The following article is a reprint of my February 6, 2008 RealMoney column

Hewitt (HEW) is a leading global provider of human resource benefits, outsourcing and consulting services. On Tuesday the company reported $0.59 in earnings per share, beating analyst estimates by a full $0.20 per share. Given that it currently sports a healthy 9.1% free cash flow yield, I thought it was worth a further look.

Unfortunately, the full year guidance given was that Hewitt is “maintaining our fiscal 2008 guidance despite absorbing what we expect will be about six cents per share in dilution from the divestiture of Cyborg over the balance of the year.” After a $0.20 beat in the first quarter, ideally estimates would be raised by $0.14 (or more) despite absorbing a $0.06 per share dilution.

Hewitt’s surprise was largely driven by the fact that its Human Resources Business Process Outsourcing (HR BPO) business, which accounts for 20% of total revenue, lost less money in the company’s fiscal first quarter 2008 than it did in the prior year. Still, there are contracts that the company is trying to restructure to achieve profitability that are in “sensitive” stages.

Given how much most companies hate the human resources function, one would think that those willing to take on others’ headaches would be able to earn high profits. Unfortunately, there are a surprisingly large number of companies willing to take on those headaches. In the latest 10K, management says that “The principal competitors in our HR BPO segment are technology consultants and integrators such as Accenture (ACN), Affiliated Computer Services (ACS - Annual Report, EDS/ExcellerateHRO (EDS) and IBM (IBM - Annual Report) and; companies that have extended their services into human resources outsourcing such as Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and Convergys (CVG).

On the conference call, management indicated that the outsourcing business was counter-cyclical, with customers outsourcing more in downturns in order to reduce costs. Yet they seemed to contradict this statement by saying that the current market environment was causing their new contract signing pace to be behind schedule. Hewitt’s Zacks rank declined last week from 1 (best) to 2. Although the current rank still puts Hewitt in the top 20% of companies measured for earnings momentum, the cautious guidance and talk of a light pipeline are likely to result in some estimate reductions for the remainder of the year.

Despite the lower sales pipeline and ongoing restructuring of unprofitable contracts, Hewitt paid higher performance-based compensation in the fourth quarter. This resulted in first quarter free cash flow being $4 million lower than last year. The company also expects to spend more on capital expenditures this year, which will dampen free cash flow generation.

Furthermore, while earnings are improving the quality of those earnings is not. To gauge earnings quality, I measured the accrual ratio (change in net operating assets as a percentage of net operating assets) over the past several years. The accrual ratio gives an indication of the extent that earnings are driven by cash flows versus accounting choices. The closer the ratio is to zero, the better. Hewitt’s has been declining.

Source: Zacks Research Wizard, compiled by William A. Trent

So, after looking under the hood, I see a company with falling earnings momentum, falling free cash flow yield and falling earnings quality. The only thing rising in recent quarters has been the share price. As a value oriented investor, I’d rather it was the other way around.

Disclosures: None

Zacks Investment Research has provided Stock Market Beat with a complimentary trial subscription to Research Wizard.

When it comes to reading financial statements and government statistics, it is a good practice to follow Ronald Reagan’s admonition to “trust, but verify” whenever possible. Many have pointed out the high percentage of US job growth generated by the “birth/death model” in recent years, and I have noted that despite headlines to the contrary even the government’s statistics on job growth look sluggish.

So today I am trying to verify. By looking at what companies that are related to the job market are saying, perhaps I can see whether there is more strength or weakness than is otherwise apparent. The companies I chose were Paychex (PAYX) and Automatic Data Processing (ADP), both of which manage payrolls for a large number of businesses, and Hewitt Associates (HEW), which is an outsourcing firm providing benefits management. I reviewed their recent conference calls to collect their thoughts on the job market.

Paychex, for one, is doing its own part to help the employment market.

As of May 31, 2007 our number of employees increased 7% from 10,900 employees one year ago, to 11,700 employees today.

(Excerpt from full PAYX conference call transcript). While that doesn’t say much for the overall economy, it is certainly a start. On the bigger picture, management said:

When we look at the specifics of the things that we have a visibility to and the main number that we look at is the new hire transactions per client and the change in that from a growth year-to-year basis. Night of 2007 ended up at 4.2% for the full year and 5.1% for the fourth quarter. So, those are two very healthy numbers. Last year as an example was 3.1% on the full year.

So, John has often talked about it has been the economy stuck in a good place and the stuck that we, the elements of the equation that we see specifically new hire transactions because we do the compliance reporting.

Bonuses paid is other one that we look at and at the year end the bonus is paid by our clients to their employees were also up. And we look at checks per client, that was also up on a year-to-year basis, although modestly. So, the things that we look at suggest to us that the economy at least the one that we’re addressing, seems to be okay and it doesn’t seem to be moving dramatically one way or the other.

(Excerpt from full PAYX conference call transcript)

ADP does not think things are slowing significantly.

Liz Grausam - Goldman Sachs

Okay. And your pay per control has decelerated a little bit from 3Q into 4Q. Are you seeing anything kind of broad based across your client base one direction or the other in terms of what their hiring trends have been across the year?

Gary Butler

No, we’re not, and you can’t it’s hard to look at it quarter-to-quarter. Now, if you look at the trends for the past year, we were as low as 1.7, and as high as 3%. You have got to really look at it on the full year basis, and we aren’t seeing anything that would lead us just believe that’s decelerating.

(Excerpt from full ADP conference call transcript)

In case things do start to slow, ADP also helps us figure out how to spot it.

Typically in economic slowdowns in the past, what becomes more difficult is selling new business because people stop expending capital or the time to convert the business, et cetera. So, the thing that would probably be the most visible would be a slight slowing of new sales bookings.

Additionally, in severe downturns in the past we’ve seen some clients cancel ancillary reports or supplemental kinds of things that we were doing for them to try to get the bill down a little bit. And certainly if you had a major slowdown you would see some abatement in the pay growth that we’ve enjoyed at the 2% plus level over the last three years.

(Excerpt from full ADP conference call transcript)

Hewitt also appears to see things as solid.

The HR BPO business reported strong top line growth in the third quarter. Overall, after adjusting for the decline in third party revenue and currency, revenues grew 14%, driven primarily by growth of existing clients, including an increase in the project work as well as by contracts that went live in the twelve-month period.

(Excerpt from full HEW conference call transcript)

All in all, the conference calls seem to verify what I had been seeing from the government statistics - a fairly trendless situation.