DHX - DHI Group Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019 Financial Results

NEW YORK, Feb. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- DHI Group, Inc. (NYSE: DHX) ("DHI" or the "Company") today announced the following financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year ended December 31, 2019.

Fourth Quarter 2019 Financial Results

• Total revenues¹ were $37.7 million, up 1% on a sequential basis and down 1% year over year.
• Dice¹ revenues were $23.3 million, up 1% on a sequential basis and down 3% year over year.
• eFinancialCareers revenues were $7.8 million, down 1% on a sequential basis and down 6% year over year.
• ClearanceJobs revenues were $6.6 million, up 5% on a sequential basis and up 16% year over year.
• Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, total revenues were up 1% on a sequential basis and down 1% year over year while eFinancialCareers was down 4% on a sequential basis and down 6% year over year.
• Net income was $3.5 million, or $0.07 per diluted share, compared to net income of $2.9 million, or $0.06 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.
• Cash flow from operations was $3.9 million compared to $6.2 million in the year-ago quarter.
• Adjusted EBITDA² was $8.6 million, and Adjusted EBITDA margin² was 23% compared to $8.3 million and 22% in the year-ago quarter.

Full Year 2019 Financial Results

• Total revenues¹ were $149.4 million, flat year over year.
• Dice¹ revenues were $92.5 million, down 2% year over year.
• eFinancialCareers revenues were $32.1 million, down 5% year over year.
• ClearanceJobs revenues were $24.7 million, up 17% year over year.
• Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, total revenues were up 1% year over year while eFinancialCareers was down 2% year over year.
• Net income was $12.6 million, or $0.24 per diluted share, compared to net income of $7.2 million, or $0.14 per diluted share in 2018.
• Cash flow from operations was $22.9 million compared to $14.9 million in the prior year period.
• Cash was $5.4 million; total debt of $10 million.
• Adjusted EBITDA² was $34.9 million, and Adjusted EBITDA margin² was 23% compared to $32.0 million and 21% in the prior year period.

¹ Excludes Dice Europe, which ceased operations August 31, 2018.
² See "Notes Regarding the Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures" later in this press release.

Commenting on the quarter and the year, Art Zeile, President and CEO of DHI Group, Inc., said:

"We made significant progress during the year in building a strong foundation for future revenue growth and the long-term success of the Company. We delivered more product innovation in 2019 than the Company had delivered in the prior five years combined, and we intend to accelerate that pace of innovation in 2020 as the industry leader in the growing market for matching technologists with employers. We also strengthened our go-to-market strategy, with our new Chief Revenue Officer, Arie Kanofsky, adding top-notch sales leadership to his teams during the fourth quarter, while at the same time standing up new Dice commercial sales teams in Denver and New York. We believe our investments to further strengthen our product offerings and go-to-market strategy positions the Company to generate sustained long-term revenue growth in the future."

Product Highlights

In 2019, DHI delivered more than 20 marquee product releases and dozens of minor releases. DHI expects the pace of product development to increase in 2020 as a result of its investment in, and transformation of, its engineering team to a domain-driven engineering model. Below are the product highlights delivered during the fourth quarter:

Dice

• Delivered Dice multi-location search and completed an update of Dice application management, which was the last piece in the complete renovation of the Dice client experience. In addition, all Dice clients have now been transitioned to TalentSearch 4.0. Dice Candidate Match, which was launched earlier in 2019, and the machine learning algorithm behind it, continues to improve with over 14 million successful matches in fiscal 2019.

eFinancialCareers

• eFC marketplace capabilities expanded with the launch of an upgraded Candidate Profile, which added new fields for candidates to share career experience and goal information. Candidate Profile and the Messaging feature drove thousands of messages sent, connecting employers and candidates on the platform.

ClearanceJobs

• ClearanceJobs continues to take the lead in driving new important capabilities, and in the fourth quarter delivered new dashboards for both employers and candidates that provide insight into their profile performance, network reach, and IntelliSearch-based recommendations to improve their connections.

Business Outlook

DHI expects revenue will turn to positive year-over-year growth in the second half of 2020, primarily driven by product development and increased investment in sales resources. The Company expects an Adjusted EBITDA margin² of 20% for 2020, given its increased investment in product and engineering capacity and the ramp up of sales resources to accelerate revenue growth. The Company is not providing guidance for net income because it cannot reasonably assess the impact of stock-based compensation and income tax expense.

Conference Call Information

Art Zeile, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Kevin Bostick, Chief Financial Officer, will host a conference call today, February 5, 2020, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time to discuss the Company's financial results, recent developments and progress on its tech-focused strategy.

The call can be accessed by dialing 844-890-1790 (in the U.S.) or 412-380-7407 (outside the U.S.). Please ask to be placed into the DHI Group, Inc. call. A live webcast of the call will simultaneously be available through the Investor Relations section of the Company's website, https://www.dhigroupinc.com, and available for replay after the call ends.

About DHI Group, Inc.

DHI Group, Inc. (NYSE: DHX) is a leading provider of data, insights and employment connections through our specialized services for technology professionals and other select online communities. Our mission is to empower technology professionals and organizations that hire them to compete and win through expert insights and relevant employment connections. Employers and recruiters use our websites and services to source, hire and connect with the most qualified and highly-skilled technology professionals, while professionals use our websites and services to find ideal employment opportunities, relevant job advice and tailored career-related data. For nearly 30 years, we have built our Company on providing employers and professionals with career connections, news, tools and information. Today, we serve multiple markets in North America, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region. Find out more at www.dhigroupinc.com.

¹ Excludes Dice Europe, which ceased operations August 31, 2018.
²  See "Notes Regarding the Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures" later in this press release.

Notes Regarding the Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures

The Company has provided certain non-GAAP financial information as additional information for its operating results. These measures are not in accordance with, or an alternative for, measures in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States ("GAAP") and may be different from similarly titled non-GAAP measures reported by other companies.  The Company believes that its presentation of non-GAAP measures, such as Adjusted Revenues, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margin provides useful information to management and investors regarding certain financial and business trends relating to its financial condition and results of operations. In addition, the Company's management uses these measures for reviewing the financial results of the Company and for budgeting and planning purposes.  The non-GAAP measures apply to consolidated results and results by segment or other measure as shown within this document. The Company has provided required reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures elsewhere in the document.

Adjusted Revenues

Adjusted Revenues is a non-GAAP metric used by management to measure operating performance. Adjusted Revenues represents Revenues less the revenues of divested businesses. We consider Adjusted Revenues to be an important measure to evaluate the performance of our ongoing businesses and provide comparable results excluding our divestitures.

Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin

Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin are non-GAAP metrics used by management to measure operating performance. Management uses Adjusted EBITDA as a performance measure for internal monitoring and planning, including preparation of annual budgets, analyzing investment decisions and evaluating profitability and performance comparisons between us and our competitors. The Company also uses this measure to calculate amounts of performance based compensation under the senior management incentive bonus program.  Adjusted EBITDA represents net income plus (to the extent deducted in calculating such net income) interest expense, income tax expense, depreciation and amortization, non-cash stock based compensation, losses resulting from certain dispositions outside the ordinary course of business including prior negative operating results of those divested businesses, certain writeoffs in connection with indebtedness, impairment charges with respect to long-lived assets, expenses incurred in connection with an equity offering or any other offering of securities by the Company, extraordinary or non-recurring non-cash expenses or losses, transaction costs in connection with the credit agreement, deferred revenues written off in connection with acquisition purchase accounting adjustments, writeoff of non-cash stock based compensation expense, severance and retention costs related to dispositions and reorganizations of the Company, losses related to legal claims and fees that are unusual in nature or infrequent, minus (to the extent included in calculating such net income) non-cash income or gains, interest income, business interruption insurance proceeds, and any income or gain resulting from certain dispositions outside the ordinary course of business, including prior positive operating results of those divested businesses, and gains related to legal claims that are unusual in nature or infrequent.

We also consider Adjusted EBITDA, as defined above, to be an important indicator to investors because it provides information related to our ability to provide cash flows to meet future debt service, capital expenditures and working capital requirements and to fund future growth. We present Adjusted EBITDA as a supplemental performance measure because we believe that this measure provides our board of directors, management and investors with additional information to measure our performance, provide comparisons from period to period and company to company by excluding potential differences caused by variations in capital structures (affecting interest expense) and tax positions (such as the impact on periods or companies of changes in effective tax rates or net operating losses), and to estimate our value.

Adjusted EBITDA Margin is computed as Adjusted EBITDA divided by Adjusted Revenues.

Adjusted Revenues, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin are not measurements of our financial performance under GAAP and should not be considered as an alternative to revenue, net income, operating income, cash provided by operating activities, or any other performance measures derived in accordance with GAAP as a measure of our profitability.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release and oral statements made from time to time by our representatives contain forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on those statements because they are subject to numerous uncertainties and factors relating to our operations and business environment, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, information concerning our possible or assumed future results of operations. These statements often include words such as "may," "will," "should," "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "estimate" or similar expressions. These statements are based on assumptions that we have made in light of our experience in the industry as well as our perceptions of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors we believe are appropriate under the circumstances. Although we believe that these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, you should be aware that many factors could affect our actual financial results or results of operations and could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, our ability to execute our tech-focused strategy, competition from existing and future competitors in the highly competitive markets in which we operate, failure to adapt our business model to keep pace with rapid changes in the recruiting and career services business, failure to maintain and develop our reputation and brand recognition, failure to increase or maintain the number of customers who purchase recruitment packages, cyclicality or downturns in the economy or industries we serve, the uncertainty surrounding the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union, including uncertainty in respect of the regulation of data protection and data privacy, failure to attract qualified professionals to our websites or grow the number of qualified professionals who use our websites, failure to successfully identify or integrate acquisitions, U.S. and foreign government regulation of the Internet and taxation, our ability to borrow funds under our revolving credit facility or refinance our indebtedness and restrictions on our current and future operations under such indebtedness.  These factors and others are discussed in more detail in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, all of which are available on the Investors page of our website at www.dhigroupinc.com, including the Company's most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and subsequent filings under the headings "Risk Factors," "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations." You should keep in mind that any forward-looking statement made by the Company or its representatives herein, or elsewhere, speaks only as of the date on which it is made. New risks and uncertainties come up from time to time, and it is impossible to predict these events or how they may affect us. We have no obligation to update any forward-looking statements after the date hereof, except as required by federal securities laws.

Investor Contact

Todd Kehrli or Jim Byers
MKR Investor Relations, Inc.
212-448-4181
ir@dhigroupinc.com

Media Contact

Rachel Ceccarelli
Senior Director Communications
212-448-8288
media@dhigroupinc.com

Supplemental Information and Non-GAAP Reconciliations

On the pages that follow, the Company has provided certain supplemental information that we believe will assist the reader in assessing our business operations and performance, including certain non-GAAP financial information and required reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measure. A statement of operations  and statement of cash flows for the three and twelve month periods ended December 31, 2019 and 2018 and balance sheets as of December 31, 2019 and 2018 are provided elsewhere in this press release.