Alithya Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ALYA) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Claude Thibault: Sorry, I missed the beginning of the question.

Gavin Fairweather: Just the reset of the health and benefit factors, maybe for Claude, can you quantify that so when we look at the sequential gross margin, [indiscernible] the underlying trend?

Claude Thibault: Well, my calculations are Q3 to Q4 of Alithya, which is calendar Q4 to calendar Q1, so the reset occurs on January 1. We’re easily talking a couple percentage points on gross margin, so anywhere–you know, 1.5% to 2.5%, depending on mix of revenues and geographies, but it’s in that ballpark, then it eases off. We have new employees being hired all the time, so those are not affected, so it’s a partial impact as you go into the year. It depends on the salary of the employees – higher paid employees hit the ceiling before and vice versa, so there’s probably not much really occurring from Q4 to Q1 – a little bit, but not much. It’s mainly then into Q2 and Q3.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Deepak Kaushal at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Deepak Kaushal: Hi, good morning guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Paul, you mentioned you still feel comfortable about your strategic targets. I think in the past, you have mentioned a $600 million target for fiscal ’24. Can you give us a sense of how much you’re expecting that to come from organic, M&A, and maybe just a bit of an update on the M&A environment as you see it?

Paul Raymond: Sure, thanks for the question, Deepak. Historically we have been 50/50, so that’s kind of the ballpark we look at. It varies because some years, we’ve done more acquisitions and right now we haven’t done any in the past 12 months, so we usually target 50/50. We’ve been very patient. As you can see, we’re generating a lot of cash. We’re de-leveraging fast. There is some nice targets out there and the environment right now, we find is getting extremely favorable to us because in the past, there were a lot of private equities, very aggressive in our industry in acquiring some targets that we might have looked at in the past, that we passed because the multiples were kind of crazy. We’re actually seeing that kind of reverse and come around, so we’re seeing a lot of funds de-leveraging and then a little bit like what you’re seeing in the commercial real estate market right now.

We’re seeing some interesting opportunities coming to the table that people want to move fast on. I think we’re in a great position. We’ve demonstrated, and Claude showed the chart, that we can do very accretive acquisitions that de-leverage very fast. We’re very disciplined, so I kind of like the environment out there right now for us to find some interesting targets. We have the balance sheet to be patient, so I kind of like where we are right now.

Deepak Kaushal: Okay, fantastic. That’s helpful. Then just on the margin target, I think your target was 9% to 13% EBITDA margin. You still have a ways to go there, but it sounds like you have some improvements in gross margin and your target to get to 10% of–target to go from 6% to 10%, that’s versus contract employees, is that right?

Claude Thibault: Yes, so we’re close to 80% right now, so we think we’re within striking distance to getting there, Deepak.

Deepak Kaushal: Okay, so where is the other improvement coming from? Is there any coming from SG&A or is it all on the permanent versus [indiscernible]–