Kelly Services, Inc.

All parties will be on listen only until the question and answer portion of the presentation. Today's call is being recorded at the request of Kelly Services. If anyone has any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host, Mr. Scott Thomas, Kelly's Head of Investillations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Liv. Good morning, and welcome to Kelly's fourth quarter and full year conference call. With me today are Kelly's President and Chief Executive Officer, Peter Quigley, and our Chief Financial Officer, Troy Anderson. Before we begin, I'll remind you that the comments made during today's call, including the Q&A session, may include forward-looking statements about our expectations for future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those suggested by our comments. We do not assume any obligation to update the statements made on this call. please refer to our SEC filings for a description of the risk factors that could influence the company's actual future performance. In addition, we'll discuss certain data on a reported and on an adjusted basis. Discussion of items on an adjusted basis are non-GAAP financial measures designed to give insight into certain trends in our operations. For more information regarding non-GAAP measures and other required disclosures, please refer to our earnings press release presentation and, once filed, Form 10-K, all of which can be accessed through our investor relations website at ir.kellyservices.com. I will now turn the call over to Kelly's president and chief executive officer, Peter Quigley.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Before I share my reflections on our fourth quarter and full year performance, I'd like to discuss the leadership succession plan that we announced in our earnings press release earlier today. After 22 years with Kelly, I intend to retire as President and CEO by the end of this year. The Board has initiated a process to identify my successor, engaging a nationally recognized firm to conduct a comprehensive search of both internal and external candidates. I plan to continue serving in my current role until the Board of Directors appoints Kelly's next CEO and we can facilitate a smooth transition. Over the past few years, we have made meaningful strides on our specialty growth journey, and Kelly is well positioned to realize the value creation opportunities that lie ahead. I'm proud of the progress we have made, and I look forward to concluding my tenure with a strong 2025 defined by continued growth and strategic evolution. With new leadership and as market conditions improve, The board and I are confident that Kelly will reach new heights and create even more value for our clients, talent, employees, and shareholders. With that, let's review the highlights from our performance in the fourth quarter and full year. In the fourth quarter, Kelly delivered both top and bottom line growth on a year-over-year basis, increasing organic revenue by more than 4% and adjusted EBITDA by 34%. This reflects strong profitability for the quarter as we delivered 110 basis points of margin expansion through targeted organic and inorganic initiatives. Total company performance exceeded the outlook we provided in November and continued to outpace the market. At the segment level, education delivered another quarter of double-digit revenue growth and accelerated the expansion of our higher margin therapy business through the acquisition of Children's Therapy Center. In set, the revenue deceleration we experienced early in Q3 subsided in Q4, and we captured growing demand for our life sciences specialty and our higher margin statement works solutions. Both OCG and P&I delivered solid revenue and profit growth as our differentiated offerings in these businesses enabled us to further expand market share. Our positive performance in the fourth quarter bookended a year of significant strategic progress. Last February, I said that 2024 would be an inflection point in Kelly's journey by capturing a greater share of customer demand and by more effectively converting top-line growth to bottom-line profitability. Today, I'm pleased to say that we delivered on our commitments and are poised to continue doing so in 2025. We continued to accelerate profitable growth, delivering positive organic revenue growth on a year-over-year basis and outperforming the market across our specialties. We remained laser focused on improving profitability as well, delivering 50 basis points of organic adjusted EBITDA margin expansion in the quarter and bringing our full year EBITDA margin to 3.3% on an adjusted basis. This represents a significant increase over our recent historical average of approximately 2%. We unlocked additional value-creating opportunities and further streamlined Kelly's operating model, completing the sale of our European staffing business for more than $100 million. We also completed the sale of Ayers Group in June, enabling OCG to sharpen its focus on global RPO and MSP solutions. Finally, we redeployed capital in pursuit of inorganic investments in higher margin, higher growth specialties with the transformational acquisition of motion recruitment partners. The addition of MRP has strengthened the scale and capabilities of our staffing, consulting, and RPO solutions in attractive customer and markets. We delivered on these commitments in 2024, notwithstanding a challenging operating environment in which total staffing industry revenues declined in most segments by double digits. Our continued progress against this backdrop further reinforces our strategic decision to sharpen our focus on in-demand specialties in which Kelly is well positioned to compete and win. I'll share more later on how we'll leverage our momentum to propel us forward on the next leg of our specialty journey. First, I'll turn it over to Troy Anderson, who will lead the financial discussion on the call today, having completed a successful transition with Olivia T. Rowe in December into the role of Chief Financial Officer. Troy, over to you for more details on our results in the fourth quarter and full year.