On Assignment Inc. Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-02-19 18:15:42.0

Tags: Call Transcript, Quarter, Earnings, UBS AG, On Assignment Inc., Mergers & Acquisitions, Operational Accounting, Corporate Law, Research & Development, Investment, Finance, Business Operations, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question is from Andrew Fones – UBS

Andrew Fones – UBS

First of all, I wanted to ask if you could quantify the impact of the annual savings from the cost cuttings that you've announced, and when you started to take those actions in the fourth quarter. I'd just like to understand how much of those savings were benefit to the fourth quarter versus what we should expect in Q1 and beyond.

Peter T. Dameris

We identified and started moving on some of the reductions in staff, but we didn’t do much in the fourth quarter, Andrew, because it was the holiday season. So most of it occurred in January and, as you will note from the absence of any kind of restructuring charge, there are some severance payments and we're just flowing that through the income statement and that is not sizable.

But the majority of what we hope to gain from holding our SG&A or reducing it is in the forward quarters versus any significant impact in the fourth.

James L. Brill

I might just add Andrew, I think we've given for the most part some staffing consultant numbers and for example at Oxford as you know there's a fairly robust turnover, and [Mike] started to not replace some of the people that were departing back in the third quarter of last year. We actually talked about some of that in the third quarter conference call.

Andrew Fones – UBS

And then in terms of the guidance, you mentioned obviously the fewer days in Q1, but looking back historically, other than the year where you did the Oxford acquisition and the Physician Staffing acquisition, we have seen revenues remain flat from Q4 into Q1. So I was just wondering if you could perhaps give us the number of days do you expect in the first quarter, quantify that as seasonal impact as you see it relative to Q4.

I guess it looks as though you're saying that the weekly revenues in February, they're I think around 16% year-over-year versus the guidance of around 19%, just wondering whether you’re modeling kind of further deterioration here in terms of the guidance, or whether there was just some significances or impacts early in January that is starting to wash out, just a little color there. That would be great.

Peter T. Dameris

I'll give you kind of a qualitative comment and then Jim can give you the quantitative comment, but as it relates to the first quarter, clearly the end markets have deteriorated and probably the biggest surprise for us, Andrew, has been on the nursing side.

 

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