Public Policy Holding Company, Inc.

Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PPHC first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, we'll open up for questions. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to hand it over to our first speaker, Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer.

Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that during this call, management will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. In addition, during this call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release, which can be found on the investor section of our website. I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Stuart Hall.

Thanks, Matthew. Good afternoon to everyone who's joining us today. I'll keep this set up brief. We covered a great deal of background on the company and its marketplace on the last call. And for anyone looking for a deeper dive on PPHC, I'd encourage you to go ahead and listen back to that call or feel free to reach out to our investor relations team. They're always available for you. So turning quickly to the first quarter, we had a strong start to 2026. Revenue grew 27.5% to 50.1 million, with organic growth of 5.1%. That was a step up from the 4.7% we saw in the first quarter of last year. Our adjusted EBITDA was a record first quarter result at 11.2 million, up nearly 29.7%, with a margin of 22.3%, while we reported a gap loss of 11.5 million. And with the IPO proceeds on the balance sheet, We ended the quarter with net debt of just $1.8 million down from $44.6 million a year ago, and that's a very different balance sheet picture than where we were. A few other notes from the quarter that I'd like to call out quickly. On M&A, we continue to execute in the same fashion we always have using the same discipline playbook that you've heard about before. On April 1, we closed the acquisition of WPI Strategy. WVI is a UK-based public affairs and economics consultancy that deepens our London presence through page field communications, but also has applications and a cross-sell potential with a number of our companies across the worldwide platform. Alongside platform-level acquisitions that we are consistently evaluating and progressing to at various stages, we also pursue what I like to call common sense talent additions, or sometimes called acquihires. The molar deals that bring experienced professionals with established client relationships into existing firms. They aren't transformative in size by themselves, but they're immediately accretive and they compound over time. Last week's addition of Lee Cowan and Nicholas Evans to multi-state associates is a good example of this. We expanded the firm's stakeholder engagement practice across federal, state, and local government relations. Lastly, in March, we were added to the Russell 2K and 3K indices, a welcome milestone just a couple of months after the NASDAQ listing and one that will expand our shareholder base. On the operating environment, it remains favorable for our business. Federal lobbying spending continues at record level. State-level activity is intense. Legislatures have filed over 100,000 bills in the last year. on issues that our clients care about most, things like data centers, AI, healthcare, energy, financial services. The policy agenda remains active at every level, and our clients are turning to PPHC companies to help them navigate it. That's exactly the operating backdrop that we constructed the company for and we continue to take advantage of. I'm going to have Thomas at the end of the call cover some of the relevant ways we're capitalizing on these tailwinds. And with that, I will hand it over to Roel for a closer look at the numbers. Roel?

Yes. Thank you, Stuart. I'll take you through the key financial highlights for the quarter. But before I do so, I would like to point out that the comparables for Q1 of 2025, we have never released those before due to the semi-annual reporting schedule that we used to work under when we were only at the London AIM list. However, needless to say that these Q1 numbers for 2025 were produced in a way that is consistent with all our subsequent quarters and undergoing the same level of rigor and review by our auditors. So let's do first a quick helicopter picture of what we believe is a really nicely strong quarter. Our revenues continue to trend upward year after year, every year with positive organic growth. As Stuart already alluded to, we reached revenue of $50 million in Q1, which represented year-over-year growth of 28%. Now, in this chart, the light blue part in the revenue bars represents M&A growth. And in Q1, this M&A-driven growth stemmed primarily from TrailRunner, which we completed in Q2 of last year, and which has now been for a full year with our portfolio. as well as by Pine Cove Strategies, which joined us in Q3 of last year. Then the red segment in each bar represents organic growth. And in 2026 Q1, this organic growth was equal to 2 million of 5%, which is really actually in line with organic growth that we ended Q4 of last year with. In terms of profits at the bottom, we realized adjusted EBDA of $11 million, which is a record for Q1 by itself, and it's up $2 million versus prior year. In margin terms, it was approximately level with last year's margin. Now, I would like to point out that margins in Q1 typically tend to be slightly lower than the margins for the full year. because of a slight seasonality in our top line that favors Q2 and Q3. Overall, it's worth reemphasizing that in 2026, we anticipate a margin somewhat below our 25% target. On the one hand, due to the ongoing shift in business mix, but primarily because of the increase in our public company costs we're experiencing as consequence of our new NASDAQ listing. We already anticipated those increased costs and we're now indeed seeing them coming through. So let's look at the financial highlights on a consolidated basis. Thereafter, I'll zoom in for a second. So the first two boxes, revenue and adjusted VBA, I already talked about. So let's go to the third box, the adjusted net income. This measure nearly doubled from 3.7 million to 7.4 million. That was, of course, partially driven by the underlying increase in adjusted VBA, but a meaningful part of the step-up also stems from the change in effective tax rates from 53 percent last year in Q1 to 27 percent this year. Now, in either year, this effective tax rate is much higher than where a full-year tax rate eventually ends up. which is typically in the 15-16% range. However, the phasing of our tax provision across the quarters is heavily impacted by the extra GAAP results, which, as you know, in our case, are getting impacted by various non-cash items in our P&L. The most notable non-cash charge in our P&L is the share-based accounting charge, which relates to our 2021 London IPO, which by the way will roll off at the end of 2026. And also the M&A related payments that we expand through our P&L because of the continued employment conditions that we attach to our deal terms. So now let's move on to cash flow. Our free cash flow for the quarter was negative 10.3 million, compared to a positive 3.2 million in Q1 last year. That negative cash flow in Q1 is not atypical, as the company always pays its bonuses during the first quarter, resulting in a reduction of our accrued expense balances. This year, our cash flow generation was further suppressed by a $13 million increase in accounts receivable, resulting from the inclusion of the 2025 acquisitions, but also from slower collections. Now, a significant part of this account receivable investment is temporary, and we anticipate that this will get unwound in the upcoming quarters to a very large extent. So, moving to our EPS results. Our GAAP EPS is still negative due to the aforementioned non-cash GAAP charges. that we take through our P&L. However, the adjusted fully diluted EPS was positive at 25 cents per share, which is up 75% from the prior year. In turn, that result is an outcome of having a very strong improvement in the adjusted net income that we just saw, offset by the dilutive impact of the 15% increase in the number of shares, you know, which was impacted by our NASDAQ IPO. So then on the balance sheet, and I'm now at the right bottom of this chart, we ended the quarter with $43 million in cash, a total debt of $45 million, and therefore a net debt position of just about $2 million. That was a major improvement from the $27 million net debt that we had at year end, and even more so from the $45 million net debt that we had at the same point last year. And this improvement was driven by the IPO proceeds coming onto the balance sheet in January, in tandem with the customary debt repayments that we make throughout the year. So where does that leave us from a balance sheet perspective? Well, knowing that we've engaged in significant M&A activity over the past five years, and that even after those five years, we find ourselves in a situation with such a strong balance sheet, with hardly any net debt, then I cannot conclude otherwise than that we're very ready for the next phase of growth with ample balance sheet flexibility for continued rent as accretive M&A. One final point on this chart, I would like to mention that our cash position in Q2 will be impacted by our customary final dividend over the prior book year. which in this case was $0.24 per share, and that amounts to approximately $7 million in dividend payments upcoming May. Now, as promised, let's look at the operating performance of each of our segments. First, here you'll find a quick visual view of the organic growth by segment, which I really would like to describe as very robust. At the top of the page, you see a consolidated 5% organic growth. And you can also see that this was better than 23, better than 24, and slightly below 25. But then in the bottom half, by segment, you see that in the government relations segment, we saw stability and healthy growth at 5%. In the corporate communications and public affairs sector, we saw a moderate growth of 3%, but I should say that this was, again, a very strong 2025 post-election comparable. And finally, in compliance and insights on the right, we saw organic growth of 11%, excellent result, whereby especially compliance continues to drive really good growth. Now, let's double-click on these segments and look at their profitability. In the following slide, which is very informative, but at the same time, admittedly, also somewhat dense. Now, our government relations segment, which remains our anchor at 57% of our total revenue, increased 8%, with margins moving up to 45% from before. Corporate communications and public affairs was up 83% on a reported basis, That reflects the full benefit of the incorporation of TrailRunner. The segment margin in CCFDA moved up nicely from 22% to 26% as we see the operating leverage that we had expected from the acquisitions we made in this area. And finally, compliance and insight services had another strong quarter. We already saw that it was 11% growth, both reported and organic. and the margin remains around 50%. Then, you know, at the subtotal, you can see the total for these three segments has a blended margin that remain very stable around 39%. So, what follows after that 39% are two final items bridging us to the published adjusted EBDA. So those two bridging items are, on the one hand, the bonus pool, which was up 24% versus prior year, in line with profit growth. And secondly, the corporate costs, or the holding costs, which were up 19%. As mentioned before, that's a consequence of our incremental public company costs and investments. I'm going to skip the next three charts that portray the management P&L, the management cash flow statements, and the net debt position because we already covered most of the key points in the highlights and just reviewed. But I really want everybody to know that our deck contains these charts as well as a set of other charts and tables in the financial appendix. So this gets me to the guidance statement. Consistent with practice at NASDAQ, we've made our guidance slightly more specific than what we were used to doing. What's not changed is that, in general, PPHC expects to continue growing its revenues at an average organic rate of approximately 5 percent, and this will be supplemented by acquisitions. Now, if there's no further acquisitions for 2026, we would anticipate reported revenue to come in in the range between $295 million and $209 million. Then go to profit. In general, we continue to aim for an adjusted EBITDA margin around 25%. However, as communicated before and taking into account the dynamics of our changing business mix, in 2026, we will come out below that target number, also as we experience the impact from assuming US public company costs and certain technology investments. And therefore, we anticipate our adjusted EBITDA to come in at a range between 46 million and 48 million, reflecting an adjusted margin between 22 and 23%. And not written here, but I would like to end by saying that we also expect strong free cash flow conversion in the balance of the year, which is typically weighted towards the second half of the year. With that, I'll hand it over to Thomas.

Thanks, Raul. I'll keep my comments focused on a handful of things that are significantly new or notable this quarter, rather than retrace the platform story we covered in great detail last time. As we said before with this same slide setup, our growth strategy is fundamentally talent-focused, recruiting and retaining top-level talent. And we've had a strong start to the year by all measures. Just a quick recap of some of the news from the reporting quarter. Seven Letter, our leading public affairs brand, expanded in Los Angeles, bringing in a specialty media practice. They're also expanding their fast-growing space and defense practice with some high-impact talent there, too. Also out west in Sacramento, our firms KP and LP have just celebrated their 30th and 20th anniversaries, respectively, as standout leaders in that and the largest state markets. Both have built strength in long-term succession plans into their leadership teams since joining us. TRI Sports recently named Alden Mitchell, previously of Stanford and Uber, as its new president. That practice continues to thrive amidst rapid change across college, professional, and international sports. We also just announced new leadership at Forbes Tape Partners, one of our founding firms, now officially FTP, with fresh leadership across both the lobbying, and public affairs practices there. This is a planned generational succession at one of Washington's largest lobbying firms, and it's exactly the kind of institutional continuity our model is designed to produce. Our growth strategy involves three more drivers, expanding service lines, capturing the additional client wallet, and executing on a creative M&A agenda. A great example of collaboration from the quarter, the launch of investor services offerings from Concordant, which brings together TPHC's full depth of experience to deal teams, private equity, family offices, and corporates facing growing policy and regulatory risk to their investments. It's a focused, repeatable product that aims to capture a different budget and is backed by the unique collection of expertise across our platform. You can learn more about it at the Concordant Advisory website. Additionally, the growth of our issue-based practice groups and the simple but effective client referral incentives we offer are all tools to drive this collaboration. And still, we benefit from the multi-brand strategy that we've had from the start. As an aside, uniquely, and even with the measurably increasing growth via the collaboration, our key client concentration measures drifted further down. Our top 10 clients are now just 8% of total revenue versus 9% a year ago. and no single client is more than 2% of the overall business. There is no significant client concentration risk in the business at all. A further update on our post-M&A integrations, Trailrunner is now a full year in, and you're seeing its big contribution in the communications segment, that 82.7% reported growth, and most importantly, the nearly four-point margin expansion as operating leverage shows up as a result in that segment. On the same front, Pine Cove Strategies is delivering similarly on the Texas-based growth thesis we laid out when we announced it last fall with George P. Bush. Lastly, on our future M&A pipeline, it's still very active, dozens of firms at various stages with the same mix, selective U.S. specializations, key states, and international opportunities in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, guided where our clients tell us they need us most. Our sweet spot remains businesses in the $10 to $30 million dollar revenue range, profitably contributing to our premium margin profile, and with a clear cross-sell in the existing portfolio, based on geography and capability. As in our most recently announced deals, we work closely with our existing firms to identify opportunities to acquire specialization and scale into the portfolio. Both deals, while small in scale, will have outsized impacts on the firms they're being brought into, page field and multi-state respectively, by way of the specialization and reputation. Big wins for both. We continue to see a good level of deal flow, with private equity platforms still dominating the competitive set, along with a few traditional players. Our uniqueness remains based on the market-leading scale of our government relations segment, state and federal, that policy expertise, and the public market status and how it shapes our M&A formula. And with that, I'll hand it back to Stuart.

Thanks, Thomas. Let me pull it together for you in the same framing that we used last quarter, because one quarter later, it holds up very well. First, stability. About 92.8% of our revenue is still retainer-based. Client retention remains in the mid-80s across the entire network. And no single client, as Thomas noted, is more than 2% of our book. That delivered our steady 5.1% organic growth against a busy macro backdrop. Secondly, profitability. It was a record first quarter on our adjusted EBITDA of $11.2 million, with margins moving in the right direction in both CC and PA and government relations. As Roel noted, the largest non-cash charge on our P&L, the approximately $30 million a year in share-based comp charge from our London listing, fully amortizes after this fiscal year putting us on a clear path to gap profitability in 2027. Third, on growth. Discipline M&A continues. One acquisition closed in the quarter, another just recently, and a robust pipeline that remains under active consideration and process. Thomas walked you through the talent acquisitions and new practices across the portfolio, and each is an example of what we mean by compounding growth by investing in people and capabilities we already have, not simply buying revenue. Fourth, our people, and most importantly, our people, the reason why any of this works at PPHC. Approximately 200 of our 450 employees have some form of equity instrument, and that includes more than 140 with outright stock ownerships. The model is built around keeping our best talent and bringing in the next generation into ownership. As Thomas mentioned, two of our firms celebrated milestone anniversaries in this quarter with new leadership teams in place or on the rise. That's what long-term retention and succession planning looks like in practice, and it's what we work the hardest at every day. The short version, the quarter played out the way we told you we thought it would, with steady organic, disciplined M&A, meaningful margin progress in the segments where we've been investing, and a balance sheet that gives us room to keep executing on the agenda that Thomas laid out for you. We appreciate your time today, your continued interest in PPHC. Now, operator, I will hand it over, and we will open the floor for questions. Thanks.

Thank you. And as a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by. We'll compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. And our first question will come from Raj Sharma from Texas Capitol. Your line is open.

Thank you. So congratulations on stellar results. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to just ask about your organic growth that this quarter, you know, especially in the CCPA segment, there's a there's 3% growth relative to much greater growth last year. I'm wondering if you have any color on that, you know, what contributed to the CCPA growth, you know, last year that one shouldn't expect to continue going forward. And I have a follow-on question.

Thanks, Raj. Good to hear from you today. Appreciate the question. I think, you know, as we noted that, you know, frankly, We had a really strong first half of the year in CCPA last year, and as a result, you had a tougher print that you're working against. We came out of election season last year like we traditionally did with a whole new agenda based on those results, and there was momentum that carried into the first half, especially in project execution against those agenda items coupled with lobbying, but especially in the comms segment where the project work naturally picks up. So really, I think, you know, the carryover into this year has been, you know, from quarter to quarter really positive, in my opinion. And I've been really pleased with it. Roel, you got anything you would like to add? Roel says I covered it. So thanks. Go ahead, Raj. What's the other question?

So the other question is any sort of commentary or, you know, any sort of color on contribution from acquisition that you, A, you just did any contribution to revenues this year. And also, can you comment on the size of the acquisition that you likely plan to do or intend to do every year? I know it's tough to call. I know your pipeline is pretty robust, but any sort of sense on what do you plan to do?

Yeah. Well, you will have noticed, Raj, this is rule that indeed the acquisitions that we've done so far this year are on the smaller side. The largest of them was WPI. And that was closed by April 1. So that's not reflected in any of these numbers yet. And then we also announced the Cohen as a small acquisition per May one. But that was really more a hire of two people who have bringing a book of business. So I will say our acquisition volume up till now has been relatively small. We've been on records in the past that we expect to acquire on average, somewhere between 30 and $40 million of revenues each year. But obviously, that always depends on the availability of the right targets and then the exact timing of those transactions, let alone, of course, then the profit contribution that they have and the price that we would pay for it. These are all variables that are different for each acquisition. Therefore, it makes it somewhat hard to predict.

Got it. Thank you for taking my question. I'll take it offline again. Thank you. It's been a great course.

Thank you.

Thanks, Raj.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Jason Tilchen from Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to start, you know, last month you announced a new practice accordant that really seems to leverage your complete portfolio of assets. And I believe Thomas mentioned that prepared marks, this should go after a different part of client budgets. So maybe if you just talk a little bit about how meaningful the opportunity is, what sort of investment you may have to make to get this sort of launched and rolled out, and then sort of more broadly, how many other similar opportunities do you see in the pipeline to organically sort of expand to new services and areas?

Sure. I mean, this is one we've eyed for some time and is so adjacent, depending on where clients are and who clients are calling. So we do work in the financial services sector, obviously, and directly with private equity funds. But there's a category of two or three leading providers of this regulatory multi-issue program. diligence, and we've eyed it for some time, made some inquiries from an acquisitive standpoint, and then realized we were just leaving too much. And so it's a light investment from headquarters really into the concordant framework that was already set up a couple of years ago to really facilitate a one or best of practice. And some select hiring from the right people, and we can talk about the people There, we're being quite entrepreneurial about it, but still flexing our scale and showing up in a competitive space. And not only is it a new client budget, in many cases, it's just new clients. It's getting into a different part of either a private equity fund from a deal-by-deal basis or a whole new type of buyer across the world. So it's an interesting, frugal thing, but we'll continue to look for opportunities, including WPI, to to bolster that service. Some of the economic consultancy they do is, again, another adjacency. And call it a product or a sort of service-enhanced product. It is a different kind of thing for the arsenal.

Great. That's very helpful. And just curious, maybe if you could talk to the conflict in the Middle East, either positively impacted in terms of benefiting defense practice or maybe negative in creating some sort of distraction in Washington. Just curious how that's sort of netting out so far and any observations you've had.

Well, I think just Jason, this is Stuart. I think, you know, We viewed the area and the region for quite a while as a really, really potential good place for us, especially in terms, again, of our corporate comms practices. There's a lot of investment money that's in the region in general that's looking for connectivity in the U.S., for direct investment here, which is kind of the U.S. on-shoring move that we think is going to pay a lot of dividends for us in the future. Certainly, we're leveraging heavily off of really, really good practice and office that Trailrunner has in the UAE. And we think as this sorts out, frankly, if anything, the acceleration of alignment to interest over there to U.S. markets is going to only accelerate. Obviously, things are going to have to continue to sort themselves out and will at some point, I think, in the coming months. But when that happens, you know, we really, really feel like, you know, we've got some great opportunities there. And we've really positioned our assets here in the United States, you know, and frankly in London, you know, to really leverage off of those opportunities. And, you know, we're going to actively work that axis forward.

Great, that's really helpful. And if I could just toss in one quick one for Ruhl. EBITDA margins up 40 basis points year over year despite the increased public company costs and tech investments. Maybe you could talk to some of the sources of efficiency you're seeing beyond just operating leverage at the portfolio companies.

Well, yes. There is some operating leverage that in years of good revenue growth, there's always, well, we see our margins expand. And I'd say that helped us actually almost offset the higher holding costs that we've experienced in Q1 to a good extent. And we hope to continue this. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Scott Schneeberger from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Thanks very much. Good afternoon and congratulations. I guess I'd like to start off, Stuart, you highlighted at the beginning, certainly we've seen an acceleration in the organic growth versus the past two years. In the past few quarters, here in the first quarter, in the organic growth of government relations, can you just speak to what that is? Is it just a very dynamic environment right now where There's a lot of activity, or are you winning a few big contracts that are lifting that? Just curious about this.

Well, it's a combination of factors, Scott. I think, you know, number one is, you know, we put a lot of effort in really over the past 18 months to try to build even greater intercompany synergies between, you know, our complementary brands. And I think that's really important. it's really starting to bubble up to the surface and the macro numbers that you're starting to see. And, you know, I think, you know, it, it, you know, I think the interplay with corp comms and investor and crisis with trail runner, along with our kind of traditionally more public affairs oriented assets has been really, really strong. So I think what you're really seeing is, is, is a lot of production off of that. Obviously the, macro environments, especially given our moat remains again, and kind of lobbying and public affairs. You know, certainly macro dynamics of change up evil, all those things, you know, have, you know, lead our clients to have to obviously address, you know, again, that interface with government on an ongoing basis. So there is a kind of a strong macro backdrop. And it's not, it's not simply, you know, in DC, it's more a lot. So, I think that helps as well, and I think all of these factors, you know, are coming to, you know, a confluence that, again, is, you know, uplifting and helping us with organic growth so far.

Great. Thanks. Two more. One is just it's kind of a two-parter, and it's what is it that you're looking for? What is topping your priority list in your M&A pipeline? Is it... state-government relations? Is it moving internationally? Just kind of curious. And the Part B of this question is, is there really nice margin profiles in your pipeline. I know that, you know, with this guidance of 25% in a normalized year with not the public company cost, is there a lot in the pipeline that has very robust margins or is that something where it's really you have to pick and choose of what the profiles are in the pipeline? Thanks.

We've tooled up in the comms, corporate comms, via M&A, you know, over the past 18 months, ProRunner, PageField. And we've continued to say that we invest against capabilities and geography. I can say within the dozens of things that we've discussed in the pipeline, there are some really prime margin geographies that we want to still play in for that prime margin and the reason that they're, you know, they're core to business activities. and some quite specialized things that may be smaller in scale but chunkier in margin. At the same time, when we look at the geographic play, we know that as we expand the base in Europe, it's not going to be the most prime margin for us across the wallet. but it's still where our clients need us and where sort of expertise is needed in global policy considerations. So we do have to play in both as we do have a premium margin, and that's sort of ballast by the lobbying practices in D.C., and then we have Sacramento, and then we have Austin, and sort of the things have quite different profiles, but towards the premium across.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, just let me add to that. We mentioned before that we look at several gating factors on M&A. One is what Thomas just said. Does it add geography? Does it add capability? Is it complementary to the rest of the portfolio? We obviously look at the people profile and all of those terms, which is maybe as critical as any issue. But margin is right there as well. And I've said before, and I think I'll repeat it again, while we have desires to build our network out further, again, based on those three prime issues, we're not interested in putting dots on the map to simply say we have an office somewhere. If the margin profile is not right or the people aren't right, you know, we're not going to do it. So, and I think, you know, I think that's what everyone should always be assured of that, you know, We're not looking to just have loss leaders or really things that fall well below our margin profile just for the sake of being somewhere.

Great. Thanks, Stuart, and thanks, Thomas. That's good color and insight. Last question, and probably it's going to get Role involved as well, is just with establishing annual guidance here, specifically to revenue but also to EBITDA, what – What are some of the things we should keep in mind that could put you to the top or above the high end of the range? What are things that could put you more down toward the lower end of the range? Thanks.

Yes. Well, Scott, two things that pop in my head primarily. First is our volume of project work. That is always somewhat unpredictable. And, of course, we've got lots of statistics to go off from prior years. But at the end of the day, it also depends on certain issues bubbling up. Last year's, for instance, the whole issue around the expiration of the Obama subsidies in healthcare, that created a huge, nice flow of projects that you never know to what extent such a flow will reoccur this year. So that is factor number one. And the other factor is very simply acquisitions. So any new acquisition will put us outside that range that I've mentioned at the call.

Excellent. Thanks. Appreciate all the call, guys.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Samuel Dindal from Stifel. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. I hope you're well. Congratulations on the results. Just one question for me, please. Just on the acqui-hire front, I appreciate the hiring of Lee Cohen and Nicholas Evans a few weeks ago. Has that accelerated post-US listing? Are you finding more people you sort of had conversations with over the last few years sort of now more willing to join or any sort of color on that would be great?

Thank you. What I would say to that, Sam, and thanks for the comment there. I really appreciate it. But I think what I would say is that it's really been interesting, just like our pipeline feels more robust now post-US listing than it's been at any prior time. I think the other thing is we're seeing more inbound talent coming to us, some that are much more willing to listen to us now. et cetera, a post-U.S. listing. So, you know, I would continue to, you know, anticipate that, you know, we'll continue to make some really good talent acquisitions, you know, in the foreseeable future because, again, I think we're really, frankly, getting noticed out there. And I think we're a differentiated platform because we're public and, you know, this is a space that, you know, has typically been dominated by private investment and private companies. And I think there are people that are starting to look at our public company status, our levels of employee ownership, et cetera. And it's really, I think, in their prime years of their career, seeming like an attractive possible option for them if they fit with us. So we're really excited about that. It's been one of the downstream benefits, again, of being able to evaluate a lot of individual or small collectives of talent as opposed to simply looking at platform acquisitions.

Brilliant. Thanks, Nikola.

Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions in the queue at this time.

Great. Great. Well, thank you a lot, operator. Thanks for all of you for participating today. Again, as always, as I noted in my closing, investor relations is always open here. We are always happy to interface, take your questions. So please, please reach out after this call. If you'd like to follow up on anything, either related financially or strategically, and we'll be glad to work with you and get you the answers that we can. Thanks.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does include the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.