BGSF, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the BGSF Inc. Fiscal 2024 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sandy Martin, three-part advisors. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chad. Good morning, and welcome to the BGSF first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. With me on the call today are Beth Garvey, chair, president, and chief executive officer, and John Barnett, chief financial officer. After our prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. As noted, today's call is being webcast live. A replay will be available later today and archived on the company's investor relations page at investor.bgsf.com. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions made by the company under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements, because of various risks and uncertainties, including those listed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Management statements are made as of today, and the company assumes no obligation to update these statements publicly, even if new information becomes available in the future. During the call, management will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which can be useful in evaluating the company's operations related to the financial condition and results. These non-GAAP measures are intended to supplement GAAP financial information and should not be considered a substitute. GAAP and non-GAAP measures are reconciled in today's earnings press release. I'll now turn the call over to Beth Garvey.

Thank you, Sandy, and thank you all for joining us in reviewing our performance so far this year. Before we discuss our first quarter earnings, I want to address last night's release announcing our decision to review strategic alternatives for BGSF. Over the past five years, we have worked hard to execute our long-term strategy for growing the company organically and through M&A, enhancing our margins, paying down debt, and returning capital to shareholders. I wholeheartedly believe what we have built will create value for shareholders over time. However, our valuation has not reflected that in progress to date, and the Board and I know that this is the right time to evaluate our options. We also think suspending the cash dividend is appropriate as part of this decision. This strategic process includes a full range of value creation opportunities to accelerate growth or improve the structural return profile of the company. John and I are fully engaged with our advisors and the board to explore ways to unlock value for the shareholders of BGSF. We have not set a timeline for the conclusion of the review, and I do not have an update today. so I will not be taking questions related to the company's strategic review process. Turning to our results, the first quarter of 2024 met our near-term expectations. Although there continues to be caution around hiring, we are encouraged by recent trends in our project and consulting work related to IT and finance and accounting. Despite choppiness in the past few quarters, we saw significant momentum for both areas, resulting in a 7% increase sequentially over last quarter. Our recent project wins have bolstered our confidence in our strategic repositioning and important tech investments, bringing us closer to our clients' needs in 2024. Our actions during the challenging macro backdrop over the last few years have helped us transition into a structural, high-margin profile business. We acknowledge that there's more work to be done and are increasing our focus on accelerating revenue growth and scale. We're proud to offer high-value professional and property management services and solutions in highly specialized niches in growing addressable markets. Our business is built on state-of-the-art technology platform with proven process excellence. Looking at our professional segment, I'd like to start by highlighting just a few recent wins we're excited about. In the first quarter, we commenced one of the nation's largest SAP cloud projects with a Fortune 500 company that ranks in Fortune 100's fastest growing companies list. We would not have been in a position to bid on this project a few years ago, but today we are because of our strategic implementations, process changes, and platform upgrades we've made. We're also actively engaged in projects to support two large divestitures for a Fortune 500 client and are engaged in supporting other merger and acquisition projects this year. These projects excite us and give us confidence that our strategic high-end consulting solutions are uniquely positioned on what clients are looking for in 2024 and beyond. We're at the leading edge of the best technologies available to top companies worldwide. Turning to a discussion about property management, as we look at the first quarter sales, we were up against strong sales from the prior year, which were up almost 10%. Competition, coupled with increased operating expenses for property owners, has resulted in a re-evaluation of our sales process to overcome these factors for our valued clients. In the first quarter, we included restructuring of our sales organization and, more importantly, a change in how we compensate them. Our property management sales leaders now are directly compensated for sales and are no longer tied to a specific market. empowering them to drive sales and see the success of their own personal production. This was based on our proprietary CRM technology we implemented last year. Now we have full visibility into each market and the number of units, which is a game changer for the sales leadership and property management. We expect our work to begin showing up in the results in the second half of 2024. With that, I'll turn the call over to John.