e8vk
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549
FORM 8-K
CURRENT REPORT
PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(D) OF
THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
DATE
OF REPORT (DATE OF EARLIEST EVENT REPORTED): APRIL 2, 2007
PFSweb, Inc.
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)
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Delaware
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000-28275
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75-2837058 |
(STATE OR OTHER JURISDICTION
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(COMMISSION FILE NUMBER)
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(IRS EMPLOYER |
OF INCORPORATION)
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IDENTIFICATION NO.) |
500 NORTH CENTRAL EXPRESSWAY
PLANO, TX 75074
(ADDRESS OF PRINCIPAL EXECUTIVE OFFICES)
(972) 881-2900
(REGISTRANTS TELEPHONE NUMBER, INCLUDING AREA CODE )
N/A
(FORMER NAME OR ADDRESS, IF CHANGED SINCE LAST REPORT)
Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the
filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions:
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Written communication pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425) |
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Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12) |
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Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b)) |
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Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c)) |
INFORMATION TO BE INCLUDED IN THE REPORT
ITEM 2.02. Results of Operations and Financial Condition
On
April 2, 2007, PFSweb, Inc. hosted a conference call announcing its financial results for
the quarter and year ended December 31, 2006. Attached to this current report on Form 8-K is a copy
of the related conference call transcript dated April 2, 2007. The information in this Report on
Form 8-K, and the exhibit hereto, shall not be deemed filed for purposes of Section 18 of the
Exchange Act or otherwise subject to the liability of that Section.
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Exhibit No. |
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Description |
99.1 |
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Conference Call Transcript Issued April 2, 2007 |
SIGNATURE
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused
this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized.
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PFSweb, Inc.
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Dated: April 4, 2007
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By:
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/s/ Thomas J. Madden |
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Thomas J. Madden
Executive Vice President,
Chief Financial and
Accounting Officer |
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exv99w1
Exhibit 99.1
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PFSweb, Inc.
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PFSW
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Q4 2006 Earnings Call
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Apr. 2, 2007 |
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MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION SECTION
Operator: Good afternoon everyone. My name is Mary and I will be your conference operator
today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the PFSweb Fourth Quarter Year End
Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. It is now my pleasure to turn the
floor over to your host, Todd Fromer of KCSA. Sir, you may begin your conference.
Todd Fromer, KCSA Worldwide
Thank you, Mary. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the PFSweb 2006 Fourth Quarter and
Year-End Earnings Conference Call. Before we begin, I would like to note that matters discussed on
this conference call consist of forward-looking information under the Private Securities Litigation
Reform Act of 1995 and is subject to and involves risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual
results to differ materially from the forward-looking information. PFSwebs annual report on Form
10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006, identifies certain factors that could cause actual
results to differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements made, and
investors are advised to review the annual report and the risk factors described therein.
These factors include our ability to retain and expand relationships with existing clients and
attract and implement new clients; our reliance on the fees generated by the transaction volume or
product sales of our clients; our reliance on our clients projections or transaction volume or
product sales; our dependence upon our agreements with IBM; our dependence upon our agreements with
our major clients; our client mix; their business volumes and the seasonality of their business;
our ability to finalize pending contracts; the impact of strategic alliances and acquisitions;
trends in the market for our services; trends in e-commerce; whether we can continue and manage
growth; changes in the trend toward outsourcing; increased competition; our ability to generate
more revenue and achieve sustainable profitability; effects of changes in profit margin; the
customer and supplier concentration of our business; the unknown effects of possible system
failures and rapid changes in technology; trends in government regulation both foreign and
domestic; foreign currency risks and other risks of operating in foreign countries; potential
litigation; our dependency on key personnel; the impact of new accounting standards and rules
regarding revenue recognition; stock options and other matters; changes in accounting rules or the
interpretations of those rules; our ability to raise additional capital or obtain additional
financing; our ability and the ability of our subsidiaries to borrow under current financing
arrangements and maintain compliance with debt covenance; relationship with and our guarantees of
certain of the liabilities and indebtedness of our subsidiaries; whether outstanding warrants
issued in a product placement will be exercised in the future; the transition coffers [ph]
resulting from our merger with eCOST; our ability to successfully integrate eCOST into our business
to achieve the anticipated benefits of the merger; eCOSTs potential indemnification obligations to
its former parent; eCOSTs ability to maintain existing and build new relationships with
manufacturers and vendors and the success of its advertising and marketing efforts; and eCOSTs
ability to increase its sales revenue and sales margin and improve operating efficiencies.
PFSweb undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason,
even if new information becomes available or other events occur in the future. There may be
additional risks that we do not currently view as material or that are not presently known.
It is now my pleasure to turn your call over to Mr. Mark Layton, Chairman and Chief Executive
officer of PFSweb. Mark, the floor is yours.
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PFSweb, Inc.
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PFSW
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Q4 2006 Earnings Call
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Apr. 2, 2007 |
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Mark C. Layton, Chairman of the Board, Senior Partner, CEO
Thank you, Todd. Catch your breath there. And Id like to add my welcome to everybody to our Q4
call and year-end conference today. Speaking on the call today will be Mike Willoughby, President
of our Services division, and Tom Madden, our Chief Financial Officer. At the end of the call,
well be available for questions.
During the call, well give you an overview of the Q4 results as well as our full year 2006 and
provide you some detail information on each of the operating segments and some financial guidance
regarding our outlook for 2007.
Let me begin by recapping our results for the three months and year ended December 31, 2006, which
we released just a few minutes ago. In analyzing these results, Id like to first point out to you
that there are a couple of key points I think are important considerations for you to evaluate in
looking at results for 06. First, as many of you are aware, back in February of 2006 we acquired
the business eCOST.com via a merger transaction. At the time of the transaction, eCOST was a
business experiencing certain financial constraints and other operating difficulties that were
affecting its overall performance.
Strategically we believe then and we still strongly believe that PFSweb has the operational
and technology infrastructure and the know how that will allow eCOST.com to return to solid growth
and improve the operational performance while also driving a better overall financial performance;
however, we spent most of 2006 completing significant integration activities.
Our 2006 financial results reflect significant expenses related to that merger and the integration
activities and the large operating losses, which eCOST.com experienced during that transition and
from certain credit card fraudulent related events that we discussed on previous calls.
We believe that the eCOST.com business is now stable, and that through our actions the operating
losses of eCOST have been significantly reduced, but its important as you look at our 06 results
that you keep that transition period in mind.
Secondly as you look at our results for 06, we undertook various actions to reduce the operating
losses of the eCOST.com business. Through a reduction of costs and a focus on higher gross margin
revenue streams, which in many cases meant that we turned away revenue that we deemed unpalatably,
we have been successful in dramatically reducing the break-even point of the eCOST business.
Its now our believe that eCOST can operate at break even with revenue levels of around 8.5 million
per month and adjusted gross margin of about 9%. At this time the run rate level of eCOST is at
about 80 million annually; slightly below the break even level, and our gross margin is also
slightly below the targeted range as well.
While the eCOST.com business declined this past year in terms of top line results, we believe that
the overall help and outlook of eCOST is much improved as compared to the pre-merger period;
however, we are required annually to complete an appraisal and evaluation of the intangible assets
of each of our businesses including eCOST. After that review, it was determined that the goodwill
value of eCOST should be reduced by approximately $3.5 million to adjust it to its fair market
value.
This one-time, non-operating, non-cash charge was reported in our Q4 results. So as you evaluate
2006, please keep these 2 points one the transition expenses and integration activities and
secondly this large non-cash charge as kind of reference point when looking at the 06 results.
So with that as a background, let me just give you a little bit of overview of the 06 financial
results and Tom will give more detail going forward. First on the eCOST side, we certainly have
begun to
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PFSweb, Inc.
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PFSW
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Q4 2006 Earnings Call
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Apr. 2, 2007 |
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show some stabilization in that business. The financial results for the fourth quarter really
dont still fairly represent the tremendous changes and progress that we made during 06. We
believe the results in 07 for eCOST will be a much better guide as to the success of our
turnaround program.
This program includes significant improvements to more accurately monitor inventory, conduct better
customer service activities as reduced the occurrence of fraudulent charges, fraudulent credit card
activity in the business. Shipping fees and transportation costs have been reduced, and as I
mentioned earlier, overhead costs are down as well. Ill get into a little bit more detail on some
of the eCOST.com business segments later in the call, but we think 07 will be a much better year
in terms of operating results for eCOST.
As you look at 06 financial results on the Service Fee segment side, and Mike will give you more
details on this in a minute, theres really nothing short of an exceptional year on our Service Fee
business during 2006. Not only did we expand on a number of existing agreements with clients we
also signed a number of new clients in 2006. Our scale within the Services segment continues to
grow. During 06 we moved about $2.7 billion of merchandise over our infrastructure and technology
platform. Our Services segments, PFS and Supplies Distributors combined also had what we believed
to be outstanding financial performance during 2006 in the fourth quarter doing EBITDA of about 2.2
million on an adjusted basis, and for the year at about 12.2 million of EBITDA.
Our quality of performance overall remains high. Our financial foundation remains solid and our
outlook for the future continues to be exciting. Clearly Im very pleased with the overall
progress and momentum within each of the business segments and I look forward to seeing
improvements in our financial results through 2007. I want to take a moment to thank our entire
team worldwide for their outstanding commitment and efforts during an important and strategic but
also a challenging transition year for us at PFS. Let me now turn the call over to Mike for a
couple of minutes, let him give you a few details on the Service Fee and Supplies Distributors
segments of our business, or the Services segment and then Ill be back to give you a little bit
more detail on the eCOST business.
Michael Willoughby, Senior Partner President of Priority Fulfillment Services
Thank you Mark. As I have done on previous calls Im going to refer to the Supplies Distributors
and the Service Fee business collectively as our Service Fee business segment, as Mark alluded to
just a moment ago. I do this because they are essentially the same operational business models
although they have a different financial model behind them. This quarter we continue to experience
a solid year for new business growth within our Services Business segment. PFSwebs Service
Business segment is a recognized leader in the business process outsourcing market and our
customers choose us because of our reputation as a specialized global services provider. We have a
broad passage to handle their needs. Our solutions aim to improve the quality, productivity, and
the reliability of the global supply chain, inventory management and distribution for each of our
key partners. The key reason for our success is not just our know-how but also the scale of the
business we operate.
As Mark mentioned earlier our platform handled over 2.7 billion in merchandise sales in 2006. By
operating at this high level were able to offer our clients a wide range of resources that would
be totally cost prohibitive for them to obtain and maintain on their own. Id like to now touch on
several exciting new agreements that we announced since our last conference call. This year we
closed approximately 15 new contracts that are estimated to be valued at approximately $12 million
in annual service fee revenue. This estimate is based on full implementation and current client
projections. While we did recognize the benefit of certain of these contracts during calendar year
2006 other contracts are expected to become operational during the first several months of this
year. Were pleased with this level of new business that weve achieved as our list of clients
grows with widely recognized reputable leading brands and companies including the following. First
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PFSweb, Inc.
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PFSW
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Q4 2006 Earnings Call
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Apr. 2, 2007 |
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Katun Corporation. Under our agreement with Katun who is the worlds latest alternative supplier
to office equipment industry well support their Canadian operations through a customized logistic
and customer care solution out of our Toronto facilities. Specifically these efforts include
inventory management, order fulfillment, traffic management and returns processing services. Katun
was the second major announcement for our Canadian operation this year. The first was our
agreement to provide a comprehensive e-commerce solution throughout all of Canada for Roots. Roots
is Canadas leading athletic lifestyle brand.
As we announced in September, our expanded program for Roots has been a success and further
strengthened our partnership with Roots throughout North America. Considering the announcement of
both of these agreements and the potential for additional new contract in the near term, we needed
to expand our Canadian headquarters and we moved to a new 22,000 square-foot facility.
This new facility allows us to maintain a strategic location in the outskirts of Toronto. This new
location features additional warehousing capacity and an additional 20 call center stations. These
provide multi-lingual customers support to both the U.S. and Canadian markets. By expanding this
Toronto location and these new client agreements, we believe we will achieve greater scale of
operation and improve our ability to offer world-class services in Canada.
Im moving on to some new agreements that we have in the United States. We previously announced a
5-year agreement with LEGO brand retail. Under the agreement we will serve as LEGOs fulfillment
partner for all direct-to-consumer orders in North America. This includes orders through its web
site, shoplego.com, which according to Neilson net ratings experienced an increase of online
traffic of 120% during the fourth quarter of 2006.
And the LEGO catalog, which is sent between 750,000 and a million homes eight times a year. As
part of this agreement will be maintaining and tracking the inventory to support these outlets in
one of our Memphis warehouses. As a global brand, LEGO is an exciting new partnership and we look
forward to supporting North American online and catalog sales, which are continually growing.
We also announced an agreement with Fathead, LLC., an official licenser of popular professional
sports team memorabilia including NASCAR, NFL, NBA and MLB. As part of this program we be
providing a complete order fulfillment solution that will support Fatheads online sales at
Fathead.com, including order fulfillment, inventory management, distribution, returns processing
and customer care services.
Most recently, we announced an agreement with Riverbed Technology. They are a market-leading
provider of wide area data services. And theyve continually drawn a lot of attention since their
IPO in September 2006. Since announcing this agreement we started the implementation of a custom
solution to support their global operation and meet all their supply chain and order fulfillment
requirements from our Memphis location.
Due to our consistent flow of new business in the US, we recently finished expanding our customer
care and distribution facilities in Plano, Texas and Memphis, Tennessee, in addition to the
expansion of our Canadian facility. This included expanding our customer services centers by 170
call seats, bringing the total number of customer care professionals to 480. We have 400 in Plano
and about 80 in our Memphis facility.
We expect this steady flow of new business to continue in 2007. And currently our pipeline of
potential new business including pending proposals totals about $25 million in annual services.
And after this summary of our service fee business opportunities and status, Im going to turn the
floor back over to Mark. Mark.
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Mark C. Layton, Chairman of the Board, Senior Partner Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Michael. Okay let me go now and just provide you a little bit update on the eCOST
business. I gave you some results so far, but just to give you a few highlights on the progress
that weve made with eCOST so far this year. As I stated earlier and we talked about on the last
call, we achieved a major milestone this year with the completion of eCOSTs integration into
PFSweb in time for the 2006 holiday season. Overall we are pleased with the results for the fourth
quarter. Growth still is an area we would like to invigorate more, but for the first holiday season
together with eCOST, Im real happy with what the combined teams have been able to put on the
scoreboard for us.
In December we launched a revamped website that has received very positive feedback from customers
so far. This is really step one in a series of changes that will continue to happen to the site
going forward. There is just a lot of almost ongoing activity out there now in terms of
improvements that we are making to the site. Some of the improvements that you have seen so far
include easier navigation and enhanced search ability of available products. Most notably customers
will notice easier access to about 36 exclusive offers and the daily bargain count down link. While
we are pleased with the steps we have taken so far, as I mentioned we have plans to continue to
make significant adjustments to the website throughout 2007 in order to enhance the overall
shopping experience for our customers and to allow us to begin to expand into other product
categories, which was our original plan strategically with the business when we merged back in
February of 06.
These improvement plans include increased rich content and product review integration, further
improvement and enhancements to the navigation of search tools, a complete rework of the My Account
and Shopping Cart areas, continued introduction of new payment processing options, all of which we
are hopeful to get done in the first half of 07.
As part of an ongoing assessment we recently signed a partnership with Etilize, this is a company
that specializes in rich product content on technology products with e-commerce websites. As a
result of this partnership and the development by our team of a new product that we call
EntentePartner Connect, eCOST is in the process of dramatically increasing the number of SKUs that
we list and then properly merchandise on our site. Weve got more than 100,000 different SKUs that
are appropriately merchandised on our site. When I say merchandised we are talking about products
that are automatically priced correctly to the margin goals that we have, that there are
appropriate product descriptions, add-on product information, photos of the product out there on
the site. This is one of the major challenges in terms of expanding the scale of products that we
offer is to be certain that we can do it in a manner thats automated so that we have appropriate
merchandising information thats necessary to give consumer buyers the data that they need to make
an educated buying decision.
Now we expect the number of SKUs to continue to increase monthly as we introduce new products, new
product categories, and other non-merchandise features to the site. These enhancements to the
product listing features on the site will also increase the accuracy of new product search modules
and improve the search capabilities for specific products. This new platform installed with the
assistance of Etilize includes automated checks, which tracks, monitors and reports product data
errors and theft and constantly helps us improve the available data on this site.
Additionally during the past several months and this is one of the things we that was a key
strategic element for us in terms of when we acquired the business, expanding eCOST is that we
successfully implemented several new virtual warehouse partnerships, which are a critical component
to our ability to provide customers the best shopping experience and competitive pricing, but also
helps us limit our inventory exposure. Once again using the Entente partner connect technology
that I just described, this is a critical enabling tool that allows us to scale the
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PFSweb, Inc.
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Q4 2006 Earnings Call
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Apr. 2, 2007 |
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implementation of virtual warehouse partners in their corresponding product lines particularly as
we expand outside technology products.
Expanded product offerings would minimize inventory exposure is a critical component to both our
revenue growth and our gross profit improvement plans that we targeted for 2007. During last
quarters conference call, I mentioned that we began construction of a 6,200 square foot,
multilingual customer call center in Manila in the Philippines.
This new facility was officially opened this morning as the first PFSweb entity using this
location, eCOST will now have a dedicated staff of highly trained customer service representatives
who will supplement our existing call center operations here in the U.S. Also at this location we
plan on housing certain functional area support personnel as well with an eye towards reducing
future operating costs.
In addition, we have employed an expanded staff of web development professionals that will double
the overall size of this part of our IT Team and it should allow us to move more quickly and cost
effectively to address the numerous development plans that we have for not only the eCOST site, but
other web commerce areas in the months to come.
Let me give you just a minute on some of the key operating metrics for eCOST this past quarter. As
of the fourth quarter ended December 31, 06, eCOST had about 1.6 million total customers. That
compares to about 1.4 million total customers in 2005. Active customers for the quarter ending
December 31, 06, were about 287,000. That compared to about 468,000 to the same period last year.
New customers for the fourth quarter of 06 totaled 29,915. That was compared to 71,000 from a
year ago and for the 3 months ended December 31, 06, eCOST reported a total of 74,000 orders
shipped with an average order value of about $272. That compares to about 115,000 orders that were
shipped in 2005 with an average order value of about $374.
Ad expenses for the fourth quarter were 438,000. That compared to 1.4 million for the fourth
quarter of 2005. The cost to acquire a new customer for the fourth quarter of 06 was about
$14.63. That compared to $19.39 in the same period a year ago.
The cost to acquire a new customer is calculated by taking the total ad expenses during a period
and dividing it by the total number of new customers during that same period. As I have stated
previously, we decreased significantly our spending on marketing advertising for eCOST during our
restructuring efforts. We are now in the process of re-evaluating and ramping up those efforts as
we look into 07 now that we are operating on a very solid basis of operations.
Now, let me turn the call over to Tom, who will give you some information on our financials for the
fourth quarter and the full-year of 06, and then Ill come back to give you a little bit of
information about what we see for guidance for 07 and then to address questions. Tommy?
Thomas J. Madden, Senior Partner Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accounting Officer
Thank you, Mark. First of all before starting I would like to just note that PFSweb 2006 results
unless otherwise stated, only include eCOST.com operations from the point when the merger closed on
February 1, 2006, through our December 31st Year End. Also PFSwebs 2005 consolidated results do
not include eCOST.com operations. Let me first start by providing a brief overview of our
consolidated operating results for the quarter and year-ended December 31, 2006 and then provide
some operating highlights for certain business segments, and then Ill follow that with some key
balance sheet items as well.
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PFSweb, Inc.
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As reported in our press release issued this after our consolidated revenues for PFSweb for the
quarter ended December 31, 2006 were $109 million as compared to 83.4 million for the fourth
quarter of 2005. Gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2006 was 9.8 million or 9% of net revenues
compared to 8.4 million or 10% of net revenues in the fourth quarter of 2005. Adjusted EBITDA,
which is a key metric in evaluating our operational performance and potential was 0.9 million for
the December 2006 quarter versus 2.7 million in the prior year. Excluding eCOST operations
adjusted EBITDA was 2.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2006, which was relatively consistent
with the prior year period. Net loss for the fourth quarter of 2006 was 6.5 million or 14 cents
per basic and diluted share as compared to net income of 0.5 million or 2 cents per basic and
diluted share for the same period last year. Once again excluding eCOST.coms operations for the
current quarter net loss was approximately 0.7 million, which was down approximately 1.1 million
from the fourth quarter last year.
The current year bottom line results for the December quarter include $200,000 of
stock-compensation related expenses, which were 0 in the prior year as well as the 3.5 million
one-time non-cash goodwill charge for eCOST.com, which Mark discussed earlier as well as increased
D&A interest and tax costs in the prior year.
Now turning to the results for the full year our consolidated revenue for calendar year 2006 was
423.3 million compared to 331.7 million in 2005. For comparability purposes excluding eCOST.com
revenues for 2006 were 334.9 million, which was a slight increase over the prior year. Gross
profit for the full year ended December 31, 2006 was 39.7 million or 9.4% of net revenues compared
to 32.5 million or 9.8% of net revenues in 2005. Gross profit for the year in our Service Fee unit
was 26.5% of service fee revenue, a slight improvement as compared to the gross margin at 25% of
Service Fee revenue in 2005.
Adjusted EBITDA for calendar year 2006 was 2.5 million as compared to 9.5 million in the prior
year. Excluding eCOST operations adjusted EBITDA was 12.2 million for 2006, which actually for our
Services and Supplies Distributors businesses represented a $2.8 million increase over the prior
year, a very strong improvement in those business units year-over-year. Net loss for the year was
14.5 million or 34 cents per basic and diluted share compared to a loss of 0.7 million or 3 cents
per share for the prior year. Excluding eCOST.coms operations for 2006 net income with 1.6
million. Again, an increase with 2.3 million over the prior year for our services and supplies
distributors business units even after considering 0.9 million of stock compensation expense in the
current year, which was zero in the prior year.
As this results indicate our combined Service Fee and Supplies Distributed businesses performed
well comparison to last year. The results in these businesses over achieved our internal goals
during this period. Lets now talk a little bit about the eCOST.com business.
We feel the best way to judge the effect in this in the incremental improvement to eCOST.coms
operations since our merger date is by looking at the sequential quarter-to-quarter results. These
improvements are most notable when comparing sales, gross margin percentage as well as cost level.
As Mark discussed, our key focus for eCOST.com is to drive revenue growth through an expanded
marketing and advertising program effort while maintaining our ongoing cost control measures.
As you evaluate the financial results for eCOST for the December quarter, you will actually see an
improved sales performance partially due to the holiday season as compared to the previous quarter.
Secondly, eCOST.coms gross margin is improving. Excluding the negative impact this quarter of
selling a higher level of certain aged inventory below cost to reduce our inventory levels, the
gross margin for the quarter would have been approximately 8%. An improvement from recent periods,
and closer to the near term gross profit goals we have established which as Mark indicated earlier
is approximately 9%.
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PFSweb, Inc.
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Now well talk a little bit about our consolidated balance sheet and some of the highlights there.
From a cash perspective, our consolidated cash positions remain solid with cash equivalent and a
restricted cash balances exceeding 17.7 million as of December 31, 2006. Our accounts receivable
and inventory levels continue to reflect solid turnover results during this period as well.
From a financing perspective, over the past month we have been successful in either amending or
renewing all of our asset-based financing facilities for our Service Fee, Supplies Distributors and
eCOST.com businesses. All of these new agreements have terms that are either at or somewhat
improved from the prior levels. Now Id like to turn the call back over to Mark for closing
remarks.
Mark C. Layton, Chairman of the Board, Senior Partner
Okay, thank you Tom. So to summarize before I open for questions, obviously 2006 was an important
strategic year for us. It was an important there was a lot of transition activity that went on
and as I began the call I think there was a lot of information that needs to be taken into account
as you evaluate the 06 results.
Again Services business had a great year in 06, it was stable throughout the year. We had good
growth ahead of our original targets. Over $12 million of EBITDA performance in those two services
segments combined. That stable platform and good results from there allowed us to attack the
integration activities with eCOST vigorously and to get those under our belt. 07 is really now a
time for us to turn to the future and we believe that with the multiple markets that were now
operating in that this whole strategic undertaking we are going after will allow us to produce more
consistent revenue growth than we were able to previously target and hopefully better bottom line
performance as we look forward to 2007.
Briefly just let me give you some targets that we have in place now for 07. We are targeting
consolidated revenue excluding past due revenue for 2007 in the range of 420 to $435 million. As
Tom spoke in the past, we believe that adjusted EBITDA is the most appropriate measure to gauge the
profitability of our business so we will provide our guidance on an EBITDA basis.
On 2007, we are targeting a consolidated, adjusted EBITDA range between 8 and $10 million.
Obviously this will mark a significant improvement in our operations from an overall basis. That
primarily comes from a significant improvement in our eCOST business and obviously continued strong
performance from our service fee and supply distributors business segments.
We expect our capital expenditures for 2007 to be in the 3 to $5 million range. This would exclude
any unknown capital expenditure for any new client additions that at this point we have no
information on.
That concludes our prepared remarks for today. We hope this information will give you a good
backdrop not only about the strategic activities that we undertook in 06 and also our plans for
07. We are hopeful to get out in the next few months and begin to meet with investors from the
Wall Street standpoint and begin to explain information as we think 07 will be a good year for us
in terms of re-invigorating interest and activity in the PFSweb shares.
So with that information, operator, we will now be available for questions.
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QUESTION AND ANSWER SECTION
Operator: Certainly. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Frank Hayden from
Hayden Investments. Please go ahead.
<A>: Frank?
Operator: Mr. Hayden, your line is live. Please go ahead. Our next question comes from Greg
Fortuna [ph] from Carmen Equities [ph]. Please go ahead.
<Q>: Hello, gentlemen.
<A>: Good afternoon.
<Q>: I am a new shareholder and from where I am sitting I just want to let you know maybe how
it sounds. You have a great service fee business and that business is clearly significantly
undervalued compared to your competitors as I am sure you are aware of that, and you have a
business in eCOST that I mean just to name a few highlights you have added a credit card fraud. It
sounds like its taking up a lot of your time. You are writing down goodwill. If you look through
your release, everything says ex- eCOST this will be better, ex- eCOST this will be better,
ex-eCOST itll be better.
You have already stated, Mark, that you are running below your revenue and margin guidelines. If
you announce on this call that you were getting rid of eCOST, the stock would be up a dollar. I
think that I guess my question is and follow-up is what will it take for you to realize that
you are only doing a disservice to shareholders by keeping eCOST and not closing it down?
<A>: Okay. We have made a lot of information about the eCOST business. The challenges that
we have in the services business has to do with the consistency of the revenue growth model due to
the long lead times in that business. Shareholders were quite vocal about the fact that we needed
strategically to find ways to smooth out the growth of that business. Weve looked at our
strengths in technology and in our infrastructure capability and the products segments, us selling
products direct was a way for us to be able to address those concerns. We went through a very
significant transition period with a business that was in trouble last year. Going forward, we
think it will be able to be a business that will contribute significantly. So thats the strategic
plan that were on with the business and where we plan to go from there.
<Q>: Okay, but that being said, at this point, theres probably not too many shareholders who
would be unhappy. I mean, right now youre around four times EBITDA, which is not even most
deals are getting done at double that rate in your space, in your service space. You are killing
your business. This is costing money, every call you I cant imagine how much time youre
spending on this. I could hear it in all of your voices when you talk about your the service
business is very exciting, even more [audio gap]. When you talk about eCOST it sounds like you
just cant wait to get off the call. [indiscernible] to me, and you know this environment. Your
stock is cheap and a lot of shares outstanding, it doesnt take much for a few shareholders or one
shareholder to get together and force a hand. So I still you didnt really answer my question.
What is it going to take for you to get close this up, write it off, try to sell it, get rid of
it? At what point [indiscernible] make a decision?
<A>: Thank you. Next caller, please.
Operator: Our next question comes from George Walsh from Guilford Securities. Please go ahead.
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<Q>: Mark, Ill take it from a different angle. Just as you go into eCOST here, it seems the
driver is youve got to get the revenues up and youve got to get the traffic up. Lets take it
from element of what to take [ph] really going to do that [ph]. If we go with your expertise that
youve improved the infrastructure but its about the marketing initiatives to really drive the
traffic, and what is that going to cost? How soon do you think that can be ramped upwards where
its meaningful where you dont have the gap between run rate and the break even point that you
have now?
<A Mark Layton>: Well the big challenge that weve had in the business has to do with the
fact that the click charges on the shopping bots which was a primary driver of activity to the
eCOST Website had gone up significantly in the last 14 months. When we acquired the business last
year, we were probably looking at an average of 50 or 60 cents per click. Over the holidays, that
got up to over $1.10 per click, and so we have backed way off in terms of that and that has an
impact in terms of driving traffic to the site and ultimately on growth. But as I mentioned, our
focus has been on reducing the break-even point of the business in 06 and not really on revenue
growth.
So the short answer to your question is its probably not by just increasing ad spend on online
advertising. The activity that were undertaking right now has to do with the fact of expanding
our e-mail marketing. We have done a number of things to try to not only better target e-mails,
and much of this has not yet gotten us results because we are just beginning to do this now, as we
had begun to focus on growth really only in the last six weeks or so have we gotten our head back
on how are we going to grow the business going forward? But targeted e-mail marketing is important
for us in terms of because we see high response [indiscernible] marketing list now.
Secondly is the growth in offline advertising activity. We have made some investments in radio
advertising. Were going to be doing more in the catalog front. That will go out in the next few
weeks, where we have seen in the test markets weve done this over the last couple of months; good
response rates from those types of things. And at this point with the online costs being as high
as they are, those are more cost effective customer acquisitions tools for us from there.
Again, we just have not done a lot of investment in new customer acquisition in the last six months
as we went through this transition period. Just in the last few weeks weve begun to focus
attention on what were going to do and Im hopeful that the growth results will come throughout
2007.
<Q>: Okay, do you expect to do any hires in terms of marketing personnel or do you feel you
have the people in place that know what to do and to implement the plan and drive it?
<A Mark Layton>: Well we are using rather than hiring ourselves, were using outside, I
dont know if contractors are the right word, but outside agencies that have specialties in certain
areas. And so thats where our focus is at right now. Weve had a number of people involved in
the business and through that have developed the plans that we have put in place. Some of these
guys are PhDs that understand the whole direct marketing area. Some of these are guys that have
been involved in various successful online stories in the past that have done consulting work for
us. And were also talking to other companies who specialize in customer acquisition and traffic
generation for web sites. And through that weve garnered a variety of different things to help
drive our strategy for e-commerce growth.
<Q>: Okay, all right, thank you, Mark.
<A Mark Layton>: Thanks.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from John Fitzgerald from Bishop, Rosen
& Company. Please go ahead.
<Q John Fitzgerald>: Yes, Mark, throughout the course of 07 do you plan to meet capital by
going to the markets I guess is the better question?
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<A Tom Madden>: At this point in time we take a look at our available capital to support
business and the expanded financing facilities that we have in place. It is not currently expected
to go back to market. We will continue to evaluate that.
<Q John Fitzgerald>: When will it be evaluated again?
<A Tom Madden>: We continually evaluate that.
<Q John Fitzgerald>: Then an ongoing basis then? Okay, thank you.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Brett Combs [ph] from Combs Produce
Company. Please go ahead.
<Q>: Hi guys. What was the net income again for PFSweb in 2006 excluding the eCOST
acquisition?
<A Tom Madden>: Net income excluding eCOST for 2006 was 1.6 million.
<Q>: Thank you.
Operator: We have a follow-up question from George Walsh from Gilbert [ph] Securities. Please go
ahead.
<Q>: I did miss this a bit but can you break down a little bit what you use the 3 to 5
million for CapEx what that would entail?
<A Mark Layton>: Okay, most for certain known clients from the we mentioned earlier that
will require some capital expenditure needs as we support them in call center and/or fulfillment
operations. In addition we usually have a base of just kind of $2 to 3 million a year in estimate
of, Im going upgrade to our existing infostructure either from an IT standpoint or warehouse
compasity in order to insure weve got the right tools in place to do the job effectively and
efficiently.
<Q>: Okay. Do you get reimbursed for some of that? I thought on a previous caller theres
mention of a certain work into your rates or theres a reimbursement.
<A>: Right, it depends on the contract scenario, but anytime that a large capital expenditure
requirement is being required as a result of a new contract we work with our client to insure that
theyre aware of that financial comment on the front end. And that we contract with them to the
extent that they leave early from the contract, they have a commitment, if you will to reimburse us
for any unamortized costs according with those assets [ph].
<A>: And then we will take the costs of the CapEx and spread it over the term of the
contract. In other cases clients buy the Cap themselves so it just, every deal is just a little
different.
<Q>: Okay and can you kind of give a reimbursement guidance versus that 3 to 5 million?
<A>: Well all of it, well collect all of it with cost of money.
<Q>: Okay.
<A>: But theres none of that were making investment on our own. Its just a question of
whether we will get it upfront, which is a relatively small percentage of it, or whether we will
get it over the life of the contract.
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<Q>: Okay.
<A>: On that $2 to 3 million base, most of that is our eternal activity just to again keep
our functionality current. Another $2 to 3 million of that 5 would be items compliable [ph] to
known new client actively where that activity would be supported by our contract.
<Q>: Okay and those numbers dont include eCOST CapEx, is that correct? Or thats in F8 [ph].
<A>: Theres some eCOST, but eCOST right now weve got the infostructure in place primarily,
the one primary component that we are doing is taking a look from an IT standpoint as we further
upgrade the website functionality to support the business.
<A>: But we dont have any significant eCOST CapEx plans for the year. And theyre also
included in that number I think is the work that we are doing in the Philippines, over in the
Philippines office.
<Q>: Okay. All right, thank you.
Operator: Gentlemen there appear to be no more questions at this time.
Company Representative
Thank you operator. We appreciate it Mary. Thank you for your time today ladies and gentlemen. Good
bye.
Operator: Thank you gentlemen. Thank you everyone. This concludes todays conference call, you may
disconnect your line to descend and please have a wonderful day.
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