The Hackett Group, Inc.

Welcome to the Hackett Group Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Your lines have been placed on a listen-only mode until the question and answer session. Please be advised the conference is being recorded. Hosting tonight's call are Mr. Ted Fernandez, Chairman and CEO, and Mr. Rob Ramirez, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Ramirez, you may begin.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss the Hackett Group's Fourth Quarter results. Speaking on the call today and here to answer your questions are Ted Fernandez, Chief Financial Officer, Chairman and CEO of the Hackett Group, and myself, Robert Ramirez, Chief Financial Officer. A press announcement was released over the wires at 4.05 p.m. Eastern Time. For a copy of the release, please visit our website at www.thehackettgroup.com. We will also place any additional financial or statistical data discussed on this call that is not contained in the release on the Investor Relations page of our website. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that in the following comments and in the question and answer session, we will be making statements about expected future results, which may be forward-looking statements for the purposes of the federal securities law. These statements relate to our current expectations, estimates, and projections and are not a guarantee of future performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict and which may not be accurate, especially in light of COVID-19. Actual results may vary. These forward-looking statements should be considered only in conjunction with the detailed information, particularly the risk factors that are contained in our SEC filings. At this point, I would like to turn it back over to you.

Thank you, Rob, and welcome everyone to our fourth quarter earnings call. As we normally do, I will open the call with some overview comments on the quarter. I will then turn it back over to Rob to comment on detailed operating results, cash flow, as well as comment on outlook. We will then review our market and strategy-related comments. After such, we will open it up to Q&A. I would like to start by continuing to acknowledge those dedicated individuals who continue to work nonstop and under very dangerous circumstances to support all of us during this pandemic. I also want to acknowledge our associates and clients that quickly and successfully adapted to the remote delivery requirements around the globe. This quarter is about progress. and how eagerly we're looking forward to 2021. Let me first start with our quarterly results. Since the end of Q2, we have experienced increased activity through the end of the year, and we experienced it through the end of the year. I am pleased to announce today that our quarterly results exceeded our expectations. This afternoon, we reported net revenues of $59.2 million and pro forma earnings per share of $0.23, which was up 35% sequentially. Net revenues were up 2.5% sequentially on lower available days, but as I said, pro forma EPS was up strongly from our COVID-disrupted Q3 results of the prior year, and only one penny below the profitability in Q4 of last year, which obviously was not COVID impacted. U.S. sequential revenue growth was led by the continued bounce back of our strategy and business transformation group and the double-digit year-over-year growth of our SAP, Oracle ERP, and OneStream practices. The pandemic has accelerated the deployment of digital technologies to support cloud enablement transformation, which has resulted in the growth in these practices. We are further encouraged that Q4 sales in the U.S. were ahead of prior years sales for the first time in 12 months. On the international front, Europe was sequentially stable, which for us, that's very good news. The investments we have made to fully digitize all of our IP and the development of our IP as a service platforms, which include Quantum Leap, our state-of-the-art global benchmarking platform, as well as our proprietary Hackett digital transformation platform, or DTP, are highly differentiating our offerings and will continue to be important drivers of our growth for many years to come. Additionally, our partnerships with rapidly growing e-procurement, infrastructure and cloud analytics, and other cloud and other workflow automation providers will also continue to be key to our digital transformation strategy, as well as important future drivers of our growth. On the balance sheet side, our ability to generate strong cash flow from operations has allowed us to continue our dividend, buyback stock, and fund acquisitions we identify while continuing to invest in our business. It is important to reiterate how important it was to start the year with such a strong cash position and no outstanding debt, which has provided us with the ability to properly manage the demand disruption that we faced. With that said, let me ask Rob to provide details on our operating results, cash flow, and also comment on outlook. I will make additional comments on strategy and market conditions following Rob's comments. Rob.