CBIZ, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the CBiz full year 2020 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 touch-tone phone. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lori Novickis, Director of Corporate Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the CBIS fourth quarter and full year 2020 results conference call. In connection with this call, today's press release has been posted to the investor relations page of our website, cbiz.com. This call is being webcast. and a link to a live webcast as well as an archived replay and transcript can also be found on our website. Before we begin our presentation, we would like to remind you that during the call, management may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures can be found in the financial tables of today's press release or in the investor presentation on our website. Today's conference call may also include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, strategies, and prospects. Forward-looking statements represent only estimates on the date of this conference call and are not intended to give any assurance as to actual future results. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, These statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause to differ materially. A more detailed description of such factors can be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please note that CBIS assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements. Joining us for today's call are Jerry Grisco, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Ware Grove, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Jerry for his opening remarks. Jerry?

Thank you, Lori. Good morning, everyone. With the release of our results this morning, we were pleased to announce growth in total revenue, income from continuing operations, and adjusted EBITDA for both the fourth quarter and full year of 2020. Throughout the past year, I emphasized the fundamental characteristics of our business that I believe enable us to continue to perform well in both favorable and less favorable business climates. As I described on our second quarter call, these characteristics include that approximately 70% of our revenue is generated from essential services, including our tax services, insurance services, payroll services, and a host of others that we provide to our clients regardless of economic conditions in the market. We generally retain approximately 90% of our clients from year to year, We have a broad geographic footprint. We serve a diverse client base in terms of size and industry. We enjoy strong and constant cash flow and have a substantial amount of variable expenses in our business. Our ability to grow throughout the challenging business climate that was 2020 is a testament to those characteristics, the strength of our business model, and the agility and resilience of our team. As expected and reflected in our results, Some of our businesses perform better than others in more uncertain and volatile business environments. Generally, the essential services described earlier tend to continue to perform well even in more challenging business climates, while certain more discretionary services are less predictable. Many of our more discretionary services are in higher demand when our clients are pursuing or making decisions around growth, such as acquisitions or significant expansion plans. We saw much of this play out during 2020, Within our financial services group, we experienced strong performance from our core tax and accounting business and our litigation support business, and continued steady performance from our government healthcare consulting business. We also experienced a slowdown in the second and third quarters in demand for certain of our more discretionary project-oriented services, such as our valuation business and portions of our private equity advisory practice. However, demand for many of those services began to rebound in the fourth quarter, particularly for those services that are tied to supporting our clients' pursuit of acquisition opportunities. One note on our government healthcare consulting practice. On our last call, we discussed how the rate of growth had temporarily slowed during COVID due to restrictions on access to client facilities and delays in receiving client information. In the fourth quarter, we were pleased to see the rate of growth for that business resume to more normal levels. and we expect demand for the services provided by that business to remain strong throughout 2021. Turning to our benefits and insurance group, we had a similar experience to our financial services group with strong performance from the essential services that we provide, including our employee benefits business, the commercial and personal lines portion of our property and casualty business, the advisory services we provide for our clients on their retirement plans, and demand for our upmarket, more robust payroll platform. From a consolidated view, the solid results that we experienced for those services were somewhat clouded by the softer results from a relatively small portion of our property and casualty business tied to the hospitality and adventure sports. A decline in the number of payrolls processed for some of our smaller clients, particularly those tied to the restaurant industry, and a number of other more project-oriented service lines. The encouraging note here is that we expect the portions of that business that were negatively impacted by the soft economic conditions to return to more normal growth levels once the economy improves. One last note as it relates to our benefits and insurance business. We have made substantial investments over the past several years in hiring, training, and supporting new producers within this group. Those investments are essential to drive sustained long-term organic revenue growth. The early report card on those investments is very encouraging And as a group, the new producers that we brought into this program are outperforming our projections. As a result, we are continuing to invest in our new producer program and to expand this program to other business lines. Now looking forward, we entered this year in a position of financial strength with a very strong balance sheet, low debt, and ready access to capital. As we demonstrated in 2020, we also have a significant amount of variable expenses and considerable discretionary spending items that we can manage to preserve liquidity if economic conditions are worse than currently anticipated. While much remains uncertain, we expect client demand for our core essential services to remain strong and for client interest in many of our more discretionary services to increase as business conditions continue to improve. Based on our performance in 2020, the financial strength of the business, the cost control measures that we have at our command, and our current view of the business climate for 2021, we have elected to reinstate guidance for this year. I want to caution that while we are comfortable issuing annual guidance, we do expect more volatility than we ordinarily experience when comparing a given quarter to the same period in the prior year. So we would caution against doing so. Our decision to reinstate guidance is based on a couple of key assumptions that shape our outlook for 2021. These assumptions include the first six to nine months of 2021 will be similar to what we experienced in the second half of 2020, and we expect continued recovery in the M&A market, which impacts many of our more project-based and private equity services. We saw improvement in the fourth quarter and expect this trend to continue throughout 2021. At this point, I will turn it over to Ware Grove, our CFO, to provide more specific details on our financial performance for the fourth quarter and full year of 2020. Where?