HireQuest, Inc.

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to HireQuest Incorporated first quarter 2023 earnings 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 phone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. John Nesbitt, Investor Relations. John, over to you.

Thank you and good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to the call. Hosting the call today are HireQuest Chief Executive Officer Rick Hermans and Chief Financial Officer David Burnett. I'd like to take a moment to read the Safe Harbor Statement. This conference call contains four 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, should, or other comparable terms involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and dependent circumstances that will occur in the future. These statements include statements regarding the intent, belief, or current expectations of higher requests and members of its management, as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance involve risks and uncertainties, including those described in HireQuest's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, 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. I would now like to turn the call over to CEO of HireQuest, Rick Hermans. Go ahead, Rick.

Thank you for joining us for today's call. To begin with, I will provide an overview of the financial and strategic highlights for the quarter. And then David will share more details surrounding our first quarter results. Our first quarter results were driven by strong performance at our organic locations and the integration of strategic accretive acquisitions into our business. Total revenue grew 40% to $9.9 million. with franchise royalties increasing 41.8% to $9.3 million. System-wide sales for the quarter increased $153.5 million compared to $101 million in the first quarter of 2022, and net income from continuing operations increased 372.1% to $2.3 million, or 17 cents per diluted share. Last quarter, we announced that we had completed our acquisition of MRI Network, a top permanent placement and executive search firm and professional staffing network based in the United States and the third largest executive recruiting network in the world. This was a transformative acquisition for us, adding over 200 franchise offices both in the United States and international to our staffing network. Excuse me. Our acquisition of MRI Network is a perfect example of our broader M&A strategy. We are intently focused on identifying, evaluating, and executing accretive acquisitions that we believe will further enhance the organic growth of our business. MRI Network allows us to add immediate scale in a brand-new vertical focused on the executive search and professional staffing market, and in a way that supports our existing HireQuest Direct and Snelling offerings. As is the case with any acquisition, we also incurred certain expenses related to our purchase of MRI network that are reflected in this quarter's results, particularly in our SG&A. These are near-term, one-off expenses that we planned for as part of the acquisition, and we expect them largely phased out by the end of the third quarter. We will note here that certain expenses related to MRI have been a bit more difficult to eliminate as quickly as we would have wished. That said, we are pleased with the progress we've made this quarter, particularly our ability to efficiently integrate large acquisitions into our business to have a near immediate positive impact on our results. This is especially true in the current economic environment, where many staffing companies have been reporting declining revenues year over year for their U.S. and North American businesses. With the first quarter now closed and a little more visibility into 2023, I'm confident that we are well positioned to continue driving our growth strategy to deliver consistent, improved results as we move through the balance of the year. With that, I'll pass it along to our CFO, David Burnett, who will provide a closer look at our first quarter results. David?

Thank you, Rick. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Expanding on some of the numbers Rick mentioned, let's start with total revenue, which for the first quarter of 2023 was $9.9 million compared to $7.0 million for the same quarter last year, an increase of 40%. Our total revenue is made up of two components, franchise royalties, which is our primary source of revenue, and service revenue, which is generated from certain services and interest charged to our franchisees and other miscellaneous revenue. On occasion, we will report a third component, company-owned revenue, which would be related to company-owned locations that are not marketed as a potential franchise and are managed by us instead of a franchisee. At March 31st, 2023, we owned one location, but it did not meet this criteria and instead is classified as held for sale and reported below the line as discontinued operations. Those operations are not included in the revenue I just mentioned, but it is important to keep in mind that we are still benefiting from this location and once it is franchised out, we will retain a royalty stream. For continuing operations, franchise royalties for the quarter were $9.3 million compared to $6.6 million for the same quarter last year, an increase of 41.8%. Almost all of the increase in royalties relates to acquisitions. Although organic sales grew modestly, we are proud to be able to maintain organic sales in an uncertain and declining market. Underlying the growth in royalties are system-wide sales, which for the quarter were $153.5 million, compared to $101 million for the same period in 2022. System-wide sales reflect sales at all offices, including those classified as discontinued. Similar to the growth in royalties, growth in system-wide sales is primarily related to acquisitions completed in 2022, but unlike many of our competitors, we did not lose organic sales year over year. Service revenue, which is generated from interest charged to our franchisees on overdue accounts receivable, service fees, and other miscellaneous revenues such as license fees, was $534,000 for the quarter compared to $468,000 for the same quarter a year ago. Changes in service revenue are generally related to growth in system-wide sales and the resulting increase in accounts receivable. Selling general and administrative expenses for the quarter were $5.8 million compared to $2.7 million in the prior year period. That is an increase of 120.1%. The increase was primarily driven by two large items. First, we had a tough comparable for our workers' compensation expense. For the first quarter in 2023, workers' compensation expense was approximately $185,000 compared to a $613,000 benefit in net workers' compensation expense in the first quarter of 2022. That is a $798,000 swing in workers' compensation expense from Q1-22 to Q1-23. This benefit in the prior year included a $365,000 reduction related to the smelling workers' compensation reserves assumed at the time of acquisition that have been winding down. There was no such adjustment in 2023. Generally, workers' compensation expense will fluctuate quarter to quarter based on the mix of worker classifications, the level of payroll, and claims resolution, both recent and historical. The predominant item driving the increase in SG&A is compensation and benefits. Compensation-related expenses have always been the largest component of SG&A. There was a $1.6 million increase in compensation-related expenses from Q1 2022 to Q1 2023. When we acquired MRI Network in December 2022, we took on over 30 new corporate employees. During the first quarter, we have absorbed significant costs as we integrate MRI Network into our operations. We are handling the integration in a disciplined manner in the hopes of creating an annuity-like payback from cost savings for the foreseeable future. Because high costs often creep back in over the near term, it is critical for us to be patient and secure cost synergies that will hold for several years. In addition to increased salaries and benefits, we have also absorbed other MRI network SG&A expenses, including marketing, IT, insurance, professional fees, and the like. As we communicated in our last earnings call, we expect to carry certain transition items and associated expenses through at least the first half of this year and into the third quarter. The increase in SG&A can be felt in income from operations, which is total revenue less SG&A depreciation and amortization. Income from operations was 3.3 million in the first three months of 2023 versus 3.9 million in the first three months of 2022, a decrease of 14.7%. Net income includes income from operations adjusted for miscellaneous items, interest, income taxes, and discontinued operations. Interest and financing expense included a $318,000 loss on debt extinguishment related to the refinance of our line of credit. This was largely offset by a $340,000 gain on the conversion of our dental power business into a franchise, which is reflected net of tax in discontinued operations. Net income for the first quarter of 2022 included $3.6 million of losses resulting from the conversion of acquired operations into franchises. All-in net income for the quarter was $2.6 million or $0.19 per diluted share compared to net income of $603,000 or $0.04 per diluted share in the first quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter of 2023 was $4.6 million compared to $5.3 million in the first quarter of 2022. We believe adjusted EBITDA is a relevant metric for us due to the size of non-cash operating expenses running through our P&L. A detailed reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income is provided in our 10Q. Moving on now to the balance sheet, our current assets at March 31st 2023 were $59.6 million compared to $51.9 million at December 31, 2022. Current assets as of March 31 included $8.2 million of cash and $48.1 million of accounts receivable, while current assets at December 31, 2023 included $3 million of cash and $45.3 million of accounts receivable. The elevated cash balance reflects some cash management inefficiencies as we change banks from Truist to Bank of America. Current assets exceeded current liabilities by $14.7 million on March 31st versus year-end when working capital was $15.2 million. The decrease in working capital reflects a larger balance on the credit line following the acquisition of MRI Network. At year-end, we had $21. At quarter end, we had $21.2 million drawn in our credit facility and another $19.1 million in availability, assuming continued covenant compliance. As I've referenced a couple times, in February of 23, we replaced a line of credit facility at Truist Bank plus a term loan we had at Truist Bank with a new $50 million line of credit from Bank of America. We believe that this new facility provides us with the flexibility and room for short-term working capital needs 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, we paid a six cent per common share dividend on March 15th, 2023 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. As I said before, I am confident in HireQuest's ability to drive sustainable growth across our business and generate positive operational results in 2023 and beyond. As always, I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to our team, our franchisees, their workers for their excellent work and dedication. I'm very encouraged by the progress that we've made in expanding our franchising network and offerings to address a broad spectrum of staffing needs, and I look forward to leveraging our network to drive growth and value for our shareholders. With that, we'll now open the line for questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We are now opening the floor up for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your phone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For any participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before you press the keys. One moment whilst we poll for any questions. Okay, your first question is coming from Evan Steink of Barrington. Evan, your line is live.

Hey, Kevin Steink of Barrington Research. So, yeah, I wanted to start off, I guess, by asking about organic sales growth. You noted they grew modestly while, you know, other competitors were maybe reporting declines. What's your feel for organic growth outlook as we continue to progress through 2023, you Overall demand, you know, is that softening and what's labor supply availability? Just any comments on that as we move forward in the year? Sure.

So we are definitely seeing a continued slight slowing in demand. it's noticeable without being appreciable if that makes if that makes any sense the um you know it it we're definitely you know you you can you can see it the as far as um you know throughout the year obviously look it depends on if the fed keeps increasing you know interest rates that i you know that may accelerate even further. As far as workforce supply, it's definitely based on industry, and that's even true of the declines, oddly enough, is that there are anything that touches upon tech, and that's particularly true, let's say, with the MRI network is, you know, there's, it's a full-on recession for those offices that focus on IT, at least in our experience. And there are certain geographic regions as well that are definitely performing poor. Whereas, frankly, and probably why we're outperforming, say from an organic standpoint, why we're outperforming our competition is were heavy in Texas, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, states that have not been nearly as negatively impacted as certain others, and where we are experiencing the most softening are in certain, again, are in certain states.

Okay, that's helpful commentary. Yeah, just in terms of the cost items related to the MRI, you mentioned that maybe some of the costs are rolling off a little more slowly than you might have hoped. And you also talked about the compensation and benefits increase of $1.6 million, I believe you said, related to MRI. So can you just maybe talk about a little bit more what's maybe taking a little longer there? And did you actually or have you achieved all the synergies out of the gate from MRI that you would have thought of? Or is there still more to come? Or I guess they're coming more slowly.

So that's right there. Right there's your finger on maybe why they're going down a bit slower than hoped for is some of the synergies have been slower. And what I want to caution really anybody who's listening as far as who's an investor is, you know, this is a marathon. And we, you know, in buying MRI, we took over a company that has in, let's say, system-wide sales, more than 50% of what we had. So this is, you know, this was a very significant acquisition. And while, you know, in my optimism had maybe hoped that we were going to be able to digest it faster than, let's say, than what it's turned out to be, you know, so some of the expenses are sticking around a little bit longer because we want to make sure we do gather all of those efficiencies, you know, all the synergies that we really know that in the long run we'll have. And so, like I said, is it taking a little bit longer? Yeah. And, you know, that's why I'll own it. You know, is that, you know, earlier, you know, we were really, I had been hoping and thinking that by the end of the second quarter, all the expenses would be gone. They'll definitely drag a bit into the, you know, into the third quarter. But, you know, this is where, obviously, I mean, I've only been the CEO of sort of the public company since middle of 2019. Hopefully, I've developed a track record of where I'm not going to try to overpromise anything, and I certainly did it prior to that when we were a private company. And, you know, so it's like this, you know, this, you know, I know when we're overstaffed, I know when we're over, you know, when we're overspending on something. On the other hand, we bought MRI with some very, very specific goals in mind. And yes, it's taking a little more patience. Of course, again, we're still only five months into this thing, you know, five and a half months. So it's not like we've been screwing around with this for years. You know, but there are just certain things that we absolutely know will generate those, again, those synergies. But ultimately, I know where we need to be to have this be a good investment. And we'll ultimately get to the point we need to get to. But I want to use a concrete example. Let's say franchise sales. And I think even you asked the question back in maybe it was September of last year or like third quarter last year, maybe before that. We had never up until the end of You know, the latter half of 2022, we, meaning HireQuest, had never actually had a franchise sales program. We never had a franchise salesperson, never hired brokers, never did anything. It was all purely organic. And we started with like a part-time salesperson at the end of last year. And even that was by part-time, it was probably not even the halftime of a person. Well, now through the MRI acquisition, you know, we had two salespeople. Now, franchise salespeople. Now, realistically, you know, it's easy to demonstrate and measure whether they're successful or not. And, you know, those are things where it requires patience. We can't expect that all of a sudden on day one we're going to be cranking out four new franchises a month. It just doesn't work that way. That being said, you know, we can certainly, again, measure what's coming in. or, you know, what's being produced. And if, you know, if it's insufficient, you know, there's all sorts of opportunities to just to go back to the way we were. So I guess, again, what I'm really saying to you, and I'm saying to anybody who's listening, is we're well aware of where we need to be. And we're well aware of what, you know, what our costs realistically need to be at. But we're also interested in what happens to the company three years from now and five years from now, far more than we are interested in what happens over the next three months.

Great. That's helpful commentary. And you know, that makes sense obviously with an acquisition of this size to, you know, take the time to get it right. Uh, even if maybe it takes a little bit longer. Um, so completely understood there. Um, So maybe just lastly here, you enumerated a number of costs in the press release and your comments here. And I think you said some of those coming off by the third quarter or maybe by the end of the third quarter. What costs should we think about rolling off there? You mentioned IT expenses and license fees. third-party services for contract staffing, obviously the salary and benefits costs, and advertising and marketing. So just wondering what kind of should be coming out, you know, as we get to that third quarter timeframe.

Yeah, so let me make sure I clarify that statement, and I'll go back to my – because, you know, part of it isn't – It's not necessarily just reducing costs. It's making sure that the costs are in line with what the revenues are. So I'll go back to the franchise salespeople. I'd hire 50 more franchise salespeople if they were producing enough new franchises to justify the cost. Right? So I'm not saying to you, you know, that, well, we're going to get rid of it because that will reduce our costs so that our SG&A goes down. That's not really the point. The point is more, you know, we're going to make sure that we're selling enough franchisees to justify what is a fairly heavy investment. Now, some instance, and so that's important to note. I mean, and again, it's sort of like we took on over 220 new franchises. Well, we want to make sure that they understand that we're committed to their success and to giving them good service. But it still ultimately has to flow through that those costs are in line with what the revenues are. Now, as far as some other costs that are identified to go away, there are certain softwares where we're running – we have – two different copies of, let's say, of our accounting software. Well, it takes a while. You know, what theirs was and ours was, those have to be integrated, even though they're two copies of the exact same software. It's just, you know, frankly, things, you know, that's a good example. The other part is we had a holdover of their CFO software. you know, there meaning MRI network CFO. Well, okay, he left in the middle of April. So that, you know, that's an expense that rolls, you know what I'm saying? That's an expense that rolled off already that will then be partially captured in the second quarter and obviously will be completely gone in the third quarter. And, you know, I do want to draw out two other points. I don't want to just have it be, you know, buried as well. One is, is Keep in mind our effective tax rate, just the effect of a higher effective tax rate was about $170,000 of net income. Not that that changes a lot, but it's still kind of one of those things. Obviously, we get no benefit from paying taxes other than it keeps us alive as a company, but there's no, relatively speaking, we paid a lot higher tax rate. And it's described why, but the point is it does make a comparison. not look as good as what I'd prefer. And the other part is with the workers' comp. That workers' comp swing of, you know, $800,000, you know, was frankly not expected, you know, but it's, you know, it's obviously had a major impact. But going back to your other point is that, you know, there are, like I said, certain softwares that, you know, the contract will come out, will be coming up, You know, that both, both higher quest and MRI network might be using some form of, let's say, you know, where we store our data, you know, the, you know, their software or their data storage isn't a completely separate than how we store ours. Well, obviously, that's caught, you know, that's just not cost effective. But that takes three months, six months, nine months before that stuff goes away. And so anyway, there are just certain things that we had hoped we could have gotten through faster than what we did and are. And part of it is – and again, it's why I still want to go back to why we're focusing on three to five years, not three to five months – we spent a lot of time these last five months really working on relationships within the franchise community because really ultimately what we bought, and I want to make sure this is made completely clear, is we bought a series of 220 relationships. And how well we do with this deal in the long run is going to be based on how well we do with building relationships with those 220 people franchises because kind of a funny thing is, is if you look at, I don't know exactly what the data is, but if you went and looked for it, it probably, you know, franchise acquisition costs are probably at least $50,000 per franchise. And so if you looked at the value of, you know, uh, MRI just off of that, you know, just to replace it, to get to 220 franchises, we'd be, we'd probably have to pay $11 million. with zero historical revenue. So I want to keep that in perspective is, again, we're focused on those relationships as well, because that's where the synergies will ultimately come from, is they get comfortable with us. And so, like I said, we're being patient. We're being patient. We're trying to invest in the system in a way that benefits all of our franchises. But again, we're also well aware that Ultimately, everything needs to be cost effective. I've been in business for 33 years, and that's never been a problem for me to make sure that ultimately we're in that position.

Okay. Thanks for all the insight. That was helpful. I will turn it over. Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Matthew Hayes from D.A. Davidson. Matthew, your line is live.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Weekly jobless claims just came in at $264,000, hitting a one-and-a-half-year high last week. Could you comment on how this development impacts your business?

I think that where it affects us most is it's an indicator that demand is softening. It's just another indicator. It hasn't really impacted us from a job fill standpoint. Other than what I would say is clients are being a bit more selective. A year ago, a year and a half ago, many clients were desperate enough that they would you know, that they were less choosy than what they are now. Now they're back to a more normal way of being choosy. So that's one aspect of it. And, you know, as I said before, in response to one of Kevin's questions, there are certain industries and areas that are, you know, that 260, I would love to be able to see the detail of that 264,000, you know, new jobless, 264,000 new jobless claims, my guess is that they fall in probably, you know, very much in certain industries and, you know, not necessarily overall. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I would just say that, you know, like I said, but anytime you start seeing that and if the jobless rate starts going up, you know, clearly that's what's driving that softness. That's why, you know, Some of our competition were showing revenue declines of 14, 15, 16%. And that would tend to accelerate that, higher jobless claims, obviously.

That makes sense. And a follow-up for you, Rick. You've built this business from scratch, and it seems like a real differentiator to this story is your deep understanding of both the franchise staffing model and incentivizing entrepreneurs from having been in this business for over 30 years. I guess my question is, how much longer do you plan on running the business?

You know what? I have no – I have no – Pretty much I work out five days a week, even though I'm fat. I still work out five days a week. I feel great. So I have no intention of going anywhere.

Great. I'll jump back in here.

Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Mike Albanese of EF Hutton. Mike, your line is live.

Rick, David, how are you guys? David, how are you? Good, Mike. Yeah, hey, first off, glad to hear that, you know, you have no intentions of, I guess, leaving, continuing to, you know, build upon your previous successes here at HireQuest. You pretty much answered, you know, my question in your responses to Kevin, but I'd like to just go back to his original question, and maybe we can dig into it just a little bit deeper. And the question is, you know, as it relates to the divergence in organic growth rate between you and your competitors. And I'm wondering if you get the sense at all that you're stealing market share from them, you know, and what that could be attributable to, you know, is it the difference in business model or is it just simply, you know, kind of what you're, what you alluded to, which is just your exposure to different end markets and different geographies. I'm really just wondering if there's more under the hood there.

I would love to sit there and say we're just so much freaking better than everybody else that we're just crushing them. Right. And that's why. Honestly, though, if I said that, I'd be I'd be lying. I mean, I do think generically we are better. Right. I mean, I'd say that to any client because of our model. Right. I would always take a franchisee on average over. corporate run store every time right so I believe in that that being said though that has been baked into our numbers for literally decades so I can't really claim that is why we did so much let's say better from a revenue standpoint this quarter I think it's a hundred percent just based on where we are and because even within our own numbers there are a couple of places where we are off and And fortunately, those are in places where we have, you know, those tend to be in places where we have less exposure. And look, I live in Florida. You know, you would, you would never, you know, you would never confuse this place with someplace that's in a recession. It's, it's booming. House prices are up, everything's up. Fortunately, like I said, we are heavy in Texas and, you know, Texas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee. So I just think that is really what it is. And so call that strategy, call it dumb luck. You know, it is just a fact.

Yeah, no, I mean, well said. That's fair. You know, I think I'd like to give you a little more credit than it's just dumb luck, right? I mean, where you're located is by design, you know. But my general thought is I wonder if the softening process You know, labor market and the weakening demand is really exposing a better business model. And if that's starting to show in the numbers, and, yeah, I know it's hard to kind of dissect that. So I was just curious as to what your thoughts on that were.

So, yeah, thank you very much.

Even in the places where we're way down, right, like there's one particular market I'm thinking we're way down. It's related to one single client. Mm-hmm. And, you know, it was just and, you know, they have had a big slowdown and they consolidated their operations. Well, there's nothing we could do. There's literally nothing we could do about that. Now, if we were in certain other, you know, certain other states, you know, we're in certain other states where, you know, it's just it's it's softer. You can tell. I mean, you can see it. you know, probably even where you look at real estate prices, and it's almost a harbinger for us as well. I will say, you know, for a thought going forward is, obviously, you know, if interest rate increases ultimately choke off commercial real estate demand, you know, that's, you know, that's a, you know, that's sort of a longer term where it starts to create broad-based problems.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, thank you very much. That's really all I got for you today. All right.

Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Aaron Edelheit of Mindset Capital. Aaron, your line is live.

Thank you. Just for the record, Rick, you're not allowed to leave a higher class. That's a new shareholder rule we're implementing. I don't know if you know about it. I just want to say in all seriousness, I really appreciate the candor. I really appreciate you just sharing open and not glossing over any of the tougher things that you go through. I really appreciate it. My question, just to clarify, and I really appreciate all the detail that you've shared in your commentary and answering the questions. It sounds like you believe the synergies are still there. It just may be an extra quarter. And that when we're looking in Q4, obviously no one can control or no one, well, I could predict where the economy was going. I'd be sitting on a beach somewhere, but absent that, by Q4, things should be normalized to where you want them to be. Is that an accurate assessment?

No, I would say that's actually somewhat inaccurate, but maybe not in the way that you think. I would have never, I never went in, we never went in thinking that we were going to get all these synergies in the first quarter or the second quarter. A lot of these are literally, these are three to five year propositions in a lot of cases. For example, utilizing, MRI has a great training program. Well, we're co-opting that into also working with our Snelling branches, for example. Now, what's the payoff on that, right, in the current quarters? it's nothing really, right? It's, it's something that happens over time. And so I don't expect to get a benefit from that for two, three years, frankly. Now there are other things, there are other synergies in particular where I think that, you know, both the MRI network and higher quest direct, well, and Snelling, all three frequently sell to the exact same companies, but maybe different areas within those companies. those synergies have been slower to develop than what I had really thought. And that those are the ones that definitely should be blooming by the third and fourth quarter. But that's taken a little bit longer than what it is. That would be a faster one. And again, some of the synergies on just how we deliver our services. So whether that's

handling accounting and things like that there are there are still synergies that you know that that just we just have to plow through it and already they've started but they need to you know but they have more to go yeah when you those costs that you specifically highlighted uh it's like seven eight hundred thousand dollars outside of the workers comp which i understand fluctuates up and down are I just want to clarify so that I fully understand. Are those some of the costs? Are those all of the costs? Are there even more synergies that you fully expect? Like, how should I think about those specific extra costs that you highlighted in the press release versus kind of the, in terms of a more normalized where things should be Q4?

So I'm a builder, not a burner, right? We didn't buy MRI network, you know what I'm saying, to strip out whatever we could and then just, you know what I'm saying, just feed off of a corpse. That makes no sense. There would be no purposes in us doing that. Rather, we looked at MRI network as being something that would be accretive to what we do. It would expand, it does expand our product offerings to a far broader segment of the overall staffing industry. It also brought in 220 franchisees, many of which certainly have the talent to do more than what they're doing. And so by bringing those resources, it is absolutely our intention and goal and expectation that there are – again, within that group of 220 MRI franchises, there are a fairly good-sized number that – you know what I'm saying? That we can help them double or triple their business. That's how we're going into it. That requires – and so – I'm not saying – because I wouldn't carry – I want to make sure I'm clear. Unless it was something along the lines of, hey, we only have one person who knows how to run this software, and we better not get rid of them even though they're a terrible, expensive employee. There's nobody I want to – there's nobody – and I tried to – and I may have done a bad job with it when I was answering Kevin's question. It's not my goal to – you know what I'm saying? It's not my goal to cut anything. My – Our goal would be that those synergies would develop, those incremental amounts of business would develop, that those costs are just in line with what they need to be. And I go back to the – I don't want to beat a dead horse, but the franchise sales, again, it's very easy to demonstrate whether it's been successful or not. And we've got a pretty heavy investment in it. Now, I believe it'll make a lot of sense. And we've started to, you know, we've got some green shoots that have started. I think we've opened, I don't know, you know, in the first through May. You know, I don't know. You know, there's been, I think we got to, anyway, like four or five, something like, don't quote me on that. I'm not, you know, but it's, but, you know, they're starting to come, right? So it's kind of like, okay. And, you know, that's, then that justifies it. But those results, even as you sell a new franchise, you don't really get jacked when you sell one of those. It's over time that that starts becoming worthwhile. So that was a really long way of answering your question, but it's just simply – I would not look at the synergies as just, hey, let's just gut what we can. It's not that at all. It's making sure that we use what we have to absolutely optimize our what we're doing.

So if I were to summarize what I heard, this is really about this acquisition is really about growth. When I just take some of the examples, you have people who will sell franchises for the first time, you have training programs, you bought a new franchises who have the opportunity to expand what they're doing with higher risk offerings. And that by next year, it should be really clear that organically from the combined HireQuest MRI, that HireQuest is growing organically. And if you're not, then you'll pull back on some of these investments. Is that a right way to think about it?

Yeah, that's 100%. That is exactly. You're spot on.

Okay, so speaking of growth, I would be remiss to – you have an expanded credit line. You've been a tracker.

It's actually reduced, by the way. It's reduced.

Oh, okay. Well, I guess I'm more flexible. But what does your pipeline look like? And I'm keenly interested because if my understanding is correct, the economy does weaken from here. You don't have as great as an account receivable demand, which means your cash balance goes up. You pay down your credit line. along with just your normal free cash flow, puts you in even a better position to acquire more companies like MRI. What does your pipeline look like? And how do you think about where you are balance sheet wise towards taking advantage if you see another great opportunity like MRI?

So as far as on the pipeline, my answer is the same as what is almost every quarter. which is we have more than enough targets. I will fully admit we're being choosy because you know, you're buying off of 2022 multiples or earnings rather versus maybe what's really going on now. So, you know, we're being careful because you know, we need to see some people experience a little bit of pain. that's when we'll probably be more aggressive. You are right in saying that obviously to the extent that our revenues go down, it also drives down our AR, which then of course drives down our borrowings. Based on ordinary earnings and cash flow, obviously I would like to think of it as though we will have a relatively, notwithstanding any future acquisitions in the near term, that our line of credit will move down relatively quickly. And so the resources we have generally are adequate even as it is. And again, I would expect our line to drop fairly, you know, fairly consistently and yet significantly over the next three to four quarters. Realizing as well, and it's, it was in the press release, I think, but it's, you know, we're really inefficient right now as far as on our cash, you know, on our cash position is, I think even at the end of the quarter, we were sitting at like 8 million bucks in cash versus let's say three at the end of the year. So our borrowings were really inflated by, at least on that day, $5 million versus what they probably normally should have been. Point being that – because that was kind of just now we've – anyway, we had clients paying into old lockbox instead of new lockbox. So anyway, like I said, it's just harder to keep the cash balances as low as we would normally like to. All that being said is that I don't see any actual lack of resources unless we were able to bag a whale.

Thank you very much, and keep up the great work. Thank you.

Thank you very much. There appear to be no further questions in the queue. I'm going to hand back over to management for any closing remarks.

I want to thank everybody for listening in. I hope that you will, uh, agree that the quarter was momentous in that, again, we took on an entity that represented almost 50% of what higher quest was previously, and that there are a lot of opportunities out there that we are working towards admittedly, uh, little, you know, um, The opportunities are in some ways bigger, and therefore the investments are bigger. But anyway, I do want to thank you for joining us and look forward to continuing the success as we go through 2023. Thank you very much.

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