal 2014, we made tremendous progress in executing our strategic and achieved key milestones to enhance shareholder value. Our achievements included the completion of the expensive and distracting multi-yearly statements becoming current on our SEC filing requirements, making substantial progress in strengthening our financial controls and increasing shareholder liquidity by moving some of the over the counter Stock Market to the NYSE MKT Exchange.
Most importantly, we made significant progress on our primary goal of achieving a more highly focused and profitable Volt. We have invested on non-core software businesses which could not attain our target levels of profitability. These were fundamentally different businesses from our staffing and services businesses with different risk and reward profiles. Our focus on profitability was evidenced by the divestiture of the VMS software business in the 1st Quarter of fiscal 2014, the discontinuation of the telecommunication government solutions business in the 2nd Quarter and the sale of the computer system segment which we announced in December 2014. In all, these actions will increase our profitability and cash-flow by more than $20 million annually, expedite the reshaping of Volt to generate greater long-term shareholder value, and allow us to return additional capital to shareholders. On this last point – we announced a new share repurchase program earlier this week. We will make repurchases as we believe that Volt share price does not fully reflect the company’s underlying value.
Turning to the businesses: As a reminder, within staffing services segment, we refer to customers that require a multi-location coordinated account management and service delivery and multiple skill sets as enterprise customers. While our retail customers are primarily, any single location with sales and delivery handle primarily from a geographically local team and will relatively few headcounts on assignments and one or two skill sets. We also distinguish between traditional staffing services for which we have paid on the time-and-materials basis for providing contingent staff to work under the supervision of our customers – as separates from staffing services where we provide additional services including project based services for which we sometimes pay on a basis other than time and material.
