NCO Group Files Annual Report with 2011 Financial Results

NCO Group, Inc., one of the largest ARM and BPO firms in the world, late Friday filed its annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission that detailed select financial results for 2011. The company has not issued a formal press release discussing details of the results.

In the filing, NCO said that it recorded revenues of $1.54 billion in 2011, down 2 percent from 2010. The company’s debt collection unit accounted for $1.2 billion in revenue, down 7 percent from the previous year, while the CRM unit accounted for $340 million, up more than 20 percent from 2010.

NCO recorded a loss in 2011 attributable to the company of $278 million, up significantly from the $155 million loss it recorded in 2010.

But the company noted that impairment charges to goodwill and trade names and restructuring charges in 2011 far outweighed those of previous years. In 2011, NCO took a $183.8 million impairment charge and cited $30 million in restructuring costs, compared to $57 million and $17.1 million, respectively, in 2010 and $24.8 million and 11.6 million in 2009.

Many of the charges were related to the acquisition of APAC Customer Services, Inc. and subsequent debt refinancing. The company last week announced that the APAC merger was completed and that the new combined company would be trading under the name Expert Global Solutions, Inc.

[Editor’s Note: For more detail about the new company, read insideARM’s exclusive interview with CEO Ron Rittenmeyer.]

The new company will operate two business units: ARM (under the NCO brand) and CRM (under the APAC brand). NCO has been in the process of shutting down its debt buying operations over the course of the last year.

In 2011, the company sold a large portion of its remaining purchased receivables portfolio. At the end of 2011, NCO said that the carrying value of purchased assets portfolio was $3.4 million, down from $78.6 million at the end of 2010 and $138.4 million at the end of 2009.

NCO also noted that it operates from 95 offices in 11 countries, with 58 of those facilities in the U.S. Of the 68 debt collection-only offices it operates, 48 are in the United States and seven are in Canada.