Franklin Covey Co. (NYSE:FC) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Another reason why is because we are getting really good client outcomes and word of mouth spreads fast. This year we just landed our second state-sponsored contract. We did one last year. We have several more in the hopper right now, where the states are learning about what’s happening inside of some of their bigger districts and are coming in to help sponsors schools and get behind them to get — to accelerate growth. That’s helping a lot. The funding environment is…

Dave Storms: Okay.

Sean Covey: … very positive right now. I think the number one reason why is because we have a large foundation. If you look at our historical number of Leader in Me schools, 6,000 or so. About a third of them have been sponsored by companies, by organizations, by foundations and other partners. They don’t pay for all of it. They paid for a good chunk to help schools get started. And so we have — as I have shared before we have a partnership with large foundation that’s committed to sponsoring literally thousands of schools over the next decade to help Leader in Me get going in these schools and districts. After funding is still around for another year, it expires at the end of this year. We do have a lot of multiyear contracts in place that will help us through the coming years.

I think we will see some impact from that next year, but we primarily get funding from Title I and Title II dollars that is not going away and will always be there. But, yeah, I think, for the foreseeable future, we see ongoing increase growth in a number of new schools we bring on each year in the U.S. and Canada, and again, there will be some maybe funding impact next year from the escrow funds expiring. But we don’t think — we still think we will grow the following year and those are the primary reasons why I think it’s going well. Does that answer your question, Dave or?

Dave Storms: Yeah. That’s great color. Incredibly helpful. Thank you, Sean.

Sean Covey: Yeah.

Dave Storms: And then just one more from me if I could, you mentioned inorganic growth being potential avenue with your anticipated cash generation over this next — several years. So what — is there anything you are seeing in the market that is attractive or how are you kind of thinking about your capital allocation right now?

Paul Walker: I will speak to the growth side and then maybe Steve could talk about any the other capital allocation points he would like to make. So first, we have been and continue and as we reported, expect to generate significant amounts of cash. We are and we expect that we will and so what to do with that cash is a great question. The order of priority for us would be to first invest that back in the business in the form of organic growth and we think that there is a tremendous opportunity to continue to drive organic growth in our business. We — while we are doing great, we had a record number of new logos and new schools last year. There are still, fortunately, a significant number of organizations out there and schools and districts that would benefit from what we have.

And we just — we think in some ways we are just, as far as we have come, we are still just getting started with the impact that we could have as we grow our sales force we help them ramp more effectively, we put money into marketing, we put money into content, we have built solutions like those we are launching this year that are built to really scale up and down and across organizations to get out the large. We have talked in the past about client penetration that, while we are thrilled that average revenue per client increased again this year from $77,000 to $83,000, that’s still a fraction of the revenue that we believe is available just inside our average current client today and so we are thinking about that as we build solutions, as we ramp these leaders and coaches and these implementation strategists.

It’s with the clear visibility in our minds that we can expand significantly within our current client organizations and there are a lot of clients for us to add. So that’s the first use of cash is to invest in those areas of growth that we can see that are what we call organic. Second, there are some interesting, and I think, going to be some interesting inorganic opportunities for us to explore as we get bigger, as we continue our focus on really differentiating our solutions around having this best-in-class content. There are, I maybe won’t get into the exact specifics today just to not get that out there. But there are some areas where we think there are some adjacent — very near in adjacent opportunities that would either add capability or might add additional customers and revenue while we are building those same things ourselves quickly.

And then, of course, after having done those first two priorities, we have over the past many years returned a lot of cash to shareholders in the form of share repurchases. Steve, I don’t know if you want to say anything about that.

Steve Young: No. I mean, we do think that we will be able to allocate enough resources to run the business and to pursue current opportunities to do some more tuck-in type acquisitions and as long as the acquisitions that we might do are tuck-in type but not transformative larger than we expect we also have available cash. We don’t mind having a little bit on the balance sheet and some unused liquidity. But we also see the value as shown in the last couple of years of repurchasing company stock. I think that’s a good opportunity to increase value for shareholders also.

Paul Walker: Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Dave.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] One moment for our possible next question. I am showing further — no further questions at this time, I’d now like to turn it back to Paul Walker for closing remarks.

Paul Walker: Thanks, Sean. Well, just again thank you for joining us today. Thanks for continuing to partner with us. We appreciate you and appreciate the great lengths you go to understand our story and for the advice and thoughts you have. We hope you have a great rest of your evening and a great week ahead. Thanks.

Operator: This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.

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