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

Paul Raymond: Yes, three main things: the SG&A portion, there’s a lot of one-time stuff in this past quarter that kind of creates a little bit of disturbance, but we see some significant upside there. We’ve said our target is to get to 20% and lower of SG&A, so we have a few points–a couple of points right there. We think that we have a big upside on gross margins by moving more of our work to smart shoring – we’re at 6% right now, the objective is to get to 10% by the end of the fiscal year. Also in the change of the business mix, you’ve seen we’re doing more and more of the higher value stuff as we reduce, again, the subcontractors, focus on our people and high value projects. Those things combined, we think we can get there.

If you look at the cash generation that we have right now, even if revenues were flat, let’s say the whole industry melted down for everybody and revenues were flat, we would still be generating $30 million of cash, which means we’d be de-leveraging really fast, and at some point if I look at the stock of our company, we’re probably the best deal out there. I think we have all the tools to get to where we want to be on the strat plan. We’re still looking at the 50/50 M&A and organic growth, we still have some–we see some very interesting improvement opportunities from an efficiency perspective, given our scale that we have today, so we like the position we’re in right now.

Deepak Kaushal: Okay, that’s fantastic. If I may ask one last question, pretty strong growth in Europe. Maybe if you can unpack that a bit, what’s organic, what’s inorganic, and what are the segments in Europe you’re seeing and the opportunities there going forward?

Paul Raymond: Maybe Claude, just what’s organic versus M&A in Europe?

Claude Thibault: In Europe?

Paul Raymond: Yes.

Claude Thibault: Oh, it’s very small. The acquisition part, Datum’s revenue base was largely in the U.S., so they have a few customers in the U.K. and a few customers in Australia. It’s really minimal. The bulk of the increase is really our French operation really turning the corner and doing well. It’s probably 4 to 1 or something like that, if you split up the increase.

Deepak Kaushal: Okay, and how do you see opportunities to expand in Europe? This is all–a lot of this the aviation industry. Are you looking at more verticals or geographies beyond France? How should we think of that?

Paul Raymond: I think we’re–you know, we have a good foothold in Europe. I think there are opportunities to expand that significantly. We would look to expand Europe if it could come with an expansion of our smart shoring operations at the same time, right, so we see significant opportunities for growth in Europe and in North America. Each time we grow that, we have the opportunity to grow our smart shoring capability at the same time, so we’re looking–the sweet spot would be acquisitions that do both, right, that complete our offering at high margin, that add to both our onsite and smart shoring capabilities, and there are some of those in Europe as well. They’re going through the exact same economic cycle we’re seeing in North America, so we’re seeing some nice opportunities there as well.

Deepak Kaushal: Okay, fantastic. Thanks for taking my questions. I’ll leave it at that.

Paul Raymond: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Jérôme Dubreuil at Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Jérôme Dubreuil: Bon matin. Thanks for taking my questions. Thanks for the color on backlog. We’re asking on this in this macro–with this macro uncertainty at this time, so good to hear that backlog is rather firm. Just checking another point, how easy is it for clients to defer the orders that are in the backlog at this time?