e8vk
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549
FORM 8-K
CURRENT REPORT
PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(D) OF
THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
DATE OF REPORT (DATE OF EARLIEST EVENT REPORTED): AUGUST 14, 2006
PFSweb, Inc.
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)
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Delaware
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000-28275
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75-2837058 |
(STATE OR OTHER JURISDICTION
OF INCORPORATION)
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(COMMISSION FILE NUMBER)
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(IRS EMPLOYER
IDENTIFICATION NO.) |
500 NORTH CENTRAL EXPRESSWAY
PLANO, TX 75074
(ADDRESS OF PRINCIPAL EXECUTIVE OFFICES)
(972) 881-2900
(REGISTRANTS TELEPHONE NUMBER, INCLUDING AREA CODE)
N/A
(FORMER NAME OR ADDRESS, IF CHANGED SINCE LAST REPORT)
Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the
filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions:
o Written communication pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425)
o Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12)
o Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR
240.14d-2(b))
o Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR
240.13e-4(c))
INFORMATION TO BE INCLUDED IN THE REPORT
ITEM 7.01. Regulation FD Disclosure
On August 14, 2006, PFSweb, Inc. hosted a conference call announcing its financial results for
the quarter ended June 30, 2006. Attached to this current report on Form 8-K is a copy of the
related conference call transcript dated August 14, 2006. The information in the Report on Form
8-K, and the exhibit hereto, shall not be deemed filed for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange
Act or otherwise subject to the liability of that Section. The information in this Form 8-K shall
not be incorporated by reference into any filing under the Securities Act of 1933, except as shall
otherwise be expressly set forth by specific reference in such filing.
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Exhibit No. |
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Description |
99.1
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Conference Call Transcript Issued August 14, 2006 |
SIGNATURE
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused
this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized.
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PFSweb, Inc. |
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Dated: August 15, 2006
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By:
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/s/ Thomas J. Madden |
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Thomas J. Madden |
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Executive Vice President,
Chief Financial and
Accounting Officer |
exv99w1
Exhibit 99.1
PFSweb
Moderator: Todd Fromer
August 14, 2006
11:00 a.m. ET
OPERATOR: Good morning. My name is Jackie and Ill be your conference facilitator today. At
this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the PFSweb Second Quarter Earnings Conference call.
All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.
After the speakers remarks, there will be a question and answer period. If you would like to pose
a question during this time, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If
you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Thank you. It is now my pleasure
to turn the floor over to Todd Fromer. Sir, you may begin your conference.
TODD FROMER, KCSA: Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for the PFSweb second
quarter earnings conference call. Before we begin, Id like everyone to note that matters
discussed on this conference call consist of forward-looking information under the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is subject to and involves risks and uncertainties
which could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking information.
PFSwebs annual report on Form 10K and 10KA for the year ended December 31, 2005 identifies certain
factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in any
forward-looking statements made. And investors are advised to review the annual report and the
risk factors described herein.
These factors include: Our ability to retain and expand relationships with existing clients and
attract and implement new clients, our reliance on the fees generated by the transaction volume or
product sales of our clients, our reliance on our clients projections or transaction volume or
product sales, our dependence upon our agreements with IBM, our dependence upon our agreements with
our major clients, our client mix, their business volumes and the seasonality of their business,
our ability to finalize pending contracts, the impact of strategic alliances and acquisitions,
trends in the market for our services, trends in commerce, whether we can continue and manage
growth, changes in the trend towards outsourcing, increased competition, our ability to generate
more revenue and achieve sustainable profitability, effects or changes in profit margins, the
customer and supplier concentration of our business, the unknown effects of possible system
failures and rapid changes in technology, trends in government regulation, both foreign and
domestic, foreign currency risks and other risks of operating in foreign countries, potential
litigation, our dependency on key personnel, the impact of new accounting standards and rules
regarding revenue recognition, stock options and other matters, changes in accounting rules or the
interpretation of those rules, our ability to raise additional capital or obtain additional
financing, our ability and the ability of our subsidiaries to borrow under current financing
arrangements and maintain compliance with debt covenants, relationship with and our guarantees of
certain of the liabilities and indebtedness of our subsidiaries, whether outstanding warrants
issued in a prior private placement will be exercised in the future, the transition costs resulting
from our merger with eCOST, our ability to successfully integrate eCOST into our business to
achieve the anticipated benefits of the merger, eCOSTs potential indemnification obligations to
its former parent, eCOSTs ability to maintain existing and build new relationships with
manufacturers and vendors and the success of advertising and marketing efforts and
eCOSTs ability to increase its sales revenue and sales margin and improve operating efficiencies.
PFSweb undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason,
even if new information becomes available or other events occur in the future. There may be
additional risks that we do not currently view as material or that are not presently known. It is
now my pleasure to turn your call over to Mr. Mark Layton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of
PFSweb. Mark, the floor is yours.
MARK C. LAYTON, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, PFSWEB: Thank you Todd. Good morning,
everyone. Welcome to our second quarter conference call. Ill begin this morning by providing you
a brief overview of the results and activities for PFSweb during the June quarter and the first six
months of 2006, and then provide an update on the current status of our integration with eCOST.com.
1
Todays release is highlighted by continued improvement and profitability for our supplies
distributors and PFSwebs services segments. Both of these segments have had a very solid first
half of 2006, both top and bottom line. And Im very pleased with their performance.
The quality of performance for our services clients continues to be strong. And the stability of
these segments of our business, both in operations and in financial performance have provided us
the opportunity to focus significant attention and resources to our products division expansion
strategy and the integration of eCOST, pursuant to the merger transaction earlier this year.
Later in the call during the Q&A portion, Mike Willoughby who we appointed as President of the
Services Division earlier this year as part of some management alignment we completed in connection
with the addition of eCOST will be available to answer any questions pertaining to the services
business.
As you will have noted, we have experienced challenges in achieving our plans to improve the
service and financial performance of the eCOST.com business segment since the merger.
The time and effort needed to meet certain quality and service targets for eCOST has been greater
than we expected and has also contributed to lower-than-targeted revenue and gross-profit margins
during the June 2006 quarter. And we expect this to continue into the September 2006 quarter.
The good news is that we have made significant progress on our integration efforts. Within the
last week or so, weve begun to see improvements in our customer-service levels. And we believe
these improvements, combined with a number of other business actions we are undertaking, should
ultimately result in improved financial performance for this segment.
Ill be back in a few minutes to just talk more about eCOST. But now let me turn over to give you
a little information on the performance of the services and supplies division segments.
In the second quarter we continued our strong momentum in these businesses. Service-fee revenue
was $16.2 million in the second quarter. To date, 2006 has been a stronger year for new business
agreements for our services business compared to 2005.
During the first half of 2006, we have finalized a number of new business agreements consisting of
both new clients as well as expanded relationships with existing clients. So far this year we have
signed new contracts with estimated on-going annual service fees of approximately $7 million plus
special projects of approximately $1 million.
These new arrangements expand across all of our geographies, U.S., Canada and Europe. While
certain of these new contracts, sorry, while certain of these contracts with new and existing
clients have been specifically named or disclosed including our relationship with Roots and Chiasso
and our new call center relationship in Europe due to contractual arrangements, we are currently
unable to disclose several other relationships that we have won.
We believe our success in new business activity during the first half of 06 is primarily
attributable to the progress we have achieved in refocusing our marketing efforts on some key
market segments.
As youll recall during 2005, we had broadened our marketing efforts in an attempt to move into a
variety of different industry areas. And at the end of the year, we assessed that that had not
been as effective as weve liked. So this year and as I discussed on previous conference calls, we
adjust our sales strategy and marketing to capitalize more on core strengths in technology,
consumer goods and the web-commerce arena.
We are very encouraged by the recent traction in the new business activity and will seek to
maintain this momentum going forward. Currently weve got a strong pipeline of potential new
business, including pending proposals of approximately $40 million in annual service fees. Its
always difficult to predict how many of these proposals will win. And wed also like to reiterate
that our focus on larger contracts has a long sales cycle.
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Our BPO solutions including logistics, distribution, fulfillment, transportation management,
product-over management, the ERP technology, our web-enabled customer care locations, when we
develop Web sites and host them, our credit-collections capability, all of our
customer-relationship management tools, and a whole bunch more in the whole suite of supply-chain
services that we belong, you know, continue to show that we can deliver a strong return on
investment and serve as a critical component at least collectively, serve as a critical component
to our overall growth strategy.
We believe our recent contract wins continue to demonstrate our ability to meet and exceed client
expectations. And we remain committed to addressing the needs of our clients through the entire
supply chain on a global basis.
So in summary, regarding these two business segments thats PFS services business and Supplies
Distributors were very pleased with their first-half results, the richness of our new business
pipeline and the quality of performance, both operationally and financially, so kudos to our
services team for a great first half.
We began last quarter reporting merchandise sales as a barometer of overall activity and scale of
commerce that the PFSweb infrastructure is processing. During the second quarter of 2006,
merchandise sales totaled approximately $662 million.
We define merchandise sale as the value of all fulfillment activity which flows through PFSweb,
whether or not we are the seller of the merchandise or record the full amount of sales on our
financials.
OK, let me now move on to provide you with some information on the status of the eCOST business
segment. From a strategic standpoint, we continue to very much believe that the world-class
infrastructure capabilities that PFSwebs technology and operations platform that we can
effectively and properly deploy these into the rapidly growing online commerce industry.
Beyond that, just to being a service provider and service providing has really been our primary
line of business since the inception of the company in the 1990s. We continue to believe that if
we can be successful into our foray into the direct sale of products via online commerce that we
can ultimately boost top-line growth and improve financial performance of our business and unlock
what we believe is significant hidden value.
So the acquisition of eCOST in February of 2006 was undertaken as a means for PFSweb to execute
this strategic plan.
As I alluded to earlier in the call, we have experienced some significant challenges in achieving
our plans to improve the service and financial performance of the eCOST business segment over the
past five months.
Our integration project, which encompasses the two facility moves and the system conversion,
actually have moved along pretty much on the timeline that we planned. However, we expect to also
be able to make various business processing improvements in areas like freight costs, credit card
charge backs and in customer service levels during the early months of the integration.
What we found is that these improvements prove to be much more difficult, complex and lengthier
than we had originally projected. The result of these issues, so far, as been a reduction in
revenue, gross profit percentage, and quality and customer service levels that are far below our
standard since the merger.
Further, we experienced a significantly higher than normal level of fraudulent credit card activity
in June and July 2006, due in part to problems experienced in the ERP systems conversion.
Now we believe that these system issues have all been resolved, but as a result, we expect charge
back levels to continue high for at least one more quarter. Going forward, we expect to return to
a normal level of credit charge backs in the future.
Now clearly the roads been rougher than we would have liked in the eCOST integration, but there is
some good news. As I mentioned, our integration efforts have made significant progress and have
generally met our time schedule we laid out last year when we were evaluating the merger.
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While the cost to get here has been higher than anticipated, we do believe we are approaching the
finish line of the heavy lifting part of the integration and that we are on target to have the
business ready to perform well operationally for the holiday season of 2006.
So, as I stated, its been a rougher road to get here than we would have liked, but our focus
continues to be to keep moving forward and drive this business model to profitability as soon as
possible.
Through the implementation of PFSs systems platform at eCOST, we expect to gain several
significant benefits in terms of our ability to better control gross margin percentage, by being a
lot more selective on the orders we accept and sharper on pricing and using automated tools to help
us get there.
We also believe we can improve the impact of freight cost on our financial performance, and, most
importantly, given the recent events, we believe we can implement much improved controls over both
terms and credit card credit transactions.
Were focused on molding the eCOST business into a profitable, sustainable model. Profit, not
revenue, will continue to be our near-term focus with an emphasis on stronger gross profit
performance.
Once we achieve that goal, we can then turn our attention towards revenue growth and increase scale
and begin to focus on many of the exciting opportunities and product and international expansion
that we see for the eCOST business.
But in the meantime, our focus is going to be on improving gross profit percentage, reducing costs,
and improving the quality of our operations that will ultimately result in improved financial
performance.
I want to reiterate we remain excited about the opportunities presented by the merger. The
combination of our operating infrastructure and technology expertise with eCOSTs strong web
platform and customer base provides ample opportunities for growth within the $79 billion web
marketplace.
Our goal is to capitalize on eCOSTs customer base of more than 1.5 million customers and its broad
selection of more than 100,000 high quality new, close-out and refurbished products that are
primarily from brand name technology and consumer electronics manufacturers.
While the creation of the new eCOST has been challenging, we are targeting eCOST to be a stronger,
profitable business once all of our challenges changes, sorry become fully implemented.
We continue to make important strides in improving eCOST technology and operational infrastructure,
but theres much more to be done.
Now I promised each quarter that Id give you some details related to the integration and the
milestones that weve completed, so let me cover some of those that we have completed since the
last conference call.
First, we have located the eCOST headquarters from its former parent company location, which was at
PC Mall in Torrance, California to a new facility in El Segundo, California.
That was finalized the first week of June. This move is expected to produce cost savings of
approximately $20,000 per month. Next, we have consolidated eCOSTs inventory into the PFSweb
Shelby Drive (ph) facility, which was also in Memphis, and that was completed the weekend of August
1, 2006.
This move provides the eCOSTs division access to PFSs advanced warehouse technologies, our high
bar coding and shop floor automation and radio frequency technologies. We believe all these things
will help us improve cost, accuracy and speed of fulfillment and will result in improved customer
service capabilities.
Third, eCOST was an early adopter of the Google checkout, and we announced this earlier this
summer. This is a new service from Google that improves the customer online shopping experience.
Excuse me for a second.
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On the Google checkout, in addition to helping shoppers find and buy from online retailers, the new
checkout option creates a more secure shopping environment through Googles innovative
technologies. We believe this service will help reduce shopping cart abandonment, increase
conversion rates though a more fast and secure purchase process.
This new checkout option has had some great activity levels on the eCOST site, and Google continues
to heavily promote the roll-out which is beneficial to eCOSTs continuing traffic levels and our
attraction of new customers.
Four, we also announced the appointment of ExactTarget to handle eCOST direct marketing efforts.
This was a transition in our e-mail campaigns to ExactTargets more advanced hosted software
application. We expect to further improve customer service and increase company efficiencies on
this.
The launch of this program in June sends more personalized e-mails with greater content features to
a host of subscribers. In addition, well benefit from advanced reporting capabilities which were
not available to us in our previous system.
Fifth, we converted eCOST from its previous ERP platform to PFSwebs ERP platform on the weekend of
June 24 of 2006. This was probably one of the most critical milestones for us in the integration
process so far, and we believe the integration of our ERP platform will allow us to more
effectively address the various functionality issues in eCOSTs order management pipeline and its
credit approval process, inventory management and overall website functionality.
The system conversion as Ive discussed has been an arduous process, but we believe its imperative
to achieve the significant improvements in both customer satisfaction and overall performance. And
as I mentioned, both of these are currently below the levels that are acceptable to us.
While we definitely experienced a number of issues from the conversion, we believe we have
addressed and rectified all of the major problems that weve identified at this point.
There are still a lot of enhancements that need to be addressed in order to reach levels of quality
and productivity that we believe we can obtain.
However, were fairly confident we believe that were headed in the right direction at this point.
eCOSTs virtual warehouse partnerships and youll hear, excuse the acronym, VW to describe that,
uses advanced middle work technology platform from PFS called Entente, and we continue to make
strong progress on the expansion of this VW program.
As of this call, we now have four very robust virtual warehouses where VW feeds with key
distribution partners, and were anticipating to add two to four more feeds before the end of 2006.
The VW concept is an area we expect to expand significantly in the future as it allows us to sell a
much broader range of products that we dont have to carry in our facility or have any inventory
risks or incur costs for storage or fulfillment.
Were also continuing to develop our non-product and service categories that are targeted to higher
gross margin sales. These are products like our extended service contracts and platinum club
memberships.
Now this week, the new eCOST.com will be unveiled to approximately 200 expected attendees at the
first eCOST Vendor Appreciation Day. This will be held in El Segundo and at this event, myself,
eCOST CEO Adam Schaffer and the entire eCOST management team will begin to share our vision with
our key suppliers about the new and improved service platform, our plans for profit and growth, and
give them a virtual tour of the expansion capabilities that the PFSweb technology and operations
facilities can provide to eCOST.
We believe this is an important event that will mark the official beginning of a new era for eCOST
focused on outstanding product selection, world-class customer service and improved financial
performance for the eCOST business.
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Let me now turn over the call to Tom Madden who will discuss some details on the financial results
for the quarter. Tom?
TOM MADDEN, SENIOR PARTNER CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER AND CHIEF ACCOUNTING OFFICER, PFSWEB: Thank
you, Mark.
Net revenues for the second quarter of 2006 were $109.3 million, compared to $84.9 million in the
same period last year.
This was an increase of more than 28 percent. Please note though that the reported results for the
three months ended June 30 of last year do not include the operations from our wholly-owned
eCOST.com subsidiary, which was acquired on February 1 of this year.
On a pro forma basis, including these cost revenues and the prior year of $41.0 million, prior year
revenues would have been approximately $125.9 million.
Service fee revenue was $16.2 million in the second quarter of 2006, approximately even with the
run rate from the prior year.
While we experienced growth and service fees due to new client activity, this was partially offset
by the impact of certain client terminations from calendar year 2005, which no longer generated
revenue in the current year.
In addition, service fee revenue was somewhat negatively impacted by the timing of certain product
drops, a (INAUDIBLE) to our largest service fee client. These drops are now targeted for the
September or December quarters of this fiscal year.
Second quarter revenues for PFSwebs Supplies Distributors division, which was formally exclusively
reported as our product revenue in the past decreased to $60.9 million from $63.4 million in the
year earlier period. This decrease is primarily attributable to the timing and extent of certain
promotional activity from one of our largest vendor relationships in this business.
eCOST revenues for the three months ended June 30, 2006 was $28 million, compared to $41.0 million
in the same period last year. As Mark discussed earlier, we continue to experience certain
challenges in this business during the quarter, resulting in reduced revenue run rate.
Consolidated gross profit in the second quarter of fiscal 2006 was $10 million, or 9 percent of net
revenues as compared to $8 million or 9 percent of net revenues in the same period last year.
Gross profit for our service fee business was $4.8 million or 30 percent of service fee revenue
compared to $4.2 million or 25.7 percent of service fee revenues in the second quarter of 2005.
We are pleased with this improvement, and the increase year-over-year was primarily attributable to
the favorable impact of contracts that become operational in calendar year 2005 and had incremental
start-up related expenses during that period.
As we now operate these contracts on a regular run rate basis, the gross margin has improved from
the earlier levels, which is what we had expected. Gross profit for our Supplies Distributors
business was $4.1 million or 6.7 percent of product revenue compared to $3.8 million or 6 percent
of product revenue the same period last year.
Its a relatively consistent performance there in our Supplies Distributors business.
eCOSTs gross profit was $1.1 million or 3.7 percent of revenue compared to $2.7 million or 6.7
percent of revenue in the same period last year. eCOSTs gross profit for the quarter was impacted
by increased inventory (INAUDIBLE) costs and higher than normal credit card charge back activity as
Mark discussed earlier.
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These charge backs are treated as a reduction of revenue, and as a result, having negative impact
on the divisions reported gross margins. We do expect margins for the eCOST business to improve
going forward, following the completion of our integration plan.
During the June 2006 quarter, SG&A totaled $12.5 million, which was an increase from $8.0 million
in last years June quarter. This increase is primarily attributable to the consolidation of
eCOST, as well as incremental expenses related to the merger with eCOST and stock based
compensation expenses put (INAUDIBLE) new accounting rules and all these were partially offset by
the favorable impact of exchange rates on our European and Canadian operations.
EBITDA, which is a key metric in evaluating our operational performance, was a loss of $687,000 for
the quarter ended June 30, 2006 versus a positive $1.6 million in the year earlier period.
Excluding the $0.4 million in incremental integration related costs to put what eCOST.com and the
$0.2 million of stock based compensation expense, however, adjusted EBITDA equaled $3,000, which
would just about break even in the 2006 first quarter.
Our net loss for the second quarter ended June 30, 2006 was $3.2 million or seven cents per basic
and diluted share, compared to a net loss of $546,000 or two cents per basic and diluted share in
the second quarter 2005.
Excluding the impact of the integration related expenses, stock based compensation expenses, as
well as the impact of the amortization of intangible assets (INAUDIBLE) cost acquisition, net loss
would have been $2.3 million or five cents per basic and diluted share in the June 2006 quarter.
Turning to the balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash totaled approximately
$19 million as of June 30, compared to $15.9 million as of December 31, 2005.
Our cash balance was positively impacted this quarter from the proceeds of our $5 million pipe
transaction completed in June 2006. Some of these funds were advanced to eCOST to support the
operating losses of that business through June with additional monies advanced in July, as well.
As of June 30, 2006, working capital was $21.0 million versus $23.4 million as of December 31,
2005. This increase was primarily due to the classification of our debt to the Mississippi
Industrial Development Board as a current liability as the related letter of credit agreement that
we have with our banks supporting this financing currently expires in January of 2007.
In addition, we had some cash use (INAUDIBLE) the integration of the eCOST business into the
overall PFS consolidated results.
We are targeting to renew the letter of credit facility later this year, which we hope to then be
able to allow us to reclassify this debt on the industrial development board financing back to a
long term liability.
Total assets were $178.3 million as of June 30, 2006 compared to $131.7 million as of December 31,
2005. Shareholders equity totaled $57.9 million as of June 30 or $1.25 per share compared to
$29.9 million as of December 31, 2005 or $1.33 per share at that time.
Based on current internal projections, we anticipate capital expenditures, including the
integration of eCOST.com, as well as upgradings and additions to facilities and information
technology systems to be approximately $4 million to $7 million for the next 12 months, depending
on our success in winning new business.
Our normal capital expenditure run rate is approximately $2 million to $3 million per year to
support our existing client activity and the remainder of that amount up to the $4 million to $7
million level that I just discussed is really equitable (ph) to the amounts to support targeted
levels of new business for both new client activities that weve signed and anticipate new client
signings in the future.
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To maintain our existing cash position, a portion of future capital expenditures, as well as any
potential future operating losses may be financed through debt, operating or capital leases or
additional equity.
As Mark has discussed, our eCOST financial plan is well below our targeted performance for this
business. We expect to continue to experience financial shortfalls for eCOST during the September
quarter as well.
We are currently targeting our operating losses to improve from the levels experienced in June and
July of 2006 as we emphasize gross profit performance, controlling costs and improving quality of
our operations and customer service.
During the second quarter of 2006, PFSweb shareholders overwhelmingly approved the re-election of
two of the companys existing directors. The appointment of KPMG as our auditors and also
approved, providing the (INAUDIBLE) directors discretion in implementing the reverse split of the
PFSweb shares up to a ratio of 1:6 for a period of up to one year.
We have no imminent plans to issue a reverse split. Our focus remains on improving our business
performance fundamentals and allowing financial performance to be the primary driver as share price
performance.
However, should our share price remain under one dollar, we will consider this the use of the
reverse split in order to maintain compliance with NASDAQ requirements. Now I would like to turn
the call back over to Mark (INAUDIBLE).
MARK LAYTON: OK. Thanks, Tom. Before I open the call for questions, let me quickly review a few
of the key operating highlights for eCOST that we began disclosing to you last quarter. As we have
targeted since the merger announcement, we expect our efforts to merge eCOST and get it going to
really begin to materialize towards the end of this year and into 2007.
Our current fiscal year is very much a transition year for eCOST.com, and we expect to
significantly build on the follow metrics once our integration plan becomes fully implemented. Im
sure Ill get some questions about exactly where were at. Let me try to frame (INAUDIBLE) from
the eCOST standpoint into Toms financial comments here.
If July was probably the low point in terms of what we have seen at this point, we went in the last
part of June and into early July through the major part of the system conversion and at that point
is when we experienced some of the difficulties that weve been describing here today.
Since that point in time, I would say mid-July or so, we begin to see the business kind of return
back in the right direction. Our performance levels are kind of beginning to improve on a daily
basis.
Our customer service stuff is improving at that point, so what I believe at this point is that you
can probably look at the low level in the July time frame and were beginning to move back up. But
obviously this has impacts on the September quarter as well.
As of June 30, eCOST had 1.58 million customers compared to 1.29 million total customers in the
prior period. Active customers for the June 2006 quarter were 351,157 compared to 536,172 in the
year earlier period. New customers for the second quarter of 2006 totaled 70,590 versus 75,202 new
customers in the same period a year ago.
Now we define total customers as the cumulative number of customers for which orders have been
taken from eCOSTs inception to the end of this reported period, and we count active customers as
the number of customers who placed orders during the twelve months prior to the end of this
reported period.
For the three months into June 30, eCOST reported a total of approximately 90,000 orders shipped
with an average order value of about $340. This compared to about 123,000 orders shipped with an
average order value of $352 in the same period last year. Computers, along with electronics and
digital imaging, continued to be our significant product categories among both the new and existing
customers.
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Advertising expenses for the second quarter were down at about $.9 million as compared to $1.47
million in the second quarter of 2005. The costs to acquire a new customer improved. We calculate
that as total advertising dollar spent in the period, divided by new customers added in the period.
For the June quarter, our cost to acquire a new customer was $13.97. Thats versus $19.51 in the
same period a year ago. Overall on a consolidated company basis, we remain on target to achieve
our previously stated projections of consolidated revenue growth exceeding ten percent, gross
profit margins of ten to twelve percent and a net income margin of one to two percent over the long
term.
In the short term, we believe were well positioned to work on this integration plan and the
improvements to the eCOST business and continuing to see the other two business segments remain
steady in our services and supplies distributors business.
Once again, Ill reiterate. While the roads been rougher for eCOST, we do think were still on
target timing wise to be poised for a strong holiday season.
Obviously were encouraged with the performance of the services and supplies segments and their
continuing ability to maintain operational excellence and provide world-class service levels.
And once again, the objective is to raise the eCOST performance to this same level of excellence as
soon as we can. This concludes our prepared comments, and Operator, well now take questions from
the floor.
OPERATOR: At this time, I would like to remind everyone, if you would like to pose a question,
press Star one on your telephone keypad. Well pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster.
BILL BUNN: You mentioned, excuse me, with regards to CAPEX, you mentioned an additional level of
four to seven million depending on how new business came in. And compare that to the two million
which is more or less normal, so an incremental 2:5. Will you be able to fund that out of the
funds you have in place already, and second, how is that going to affect depreciation and earnings
per share going forward?
TOM MADDEN: As far as the funding of the capital expenditures, well look like we have
traditionally for leasing opportunities, financing opportunities for that equipment. Weve had
success in the past with working with either our partners that were buying the product from or
other leasing companies, and well continue to seek that kind of financing going forward.
As far as the increased depreciation run rate, as we look at and complete our cost models for the
new business opportunities, one of the critical components of those cost models is the capital
expenditure costs that we would incur to get the new contract up and running.
So its part of the overall financial model, and we make sure that were covered, not only for the
depreciation costs (INAUDIBLE), but in many cases also the interest and financing component of
those capital expenditures as well,
And for any significant capital that expenditures that might be made, we also look to insure that
the contract arrangement provide for a termination fee or some kind of clause in the agreement that
to the extent that the client were to leave earlier than anticipated, that they would have a
liability to us to make up for the remaining book value of that equipment.
BILL BUNN: All right. Thank you.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Your next question is from David Foetebier of JM Dutton.
DAVID SOETEBIER: Morning, gentlemen.
MARK LAYTON: Morning, Dave.
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DAVID SOETEBIER: Id like a little more detail on eCOST. I guess, first on number of
manufacturers that youve added, any new manufacturers that are using the eCOST capability. Are
you have you lost any this quarter?
MARK LAYTON: Weve not lost any that Im aware of this quarter. David there are always new
manufacturers being brought on, so I think its more due course in business. There are no major
new manufacturers being added. I know for certain that there were a number of smaller
manufacturers and new lines that were brought onboard.
Keep in mind that the VW feeds that I was describing earlier are our primary mechanism of new
products and those just automatically appear. So if a distribution partner that we use in the
consumer electronics area or in the gaming area adds a new line, it will automatically appear on
the eCOST website as available.
And we had a little bit of hiccup in that feed during July as we went through the system
conversion, but we rely primarily on these feeds for the addition of new products.
DAVID SOETEBIER: Second part of this. On the active customers 351,000 roughly versus 536,000,
was there a big promotion or something a year ago that may have contributed to a lot of active
customers that are not in there this year?
MARK LAYTON: Active customers the twelve-month look back, so if you look at eCOST history, they
ran into their significant operating problems beginning in April of 2005. So when you look at the
June 2005 twelve month look back, it would have been back into a relatively stronger period of
operations that they had and during a time they were still a wholly owned subsidiary of PC Mall.
The difficulties that the business has had is really the macro issue that speaks to the decline in
the active customers.
DAVID SOETEBIER: Last questions on SG&A. Could you give us maybe a target for what that might
come out in September and December?
TOM MADDEN: We havent provided that guidance. There will continue to see some level of
integration costs put to the cost business like we experienced this quarter. You know they, I
dont see anything else having significant impact on a quarter-over-quarter basis.
One of the items, you know, that we did talk about was the credit card fraud activity as opposed to
that being as an SG&A item, that is treated as a negative revenue number component. So that does
not show up on the SG&A
So outside of, you know were continuing to focus in on controlling our SG&A cost structures, both
within the PFS and Supplies Distributors business as well as an eCOST. I hope that gives you a
little bit of flavor.
DAVID SOETEBIER: I forgot here, I had a question on special fraud projects also. The one million,
has that already been completed or will that show up in September?
TOM MADDEN: Mike, why dont you take that?
MIKE WILLOUGHBY: Well, I believe that the $1 million figure that we referred to in the call
earlier was run rate at the end of June 30. Special projects are a part of our normal business
activities and while they are somewhat unpredictable, we expect to see continued special projects
through the end of the year. And wed really like to see those coming into the business stream.
DAVID SOETEBIER: All right, thank you gentlemen.
OPERATOR: Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to pose a question, press star, then the
number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question is from Alex Silverman of Special
Situations.
ALEX SILVERMAN, SPECIAL SITUATIONS: Good morning.
TOM MADDEN: Hey, Alex.
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ALEX SILVERMAN: Two questions, first is on the gross margin in the service business. That 30
percent is that sustainable?
TOM MADDEN: The June 30 period normally has a little bit higher performance because of the fact
that its a seasonally high point for one of our largest service fee client relationships and the
gross margins earned during that period are somewhat higher than the rest of the year.
We target, we provided our guidance and our target is kind of 25 percent to 30 percent so we are at
the high end of that range during the June quarter. The maintenance of that number will be
somewhat dependent as well on the timing of new clients introduction.
As often times, the initial couple months or so of a new clients introduction operates at a
slightly lower than our optimal targeted gross margin performance just because were spending
additional money to get the contract going in the right direction to start off.
ALEX SILVERMAN: In terms of the $7 million of new business annualized, can you give us a rough
sense; is the imbedded gross margin in that at the high end, the low end, somewhere in the middle?
MIKE WILLOUGHBY: Alex, we see in the business that weve added this year that it falls within the
range that we have given guides for, so in that 25 percent to 30 percent, absolutely.
ALEX SILVERMAN: OK. And then in terms of customer acquisition costs on the cost side, the drop
was the result of better marketing or just, you know, getting them to actually execute a sale after
landing them as a new customer or, what was it?
MARK LAYTON: You know, what happens is, we, as we chose to narrow advertising expenses down,
youre effectiveness should go up. You know, basically as we narrow up things, we are making a
conscious decision to pay less for a new customer.
So basically what we do is we take and change the number of products that we that we post on the
box, Alex to where we only post products with high conversion rates, higher gross margins in
dollars involved in the sale.
And so the result of that is less new customers, but you can continue to maintain some new customer
growth with less overall costs. So I would expect that as we get things stabilized, well want to
expand the advertising and you will see that number go back up. The costs will go back up.
ALEX SILVERMAN: OK. And then in terms of the eCOST gross margin, if you were to strip out fraud
on a year-over-year basis, the underlying business, the products sold, is there, can you give us a
rough idea of what the trend was?
MARK LAYTON: Its down. You know, we, the gross margin percentage has been impacted by our
service problems and the fact that, you know, that we are being relatively aggressive on pricing of
some of our inventory categories.
You know, one of the issues you get into when revenue slows a little bit, youve got issues with
making certain that inventory continues to turn strongly and that forces you to move on pricing on
some products.
So youve got a bit of a multidimensional impact on that in there, but margin is down and its down
primarily because of service problems that we have had and our need to continue to make sure that
inventory is moving aggressively.
I would expect that in the coming months, youre going to see improvements in the gross profit
percentage in that business both by the elimination of fraud problems, but also through pricing
controls and improvements in our inventory and a number of other things that were doing.
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Thats one of the major short-term projects that we have right now is to get the gross margin
percentage of the business up.
TOM MADDEN: And one of the key benefits of moving into our new system platform was that
opportunity.
MARK LAYTON: Yes. Weve just got a lot better controls and more visibility than we had in the
prior platform.
ALEX SILVERMAN: Got it. Thank you, thank you very much.
MARK LAYTON: Thanks Alex.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Your next question is a follow-up from David Foetebier of JM Dutton.
DAVID SOETEBIER, JM DUTTON: Gentlemen, on the eCOST, could you give us an end-of-June inventory on
that and how would an inventory write down show up in the revenue line?
TOM MADDEN: OK. Give me one second; on the inventory number for eCOSTs at the end of June was
$9.9 million. And the write-down on inventory does not show up as a revenue item. It shows up as
a component of cost-of-product revenue. So it increases your cost, which has a, impact still of
reducing your gross margin percentage.
DAVID SOETEBIER: Do you have that number for us; inventory write-downs for the quarter?
TOM MADDEN: The provision that we took in the June quarter was approximately $300,000 to $400,000.
DAVID SOETEBIER: Thank you.
MARK LAYTON: Thanks, David.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Your next question is from Adam Mizel of Oquifer Capital.
ADAM MIZEL, OQUIFER CAPITAL: Hi guys. How are you?
TOM MADDEN: Hi Adam.
ADAM MIZEL: In your press release, you reported it looks like for the first six months of the year
total EBITDA from the services and Supplies Distributors business so call it the old PFSweb of
about $3.5 million in 06. Do you have the same number for 05 so we can compare the performance
and development?
TOM MADDEN: Give me a second here.
ADAM MIZEL: Sure.
TOM MADDEN: Last years EBITDA for the six months ended June 30, 2005 would have been
$3.4 million.
ADAM MIZEL: OK.
TOM MADDEN: And this years EBITDA for just those two businesses, hold on a second, hold on one
second, Ill come back to you on the call on that one.
ADAM MIZEL: Yes. I would have thought Tom, it is the 3.5 I see in the press release, but if it is
not, you can let us know.
TOM MADDEN: OK.
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ADAM MIZEL: A related question would be can you give us a little bit more color on sales in the
services side of the business in the second quarter? Because my sense is that the majority of the
$7 million of annual service revenues added were the sales you announced in the first quarter.
Is that correct, and if not, can you give us a little bit more color on the second quarter and what
you see happening in the remainder of the year, in terms of that pipeline?
TOM MADDEN: Mike, why dont you handle that?
MIKE WILLOUGHBY: Sure. Adam, youre right in that the run rate that we have in this press release
is primarily won in the first and early second quarters. I think that the press release indicates
that we have a very strong pipeline. I think the figure in there is around $40 million in
proposals outstanding.
We feel very good about the pipeline at this point. Its very strong and there are some wins in
there that we think that we can bring in, in the third and fourth quarter. So things look really
good.
ADAM MIZEL: Is that pipeline, how is that pipeline size compare to what you had said at the end of
the first quarter?
MIKE WILLOUGHBY: I think were probably up slightly in the pipeline size. I would say the quality
of the pipeline is a little bit improved. We had a couple of deals that have earlier in the year
that we wouldnt
have had a high probability on that have moved out and new deals have filled it in. And so I would
say that the pipeline is up slightly and the quality of it is improved.
TOM MADDEN: Adam, this is Tom. I can answer your question now in regards to the EBITDA
performance for PFSA and Supplies Distributors business units. The EBITDA for the six months
ended June 30; I think the numbers you were referring to in the press release only relate to the
three-month numbers.
The EBITDA for those two business segments was $.3 million this year and that compares to $3.4
million last year. So we ended up.
ADAM MIZEL: Tom, you just cut out when the first the this year, I got the 3.4. What was the
first number?
TOM MADDEN: $6.3.
ADAM MIZEL: OK.
TOM MADDEM: And that yes So, its a significant improvement with year-over-year in our
Supplies Distributors and PFS business units as both Mark and I alluded to during the call.
ADAM MIZEL: Got it. OK. Final question; in, as youre turning eCOST around and youve shrunk the
customer base and marketings been appropriately given the what youre going through, give us a
little sense of how that impacts your ability to bring those customers back both likely cost and
challenge of that.
Because presumably, theyre buying their equipment somewhere else than building some set of
relationships with someone elses site to do that. How do you bring them back and how much do you
think you have to invest to do that?
MARK LAYTON: You know its an intellectual conversation that can go on a long time but let me give
you short answer for that.
ADAM MIZEL: Sure.
MARK LAYTON: A key component in this whole are of paying to acquire for a customer has to do with
the lifetime value of that customer afterwards. eCOST has not historically had a very strong
repeat purchasing aspect from its, you know, the macro part of the customer base.
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I mean, I think if you look at 2005s number, the average customer purchased around 1.1 times. And
so the difficulty you deal with is just that if you use all of your gross margin dollars in the
first order or more than your gross margin dollars, as many companies do on the first order, and
the customer never buys again, then obviously thats an ongoing losing proposition that youll
never make money at.
So the key for us, we believe, is to, weve got to substantially improve the experience that the
customer has with us. We believe that that 1.1 has to do with many of the operating difficulty
eCOST has had historically and that the customer experience that they have had has just not been
stellar; certainly not to the levels we would like to see it at even so far this year.
So if we can make those improvements, then we believe we can see the movement in the repeat buying
patterns of the customers. If you were to run a financial model and say, All right, well let me
see if my customers buy 1.5 times per year. Well then all of a sudden youd be in a situation
where you might say, Well jeez, I could pay, you know, I could pay 110 percent of the gross margin
dollars of the first order to acquire the customer knowing that hes going to buy 1.5 times from me
on an annual basis, and go from there.
Thats, you know, thats a fairly traditional direct margin evaluation process. Now, so that being
said, how do you get them back? Today, you know, customers come to us in two broad areas. One is
through a collection of about ten or so shopping comparison engines, or bots as we call them that
we post products to. And these allow consumers to compare selection and price and they click
through them to the eCOST site.
That has been, you know, probably 60 percent of our new customers historically have come through
that area. And thats the area where we have trimmed our investment significantly at, and it will
slow down the new customer activity.
The other 40 percent come to us through our other marketing avenues and just word-of-mouth
activity. Those would be through paper catalogs, other advertising, traditional advertising we do
in magazines, so on and so forth.
And so, that has also been trimmed back as well. To get the customers back, we can step on the gas
on the bot side at any point in time and you almost immediately see an increase in activity to the
site as soon as those things are done.
So the other thing Ill point you to on there, Adam, is the exact target announcement that we made
this quarter. We really want to improve the efficiency of our daily e-mail activity and we believe
that that ExactTarget gives us an ability to do that.
One of the things that we did not have good data that measured before was, how many of our e-mails
actually made it to the desktop of the individual that we were marketing to?
We may be able to get it out and know that the e-mail address didnt bounce. But we couldnt get
information historically about whether you actually opened the e-mail or whether it got through
your personal or your corporate junk mail filter to actually get to your desktop.
So ExactTarget gives us much enhanced tools to phenomenally give us higher degrees of certainty
that we can then navigate through the mail filter platforms, but also ensure that we have reporting
that get to the desktop from there.
So those are some of the things that were doing in terms of how to get customers back. Were
certainly not stepping on the gas yet. We want to ensure that weve got the platform right and my
hope will be as we get to the holiday season, that we do that.
Our near-term focus as I said in the call is in improving the gross profit percentage, costs in the
business, get the thing profitable and then well worry about expansion from there.
ADAM MIZEL: OK. Thank you.
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OPERATOR: Thank you. There are no further questions. I would like to hand the floor back over to
management for any concluding remarks.
MARK LAYTON: OK. I appreciate everybodys time this morning and have a good quarter. Talk to you
again then.
OPERATOR: Thank you. This concludes todays PFS Web teleconference. You may now disconnect.
END
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