Hi, I'm Andrew Steinerman, your Business and Information Service Analyst here at JPMorgan. This is the Business Services track. This is the First Advantage Company Fireside Chat. Our Fireside Chats are 30 minutes, so it goes quick. I'm gonna start by asking questions. With us today is Scott Staples, David Gamsey, and Stephanie Gorman. I'm gonna ask my questions, but raise your hand. If you raise your hand, I will recognize you, and you could ask your questions as well. Scott, welcome back.
Thank you, Andrew. Appreciate it.
So, background screeners love covering the sector. It's a big industry. It's very fragmented, and I feel like it's very easy to say the Big Three are better than others. But I want you just to focus in on First Advantage, and tell me why you feel like your company is distinguished from even the other Big Three companies. Is it your technology? Is it your customer service? And do you feel like it's something that you could show to a potential customer easily?
Yeah, I think there's a couple things that go into that. I think let's start with our verticals. We were the very first company in this space to verticalize, and I think we've also taken it deeper than our competition. So by verticalizing, what we actually did was not just verticalizing our sales teams, but we verticalized our solutions engineers, our product teams, and in certain industries, even our customer care and customer success, especially, you know, in the regulated industries, where you actually need to be talking to experts who understand the compliance and the other drivers that are in that space. So I think verticalization is where it all starts.
That's the origin of our differentiation, because I think because of that, we've taken our product, and products, you know, really deep within these verticals, and they really resonate with our customers. So I think that's number one. Number two is, from a technology standpoint, we continuously roll out state-of-the-art technology on the front end of the applicant and candidate experience, which just makes for a great, experience for our customers when they're trying to hire, and onboard somebody. But it's the back-end technology, I think, that's given us the biggest differentiator, and this shows up... And what I'm really talking about here is robotic process automation, or RPA, or APIs. And we started our journey way ahead of anybody in the industry. We actually started, I think we built our first RPA, our first bot, over eight years ago.
You can see this in our P&L and balance sheets, because we have the highest EBITDA and margins in the industry, and a big driver of that is this automation. That's great for the financials, but our customers really don't care about that. What our customers care about is what that automation does for them. Our automation makes us super fast. If you go back to the verticals, the big piece of that vertical strategy was focusing on what we call high-volume hirers. Companies that hire a lot of people, primarily enterprise companies, that's our main focus. Within high volume, we really love the hourly worker.
So about 70% of our order volumes come from what we call High-Volume Hirers, and these are primarily hourly workers, aka blue-collar workers, where there's still a ton of turnover, and a lot of job openings. And so what that automation does for them is it gives us the speed I was talking about, which is the most relevant thing for these companies, because you just got to think about the scenario, the hiring scenarios that these companies are in. You know, they're, they're bringing, you know, a couple of 100 applicants to a distribution center, for a hiring event, and they literally want those people that they want to hire to start same day or, worst case scenario, very next day. So the speed gives us the ability to do background checks in minutes and hours, where our competition takes days and weeks.
I think our balance sheet alone gives us a lot of differentiation in the space because we've got amazing, you know, margins, which kick off a lot of free cash flow, gives us the flexibility to do the things that we want to do as a company. Roll all that up, I think we've got some really big differentiators in this space.
Okay. Do you think that that success could be copied by other large companies in the space?
I think this is an interesting industry. I think barriers to entry in this industry are really low because think about where the data is coming from. It's mostly public data sources, so anybody could get in and potentially start doing this. But barriers to success and barriers to scale, I think, are massive. So I don't think that a lot of the companies in this space can do what we've done. I think the Big Three can certainly you know continue to lead the pack, but I think, you know, some mid-sized, mid-market companies, you know, can also, you know, improve on what they do. I think where probably the challenge is with more of the mom-and-pops because they just don't have the tech chops to keep up with us.
Okay. You talk about a leading net promoter score, an NPS score. I assume that's a client NPS score. You know, what is your NPS score, and how has it been trending, and why do you think that's the trend?
... Well, I think first of all, we like to measure stuff, so we measure a lot of things. But let me explain a little bit about what we've done with NPS. So first thing is-
Client NPS, right?
Yes.
Okay.
First thing on client NPS, we do a lot, we measure everything. But yes, we're talking about client NPS. First of all, NPS, we actually made it a little easier. We don't do a traditional scale. We do a 1 through 10 ranking, which we found our customers found it easier to give us rankings on 1 through 10 because it's something that they're used to doing. So all our NPS scores are ranked 1 through 10. The second thing is, we actually measure NPS at 3 levels. One, which would be just pure client satisfaction. And we actually also do this for, you know, as many customers as we can, but primarily our large customers.
And we actually have customer success managers focusing on, you know, our top almost 500 accounts. So we get NPS scores from literally 500 accounts. So this is a pretty big sample set. This isn't just 10 or 20. This is about... We get it regularly from 500 accounts. And customer sat for us, or NPS, has improved. We're up to 9.3 on a scale of 1 to 10, and, and, you know, three years ago, we were at nine. So again, we were good three years ago, and we continue to get better at, and where we are today. So that's just pure customer sat. But we also measure new customers' onboarding experience. So we wanna know what was their experience switching to us and, you know, and the whole onboarding process.
That NPS, customer sat score is also around 9, actually at 9. And it's been pretty steady for the last two, three years. It really hasn't changed. And I think that's because we took a new approach to onboarding customers by creating SWAT teams. And these SWAT teams, you know, literally parachute in, and they're experts at what they do, and this is all they do. They go from one customer to the next with the onboarding. And then the last thing that we measure is customer satisfaction with our customer care team, our call center. Now, obviously, when people are calling our call center or they're using our, the click or the chat or however they're interacting with us, those scores tend to be a little bit lower 'cause they're calling for a reason.
But we are at about 8.25, 8.75 right now on NPS, and about 3 years ago, we were 8.25. So those are improving, too, and we think our chat is actually a big driver of that. We're getting really high scores on our chat feature because it's fast. They get their answer right away. They don't actually have to pick up the phone.
David, when the three screening companies went public in 2021, we surely didn't anticipate base revenues being down outside of a recession. I think you'll agree, we're still not in a recession. And most recently, your company has seen stability in base revenues. Do you feel like we might be at a pivot point to, you know, start narrowing those declines in base revenues? So again, my questions are: Has base revenues been more volatile than you thought? And are we now at a juncture where base revenues could start to narrow?
So base revenues turn negative for us, slightly negative in Q3 of 2022. It's down about 3.3%. Most of that came from APAC and India, and APAC and India continue to be problem geographies for us. They've not gotten a lot better, but the U.S. started to go negative base in Q4, along with everyone else. But it's gotten better, and the trends have improved, and as we reported in Q3, it's clearly moving in the right direction, and we are seeing some stability. I think that's a function of the fact that we focus on enterprise-sized clients. We have a very small SMB business. We focus on six verticals. Scott talked about the fact that a lot of them are hourly, blue-collar type of jobs with high turnover.
So I think between the verticals, the enterprise focus, the resiliency of those verticals, we're starting to see a lot of stability, and it's starting to improve.
Okay. What about the first part of the question? Like, do you feel like base revenues declining outside of recession is a surprise? I mean, surely that wasn't part of the conversation in 2021. Like, do you feel like base revenues might just be more volatile over time?
First of all, if you look at our verticals in which we operate, the six primary verticals, we kind of feel like in 2023, we've been in somewhat of a rolling recession.
Yeah.
Some of our verticals have done really good, but some of them have not. Professional services have been down, business services are down, staffing's down, financial institutions are down. So that dragged down base. We don't think it's particularly volatile at that point. We think it's bottomed out, and it's gotten much more stable.
Right. But you're not yet calling for any meaningful improvement, right?
We're not, but we were down, base was down 8.5% in Q3, 6.9% in the U.S. Negative base is gonna continue for a few more quarters, but again, it's moving in the right direction.
Comps are getting a lot better.
... Right. Year-over-year? Yeah.
Yep.
Boy, David, you might not like this one. So on the August call, when you talked about the guide for the year, you said the company's trending towards the lower end. And then on the most recent call, the wording was changed to at the lower end of the full year guide. Was that a purposeful wording change?
I think you may be reading between the lines.
So no-
A little bit there.
So not purposefully.
The point we're trying to make there is... It's the same direction, by the way, to answer the question. We are completely transparent, 100% transparent. We reported the revenues from our acquisition. We do that all of the time. The point we wanted to make, though, was two things have happened that impact guidance. One, we did an acquisition effective September 1. We wanted to report those revenues and the impact on our guidance from that. Two, as you know, we did a special one-time dividend, $218 million. That also impacts our guidance from an adjusted net income and an EPS perspective. We were just trying to be completely transparent, make sure everyone was aware.
Right. And David, do you feel like this is a business with high, incremental margins? You know, I know you have your specific margin, goals, but do you feel like there's any sort of cap, on margins, or do you feel like the incremental margins are as such, if you continue to grow, margins could continue to go higher? And I'm sure you're going to say there's plenty of room for continued automation. Like, is there any cap to margins, even a couple of years out?
So on a short term, excuse me. On a short-term basis, when revenues start to come back, they're going to fall through at a higher incremental margin, 'cause we do have an element of fixed costs in our business that you can't go below. So when those, it's not linear. So when those revenues start to come back, we will get greater margins coming through. Once you absorb another 10, 15, 18%, you will have to start adding more headcount to handle that volume. But again, those margins will be great, and that first 15, 18% are going to be at much higher fall through. On a long-term basis, it really drives. It's a combination of automation, proprietary database, and the fact that we manage SG&A costs really, really well. But there is room to continue to automate.
We will continue to roll out bots and API integrations. We do have a proprietary database that gives us a much higher margin when it comes to verifications. So we're going to pull all of those levers, and we've demonstrated over the past three years, we know how to do that.
Right. So, Scott, do you mind if I pushed a little on the proprietary database? The Verified database is really work that you've already done, you've already verified, and you're looking for opportunities to reuse the same information that you already verified.
Correct.
It's not reuse of third-party data. So my question is: how often do you get to use the Verified database? And I definitely agree that, you know, you save a lot of work if it happens to hit the same exact employee, but how often are you hitting the same exact employee? And then, is there still one more job where you have to still do some, let's say, work to get a full verification?
Yeah, and that second-
Was that, was that fair?
Yeah.
Fair question.
That's a great question. And the second part happens probably a lot more than you think. Whether you're getting it from your own database or a third-party database, you always, there's always a potential that you've got partial data, and you've got to then maybe kick it to a manual process to fill in the blanks. But in general, if you look at what all our alternative verification data sources, including Verified and some of the fintechs that we go to, about 10% of our verifications are handled by that today,
Okay, 10% is handled by both Verified and-
The fintechs, yeah.
And Fintech plus.
Yep.
Okay.
We would then go to The Work Number, Equifax, for anything beyond that. We typically only get about 19% full coverage from The Work Number. So then that basically tells you about 65%-70% still need some sort of manual process to fill in the gaps. And we don't actually mind that too much, because when we do the manual process, we then get to keep that data.
Right. Right.
So-
That's Verified.
Exactly. So you see, Verified actually grew 10 million records this past quarter. You know, ultimately, we would like to see, you know, the manual shrink and the third party shrink and use more and more of the Verified database because obviously-
Margin.
It's huge margin.
Yeah.
It's almost, almost 100% margin.
Of course, you're still charging the same price, right?
Not necessarily.
Maybe, maybe-
Yeah.
not close to the same price.
Exactly.
You're still charging a Verified price, you know?
Yeah, but it's... No, we give clients a discount for using that database.
Right. But you share in those benefits.
Yeah, big time.
When you say 10%, like, I think I understand why you say Verified and fintechs together-
Yeah
... because it's like Verified might give you most of what you need.
Yeah.
And then you could go to a fintech to get the current, one. Is that sort of why-
Right
You put it together?
Yep.
That makes total sense. Okay, great. Questions from the audience. Questions from the audience?... Come on, the lively group has to pipe up here. Where do you think that 10% could get to?
Well, it's really the question is, where can that 10% get to? I don't know is the real answer. Obviously, we want it to be as large as possible. What's really important about that 10%, is that that 10% is really great for the client. It's a really nice price point for the client. It's a super-fast turnaround time. But I think it's gonna take a while for that to be, you know, to become even more meaningful. So I would think a couple of years that are still in the making before that gets, you know... I don't even—I'd be hesitant to even give you a number, but obviously, you know, we've got goals of, you know, doubling that and tripling that over time.
We don't actually know where it could go, so a lot depends on where else we can get data from to add to it, which we're constantly scouring the Earth to find.
Right. And you mentioned it, and I didn't know that, that EWS is only, like, 19%-
Yep
... coverage for your addressable universe.
Full coverage. The Work Number would give us about 65%-ish partial coverage.
Okay.
So what that simply means is, if a client's asked us to verify past three employers, we're saying that we get past one or two-
Two
... employers.
19% of the time.
Yeah.
65%, you get-
No, 90% of the time, we get all three.
Right.
The rest, we get partial, and then we either have to do a manual or find another data source.
Right. But I-
But the great news about it is we've got this awesome tech that's figuring all that out for us. That's what SmartHub does.
Yeah. Right, and, just remind me, SmartHub is used for all your verifications? Like, is this like your verification-
It is
... portal? Like, you can't get it any other way.
Very first... An order comes in, the first thing it goes to is SmartHub.
Okay. And, you know, surely, you know, Equifax could do better on coverage, too. Like, like, as much as you're like, like, "Hey, we love it when we do manual because we put it into our Verified database," but I assume the most important thing is speed, right? And to do manual takes time.
Correct. So manual does take time. When you're talking about manual verifications, you've added days to the process. Obviously, when you're talking about database hits, you're talking minutes, you know, maybe, maybe hours. So yeah, it's... I mean, it's better for everybody if we can get, you know, better data. Again, it's, you know... Everything that's driven us in this space has been customer-led. You know, customers are really, really, you know, asking us nonstop for alternatives and, and better, better offerings here.
Right. And, when you say fintech partners, I assume you mean the payroll APIs-
Yep
... so like the Argyle's of the world. I'm not saying specifically Argyle-
Yep
... but just to give an example. Haven't they sort of suffered a little bit with, kind of, whatever you might call it, co-consumer giving up on going through the, the process, and like, don't you still see that payroll APIs have that kind of consumer giving up issue?
I think it's a great point, but I think they're all not the same.
Okay.
I think, you know, we don't, we don't work with Argyle 'cause we, we think that it's too onerous on the user.
Mm-hmm.
You're hitting on it right there. But there are other fintechs with other ways of doing this that have made it easier for the user. It may not be that they're going to the payroll, they, maybe they're going to their bank, and other ways. We're constantly talking to these companies as they keep evolving their model, but you've hit exactly what the sticky point is. If it's hard for the user to do it-
Got it.
It won't work.
I got it. And for you guys, you're really only doing VOE, you're not doing VOIE, so you could go to the bank account-
Correct.
and it's not an issue like it is for lenders.
Correct.
I got you.
We don't ever wanna see what the amount was.
Right, you just-
We just wanna know that...
Yeah
... a payroll check has hit from-
I, I-
-that employer.
I didn't think of that.
Yep.
I think that's a really good point. Questions from the audience? Okay. Okay. I know you're gonna say, "We can't control base growth," but, you know, all the other levers you can control. And we so far have said we don't see employment picking up. So my question is: If you want to improve your revenue profile heading into 2024, do you feel like any of the other levers could improve, even if base growth remains somewhat of a modest drag?
I think they can improve, but only slightly, because if you look at the data, it's incredibly consistent. Like, if you go back even four or five years, those numbers haven't changed too much.
I know.
You know, new logo is gonna be 5%-6%, upsell, cross-sell is going to be 4%-5%, attrition is gonna be 3%-4%. Now, attrition, we've gotten more 3, closer to 3 and even, even better than that, over the last couple of years, and obviously new logo and upsell, cross-sell have been, you know, doing, doing great for us. This, a lot of it, I mean, it's, it's incredible, like, upsell, cross-sell, this has been a great year for upsell, cross-sell. Maybe, maybe the best year for upsell, cross-sell. And so, yeah, there are certain things that can drive these things more positive, and there are certain trends, obviously, that we, we think that can help us. But...
You know, at the end of the day, we really believe the growth algorithm is, that we keep talking about, is a really consistent piece of it, of our success with the things we can control. The base growth, we can't control.
Right.
But at the same time, we are seeing, you know, hey, our top three verticals are actually seeing pretty good trends right now.
Right. So you feel, you feel good about the other drivers besides base growth-
Yep.
but you also find that it's hard to accelerate those?
Yeah, it's hard to accelerate, and I think one of the biggest reasons is that, you know, we still are in the HR Tech space, and HR Tech's just not fast movers. So it takes a while. It takes... The sales cycles are a bit long, and it takes a while to get them moving, but when they move, they move. And trends are in our favor. And obviously, we agree with what you're saying. The things we can control are the things we're focusing on.
Right. Right, and you already have a very high client retention. It's like 97%.
Yep.
So it's hard to think of that changing. I mean, moving up from there. Okay. So when you think about the audience, the investors here, what, what would you like them to think more about when thinking about screeners in general or First Advantage in particular?
Yeah, I'll give it a shot and then let David, you know, jump in. I mean, you know, I think just, you know, look at it, look at our margins and look at the EBITDA and look at the free cash flow that we throw off. I mean, this is a great business, and it's been a consistent great business, even through a pandemic. We believe we're the only background screener that grew in the pandemic. We grew 6%. We feel most others declined. We've done fairly well in choppy macro conditions. So there's a lot of good going on here. We've got a great customer base. Our focus is enterprise.
Our focus is primarily the blue-collar worker, which is, you know, against all the trends you see in JOLTS data and things like that. We've got the right verticals. We've got great tech. Let David jump in.
Well, Scott hit the nail on the head. From my perspective, it's all about free cash flow. We throw off $40 million-$50 million a quarter in cash flow from operations. That gives us a lot of latitude from a capital allocation perspective. So what have we done with it? We've done 5 acquisitions in the last 2.5 years or so. We've done a stock buyback program. We've already spent $118 million on the stock buyback program, and that's continuing, and it will continue through 2024. We did a one-time special dividend of $218 million, returning capital to our shareholders, almost a 10% return at the time of the dividend. We continue to evaluate other M&A opportunities, but there's still somewhat of a public-private valuation gap there, and we're not gonna overpay for it.
We have a lot of opportunities, because of the cash we generate, to continue to maximize shareholder value.
One last question: like, you talk about all these goodnesses, the verticalization, the tech enablement, my question is: What about pricing? You know, it's like we're in an inflation- or we have been in an inflationary environment. I feel like there hasn't been a lot of pricing power in the screening industry. You know, do you feel like maybe you've, you've earned your right to increase pricing more than you have in the past?
Well, first of all, we don't like to talk about pricing a lot. You know, our clients get to read and hear everything that we say, so we're very careful about that. We do have the right in every one of our contracts to pass on CPI increases every year. We have done that selectively in each of the past three years. We have raised some package costs and passed on some fees as well over the last several years, so we do that selectively. But what we've really done, and done well, is we continue to drive productivity and efficiency, which lowers our costs, and we keep that.
Yeah. So it just sounds like your answer is, like, you're not trying to increase price more, even though this is a great business, and you're tech-enabled, and I just... That's the one thing that sort of sits with me.
It's a competitive marketplace. We are never, I won't say never, but we do not try to be the low-cost provider.
Right.
We think we bring a lot of value to the table, particularly speed, technology, automation. We wanna get paid for that, but at the same time, we need to be competitively priced.
Okay, awesome. Scott and David, thank you very much.
Thank you. Appreciate it.