HireQuest, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the HireQuest third quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Brett Moss. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Operator. I would like to welcome everybody to the call. Hosting the call today are HireQuest CEO Rick Hermans and CFO Corey Smith. Please be aware that some of the comments made during our call may contain, and include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Statements about our beliefs and expectations containing words such as may, could, would, will, should, believe, expect, anticipate, and similar expressions constitute forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties regarding our operations and our future results and could cause actual question, I'm sorry, cause actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We encourage you to review the safe harbor statements and risk factors contained in the company's earnings release and its filings to the SEC, including without limitation, most recent annual report on Form 10-K and other periodic reports, which identify specific risk factors that may also cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statement. Copies of the company's most recent reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q may be obtained on the company's website at HireQuest.com or at the SEC website at SEC.gov. The company does not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after the call or date of this call. I would also like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay through November 25th. A link to the website replay of the call is also provided in the earnings release and is available on the company's website at higherquest.com. I'd like to now turn the call over to the CEO of HigherQuest, Rick Hermans. Rick?

Thank you for joining us. This past quarter marked a milestone for us with weekly sales from our legacy HigherQuest direct franchisees pulling even with 2019 numbers for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. Over the course of the quarter, weekly sales Weekly sales results improved from trailing 2019 comps 10% to 15% in early July to pulling even by the end of September. Given the continued uncertainty and headwinds from the pandemic, we're excited by their momentum going into the end of the year. Q3 system-wide sales of $99.6 million and total revenue of $6.9 million both represent record results for HireQuest. and were driven by a combination of organic growth and the contributions from our Snelling and Link acquisitions. We also had record adjusted EBITDA of $5.3 million. This is especially notable given we recently completed two large acquisitions at the end of the first quarter. Our ability to integrate both Snelling and Link and within two quarters see the results from the increased scale highlights the benefits and potential operating leverage of the franchisor model. Adjusting for the extraordinary non-cash compensation and the non-recurring note charge in the quarter, we comfortably achieved our stated net income target of 3.5% to 4.5% of system-wide sales. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we announced two acquisitions. First, our acquisition of Recruit Media at the beginning of October accelerates our development efforts and will provide new tools for our franchisees to better serve their clients and workforce. Second, we announced that we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Dental Power Staffing Division of Dental Power, and we expect to close this transaction before the end of the year. As we've said in the past, we believe that our franchise model can be applied across a broad range of staffing verticals and service industries. and we continue to evaluate the best avenue to enter these verticals, internal development, acquisitions, or a combination. Smaller transactions such as dental power give us a platform to build on both organically and through add-on acquisitions. Before I turn over the call to Corey to discuss the financial results further, I wanted to mention that the Board of Directors has declared our regular quarterly dividend. We will pay a $0.06 per share dividend on December 15th to shareholders of record on December 1st. Our expectation is that we will continue to pay a 6% dividend quarterly going forward. With that, I'll turn the call over to Corey. Corey?