HireQuest, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to the HireQuest, Inc. fourth quarter and year-end 2025 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, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Walter Frank of IMS Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. I would like to welcome everybody to the call. Hosting the call today are HireQuest CEO Rick Hermans and CFO David Hartley. I would like to 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 and terms such as anticipate, expect, intend, may, will, should 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 intent, belief, or current expectations of HireQuest 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 and involve risks and uncertainties, including those described in HireQuest's periodic reports filed with 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 change conditions. I would now like to turn the call over to the CEO of HireQuest, Rick Hermans.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our call today. As we've spoken to on previous calls, the macro environment has driven a challenging time for the staffing industry. That said, we remain solidly profitable and executed well in 2025. As many of you already know, we acquired MRI Network, our global executive search and permanent placement brand, back in 2022 as a way for us to tap into the increasing demand for executive search and permanent placement staffing offerings. Since we acquired the business, hiring for both executive search and permanent placement have slowed. and that dynamic impacted our ability to scale and grow MRI. MRI Network had two components of its business, a permanent placement executive recruiting piece and a contract staffing piece. After careful consideration during the fourth quarter, we announced our strategic decision to change the ownership structure of MRI Network by divesting the permanent placement piece of the business into a new entity and transitioning majority ownership to a newly formed leadership group made up of current and former franchise owners. We believe this is a positive strategic shift for MRI Network and the future growth of the brand. By restructuring ownership and aligning MRI's leadership with experienced franchise owner operators, we're making sure the network is being guided by the people who live its mission every day. This reset is focused on growing and strengthening client partnerships to unite a global network of executive staffing and permanent placement offices into a cohesive, high-performing organization. Importantly, HigherQuest remains fully committed to MRI Network and will continue to retain partial ownership and support the brand with essential infrastructure, purchasing power, and shared services across our staffing and recruiting network. So what that means for HigherQuest and you as shareholders of HigherQuest is that as of January 1st of this year, the permanent placement portion of MRI is operating under this new entity in which HireQuest has a minority ownership stake in. And HireQuest continues to operate and have full ownership of the contract staffing piece of the MRI business, which is the part that more closely aligns with our other franchise offerings. In another development, we announced in December that HireQuest's board of directors board of directors had approved a share repurchase program that authorizes the company to repurchase up to $20 million of its outstanding shares of common stock. We believe that a share repurchase program is currently an efficient use of our capital, reflects our commitment to prudent capital management and deployment, and reinforces the confidence that the board and management team have in HireQuest's long-term strategy while also returning capital to our shareholders. Prior to the close of the year, we surveyed over 400 offices across our HireQuest Direct, Snelling, and MRI brands to get a better sense of the overall job market and hiring trends as we headed into 2026. The data we collected points to a steadying market with fewer extremes and early signals of reallocation across industries. In other words, while we don't expect 2026 to be defined by a hiring boom or bust, We do expect more balance in the labor market that appears to be stabilizing around new priorities, including flexibility, fit, and the kind of skilled work and labor that can't be automated by AI. Some key statistics from the survey include 68% of offices surveyed said time to fill for open roles steadied in 2025, while 35% saw increases. This is generally considered to be a clear indicator of market stability. 61% of recruiters expect the time to fill to remain stable in 2026, while 15% expect improvement as candidate supply normalizes. On average, employers are moving faster to secure top candidates in full-time roles, demonstrated by the late 2025 hiring urgency uptick. Looking ahead, we expect several trends including AI and automation, reshoring and tariff relief, and economic and political shifts to be key forces that shape the 2026 hiring landscape. HireQuest is keeping a close eye on the many markets in which we operate, and we believe that we're well-positioned with our franchise staffing model to benefit from a stabilizing market and to meet the shifting demands of employers in 2026. Lastly, I'd like to acknowledge that on March 3rd, Snelling, our nationwide temporary and direct hire recruiting service, celebrated 75 years of continuous operation, placing it among the longest running staffing firms in the United States. On behalf of all of HireQuest, we congratulate them on three quarters of a century of success and look forward to many more years as a leader in their respective markets. With that, I'll now turn the call over to David to provide a closer look at our fourth quarter and full year financial results.