Q4 2008 Netsol Technologies Earnings Conference Call - Final.(Broadcast transcript)

OPERATOR: Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the NetSol Technologies fourth-quarter fiscal year 2008 financial results conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation, at which time instructions will be given. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your post, Mr. Christopher Chu, Global Consulting Group for NetSol Technologies, Inc. Thank you, Mr. Chu, you may now begin.

CHRISTOPHER CHU, IR, GRAYLING GLOBAL: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the NetSol Technologies fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year 2008 financial results conference call, for the period ending June 30, 2008. We have prepared a PowerPoint presentation to accompany this conference call. The document may be found on the main page of the investor relations section of the NetSol Web site located at www.NetSoltech.com. In addition, I would like to remind you that we are recording and broadcasting today's call. The webcast archive of the call will also be available in the investor relations section of NetSol website.

Before we begin, please proceed to slide member two as I read a brief Safe Harbor statement. This conference call and presentation may contain forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the current belief of NetSol Technologies' management as well as assumptions made by and information available to NetSol. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual future results and development could differ materially from those set forth in these statements due to various factors. These factors include, among others, changes in the general economic and competitive situation, particularly in NetSol's businesses and markets. In addition, future results and developments could be affected by the performance of financial markets, fluctuations in exchange rates and changes in national and super-national law, particularly with regard to tax regulations.

The Company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements.

Moving to slide number three, during today's call Mr. Najeeb Ghauri, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, will share key achievements for the recently completed fiscal year 2008 as well as provide an overview of the strategic outlook for 2009. We then will hand the call over to Ms. Tina Gilger, Chief Financial Officer, to review more specific details of the financial results and forward-looking guidance. Mr. Naeem Ghauri, your division President, also joins today's call and will be available in the question-and-answer session.

I would now like to pass the call over to Mr. Najeeb Ghauri:

NAJEEB GHAURI, CHAIRMAN, CEO, NETSOL TECHNOLOGIES: Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. On behalf of my Board and the global management team I'm extremely pleased to report truly impressive financial and operational results for fiscal year 2008, especially taking into account the challenging global economic environment. I hope you have found the part one presentation we prepared to supplement this call and will follow along with us. The slide numbers we refer to are found at the bottom of each slide.

As the press release issued earlier today and as slide number four illustrates, NetSol delivered an outstanding performance in fiscal 2008, delivering record financial results for the full fiscal year that met or exceeded our stated guidance ranges. Revenues rose 25% over year-to-year to $36.6 million, which is in line with our stated guidance range, driven by strong double-digit growth rates in licensing, service and maintenance fees on solid gross margins of 57%.

Operating income for the full year increased to [172%] to a record $7.2 million for an operating margin of 20%. We also successfully translated our robust top-line growth into record annual GAAP profitability and record EBITDA results, and our full year 2008 EBITDA margin topped our own guidance range, coming in at about 31% of the revenues. As you have seen, GAAP net income for the year increased to a record $7.2 million or $0.28 per fully diluted share, in line with our stated guidance range.

EBITDA came at a record $11.3 million for the whole year or about $0.44 per diluted share for the fiscal year, which we believe is the best metric to measure the underlying profitability of our business. Let's review some of the top-line strategic business highlights for the fiscal 2008.

If you'll flip to slide number five, one of the most important strategic milestones in fiscal '08 was the launch and rollout of NetSol's BestShoring and global business service strategy, representing an evolution of NetSol's core business offerings to be leveraged across our range of international client delivery centers.

The BestShoring business model and global business service platform reflect our continued focus in meeting our international clients' needs for local markets, IT services and software expertise matched with high-quality, low-cost offshore delivery capabilities. This forms a key foundation of our strategy for 2009 as we look to further grow our global footprint and expand the breadth of the international client base.

I'm extremely pleased with our success in securing significant new client relationships as we are seeing an upward trend in the size and value of the client wins we are recording. This trend was highlighted by several multi-million dollar contract wins announced in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008. I'm proud of our regional operating divisions, who were successful in converting these opportunities our core NetSol financial suite of products into multi-million dollar contract wins. We saw significant new client wins in Asia and Europe as we continued to make headway in making our regional NetSol financial suite product offerings more compatible across geographic regions, providing a (inaudible) global solutions suite and creating a more flexible delivery platform for the customers.

Evidence of our success on this front included a new frame agreement with Daimler Financial Services, which extended NetSol's relationship with this longest standing customer in additional regions of Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa as well as facilitating future market deployments. Our success in 2008 was also highlighted by a further diversification of our IT services and market verticals as we established or expanded our presence in verticals such as health care, e-government and in defense sectors.

We also experienced solid growth in 2008 from NetSol TIG, our extended innovation joint venture, which experienced double-digit year-over-year revenue growth as we expanded our billable resources in this joint venture to over 130 employees.

If we move to slide number six, we begin to look at diverse rate of growth drivers that are designed to position NetSol for additional revenue and profitability growth in 2009 and beyond. As detailed in our earnings release today, we are reiterating our fiscal year 2009 guidance, which Tina will walk through in a bit.

Let …