Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. F2Q09 (Qtr End 12/31/08) Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-02-05 11:40:35.0

Tags: Cost Management, Call Transcript, Earnings, Managerial Accounting, Human Capital, Operational Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Seeking Alpha, Watson Wyatt Worldwide

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Ashwin Shirvaikar - City Group.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - City Group

So I heavily appreciate the clarity of the press release separating out the impact of currency from the factor that you can actually control. My first question is, as it relates to maintaining your forward outlook, clearly the December quarter, performance is a part of that, but what kind of proactive steps are you taking to run in your cost structure? And is there any way you can separate out a variable comp accruals from other steps you’re taking?

John Haley

Well, do you want to talk about the cost and I’ll handle the variable.

Roger Millay

Yes sure. Ashwin, I think if you look at the business again our emphasis is on the balance between what we’re seeing in the revenue line and just to reemphasize we are seeing constant currency growth in all the segments, but really maintaining focus on those segments like Human Capital that are seeing some pressures.

So we haven’t taken kind of broad systemic cost actions at this point. Its been targeted to those practices and those regions of the world where the pressure is and at this point, that’s the continuing plan for the year, but we’re prepared to respond with contingency plans as we see the environment change.

John Haley

Yes and just to follow up on that, salary and employ benefits are our biggest expense, but there is a lot of other cost management activities that we can’t pursue. Some of the easier ones really relate to discretionary costs such as non-essential travel, certain internal meetings. We’ve been very aggressive in going after those costs.

As you know as well as I’ve stated in the past, I don’t generally like the idea of the lay-offs during temporary declines in demand, their cost associated with the lay-offs then their additional cost associated with ramping back up, lay-offs are very bad for morale. So they are not something that we look at as our first or maybe then our second resource. Now these are unusual times and if there are some significant slowdowns in our business we would have to consider all alternatives, but as of now we don’t have any significant work force reduction plans.

Let me turn to the variable comp. The way we look at the variable comp is that there is really a partnership between our shareholders and our associate and as times get better they should both share in that and as times are more difficult they should both share in the downside and we try to keep that then relatively constant.

 

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