Good day, everyone, and welcome to the FTI Consulting Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2017 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. And now for opening remarks and introductions, I'll turn the call over to Molly Hawkes, Managing Director of Investor Relations at FTI Consulting. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Good morning. Welcome to the FTI Consulting conference call to discuss the company's fourth quarter full year 2017 earnings results as reported this morning. Management will begin with formal remarks, after which we'll take your questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call may include forward looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21 of the Securities June Act of 1934 that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events, future revenues, future results and performance, expectations, plans or intentions relating to financial performance, acquisitions, share repurchases, business trends and other information or other matters that are not historical including statements regarding estimates of our future financial results and other matters.
For a discussion of risk and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ from those contemplated by forward looking statements, investors should review the Safe Harbor statement in the earnings press release issued morning, a copy of which is available on our website at www.fticonsulting.com, as well as other disclosures under the heading of Risk Factors and Forward information in our Form 10 K for the year ended December 31, 2017 and in our other filings filed with the SEC. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this earnings call and will not be updated. During the call, we will discuss certain non GAAP financial measures such as total segment operating income, adjusted EBITDA, total adjusted segment EBITDA, adjusted earnings per diluted share, adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA margin and free cash flow. For a discussion of these and other non GAAP financial measures, as well as our reconciliation of non GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, Investors should review the press release and the accompanying financial tables that we issued this morning, which include the reconciliations. Lastly, there are two items that have been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website this morning for your reference.
These include a quarterly earnings presentation, an Excel and PDF of our historical financial and operating data, which have been updated to include our fourth quarter full year 2017 results. Of note, during today's prepared remarks, management will not speak directly to the quarterly earnings presentation posted to the Investor Relations website. To ensure our disclosures are consistent, these slides provide the same details as they have historically, and as I said, are available on the Investor Relations section of our website. With these formalities out of the way, I'm joined today by Steve Gumby, our President and Chief Executive Officer and Ajay Sagarwal, our Chief Financial Officer. At this time, I'll turn our call over to President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Nody.
Thank you, Molly, and good morning to everybody on the call and Thank you all for joining this call. As I think you saw this morning, our teams delivered an extraordinarily positive second half of 2017. The 3rd quarter, I think everyone already knew, was strong. It's now joined by a 4th quarter that was also powerful. And those two quarters together offset the weak first half of the year, leaving us with both with solid results for 2017 overall and strong momentum going into 2018, so a terrific second half of the year.
So I'd like to cast our mind back. I'm sure most of you on this call like me to remember the slow start to 2017. I'm hoping most of us also remember that we felt that time this slow start was not reflective of the underlying reality of where our teams have taken this business. The strength of the positions, the competitive positions we've been creating around the world, the strength of our people in different businesses around the globe, the importance of the work we are doing in the marketplace, the marketplace receptivity to that work. Rather, as we indicated during the 1st and second quarter earnings calls, a lot of the issues in the first half of the year felt temporary.
And based on that perception, even though we delivered first half twenty seventeen adjusted EPS of only $0.75. After the second quarter, we maintained the then existing full year adjusted EPS guidance of $1.90 to $2.20, which Of course, if you do the math, and I'm sure everybody on the call did the math, inherently meant we believe the second half was going to be substantially stronger. It was, and in fact, the reality of the second half was even stronger than we expected. As is typically the case, even when our teams delivered, not all of our businesses are firing on all cylinders. And let me talk about 2 of them.
Technology and econ. Both of them businesses that I have enormous confidence in our bleeper fabulous businesses. In technology, I'm pleased to say we made real progress in 2017. The team there has been moving unbelievably fast, expanding our offerings, clients we have seen in the prior years, even in the face of some tough markets. But the business is not yet moving at a pace that it could contribute substantially to the success we had in the second half and the growth we saw in the second half.
And in econ, we also happen to have a much weaker second half their case compared to the first half of twenty seventeen and the second half of twenty sixteen. And more important, the performance is weaker than the level we know this business can deliver. As most of the people on this call know, we have a great team in Econ. That's in my opinion, and I believe an opinion of most people around the world, the leading group of economists in the world. But even terrifically competitive businesses can and will from time to time have down quarters or half years, given the large event driven nature of our business.
The reality that events and market forces can affect their business is always there. That is why the leadership team and I have been committed to making all of our businesses focused on realizing their full competitive potential. Every one of them positioned to be overall long term contributors to growth. Because if we have one or another that is hit by a temporary event or a market slowdown, we can with strength in our other businesses continue to deliver growth overall. And that's what happened in this second half of the year, even with tech and econ lagging, what we believe is their potential, we were able to deliver the strong second half.
So how did that happen? Essentially, it was for three reasons. First is a set of one off tax items, which are quite technical in nature, which I will allow Ajay to give more details on, but they clearly helped their 2017 tax rate considerably. And I'll leave it at that until Audrey has a chance to talk to that. The second is a topic that's not one off.
It's one that we discussed more, which is the strong use of cash. This business has always been a good generator of cash. Over the last several years, we put in place processes to ensure We not only generate that strong cash, we leverage those strong free cash flows in ways that support the overall growth of the enterprise and contribute to EPS growth. In a sustained way. If you look at our balance sheet, as I know many of you have, you'll see that we have considerably less debt than we did just a few years ago.
And almost every metric of our balance sheet looks about as good as it ever has. But even while being conservative, we've been able to use cash in ways that drive sustainable value creation. This year, we used the cash to buy back shares, and we did so aggressively, particularly after the second quarter when the stock dropped. Those share buybacks have had big supportive effects in the second half of the year as our earnings come back, an effect that is going to continue into next year. The second reason why our results were that strong was terrific cash use.
But to me, the 3rd reason is far more important than either of the first 2. And that is what our teams are doing every day. To drive a dual agenda, to me, a dual agenda that is the hallmark of what great professional services firms do, which is Both, that's behind people in positions where you have a right to win, be willing to be aggressive in supporting places where you know you have a market proposition that the market needs and and we can deliver as well as being tough on ourselves, looking aggressively at other places where we have less compelling arguments. Our teams continued that set of activities forcefully in 2017 on both fronts. We talked last year about the fact that management was focused in attacking places where we hadn't proven, we had a right to low end.
And we've focused on either improving our offerings there and operations or rationalizing them through targeted headcount and real estate actions. And Ajay gave you a sense of some of the magnitude of those actions that we had taken, and we did that in 2017. At the same time, we also continued the other side of that dual agenda, we added key hires and launched new offerings in attractive growth areas, including business transformation services, retail, our terrific transaction advisory business, data and analytics, our construction business, our cyber business, international arbitration, information governance and a number of others. We acquired CDG Group, not because the market was booming. To the contrary, we acquired CDG group in the face of a slow restructuring market because in our experience, when great talent is available, and you think fit with your company, you need to jump on that opportunity with a strategic thrust to support a long term goal of extending our leadership in Corp Fin and particularly on the company's side and interim management capabilities.
As it turns out, the addition of Bob Delgenio and his team is already contributing to growth in the near term, which is a terrific bonus, but the decision to move there was one based on conviction of where we can take that business long term. And we did that sort of thought processes, our teams are engaged in that thought processes across the world. It is that dual focus of betting EBITDA and investing behind businesses and leaders where we have strong plans, right to win and strong propositions for the market and being tough on ourselves and being willing to take tough actions where we don't, which is the core of how our teams are moving the company ahead. The result was in the second half of the year, we not only had a better cost position but at the same time, we drove improved revenues. And let me give you 3 examples of that.
FLC had a better cost structure to serve due to this tough decision that the management team there were willing to make. But also due to the investments made this year and the realization investments made in prior years, we got revenue up 7% versus the first half of the year, almost double digit, 9% compared to the second half of twenty sixteen. Corp Fin, the leadership team was tough on positions where we didn't have the appropriate approach and did took some significant rationalization activities where it was appropriate. But if you look, our overall cost structure did not go down because the investment opportunities we saw far exceeded the rationalization activity. Importantly, those actions in turn allow our revenue to be up 16% versus the first half of the year, and up 15% versus the second half of twenty sixteen, despite a very modest overall restructuring market.
Third example is strat comms, where due to the slow start of the year, we delayed some of our more ambitious headcount growth. But even though that helped us with the financials, the more important driver of our results was that as we thought would happen, we were able to bring our revenue back to a growth trajectory with second half revenues up 14% compared to the first half of the year and 7% compared to the second half of twenty sixteen. Before I turn this over to Ajay, Let me put your permission to take the conversation up one level. I believe we have a terrific management team at this point focused on unleashing the potential of this business. And the good news is that we're almost without an exception, wherever our teams have focused enough energy, we find terrific people with ambition, in strong enough positions that we have been able to take businesses that have been declining or flat and return them to growth.
The issue we have faced over the last several years is that, although we present this as a business with 5 segments, in reality, it's more complicated. All of those segments have subsegments, sometimes 4 or 5, sometimes you could define it as 10, many of which have different competitive positions, sometimes fundamentally different competitive positions around the world. So when you're working through that, there's a lot of places to look. And as we were moving some parts of the businesses back to growth, it has been against the backdrop of other parts that we have not gotten to. At our Investor Day, I think many of you were able to join it, you heard our management team talk about the fact that it feels like we have turned a corner that we have looked at a number of places.
We've taken hard looks, and we've returned a number of places to growth, places where we have optimism about the ability to continue growth. Importantly, I'm hoping you heard that we have management team that has a mental map to drive growth, profitable growth as its core orientation. To me, the combination of the changes we have made and the mental and map and ambition and capability of that leadership team makes me feel we have now have the ability not only to drive good use of cash, but also drive organic adjusted EBITDA growth on a sustained basis. And in that sense, to me, the most important thing about the second half of the year about the results is that those numbers start to validate these beliefs that we feel at the leadership level. 2017 is the 3rd year in a row of sustained adjusted EBITDA EPS growth, EPS growth.
Given the volatility of the company, it's only the second time in the history of the company. We've had 3 years of sustained adjusted EPS growth. Perhaps more important, the second half of this year was the largest growth in adjusted EBITDA year on year, for almost a decade. I'm not trying to argue we're done with the job. I mean, I think you're never done or close to done in professional services.
I mean, our leadership team, our SMDs, our MDs, our professionals need to continually challenge ourselves, fixing businesses, which aren't performing at the level we want, anticipating changes in the market being creative in how we grow businesses that we think are positioned well, investing in adjacencies, spotting talent in the market, challenging ourselves Have we got it right? It looks good. Have we really challenged ourselves adequately? And even if you do all that, there are always changes in end markets and client needs make a difference. And even if you do all the right things, there can be idiosyncratic effects that drive slow quarters.
So we have a lot of work to do and a lot of things to work through. It does mean to me that I believe we are entering a new chapter in this company's history. A chapter where I believe if we continually focus on the right things, we will can and will use our cash wisely and begin to grow adjusted EBITDA on a sustained basis. Obviously, those goals are important to the audience on this call or shareholder right? You're here to make sure you invest your money in the right places and see a return on those results.
Those goals are also powerfully important for our people. Because if you can have both of those, you not only deliver strong shareholder returns, you also have the wherewithal to invest in growing and supporting ambitious people's ambitions in ways that are motivating that attracts and supports the best professionals And then people who are building the business and therefore, driving the results. Back to me is the objective we have and is the path that I believe we are now on, which in turn will create a fabulously bright future for this company. With that, let me turn this over to Ajay to get more details in the quarter. And then he and I look forward to your questions.
Ajay?
Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everybody. In my prepared remarks, I will take you through both our fourth quarter and full year results and provide you with our financial guidance for 2018. Beginning with some highlights, as Steve just discussed, our fourth quarter and the second half of the year results were much stronger than both the first half of this year and the second half of last year. We finished with a very solid fourth quarter which resulted in full year 2017 performance above our expectations. Revenues for 2017 of $1,808,000,000 were above our guidance range of between $1,750,000,000 $1,800,000,000.
2017 net income of $108,000,000 compared to $85,500,000 in the prior year, and GAAP EPS of $2.75 compared to $2.05 in 2016. Full year net income and GAAP EPS were impacted by 2 special items. We recorded a discrete net income tax benefit of $44,900,000 resulting from the 2017 U. S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act or the 2017 Tax Act.
This benefit consists primarily of a $63,500,000 reduction of tax expense relating to remeasuring our deferred tax liabilities at a new at the new lower U. S. Tax rate of 21%. This was partially offset by $18,600,000 tax expense resulting from the transition tax on our foreign earnings which are deemed to be repaid created under the 2017 PAX Act. On a net basis, These items increased GAAP EPS for the fourth quarter by $1.19 and for the full year by $1.14.
The 2017 Tax Act benefit was partially offset by the pretax special charges of $40,900,000 These special charges reflect targeted headcount and real estate actions taken in 2017 and reduced GAAP EPS by $0.19 for the fourth quarter and $0.70 for the full year. Excluding the 2017 Tax Act benefit and special charges, Full year 2017 adjusted EPS were $2.32, up 3.6% compared to the prior year. Full year 2017 adjusted EBITDA of $192,000,000 or 10.6 percent of revenues compared to $203,000,000 or 11.2 percent of revenues in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA in the second half of twenty seventeen grew 45.6 percent from the second half of I want to point out that our effective tax rates in the fourth quarter full year 2017 were lower than we expected, we started the year expecting an effective tax based on our expectation for geographic mix of earnings. If our effective tax rate for the fourth quarter and full year 2017 had been between 36% 37% as we had originally projected This would have reduced adjusted EPS by approximately $0.12 $0.23 for the fourth quarter and the full year respectively.
At the segment level, our forensic and litigation consulting corporate finance and restructuring and strategic communication segments rebounded strongly in the second half of the year versus the first half. Both economic consulting and technology were weaker in the second half versus the first half, but the weakness was more than offset by the strength in the other segments. Overall, we are really pleased with these results, which exceeded our expectations. Now I will turn to our fourth quarter results in more detail by segment. In Corporate Finance And Restructuring, Revenues of $130,500,000 increased 15.2% compared to Q4 of 2016.
The increase in revenue was primarily driven In addition to the restructuring engagements I mentioned last quarter, which continued to drive revenue in the fourth quarter, we had numerous new wins supporting growth in the fourth quarter. We won these engagements despite the weak market for restructuring services, we have faced all year in fact. According to the deal pipeline, bankruptcy filings over $250,000,000 are down nearly 30% compared to 2016. Also worth noting, we topped the deal industry leak tables for dollar value a number of cases in 2017. That's the 10th consecutive year where we have earned this accolade.
Adjusted segment EBITDA was $25,800,000 or 19.7 percent of revenues, compared to $16,300,000 or 14.4 percent of revenues in the prior year quarter. The year over year increase in adjusted segment EBITDA was primarily due to higher revenues with improved utilization Moving on to forensic and litigation consulting or FLC, we were very pleased with the continued momentum of the business from the third quarter into the 4th quarter. Revenues of $120,900,000 increased 14.6% compared to the prior year quarter. This was largely driven by Adjusted segment EBITDA of $23,600,000 or 19.5 percent of revenues more than tripled compared to the prior year quarter primarily due to higher revenues and improved utilization. Of $46,200,000 more than doubled compared to the second half of twenty sixteen and was up approximately 74% compared to the first half of twenty seventeen.
The second half strengthened this business is a testament to the deep expertise and quality of our professionals across the globe and the investments we have made in growing this business over the last few years. In fact, we were recently recognized on whose legal investigations 2018 list as having the most forensic account experts listed more than any other firm globally. Economic consulting revenues of $121,100,000 declined 6.4% compared to Q4 of 2016. The decrease in revenues year over year was primarily due to lower demand for antitrust services as we were up against tough comparisons after a record fourth quarter of 2016 for these services, which included several very large cases. Adjusted segment EBITDA was $14,300,000 or 11.8 percent of revenues compared to $19,000,000 or 14.7 of revenues in the prior year quarter.
The decrease in adjusted segment EBITDA was primarily due to lower revenues and higher bad debt which was partially offset by lower compensation costs. Sequentially, we did see an uptick in this segment both on the top and bottom line. This was driven by improvements across almost all of our business lines in North America in EMEA In technology, revenues of $40,900,000 declined 5.9% compared to Q4 of 2016. The year over year revenue decline was because of lower demand for managed review services related to the roll off of legacy engagements which was only partially offset by improved demand such as our information governance, privacy and security services. Adjusted segment EBITDA of $3,000,000 or 7.3 percent of revenues compared to $5,600,000 or 12.8 percent of revenues in the prior year quarter.
The decrease in adjusted segment EBITDA was primarily because of lower revenues. As we realize a significant decline in depreciation compared to the prior year as we transition our data centers to the cloud. Lastly, in strategic communications, revenues of $54,300,000 increased 8% compared to Q4 of 2016. Revenue was driven by improved demand for our public affairs and corporate reputation services across our EMEA region with significant contributions from our teams in the UK, France, Germany and Belgium. Adjusted segment EBITDA of $10,500,000 or 19.4 percent of revenues compared to $8,400,000 or 16.7 percent of revenues in the prior year quarter.
The increase in adjusted segment EBITDA was due to higher revenues, which was only partially offset by higher compensation costs. Sequentially, strategic communications also improved on both top and bottom line. At the end of the year, billable headcount for the company was largely flat, while non billable headcount declined 7.7% as we remain focused on maximizing efficiencies across our corporate functions. SG and A expenses of $111,200,000 were 23.8 percent of revenues, and were $5,300,000 or 4.6 percent lower compared to the fourth quarter of 2016. Which was primarily due to lower travel, meals and entertainment expenses and lower compensation.
This was partially offset by an increase in bad debt. I will now discuss our cash flow statement and balance sheet. Net cash provided by operating activities of $147,600,000 for 2017 compared to $233,500,000 for 20 16. The year over year difference in operating cash flows was primarily due to increased compensation payments which include salaries, bonus and severance payments and lower cash receipts. Cash receipts were lower due to the timing of revenue, with 2017 Q4 revenues being $26,000,000 higher than 2016 Q4 revenues.
In addition, in 2016, operating cash flows benefited from a significant DSO decline from 97 days to 91 days, while 2017 DSOs continue to be on par with the prior year at 91 days. During the year, we spent $168,000,000 on share repurchases. Despite these purchases Our net debt increased only $56,200,000 to $210,000,000 because of the strong Before I speak to our For 2018, we expect our effective tax rate to be between 28% 31%. Our 2017 effective tax rate Excluding the impact of the 2017 Tax Act and special charges was 29.4%. While we expect our 2018 effective tax rate to be comparable to excluding the impact of tax reform and special charges, we're still very encouraged by the U.
S. Tax rate changes because over time we expect to realize additional benefits. Turning to our 2018 guidance. As usual, we are providing revenue, GAAP EPS and adjusted EPS for the year. Starting with revenues.
We estimate that revenues for 2018 will be between 1.82 $5,000,000,000 $1,875,000,000. We expect our GAAP EPS will be between $2.35 and $2.65. We do not expect adjusted EPS to differ from GAAP EPS. We expect earnings growth to come from Our guidance is informed by several factors We expect growth in both revenue
and
expect the rate of growth We expect an increase in upgrades to certain information technology systems and investments in cross segment initiatives. This investment will be we won't have as much In particular, we currently do not expect So even though we do not provide quarterly guidance, given our momentum going into 2018, and the timing of expenses being than the second half of the year on both the top and bottom lines. Before I close I want to reiterate that we are delighted with our full year 2017 results. Our second half performance more than offset the weakness in the first half and we have exceeded the upper end of our revised guidance range. We believe we are a significantly stronger company today for 5 key reasons.
Our brand and franchise have never been stronger. For example, in corporate finance and restructuring and FLC, we are winning the marquee retail and investigations jobs. Our cost structures and our cost disciplines are better today. We have reduced our non billable headcount. And in our segments, our leadership has strengthened and remains focused on growth with higher utilization.
In many whole set of new services like our cybersecurity and information governance capabilities. We repurchased 11.1 percent of our total share count since the beginning of 2017. Our continued ability to generate free cash flow gives us flexibility Last, we have delivered solid results, even though the key macro drivers of our business, restructuring, M and A and disputes are nowhere near their peaks. With that, let me open the call up for your questions. Thank
We'll take our first question from Kevin McVeigh with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks. And tremendous, tremendous job folks overall. Can you give us a sense, I mean, to your point, like you're clearly decoupling from historical fundamentals in is there any way to maybe frame that? One thing I've always thought about is what percentage of the business is kind of distressed versus non distressed.
But if you look at the pace, you're clearly outpacing that. Is there any way to just maybe bracket that within the context of the overall results, which
are obviously very, very strong?
Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for the congratulations and thanks for the question. Look, maybe let me try to answer it the way at least I think about it. If it doesn't answer your question, come back, okay. Obviously, there are market forces that affect all of our businesses as well as sort of random events, whether you win the 3 of the 4 big jobs, or you win 1 of the 4 big jobs.
To me, one of the issues was in our company, we were too focused on that because those dramatically affect any quarter. But over any extended period of time, what matters is, are we gaining share? Are we anticipating where the markets are moving, moving aggressively in the places where we can win where the markets are moving? And to me, if you do that, you become much less dependent on the restructuring boom to bail out your earnings. And when our management team has looked at that, we've been we've seen that there were opportunities for adjacencies that we missed in the past and we're pretty focused on not.
And so We're also focused on saying just writing our current share and writing the ways of the market is inadequate. And so in Corp Finne, I think For example, Carlin, Mike, but really a broader leadership team there has a lot of ambition and tough discipline. They're not saying we're going to go become something we can't possibly be. But tough discipline around, look, where are the adjacent spaces we can be in? We're not just a restructuring business.
We have the right to work for companies that need cost out. We do merger integration work. We have deep industry expertise that creates opportunities for us to do other work where do we have a right to win and how do we expand those services? And we've done that. And even in businesses that we are terrific in, like corp in restructuring in the U.
S. Mike and the team have taken a hard look and said, we're great in a lot of it, but where can we be better? And one of the reasons why we did the CDG deal as strong as we are in company side and we do a whole lot of company side deals, we have ambition to be better. And so to me, the C change is we have a management team that is focused on it's not an excuse to just say the market went up or down. It's what are we going to do to have at least a formidable motor that plows through the waves, even if even if they're against us, not to say that you're, you can ignore that the waves don't affect you, but let's control more of our destiny.
And I think that's what's starting up in the results. Did that address your question or I missed it, Kevin?
No, no, no, it did. And just along those same lines, like, because I think to your point, like it it cycles both ways, right? And it sounds like from a staffing perspective, are you kind of where you need to be? And it sounds like you made some progress on on the attrition as well. Are those fair statements?
Look, I think, yes, look, we made we use the We've been working on this now, look, for several years, but you know, we're a people business and you were, you move carefully and you hope to make sure that You don't want to pull the plug on businesses if you feel like you can really drive them. Now the slow part of the first half of the year allowed us to really accelerate some conversations that we've been having for a while. And so we made a fair number of moves in the first half of this year, but it was really a And then even a little bit at the end of the year, as people finalize some thought processes that were started in the early year, So I think, I don't feel like there are gaping holes that there are gaping issues of major rationalization activity that we didn't address this year. Now that's different than saying you don't have work to do. I mean, you constantly have to reevaluate.
And you know, we're making bets on groups of people and you don't make a bet 1 quarter and pull the plug in another quarter, but nor do you stick with the bet for 10 years if it's not working. And so this is a constant process. But I would say the catch up element of that process, I would say, is largely behind us. Does that answer?
It does. And then just if I could one more real quick. How much were the success fees for, I guess, in the quarter? And then just for all of 'seventeen? And was that mostly in the FLC?
So, Kevin, I'm trying to move us away from overdependence on that number, but I will be responsive So, sir, in fourth quarter, we were there was no great success as we were along the averages. And the averages, we range from lows of 3 to highs of $15,000,000 in a quarter, we were around the $7,000,000, $8,000,000 range in the 4th quarter, which is at the average For the year, we were north of $35,000,000, which is as close to the highs that we get to. And 3rd quarter was exceptionally strong in success fee.
We do not expect that that exceptional strong performance will continue. We had one big catch up success fee from a long time. So that's an important part of art to story about next year.
It does. It does. Again, thank you very much.
Thank you.
And we'll go next to Tim McHugh with William Blair And Company.
Thanks. Hi, Tim. Hi. First ask on econ, you talked about achieving the full potential of that business. I guess, can you talk at all about the confidence that it's a marketplace issue that they've been performing weaker lately or are there things happening in the business that I guess relate to execution and or how they're competing and so forth, I guess?
Yes, it is it is hard to have good data, external data, but I've had conversations with the folks in the business and We don't perceive a serious execution issue at all. Look, we have incredible group of people there. And we also have good business leaders in those businesses. I my belief at this point is this is either market driven or it's just the one off sort of thing that timing of the start of big jobs as well as whether we won or lost a specific big job in the quarter. I we have not lost competitive position.
I mean, we still have the manifest people don't allow me to use words at the beginning of the day, but a very strong position in most of our businesses And look, there can be markets that come and go. I mean, there were delays in, in mergers, in the fourth quarter, particularly some of the largest ones as there was uncertainty about regulatory policy. And, but to my sense is not most of those things have not gone away. They've been simply delayed, but delays on very big mergers, which is a place where we typically have disproportionate share can affect that business's results. So that's what we believe is the case here, Tim, we don't see anything fundamental.
And I don't have long term fundamental concerns there.
Okay, great. Yes, the comment on the stronger first half, given the momentum, is that tied to any particular segment more than the other ones in terms of the first half, second half outlook for 2018?
So Tim, I'm not going to get that specific. We expect all segments, to do better in 2017 than they in 2018 than they did in 2017. Look, mathematically, we've got to do better in the first half of next year than the first half of twenty seventeen. And, you have good visibility into jobs as you enter into a quarter, about 60%, 70% you have visibility and that momentum that we saw in Q4 continues into Q1. So that's as much as I'm gonna say.
Okay. And are you willing to talk about headcount trends and hiring expectations as you go across 2018? Just thinking about exiting the year at kind of I guess it was flat to negative 1 kind of headcount growth. Do you need to ramp up hiring again to start to drive growth even more so than even 2018, but if you're thinking 2019 and beyond.
Let me just say one thing, Tim, and then I'll let Ajay respond on the numbers, which is you should not mistake last year for us not hiring. You know, if you can get to flat headcount growth by having 0 hires and 0 attrition or you can actually have substantial hires and substantial attrition we did a fair amount of hard looks at businesses where we did not have we did not believe we had the right positions or geographies that were not critical for our future. We also hired aggressively other places. So I just want to make sure that that the flat number isn't misunderstood. Then Ajay, you wanna address the numbers again.
Tim,
this is really important in feeding off of what Steve just said. We're not going to give and, and, and, you know, sure, we have budgets and models of a percentage headcount growth, etcetera. But the idea is growth with higher utilization. The idea is we will hire. Absolutely, we will hire.
We have the wherewithal to increase. For example, in cyber security, we've hired considerably and we will continue to do so.
Higher than that. Yeah. Higher than that.
Meanwhile, we have reduced headcount through actions of roughly 250 people in 2017. Where it makes sense, we will hire, where it doesn't make sense, we will not. And that's how we were going to operate.
Okay. And then last question, if I could, just the guidance, you commented, I think on deploying cash flow. Have you assumed any additional acquisitions or and what's kind of for buybacks is embedded into the guidance?
Again, I will not give that level of specificity. We our guidance is based on both growth in all our segments. And use of our cash. The exact combination of those remains to be seen. Of course, if you look at the scenarios and you have a lower end of guidance and higher end of guidance, and it assumes a combination of those 2 elements.
And that's as much as I'll say. We retain the flexibility. We have a balance sheet that can do all of the above.
Okay. But it includes something you just want, you don't want to specify what, I guess, how you're using it. Is that fair?
You can make your own assumptions. Yes.
Okay. Thanks.
We'll go next to Tobey Sommer with SunTrust.
I was wondering if you could speak to your international infrastructure and how you feel about your current footprint as well as the utilization and leverage of it you do have 5 segments and you're not present or those segments aren't present in every geography. So maybe you could talk to how you can leverage those and what your plans are? Thanks.
Yes, thanks Tobey. Look, I think the short answer is it's a place where we've made actually quite a substantial progress over the last several years. Disclose as much details in the regional thing that it may not be so apparent from the numbers, but enormous amount of progress for the upside and future of that is is, it's got to, I guess, it's not endless because at some point, everything comes to an end, but it's just huge. You're right. Look, we have, we've been subscale in a lot of markets overseas.
In some markets, we've only had one segment markets with one segment where we're scale and well known. In some markets, we're one segment and not known in those markets. And so what you have to do is to is pick your shots and say like how do I get to scale in those markets and how do I grow those out? I would say the place where we made the most progress over the last several years is in Europe. Which was a fairly stagnant business for a few years and has just moved aggressively.
And, I think we do disclose the revenue numbers for Europe, right? And you can see that in the revenue move for Europe. Somebody probably dig it out for me before I the exact numbers, but the last several years, we've moved the revenue considerably. The most important point is the point you're making as we move the revenue considerably If you talk to our people out there, the sense of opportunity has only grown because we just become a much bigger presence in those markets. And we start to now have, for example, in the UK, the phone rings as the default condition for dissatisfied fabulous professionals at other places where I'm not sure that happened 5 years ago, just because the increased presence we have in each of our segments there, but also the broadened presence in those in across segments.
And I think, for example, in Europe, now know that FTI is growing rapidly and is succeeding. And that feeds on itself. It becomes an attractive proposition in itself. And what we're trying to create in multiple places around the globe. And we've made real progress in Hong Kong.
We've made real progress in Singapore in some parts of our Australia market. We made progress, not all parts of our Australia market, and we think hard about that. But the upside is enormous. The issue is, it's always dependent on getting a critical mass of A plus talent. You have to start with a critical mass of A plus talent or else you're setting yourself on the wrong footprint.
And so I have lots of places I would like to expand. We will not expand, unless we can get the A plus talent, but where we have found that. We've been willing to invest heavily. And so far, those investments usually cost us money the 1st year because you pay a lot for people who have who have non competes and so forth, but they've actually been big drivers of growth and we see that potential continuing. Did that address your question?
Hobi?
Sure. Ajay, can you repeat again the successfully total for the year?
It's just north of $35,000,000, Debbie.
Okay. And when you say in this part of guidance success fees, maybe a little bit lower in 2018, Is that a function of the backlog and the nature of the projects that you're working on or how do you arrive at that statement and assumption?
Precisely, we know all the cases. We know where to say we have certain assumptions of what we might get or not. You can't, you assume certain probabilities and project that.
Okay. And then I'm curious on the tax rate. Could you comment as to why the 2018 tax rate isn't lower?
No, I mean, this is what I tried to explain. It is complicated. So we're saying 28% to 31%. We operate over we operate in the U. S.
In 2017, we assume that our effective rate will be between 36% 37%, but the geographic mix of earnings was much more overseas than in the U. S. So even though the U. S. Tax rate was significantly higher than the overseas tax rates, the blended tax rate came in much lower.
Now in 2018, federal and the state and all the rest of it, you get around 28% to 31%, which doesn't look dramatically higher. It looks comparable to the rate we experienced in 2017, but for different reasons. I'll put another way. Had we not gotten the tax rate reduction our rate in 2018 under non, you know, under typical circumstances, we would have expected would be back again to the 36%, 37%. So yes, there is a reduction from that level to the 28 to 31, but year over year, it doesn't appear, to be a significant increase for us.
Significant decrease for us.
Okay. Sure. And then with respect to capital deployment, you did incur a little bit of debt as a result of repurchase in the way you spent your free cash flow in 2017. Is that an approach that we could expect over time where returning capital to shareholders through repurchase a little bit more than your free cash flow generation in a given year. Could you frame your thought process on there?
Absolutely. So the answer is not necessarily. It depends on where the shares are at. So we would like to have a leverage ratio under 2.5 times, and that's where we would like like to be. And so that too is important to us, but we generate enough cash flow that we can be aggressive in buying as we've demonstrated this year.
So that's the framework.
Thank you very much.
We'll take our next question from Mark Riddick with Sidoti.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning, Mark.
I was wondering if you could and forgive me if I missed this because I missed a couple of minutes here and there, but I did want to check to see if you had addressed sort of the cadence of the quarter during the fourth quarter, particularly in the the main segments. I just wanted to get a sense of if business sort of was uniform throughout the quarter or what that cadence look like in terms of the pickup in and utilization? Thanks.
Do you mean cadence as in the months?
Look, we we started to be strong in the second half of the year on most of our businesses and that continued. I can't tell you that we didn't have a weak that was deviating from it because of holidays or whatever that is. But our businesses in the second half of the year were performing well, there may have been a ramp up sometime during 3rd for some of them, but there was no like 1 month on, 1 month on type of thing that I remember for for our businesses in the 4th.
And we don't provide monthly results, you know, just don't.
Does that help Mark though?
Yes, yes. No, that's fair. It was just in the 3rd quarter, the core Fint had picked up faster than, on the the litigation side. And so it seems as though, forensic really sort of kicked in, but I want just to get this, it seemed as though it was throughout the which is fine. The other thing I was about us around sort of the pace of bill rate growth during the quarter, which was up across all three of the areas that you report.
Wondering if you could sort of share a little bit of your thoughts on billing rate and sort of where you're looking for that to go on some of the efforts that you've put into either pricing or if you're really looking at that, this is sort of a current revenue mix component that's been beneficial. Thank you.
That's a function of growth with higher utilization. When that's what you get. When your folks are performing, they're getting like for example in corporate finance, we not only got an increase in what you call restructuring or distressed businesses, but we, in our business transformation and transaction advisory, our growth rate was even greater. So tremendous performance all around and that then equates to higher revenue per billable professional.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
And we have no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.
Well, thank you all for your time. And, we're excited about where the 3rd fourth quarter came out as you can tell. We're I think our teams did a fabulous job, but I think for us, the best part of it is the fact that, we believe we were creating a foundation. We are creating foundation for the future of this company going forward.
And this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.