HireQuest, Inc.

Greetings, and welcome to the HireQuest, Inc. fourth quarter and year-end 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Jennifer Belladeau. You may begin.

Thank you, Callie. I would like to welcome everybody to the call. Hosting the call today are HireQuest CEO Rick Hermans and CFO David Burnett. Let me take a moment to read the Safe Harbor Statement. This conference call contains forward-looking statements as defined within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. These forward-looking statements in terms such as anticipate, expect, intend, may, will, or other comparable terms involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future. Those statements include statements regarding the intense belief or current expectations of HireQuest and members of its management, as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Respective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, including those described in HireQuest's periodic reports follows the SEC, and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Except as required by federal securities law, HireQuest undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed conditions. Let me now turn the call over to the CEO of HireQuest, Rick Herman. Go ahead, Rick.

Thank you for joining us for today's call. To begin, I will provide an overview of the financial and strategic highlights for the quarter. And then David will share more details surrounding our fourth quarter results. We delivered strong top-line growth in the fourth quarter, driven primarily by our franchise royalties, which increased by 26.4% to $7.7 million. Total revenue also increased 23.1% to $8 million. Income from operations increased 68.4%. to $2.8 million and net income from continuing operations increased 21% to $2.6 million or 19 cents per basic and diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $4.4 million compared to $3.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, showcasing our ability to drive sustained profitability across our business. For the full year, We saw an increase in franchise royalties of 35.6% to $28.9 million compared to $21.3 million in 2021. Income from operations increased 109.6% to $16 million compared to $7.7 million in 2021. Our net income from continuing operations increased modestly to $12 million or 87 cents per basic and diluted share compared to $11.8 million or 88 cents a share per basic and 87 cents per diluted share in 2021, primarily related to acquisition costs that we incurred throughout 2022. However, adjusting for these acquisition-related charges and other non-cash expenses that we expect to recoup as we integrate and scale our acquisitions, we actually saw an increase in adjusted EBITDA of 78.9% to $22 million compared to $12.3 million in 2021. So as you can see, we believe we are well positioned to drive continued profitability in tandem with our strategy of making accretive acquisitions that complement the organic growth of our business. Speaking more on our acquisition strategy, in the fourth quarter, we announced and closed our acquisition of certain assets of MRI Network, the third largest recruiting network in the world, adding over 200 offices to our franchise network across the United States and internationally. MRI provides us with immediate scale in the executive recruiting and professional staffing segments of the market and is highly complimentary to our existing HireQuest Direct and Snelling offerings. We've made great progress in integrating MRI into our operations. However, there are certain transition items and associated expenses that we will be carrying through the first half of this year. In addition to MRI, we successfully grew our franchise base through three other acquisitions over the course of 2021. These transactions fall under our more common category where we acquire businesses with one or more offices and then resell them as franchises. As I've mentioned on previous calls, we've become quite efficient at executing and integrating acquisitions like these into our business and expect that they will continue to make up a majority of the transactions we complete going forward. Overall, we're very pleased with our fourth quarter and annual results and are encouraged by the progress we've made both organically and through our acquisition strategy throughout fiscal 2022. We remain intently focused on identifying accretive opportunities in the market that allow us to continue expanding our franchise network and brand offerings and complement the organic growth of our business. As we move through 2023, we believe we are well positioned for continued growth in the current uncertain economic environment as many businesses and organizations may opt to fill their staffing needs with temporary rather than permanent employees. Additionally, an uncertain economy could result in consolidation in our industry, providing acquisition opportunities. That said, nobody likes a recession. and we will remain watchful as the year unfolds. With that, I'll pass along to our CFO, David Burnett, who will provide a closer look at our fourth quarter and full year results. David?

Thank you, Rick. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. At the risk of repeating some of the numbers Rick mentioned, let's start with total revenue, which for the fourth quarter of 2022 was $8 million compared to $6.5 million for the same quarter. in 2021, an increase of 23.1%. Total revenue for all of 2022 was 31 million, an increase of 37.4% over 2021 when total revenue was 22.5 million. Our total revenue is made up of two components, franchise royalties, our primary source of revenue, which makes up roughly 95% of our total revenue, and service revenue, which is generated from service fees, interest charged on overdue accounts, and other miscellaneous franchise-related revenue. On occasion, we will report a third component, company-owned revenue, which would be related to operations that are not marketed as a potential franchise and are managed by us instead of a franchisee. At December 31st, 2022, we operated two such locations, but they did not meet this criteria and instead were classified as held for sale and reported below the line as discontinued operations. Even though we previously have reported one of these as company-owned revenue, we reclassified it in the fourth quarter and retroactively as we began the process of franchising it out. I won't refer to those operations specifically, and they are not included in the revenue I just mentioned, but it is important to keep in mind that we are still benefiting from them, and once they are franchised out, we will retain a royalty stream. For continuing operations, franchise royalties for the quarter were $7.7 million, compared to 6.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2021, an increase of 26.4%. For the full year 2022, royalties were 28.9 million compared to 21.3 million in the full year 2021, an increase of 35.6%. Underlying the growth in royalties are system-wide sales, which for the quarter were 127.9 million compared to 106.8 million for the same period in 2021. System-wide sales for the full year 2022 were $472.2 million compared to $354.5 million in the full year 2021, an increase of 33.2%, primarily related to acquisitions completed in 2022 and organic growth related to the rebound from the economic downturn lingering in 2021 due to COVID-19. System-wide sales include sales at all offices, including those classified as discontinued. Selling general and administrative expenses for the quarter were $4.7 million compared to $4.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. For the year, SG&A decreased from $13.3 million in 2021 to $12.9 million in 2022. The decrease was primarily driven by a $2 million benefit in net workers' compensation, $1.2 million of which is attributable to the Snelling workers' compensation reserves that were assumed at the time of the acquisition and are currently in runoff mode. This decrease was offset by a net increase in compensation expense of approximately $800,000, which includes additional headcount to keep pace with our growth. Compensation-related expenses remain by far the largest component of SG&A, and most of the costs we took on from the MRI acquisition are related to human capital. Income from operations, which is total revenue plus SG&A, depreciation, and amortization, was 16 million in 2022 versus 7.7 million in 2021, an increase of 109.6%. Most of the 8.5 million increase in total revenue fell straight to income from operations, reflecting our ability to leverage incremental revenue without rapid increases in core operating expenses. Income tax expense for the quarter was approximately 1.9 million, an effective tax rate of 13.7%. This was over double the effective tax rate for 2021, which was 5.1%. The lower rate for 2021 was the result of a large non-taxable bargain purchase gain recognized as part of the Snelling acquisition. Our normal effective tax rate is expected to be in the teams and will fluctuate based on significant permanent items like the work opportunity tax credit. All in net income for the quarter was 2.7 million or 20 cents per diluted share compared to net income of $2.2 million or $0.16 per diluted share in the fourth quarter last year. For the year, net income was $12.5 million or $0.91 per diluted share compared to net income of $11.9 million in 2021 or $0.87 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2022 was $4.4 million compared to $3.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 And as Rick highlighted earlier, our adjusted EBITDA for the year was $22 million compared to $12.3 million last year. We believe adjusted EBITDA is a relevant metric for us going forward due to the size of non-cash operating expenses running through our P&L. A detailed reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income will be provided in our 10-K. Moving on now to the balance sheet, our current assets at December 31, 2022 were $51.9 million compared to $42 million at December 31, 2021. Current assets as of December 31 included $3 million of cash and $45.3 million of accounts receivable, while current assets at December 31, 2021 included $1.3 million of cash and $38.2 million of accounts receivable. Current assets exceeded current liabilities by $15.2 million at December 31, 2021, versus a year earlier when working capital was $20.5 million. The decrease in working capital reflects a larger balance on the credit line following the acquisition of the MRI network assets late in the fourth quarter. At year end, we had $12.5 million drawn on our credit facility and another $12.2 million in availability after accounting for certain reserves and letters of credit. In February 2023, we replaced this Truist Bank facility plus a term loan we had at Truist Bank with a new $50 million credit line from Bank of America. We believe this new facility provides us with the flexibility and room for both organic growth as well as the capacity to capitalize on potential future acquisitions. We have paid a regular quarterly dividend since the third quarter of 2020. Continuing that pattern, yesterday we paid a $0.06 per common share dividend to shareholders of record as of March 1st. We expect to continue to pay a dividend each quarter, subject to the Board's discretion. With that, I will turn the call back over to Rick for some closing comments.

Thanks, David. Our fourth quarter and full year results demonstrate our ability to drive sustainable growth across our business, both organically and through acquisitions that broaden the scope of our franchised operations and expand our geographic presence. As always, I would like to take the time to acknowledge our team, our franchisees, and their workers for their continued excellence and dedication to the success of our business. This is an exciting time for our business, and we believe that with our significantly expanded franchise network and dynamic offerings for a variety of staffing and other talent-related needs, we are well positioned to continue driving improved results and value for our shareholders as we move through 2023. With that, we can now open the line to questions. Thank you.

Certainly. The floor is now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Please hold just one moment while we poll for questions. Your first question is coming from Mike Baker with DA Davidson. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Okay, thanks.

Lots I could ask, but I guess I'll ask this. You guys are in a pretty interesting and unique position to have an opinion on the job market, which is obviously a huge topic right now. and wages and all those kinds of things. So I guess I'll just ask you bigger picture. What's your view of the job market right here of where wages are going? Is it easier or harder to find temporary staffing? And how does your business typically react in a recession? And would that be different this time around just because of the diversification that you guys now have through your acquisitions? Thanks.

Thanks, Mike. So number one is I would say that there is no question that there has been a noticeable, uh, slackening of demand. So there's no question that the, you know, at the margins, the amount of openings have declined and therefore it is easier to find people that said wages are still continuing to go up. And so for us, the increasing wages tends to soften the blow of, let's say, reduced demand. But it's noticeable. Now, as far as how our business generally reacts to a recession is it's not good. Recessions are never good typically for any company and certainly not for a staffing company. That said, there is still such a, while everybody is rightfully concerned about the economy, we're still sitting with incredibly low unemployment rates. And therefore, maybe I'm whistling past the graveyard, but it seems to me that This is very much different than usual in that there is just a shortage of talent. And so, again, while I completely acknowledge that there is a slowing down of overall demand, the demand in most instances still exceeds our capacity to actually even fill it. And so it will take quite a bit more slippage before we it will really start to, before it would really start to impact our numbers. But thanks for the question.

Sure. And so I guess as a follow-up to that, you know, sort of understanding that you don't really give forward guidance, and I appreciate that, but, you know, how should we think about, in the past we've sort of thought of, you know, your system-wide sales growing at GDP or something along those lines. Is that still a fair way to think about the system-wide sales?

So, let's set aside MRI for a second because that creates a new, that's created a new dynamic for us. In our core Snelling and HigherQuest Direct, Yes, I mean, GDP really does represent a good gauge as to which way our system-wide sales are going to go. And so if you assume a recession, I think that it's fair to say that for us to lose two to three times whatever the percent decline in GDP is, is a reasonable assumption. And Whereas growing tends to be not that much of a factor unless we're coming directly out of a trough. In other words, obviously, if you go back to 2017, 2018, we'd been in a growth period already for five, six years. So I'm not suggesting that a 3% growth of GDP would necessarily yield a 9% increase in our system-wide sales. But coming off of a trough, then that same way that I was saying going into a recession would drop it two to three times the GDP decline. In the immediate couple of quarters coming out of a recession would also be that factor of two to three times a, you know, two to three times sort of that increase, which is really just typically recovering what was lost during the recession. Does that make any sense in what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I got it. I'm with you. I'm following you. Okay. So that's – But then how does MRI impact that again? Going back to the MRI part, the – and this was in our sort of updated investor presentation that was put out in – I think it was December, maybe early January, but probably late December. You know, the – The system-wide sales, once you include MRI, are going to be a lot more jumpy than what they have been in the past. And so, you know, but MRI had a lot, does have a lot of franchisees that pay franchise royalties that are significant, basically aren't necessarily tied to their sales volume. And so it's, it's, I just want to make sure that system-wide sales are not going to be nearly as predictive in the future as they were in the past. And so I just want to caveat all of that, is that that will definitely make a big difference. Now, obviously, you know, that will be segment information, you know, that will be, you know, split out going forward, but I just want to clarify that as well.

Okay. So using the old math, in other words, of you know, net income should equal three to 4% of system wide sales. You're saying that that, that doesn't really hold anymore.

Yeah, that's pretty much the, frankly, that's out the window except for, except for our traditional state, you know, our Snelling and our higher quest direct offices. But it's, but so with the MRI, it's, it's significantly different. And so, um, as we put out in December, you know, it's, We're looking more now towards a percentage of fortunately with the MRI acquisition, our royalty revenues are now higher. If you go back five, eight calls ago, one of the things we shied away from, we shied away from utilizing revenue gap revenue, mostly because it was so, you know, it was relatively small and therefore it was so, you know, it would, it would be very jumpy. And so we didn't want to necessarily – we didn't want to create this yo-yo effect on margins and things like that. The good news is now we're headed towards $40-plus million worth of franchise royalties, and therefore there's more stability. So our real peg going forward is more sort of particularly like you know, operating income as a percentage of royalties, or I mean, at least as revenues, is going to be more appropriate and really more what we're going to target simply because of the, you know, because of the, at least until MRI sort of settles into a pattern, you know, settles into an appropriate pattern. It just makes it really kind of meaningless compared to what it was in the past because there are, Again, there are certain franchisees that pay really a fraction of what we would have expected in the past.

Okay. Okay. Thanks for that help. I will turn it over to someone else.

Your next question is coming from Aaron Edelheit with Mindset Capital. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Hi, Rick. How are you doing? Good. How are you? I'm doing fine. I wanted to ask specifically about the pipeline. You know, you put out an 8K that was pretty amazing to kind of dive through about what MRI could mean to you in terms of how accretive it can be. And I guess we're going to see that absent some charges and transition stuff in the first half. And I understand it's going to be jumpy and everything. But, you know, as a shareholder watching you acquire these companies like Snelling and MRI and watching you build this cash flow, I'm really fascinated just to hear about, you know, can you keep doing this? And what does the pipeline look like? And should we get more you know, as the economy weakens, does it increase the odds that you could even acquire more? How should we think about just your pipeline?

Thanks for the question. So I'm going to split that into three answers. First answer is, as far as our pipeline, and I've said this on multiple occasions, is our pipeline is always, frankly, it's as full as we want it to be. And it's maintaining, for us, it's a matter of maintaining discipline. And, but it's always there. Now, with the uncertainty in the economy, I'm not so sure that, you know, that we can, frankly, we can be particularly picky now because, you know, of the chances of a recession. And the reality is, is that a bad economy, while it certainly does not help us, I mean, again, I want to reiterate that a recession does not help us, but except to the extent that it creates opportunities. And very few companies in the staffing industry, especially smaller private companies, are particularly well capitalized. And so a downturn creates a lot of opportunities. And so I would definitely say, yes, that creates, you know, a recession creates a lot more opportunities, especially at a good price. And so, you know, that's, for us, has always been the silver lining of any recession. And generally, our best deals have always been with distressed companies. And normally, obviously, it was Warren Buffett who said something that I'd rather I might ruin this quote, but I would rather pay a fair price for a good company than a good price for a fair company. However, because of our franchise model, paying a low price for a fair company still works because we liberate that fair company from bad management and put it into the hands of franchisees. So that's a long answer to we get a lot of opportunities during a recession. Now, the second part of the answer is then the pipeline for what I'd say is related to MRI, and really I could probably put points two and three into this one answer, is that the MRI acquisition stands on its own as far as a franchised opportunity for us, contract uh you know contract staffing division which you could think of as very high paid temporary staff and so that's a nice solid business that we're happy to have and then with their you know they've been a long time franchisor of executive search franchises that's great and those are those are items that we um hope to stabilize and to improve going forward as long as economic conditions allow for it. But one of the things that drew us to MRI and still does is the opportunity, and I want to make sure I caution anybody who's listening to this as I say it, this acquisition was priced and you know, was priced in a way that we don't need any of these things to occur to make it a solid deal. That being said, they are opportunities that might not have, you know, that wouldn't have existed. And so, you know, we now have a network of another 200 plus franchisees, which means we have 200 plus entrepreneurs around the globe that we can expand their horizons with some of the other offerings that we have. And probably a good example of that is, for example, we're starting to incentivize MRI franchisees to supply leads for our Snelling and Higher Quest Direct divisions. We're giving our incentives that we've always given to our Snelling and Higher Quest Direct franchises to expand into contract staffing. And so, you know, these are things that we can grow what already, you know, sort of what already existed simply because we have more opportunities. There are, you know, there are other, you know, things that we're working with as well that are similar to that. I don't want to give away our entire internal strategy, but the point is there are a lot of ways that we believe that we can squeeze a lot more efficiency out of the MRI network. And most importantly, that, you know, that is really good for the franchise network, both Snelling, higher quest and MRI, and just create more opportunities for all three of our major, all three of our major offerings. And Again, more opportunities for our franchisees means more system-wide sales, which means more royalties to HireQuest. It's truly a win-win-win. And in fact, I'll give, I guess, one example is one of our franchisees, one of our MRI franchisees has a good client, a good friend who has a manufacturing facility in Georgia. that utilizes about $2 million a year temporary staffing. The meeting might have already taken place. The point is if we get this business, the referring MRI franchisee will receive a commission. The Snelling franchisee will get a great $2 million account, and we'll get some extra royalties. It is a perfect example of if this deal goes great, those are the types of wins that we'll have Those are the types of wins that we'll have, which, like I said, will be great for the network, great for us, great for our shareholders.

Okay, so I guess what I hear, thank you for all of that, but I hear is the pipeline is still full. There's lots of opportunity. You're staying disciplined. There may be more opportunity if things weaken from here and that you're seeing a bunch of cross-selling opportunities here. in addition to the creative nature of MRI, just cross-selling and incentivizing MRI to sell some of your existing offerings is a big opportunity as well. Is that a fair summary?

No, that's a fair summary.

Okay. And so I want to go to just your comments about the economy. As you're seeing things right now, like right now on the ground, your latest from what you're seeing your franchisees are saying. When I think about a slowing of the economy or just more, you know, openings, et cetera, but you have been suffering from not having enough labor and yet also your labor, the wage rates are going up. So you're just from wages going up. I believe your system-wide revenue is, again excluding mri for the year was about 470 million and in in terms of where we are now and i'm not asking i'm asking a hypothetical if things just kind of stayed economically and wage the way it was do you see excluding mri that that 470 is flattish going up a little bit uh you know How would you see it? I'm not asking you to predict the economy. I'm more looking for how things are going so far through Q1, just in the balancing of, well, hey, you now have more access to labor to fill more orders, but there may be less orders, but wages are also going up. Can you give some color to just those dynamics?

So I would definitely say we're obviously almost halfway through or practically through the first quarter. And I would simply say that the market is flat. And so it's hard to tell in some instances have the increase in wages offset an actual decline in demand. It's hard to tell. We've also had, and I literally had a conversation this afternoon with a franchisee who's experienced a relatively difficult first quarter. But his first response in essence was, the weather has been really bad. And you've probably never heard me once say on any call that weather, I don't like quoting weather as being an issue, simply because people tend to forget that that can create a favorable you know people like to sit there say gosh aren't we great because they're comparing it to a crappy quarter from the prior year that contained you know 15 blizzards in the space of six weeks right so it's easy to do that so I don't like to do that but clearly there's been some really bad weather and so it's very very difficult to draw strong conclusions from what we're seeing right now. And I realize that's not a very satisfying answer, but it's... No, no, I think that that's very helpful.

I know, and I appreciate just the candor. So when I think about like that, and again, I want to exclude MRI just for a second. And I don't know in this transition year, because MRI is such a big kind of acquisition and it's going to be, you know, there's going to be some kind of messiness to it. if there's a way to just be like, hey, here's our original kind of system-wide revenue, and here's kind of plus MRR, just some way for this year just to simplify. But when I think about that 470 or so, and I take your traditional, again, I'm excluding MRI, and I'm just making sure that the business, because there's going to be some messiness, just so I understand, I've always thought that that's like, three and a half to, you know, 4% net margins on that 470 or so. And, and is that, is that the right, is that gets me depending on what your system wide revenue, you know, it's like 4%, it's like, you know, around dollar 25 kind of earnings power is how I have, how I personally have thought about it. Now, obviously there's going to be, you know, you have the economy or the weather, you know, just, you're acquiring companies, but excluding MRI, is that still the right kind of way to think about kind of a normalized earnings power for let's just, I don't know what to call it, the legacy business or the existing business?

I do think that that's a reasonable way of looking at it. Perhaps it, you know, maybe now it's three and a quarter to 4% because we've got more amortization than we have historically. So it's possible, you know, harder to keep up at that level just because of the amount of amortization we have.

But amortization is a, it's not a cash expense, right?

Correct. Yeah, that's right. That's correct. And I just say on the four 70 and I would say on the four 70 is that You know, clearly, now mind you, that 470 includes two weeks worth of, it does include two weeks of MRI. So it's not, you know what I'm saying? So it's not a clean, it's not a clean comparison, realizing you got to back out a certain amount of money, you know, a certain amount of for MRI. Let's just play pretend that it's 450. And I'm not, I am not saying it's 450. I'm just, let's just say it was 450. In fact, it's 460.

Well, you exceeded my number because I was expecting 443. Oh, there you go.

So we did that. So let's just say it was 460. I would say that it should, again, realizing the economy is clearly in a fraught position where a lot of things could happen. It would generally, if the economy were flat, it should go up just based on when certain of our acquisitions took place in 2022, right? So there should be growth simply from acquisitions, not even including MRI.

Gotcha. No, no, that's really helpful. And then, and so the, you know, what I'm so fascinated by is that, you know, you were mentioning amortization and It's why I love that you break out EBITDA. Normally, when you look at adjusted EBITDA, you kind of get really scared, but you can tie into your cash flows what you're building. And so that's really helpful. Now, in terms of MRI, how do you see the timeline of the integration of that in terms of, obviously, we're going to see a big jump in revenue, but you're flowing through you know, making sure that you're acquiring, that you're fixing the system and the branches and cross-selling and maybe closing down some? Like, how do you think about that in terms of how the year will progress? When do you think it'll kind of shake out, so to speak?

So I think that by, and this was in the press release, I think, for the earnings, that the first half of the year will contain costs still related to the transition. And there was a couple of people who, as an example, were or are sort of holdovers to make sure that the financial systems integrate. And so there are some more savings to come. And there are let's say lingering contracts that we, you know, that, that we're on still that will not be renewed. And I'm not talking about human capital. Now I'm talking about just, you know, there was, I'll give you an example. There was one software that was purchased that frankly we didn't like at all, but it runs through April. So we're still stuck with that for another six weeks from now. Right. But then that's going to go away. But by the end of, by the end of, uh, by the end of April, or I mean, by the end of June, I would expect that most of, most of the transition costs will have, you know, we'll be pretty much where, you know, where we should be.

And so you would expect maybe like Q3, we're seeing kind of a clean kind of integrated, fully integrated quarter.

Sure.

Unless we do another acquisition. I hope so, Rick. That's exactly right. But, yes, at least from MRI. But, yes, all things being equal, by the third quarter, we should be at a relatively normal pace. And, of course, that's one of the difficulties in looking at our track record over the last four years is, Every quarter, you know, three out of four quarters tends to have an acquisition in it or, you know, something or a pandemic. And it clearly makes things difficult, frankly, to look at. You've got to really pay attention, unfortunately. But if you look through it, you can, you know, I think most people can look at it and say, wow, there's a lot of improvements in here. and a lot of good things to grab.

Thank you so much.

Sure.

Once again, if there are any remaining questions or comments, please press star 1 on your phone at this time. You have a question from Stanford Wyatt at August Partners. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Hey, Rick. Hey, Rick. How are you doing? Good. Hey, good. I just had a quick question. I know you know in the press release that you put the dental power up for sale and excluding, it looks like that cost you about a million three of revenue. So I guess, you know, adding that back, your revenue grew over 40%. I know you had a more difficult comparison in the fourth quarter versus third quarter, but that's, I mean, that's That's showing accelerated growth to last quarter. I guess is that on a normalized basis? Is that the right way to think about it? I'm not quite sure I understand the question. Okay. Yeah. I mean, looking at the press release, it said you put dental power businesses as listed for sale and total revenue would have been $9.4 million without that.

That's over 40% growth to last year on a normalized... If you take that out, it certainly alters things. Comparing third quarter to fourth quarter is nearly impossible unless you back out the dental power revenues from the third quarter. I would simply say that there wasn't really all that much appreciably different in the real world between the third quarter and the fourth quarter. Just the reclassification of dental power, you know, as discontinued operations just changed that. So, um, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't read anything into that part.

Okay. Got it. Yeah. Just looking at the overall growth rates. Cause I know you had, um, more difficult comparing in 4Q without any COVID hit last year. And then obviously two weeks of MRI in 4Q, which maybe offset that. But nonetheless, that's a really high growth rate relative to your peers. So good to see that continuing. And then, you know, one other question just on the EBITDA margins or just the margin profile overall. I've always looked at kind of the adjusted EBITDA relative to system-wide sales to kind of take out some of the non-cash and some of the transition acquisition costs and all that. And I know that it looks like the MRI deal will be a lower margin deal. But over time, do you think you get back kind of in line? Does the margin profile get back in line with the core higher quest business? Yeah.

That's frankly a $13 million question, right? I am certainly – the deal wasn't priced on margins. It was just priced on EBITDA, and therefore the profile may always be different. And I don't think that we'll ever get to – I don't think we'll ever get to what we have – let's say for the selling and higher quest direct on it. Certainly not relative to system wide sales. We'll never get to it for that. Never come close to it. As far as revenues, I believe that we can get, you know what I'm saying? We can get within a reasonable distance of it.

Yeah.

But again, you know, part of that, and I was literally speaking to our VP of Ops today about that almost specifically, using the example of the Georgia manufacturer that I was talking about. Well, realistically, if that comes through to fruition, that's the type of, you know, kind of like a soft gain that, you know what I'm saying, that doesn't get priced into it, right? So it's like, yeah, we might not get to that point. that doesn't mean it's not really adding even more, you know, sort of more value. And so, you know, your question is really apt. It's just too early to tell how close we'll be able to get to our traditional margins.

Yep. Okay. Got it. Well, I know in the deck, you highlight the 4 million of EBITDA that, that MRI, you know, could do on a normalized basis, just as you, as you get some cost efficiencies there and, you know, with the core business, you know, doing in the, you know, in the low to mid-20s of EBITDA this year, plus the four you picked up, you know, maybe that's a reasonable way to think about it, and then hopefully there's more upside to the $4 million from MRI as you... But to your point, right, is that if we had $22 million of EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, compared to, you know, $31 million worth of

you know, revenues, you'd sit there and say, okay, you're pushing, you know what I'm saying? You're pushing 65, 70%. And you'd sit there and say, well, okay, now we get 4 million for what was roughly, let's just say 11 million of revenues. You'd say, well, that sucks. You got to, you know what I'm saying? What a terrible deal, right? You're down in the, you're down below, you know, you're sub 40%. But then you sit there and say, well, but that's still, you know, less than four times, you know what I'm saying? It's less than four times. Yeah. You paid less than, about 3.4 times EBITDA, which is a good deal, right? So that's where, like I said, it's unfortunate from the standpoint, from an analyst standpoint or investor standpoint, it kind of bollocks our numbers up a bit, right? It's just not as clean as it used to be. That being said, it goes back to my first sentence, or the first part of my response is, The deal was priced based off of EBITDA, not based off of margins.

Yeah, no, totally. I guess my question was just around, I mean, there's obviously just a ton of upside if you do get your margins back to normalize. I mean, it seemed like a great deal for the $4 million that you got right now. Oh, but we won't.

I've got to set the expectation. No, I understand what you're saying. I mean, it's great. 70%, we won't.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, great deal as it was. And then more to go as you get more efficient with it. And yeah, that was it for me. I appreciate the time and keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you.

There are no additional questions in queue at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Rick Hermans for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you everybody for joining us. I think you will agree that it was a very good quarter for us. and a good year. And we look forward to the opportunities that will present themselves in 2023. I can assure you that the management team at HireQuest is always working hard and is always looking for opportunities to continue the growth of this company. Thank you for being a part of the company and for your interest and have a good night. Thank you.

This does conclude today's conference call, and you may disconnect your phone lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.