BGSF, Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the BG Staffing Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Now I will turn the call over to Hala Elshabini, Investor Relations, to provide introductions and read the Safe Harbor Statement. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to the BG Staffing Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Results Conference Call. With me today are Beth Garvey, President and CEO, and Dan Hollenbach, Chief Financial Officer. After the speaker's opening remarks, there will be a Q&A session. As noted, today's call is being recorded and webcast live. A replay will be available later today and archived for 90 days on the company's website. Now for the Safe Harbor Statement. Discussions today will include forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions made by BGSS based on and are made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The company's actual results could differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements because of various risks and uncertainties, including those listed in Item 1A of the company's annual report on Form 10-K, and the quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and in the company's other filings and reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All risks and uncertainties are beyond the ability of the company to control, and in many cases, the company cannot predict the risks and uncertainties that could cause its actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call, and BGSF assumes no obligation to update these statements publicly, even if new information becomes available in the future. This broadcast is being covered by U.S. copyright laws, and any use or rebroadcast of all or any portion of this conference call may only be done with the company's express written permission. During the call, management will discuss some non-GAAP measures which are used for internal evaluation and to report the results of the business as useful information to management, the board of directors, and investors of our operating activities and business trends related to our financial condition and results of operations. These non-GAAP measures are intended to supplement GAAP financial information and should not be considered in isolation as a substitute for or superior to financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please see today's news release posted on the company's website. I'll now turn the call over to Beth Garvey. Beth?

Thank you, Hala, and thank you to everyone for joining today's call. I hope that you and your families are remaining healthy and safe. I'll begin today's call with a review of our operational highlights and segment performance, and then I'll turn the call over to Dan to discuss our financial results and return at the end of the call for some closing remarks. We continue to be grateful to our entire teams for their passion and diligence in maintaining exceptional levels of service. They are the foundation of our success as we continue to support our client, partners, and field talent in new and differentiated ways. We are taking decisive actions and strategic positions that strategically positions the company through realigned sales strategies, further strengthening our market position, and capitalizing on our synergies across our divisions. The process is working as we have been able to outperform the industry as well as double our dividend from prior quarter. We are seeing positive gains from our move to digital client engagement, and we are continuously looking for ways to modify and enhance our business units to elevate our performance and service offerings. Our teams have embraced our back-to-the-office COVID playbook, with some team members voluntarily returning to the office and adhering to CDC protocols, while others are opting to continue to work from home and leveraging our digital shift quite well. Productivity is not wavered, and we are seeing strong client-partner engagement due to our hard work and efforts. Since COVID-19 began, we have strategically enhanced our business and have completed several initiatives to support our platform for future growth to solidify our market position within our peer group. We are pleased with all the overall results and excited to see strong sequential growth in real estate and line industrial with continued improvement in professional. Dan will provide more detailed numbers shortly. We continue to see improvement and enhancements from our new D365 ERP system, which went live in Q2, replacing our legacy system. We're seeing the benefits of our recently launched Power BI platform that is creating improved data analytics for better reporting and development metrics. Our website upgrades have doubled the speed and increased the flow of applicants seeking work. As we noted last quarter, we launched the new automated time card system in real estate, and we're seeing positive engagement as adoption continues to build. These technology enhancements will significantly improve operating and order management efficiencies, streamline and simplify our workflow, and drive further capabilities to ultimately enhance margin dollars. Shifting to division performances, during the quarter, we restructured our business primarily in real estate, by integrating our multifamily and talent leadership teams. This is opening up new market and business opportunities to equip our highly talented professionals with better processes, training, tracking, and improved audit policies that we believe will ultimately drive sales growth and continue our first-class service clients. We further strategically integrated our professional division post our recent acquisitions to align the teams in their service offering verticals, enabling more synergies between our recognized brands. Overall, I believe our diversification has helped to mitigate pressure on our results. As we discussed on prior calls, the real estate division has been impacted the most, although we are very pleased with their sequential month-over-month improvements that we are seeing now. Additionally, Additionally, while some restrictions have lifted on workers returning to the office, BG Talent's activity remains soft due to the prolonged shift to remote work and office buildings largely remaining empty. In response to the decline, we are selling in new and unique ways based on the circumstances we faced from COVID-19. We are working on proving ourselves execution on open orders and launched a talent acquisition center to improve our candidate funnel optimizing our staffing recruitment across all markets. We are well positioned for the recovery in real estate, realizing clients are holding cash and not adding to staffing requirements, giving the CDC's guidelines on evictions. The moratorium is set to expire on December 31st, which is keeping clients on the sidelines. However, we are closely monitoring the situation as we enter into fourth quarter and into Q1, which are seasonally our slowest quarters. Professionals saw a resurgence in activity, and during the quarter, we further integrated our recent acquisitions through reorganization, as mentioned earlier. Our brand verticals are now grouped under IT consulting, which encompasses Extrinsic, American Partners, and Edgerot. And for infrastructure and development, Zychron and Vision Technologies are now collaborating. LJ Kushner, our cybersecurity acquisition, touches all areas of our operations, regardless of the segments. Lastly, we've also merged leadership within finance and accounting groups to streamline reporting and marketing efforts. We'll expect to see cost synergies, meaningful efficiencies, and elevated cross-selling opportunities across all BGSF brands. Professional division teams continue to host frequent cross-selling blitz events that also generate wins for real estate and light industrial divisions. We are also seeing that the professional division is benefiting from a higher demand on client partners moving into the cloud. The sales pipeline remains very active and the outlook moving forward looks very strong. This group continues to do an amazing job in managing and educating our client partners on benefits of a national talent pool available to them virtually. Light industrial is most exciting as we are pleased with the rebound and activity. We saw a nice lift in our overall performance, delivering better than expected results given the tailwind in warehouse labor shortages. Keep in mind that this division is heavily weighted in warehouse logistics and fulfillment needs, and we've seen an uptick in activity for these positions, resulting from the significant shift to online shopping during the pandemic. Slide industrial sales are back to pre-COVID levels, and we anticipate a strong finish to the year with stable margins. Our diversification across client, partners, brand solutions, and markets help to mitigate the impact on our overall results. Strategically, we are spending more time working on the business by reinvesting in our people and technologies to strengthen our position as the overall market recovers. We remain focused on our previously discussed IT roadmap and expect these initiatives to greatly impact future efficiencies and drive sales growth going forward. As we discussed in the past, people are our most important asset, a key priority creating an empowered culture, which includes actionable initiatives toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. During the quarter, we established a DEI Council, developed our DEI Pillars of Excellence, as well as our strategic initiatives and KPIs. Overall, these initiatives will foster diversity education, training, and engagement as we do more to drive an open, supportive, and inclusive culture across our company and the communities where we work and live. Lastly, I'm encouraged to see the industry outlook remains positive for each of our segments. With the latest staffing industry analyst September report forecasting a 12% overall industry growth rate for 2021. We remain well-positioned, and I am confident that we are taking the right steps to take advantage of opportunities for sustained long-term growth. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dan to discuss the financials.