The Hackett Group, Inc.

Welcome to the Hackett Group third 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 third quarter results. Speaking on the call today and here to answer your questions are Ted Fernandez, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer 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 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 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 third quarter earnings call. As we normally do, I'll open the call with some overview comments on the quarter. I will then turn it back over to Rob to comment on the detailed operating results, cash flow, as well as comment on outlook. We will then review our market strategy-related comments, after which we will open it up to Q&A. Although it appears that COVID-related activity is truly tapering, I would like to continue to acknowledge those dedicated healthcare providers who continue to work nonstop and under difficult circumstances in many cases to support all of us 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 clearly evident that organizations have recognized the need to embrace digital transformation as a requirement to remain competitive, and the rate of digital innovation and related change is truly unprecedented. Correspondingly, this afternoon we reported net revenues of $71.4 million and pro forma earnings per share of $0.32, both above our quarterly guidance and up strongly on a year-over-year basis. Excluding our large SAP software sale in Q2, revenues were up 5% sequentially. The results are consistent with the strong demand recovery that, as I said, we have been experiencing throughout the year. And it's also nice to note that it's above pre-pandemic levels. U.S. sequential revenue growth, including the large Q2 software sale, was up 7% sequentially and up 27% when compared to the third quarter of last year. The results were driven by the strong performance of both our strategy and business transformation, as well as our EEA or EPM, ERP, and analytics group across nearly all of our U.S. practices. Of special note was the continued sequential improvement of our strategy business transformation group, which has now grown sequentially for five quarters in a row, reflecting the accelerated demand for digitally enabled transformation. Without a doubt, the COVID pandemic has accelerated the deployment of digital technologies to support cloud-enabled transformation, which has resulted in the improved demand across nearly all of our practice groups. We are encouraged with the increasing activity in the U.S. and the prospects in Europe. The investments we have made to fully digitize all of our IP and the development of our digital platforms, including Quantum Leap, our state-of-the-art global benchmarking platform, and our proprietary Hackett Digital Transformation Platform, or DTP, allow us to highly differentiate and expand our offerings and are important drivers of our long-term growth. We also continue to explore, add, or invest in rapidly growing cloud workflow automation and process mining technology providers across all areas of the enterprise. We believe these new and potential relationships are key to our digital transformation strategy and are important components of our growth strategy. On the balance sheet side, our ability to generate strong cash flow from operations has allowed us to increase our dividend and or buyback and our buyback program. We also continue to have strong cash balances and 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 the strategy and market conditions following Rob's comments. Rob?