The Hackett Group, Inc.

the Hackett Group's second quarter earnings conference call. Your lines have been placed on a listen-only mode to the question-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.

Thank you, Albert. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss the Hackett Group's second quarter results. Speaking on the call today and here to answer your questions are Ted Fernandez, 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'll also place any additional financial or statistical data discussed in 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 Q&A session, we will be making statements about expected future results, which may be forward-looking statements for the purposes of the federal securities laws. 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 over to Ted.

Thank you, Rob, and welcome everyone to our second quarter earnings call. As we normally do, I'll open the call with some overview comments. 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 strategy and related comments, after which we will open it up to Q&A. Given the recent rise in Delta variant infections, I would like to continue to acknowledge those dedicated healthcare providers who continue to work nonstop and selflessly to support us all during this pandemic. Consistent with our comments since the end of the second quarter of last year, we continue to experience increased client engagement and demand for our services throughout the quarter. It is evident that organizations have recognized the need to embrace digital transformation as a requirement to remain competitive. Correspondingly, this afternoon, we reported net revenues of $73 million and pro forma earnings per share of 39 cents, both in excess of guidance. Of note is a $5.3 million SAP software sale transaction, which increased our pro forma EPS by 9 cents. Excluding this software sale, our net revenues exceeded the high end of our guidance and were up a strong 7% sequentially and up 29% when compared to the COVID-impacted second quarter of last year. The results are consistent with the strong demand recovery we have been experiencing since the end of the second quarter of last year. It is also important to note that we are now operating above pre-pandemic revenue and clearly profitability levels. U.S. sequential revenue growth excluding the software sale was up 7% sequentially and up 28% when compared to the second quarter of last year. The results were driven by the continued recovery of our SMBT group, our Strategy and Business Transformation group, and 10% sequential growth in our EEA group. excluding the impact of the SAP software sale. All groups within EEA were up sequentially. Of special note is the sequential improvement we experienced in our Oracle EPM practice. As many of you know, this group has adversely impacted our year-over-year growth over the last several years as we transitioned that group from on-prem to cloud implementations. We believe that our Oracle on-prem to cloud transition is now behind us, which should result in improving revenue growth for our organization. Just to put that transition in perspective, we have lost in excess of $60 million in Oracle on-prem revenue and have replaced it with a much broader-based Oracle Cloud ERP and EPM revenues and with a rapidly growing one-screen business. I would be remiss if I did also comment on the strong performance of our SAP group which again, we can attribute that $5.3 million transaction as a result of the incredible expertise that they have in life sciences and specifically in pharma and biotech, which allowed that transaction to be facilitated and realized by our organization. The pandemic has accelerated the deployment of digital technologies to support cloud-enabled transformation, which has resulted in the growth in these practices. We are also further encouraged with the increasing activity in the U.S. and with the sequential growth that we experienced in Europe during the second quarter. The investments we have made to fully digitize all of our IP and development of our IP as a service platforms, QuantumLeap, our state-of-the-art global benchmarking platform, and our proprietary Hackett digital transformation platform, or DTP, are highly differentiating our offerings and continue to be important drivers of our long-term growth. Additionally, as I mentioned last quarter, our partnerships with rapidly growing e-procurement, EPM, and cloud and workflow automation providers also continue to be key in our digital transformation strategy and are important future drivers of growth as well. On the balance sheet side, our ability to generate strong cash flow from operations has allowed us to increase our dividend, our buyback program, as well as our buyback program. We also continue to have strong cash balances and a fully available credit facility to fund acquisitions we identify while continuing to invest in our business. 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?