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When in doubt about pandemics, ask an expert. One of the best being former FDA Commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb (non-exec director of Pfizer & Illumina), who has been calling for widespread COVID-19 workplace testing for some time. Today came news that there is now one such test available for all American businesses, freelancers, ‘gig’ workers &/or sole traders. This new tech-enabled solution is powered by CLSU’s ClearContact, ClearID and Virtual Badge (strategic partnership) applications, in conjunction with Clinical Reference Laboratory’s (CRL) expertise in blood/antibody & saliva tests.
CLEARSTAR
Thankfully pandemics don’t come around very often. The last one of such virulence as COVID-19 being the ‘Spanish Flu’ in 1918-20. So how is ClearStar faring? Today’s 2019 results (see below) were in line with our revised expectations - reporting adjusted EBITDA (post SBPs) of $370k (-$108k LY) on turnover up 14.1% LFL to £23.0m ($20.1m). Driven by strong top line growth from Medical (+21.4%, MIS) & Direct (+31.9%), together climbing 26.2% to $16.5m (71.8% of group). Albeit partly offset by an 8.3% contraction at channel partners (non MIS), which reduced gross margins to 54.1% vs 56.4% LY, reflecting adverse divisional mix.
It’s been a ‘FTSE slug fest’ over the past 3 months. Firstly investors were rattled by US/China trade tensions, then uncertainty about Brexit/General Election, and more recently by conflict in Iran/Iraq and the deadly Coronavirus. The latter sending Chinese equities, travel stocks, crude oil, commodities and many other assets plummeting.
Underlying demand for ClearStar’s tech-rich background & medical (MIS) screening services remains buoyant, as evidenced by its record orderbook and healthy pipeline – augmented by November’s ebullient US jobs report, where unemployment fell to a 50- year low of 3.5%
Recruiting skilled, trustworthy and committed staff is a tricky & often cumbersome process, especially in today’s tight US labour market (3.7% unemployment). Get it wrong, and capable candidates go to rivals. Equally hiring poor employees can damage an organisation’s results, brand & culture. No more so than in the regulated areas of healthcare, transport, petro-chemicals, defence, logistics, education and financial services.
If you’re concerned about Brexit, Sterling’s devaluation, currency wars and/or the slowing global economy, then look no further than Uncle’s Sam’s backyard. To us, America remains the ‘destination of choice’ for many investors, given its resilient consumer (>70% GDP), low unemployment (3.7%), solid GDP (2.1% Q2’19) and muted inflation (CPI 2.1%). The only problem is finding the right companies to buy at attractive levels. Step forward ClearStar, a tech-enabled background & medical (MIS) screening expert, based in Atlanta (Georgia), serving almost exclusively the US domestic market (c. 95% sales).
There are few principles in life that work consistently through ‘thick and thin’. One of the most important (& usually hardest to find) for investors is purchasing ‘quality growth stocks at attractive prices’. Enter ClearStar, who this morning (ahead of its AGM) said that LFL sales had climbed 14% in the first 5 months of 2019.
Tech firms are often faced with trade-offs. Take Amazon, who for years prioritised growth ahead of profitability in order to build dominant positions in online retail, cloud services and voice-search (re Alexa/Echo). Likewise, we think ClearStar is adopting a similar long term strategy to create shareholder value. Sure if it decided to switch off the ‘expansion button’ today, then earnings would immediately flow through. However, what we’re talking about here is a much bigger opportunity – disrupting an addressable market worth c. $4bn pa.
World class companies have one thing in common. They are all totally committed about delighting their customers. Knowing that this can create a powerful feedback loop, and likewise trigger more client wins, higher hit rates, positive referrals and follow-on work. Today we saw this virtuous circle in action again at ClearStar, a specialist in background & medical screening solutions. Announcing that it had secured a new 3 month $350,000 contract. Both extending and expanding the services it already provides to a relatively new professional services client within the financial services space.
Long term value creation is all about customer focus, profitable growth and 1 st class execution. Concentrating on what clients want today and in the future - and doing it better than anyone else. We think that Clearstar, a technology-rich background employment and medical (MIS) screening provider, has this in spades. Saying this morning, that its strong growth in 2018 (+13% to $20.1m) had continued into Q1’19 - posting record turnover, up 11% LFL to $5.1m ($4.6m LY).
Many day traders think they know better than the market, yet get royally ‘tumbledryered’ whenever the FTSE goes into ‘psychosis mode’. For long-term value investors though, volatility means ‘opportunity’.
10 years on from the $600bn Lehman Bros bankruptcy and subsequent financial crisis, regulators have been busily cleaning up the industry in order to prevent it from ever happening again. Tougher laws have been introduced, fraudulent employees imprisoned and new staff probity checks introduced. Indeed, only last Friday the UK Government announced it had deported Kweku Adoboli, a former UBS trader who was convicted of a £1.4bn fraud between 2008–11.
Often the best ideas are the simplest. Take the humble employee ID and/or visitor card. There are probably 10s if not 100s of millions of these dished out globally each year to new recruits, temporary workers, contractors, visitors, etc. Not only costing a small fortune to produce, but also needlessly sucking in vital resource, slowing up the onboarding process and damaging the environmental (re plastic).
Occasionally analysts can be guilty of over complicating matters. Strip out the jargon however, and often even the most complex of businesses can be distilled into four simple questions. Are revenues growing faster than costs? Will this be maintained in the long run? Is management investing enough to stay ahead of the game? And finally, how much are the shares worth compared to the current price? For ClearStar - a tech-pioneer in the $4bn global job screening (60% H1 sales) and medical (MIS 40%) testing market - we unequivocally got the thumbs-up again from this morning’s very encouraging H1’18 results.
UK investors are in a dilemma. BREXIT concerns, trade tensions and fears over another general election are all weighing on business confidence and pressurising the £. So where’s a good place to put one’s money? For myself, I’ve followed the advice of famous author & newspaper editor Horace Greeley to “go West, young man”. Allocating a sizable chunk of my own funds to America.
The momentum at ClearStar seems to be building. At the 22nd May trading update, CLSU announced that it had secured new work with the likes of Gulfstream Aerospace, Hilmar Cheese and BNSF Railway Company (a Berkshire Hathaway company).
How do you decide which equities to buy? Many people rely on the ‘comfort of the crowd’. Preferring to follow what others do to steer them through the markets. Like passive index trackers, this is fine up to a point, say when investing in highly liquid FTSE100 companies. But what about microcaps, where daily trading volumes can be much thinner, and the ‘crowd’ may not exist? Here instead, active fund managers typically focus on the fundamentals and back their own judgement to guide decision-making.
Warren Buffett, the ‘Sage of Omaha’, has spoken many wise words during his accomplished career. Not least that “markets can stay irrational for far longer” than one might expect - yet ultimately they’re “weighing machines”, so value wins out in the end.
Despite the unwelcome impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in its backyard states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas, ClearStar nonetheless reported impressive 2017 trading yesterday. Bang in line with our pre-storm estimates (from July), with revenues up 11% LFL (split 12% H1: 10% H2) to $17.8m (vs $16.0m LY) and net cash closing December at $1m (vs $1.5m June and $2.25m LY). Growth being driven by buoyant demand for direct screening (+21%) and medical/drug testing (+20%) services. The latter now (including channel partners) accounting for 38% (35% LY) of revenues, with the former equally set to climb from 24% in 2016 to >50% by 2024.
Trying to guess where the FTSE will be in 6-12 months is a bit of a crapshoot. Not so for ClearStar, where circa 90% of turnover relates to ‘repeat’ everyday background/employment and drug/alcohol screening tests (run-rate >8m pa). Better still, retention is an impressive 90% - which when added to the natural flow through of recently signed deals, the ‘on-boarding’ of existing clients, and today’s ‘bang in line’ interims – means there is >95% and >85% respectively of revenue cover for this year ($17.8m) and next ($19.8m).
Don’t you just love ‘Tech’? Churning out irresistible growth rates, profit margins and cashflows, allied to robust visibility and high client retention. A compelling mix. The only problem is that many others do as well, pushing valuations to often nose-bleed levels.
ClearStar is a well established tech platform and service provider to the background check industry with circa 2,300 generally very sticky customers. In fact ClearStar now serves over 27,000 employees annually and has over a 90% retention rate. The company is vying for profitability through both the execution of a targetted growth strategy and the search for further internal efficiencies. During 2016 the company expects to recognise circa $1.2m of annualised cost savings.
