Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc.

Good afternoon and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Hydric and Struggles Q2 2022 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Should you require any assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad and an operator will assist you. During today's call, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the conference over to Suzanne Rosenberg, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to our 2022 second quarter conference call. On today's call is our President and CEO, Krishnan Rajagopalan, and Chief Financial Officer, Mark Harris. We posted our second quarter slides on the IR homepage of our website at hydric.com, and we encourage you to view these slides for additional context. Please note that in the materials presented today, we may refer to non-GAAP financial measures that we believe provide additional insight into underlying results. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures may be found in the earnings press release. Also, in our remarks, we may make certain forward-looking statements. We ask that you please refer to the Safe Harbor language also contained in today's press release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Krishnan.

Thank you, Suzanne, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me begin with a brief recap of our financial highlights, which marked another truly stellar quarter of record results for our firm. Today we announced consolidated net revenue of $299 million, growing 15% over last year and marking a new milestone as the highest quarter of revenue in the company's history. Growth was seen across all segments of our business and of note, Executive Search delivered its highest revenue quarter ever, and Hydric Consulting reached its second highest level ever. On-demand talent posted revenue of more than $22 million, which puts us on an annual run rate of more than $90 million. Equally important, profitability was very strong with record operating income and record earnings per share. Leadership trends in the marketplace remained strong and we continue to see demand signals across each of our segments. While we have no current indication of any significant contraction, we do expect some near-term volatility given that we're in a new and very dynamic environment with inflation at multi-decade highs, central banks raising rates faster than previously anticipated, commodity prices holding at or near highs, continued uncertainty around COVID, and the rising strength of the U.S. dollar. Importantly, we remain highly communicative with our clients as we actively monitor the horizon to respond quickly. In the first half of the year, in executive search, we saw a frenzied 3,600 confirmations, which is approximately 20% higher than our usual normalized pace. And we expect that rate to moderate to a more sustainable level by year end. To be clear, we still expect to see strong growth, stronger than the record years we experienced pre-COVID in 2018 and 2019. But again, slower than the feverish pace we have been experiencing. At the same time, we expect our non-search businesses to continue their growth cycles. And as Mark will soon discuss, our guidance for Q3 reflects overall continued strength. Turning to our strategy. We are well positioned in the marketplace to serve our clients across a wide spectrum of new opportunities and challenges with our diversified set of executive search and advisory offerings. With everything going on in the world today, geographic surges in COVID, the great resignation, demands for racial and social justice, and ESG, there is a simple theme.