BGSF, Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the BGSF Inc. Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Now I will turn the call over to Hala El-Shabini, Investor Relations, to provide introductions and read the safe harbor statement. Please go ahead. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you for joining us to discuss BGSS second quarter 2021 earnings results conference call. Joining me on the call 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 investor relations page. 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 Security 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 recorder 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 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 reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. which management believes can be useful in evaluating the company's operating activities and business trends related to a 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. Reconciliations of non-gap measures to the most directly comparable gap measures are provided in today's earnings release posted on the company's website. I'll now turn the call over to Beth Garvey, President and CEO. Beth?

Thank you, Holla, and thank you to everyone for joining today's call. As much as we want for it to be behind us, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect us all personally and professionally. We have and will remain highly focused on our key priorities of serving our field talent and client partners while maintaining the health and safety of our team members. With that said, the majority of our teams have returned to the office on a hybrid basis as we continue to monitor the ongoing pandemic. Now moving on to the results. Second quarter finished strong, and our overall first half of 2021 results improved both sequentially and on a year-over-year basis. Our strategic restructuring efforts and ongoing improvement strategy are driving momentum across all of our business segments and positioning us for continued growth and profitability. We are still on target with our remaining IT roadmap projects, including payroll, HRIS, CRM, and applicant tracking systems. As we are able to return to some of our traditional ways of doing business, we believe virtual connections are here to stay, thus a hybrid approach combined with a digital transformation and innovative client and talent engagement will drive our sales and delivery engines. Beginning with real estate, results were better than expected given a slow start to the second quarter, but we continue to see progressive climbs in revenues during the quarter to finish with an impressive 80% increase. Our forward focus is on talent attraction and retention coming into the second half of this year as backlog starts to unwind in the real estate segment. Several market reopenings are taking place at a steady cadence. We are intently focused on optimizing our relaunches and establishing a centralized hub to support our regional markets to bolster collaboration in recruiting and placement efforts. We anticipate a strong return to normal in the beginning of 2022. As I mentioned earlier, our teams are in the office on a hybrid basis and are focused on capturing pent-up demand. I expect this process to be positive overall but do anticipate some lumpiness as we phase in new markets and manage through the labor shortages as well as new COVID-19 restrictions for the remainder of the year. Our professional segment performed well, with our IT consulting brands being the biggest highlight in the group, which exceeded the six-month targets. We've seen a nice rebound in finance and accounting, and our cyber business is tracking towards pre-pandemic levels. Infrastructure and development saw growth during the quarter, although at a slower pace, which continues to impact our results. Momentum Solutions, our latest acquisition, has brought many benefits to our business. New client introductions have taken place, and we are executing on numerous managed services opportunities, building a strong pipeline through cross-selling and strategic customers. Our cross-selling efforts are starting to ramp up through our cross-divisional 1BGSF approach and we are seeing solid contributions and wins from our strategic customer program. We saw a nice lift and start late in the quarter, however. We still have several of our client partners that have been slow to return. We expect this will continue to drive demand in the third and fourth quarter, and overall we are seeing strong demand for resources across all areas within the professional segment. Slide industrial continued to show strong growth, and demand remains high even though we continue to manage through industry-wide labor shortages. Although we typically see a softer first half followed by continued momentum in the second half of the year, primarily driven by holiday shopping, the strength continues and we are optimistic about our full year numbers in this segment. It appears the uplift from the significant shift to online shopping is not showing any signs of slowing down. Lastly, we continue to make good progress on our corporate responsibility initiatives, particularly in leadership training and community work. During the quarter, all senior leaders successfully completed a three-day inclusive leadership training. Our VIBE Council has identified next steps to support our D&I pillars for the remainder of 2021 and into 2022. In addition, we are seeing a lot of engagement across our teams through our employee recognition platform, and the Philanthropy Cloud is being well utilized. I'm truly excited about these important initiatives to not only strengthen our team and culture, but it also continues to support and build strong communities around us. As we continue to navigate these rapidly changing times, our diversified revenue model continues to be a key differentiator for BGSF. And with that, I will turn it over to Dan.