CBIZ, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the CBiz third quarter 2021 results conference call. All participants will be in a 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. And 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 Ms. Lori Novickis. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the CBiz third quarter and nine-month 2021 results conference call. In connection with this call, today's press release and the quarterly presentation have been posted to the investor relations page of our website, cbiz.com. As a reminder, this call is being webcast, and a link to the 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 and 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 future results to differ materially, and CBIS assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements. A more detailed description of such factors can be found in the filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 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, and good morning, everyone. With the release of our third quarter results, I am extremely proud of our performance to date. Our results in the third quarter and throughout this year continue to demonstrate the strength and resilience of our business. We started this year with a good deal of optimism, especially given the performance of the business since the onset of the pandemic, the steadily increasing demand for our services that we experienced through the second half of last year, and the level of confidence about the business climate that we're hearing from many of our clients. Even with our optimistic outlook, our performance to date has exceeded our expectations. While we oftentimes experience some seasonal slowness in the third quarter, that has not been the case this year. The strong demand for our core essential services that we experienced through the first half of this year has continued through the third quarter, and our results have been bolstered by very strong performance from many of our more project-oriented advisory services that are often viewed by our clients as being more discretionary. And perhaps most encouraging, the strong performance reflected in our year-to-date results is coming from both of our major practice groups and across nearly all major service lines of our business. Within our financial services group, we continue to experience strong performance from our core accounting, tax, and advisory businesses. And in addition, during the third quarter, we saw steady demand for our tax consulting services and robust demand across the board for our advisory services. These results reflect the strength of our current business climate and the overall confidence and optimism of our clients. As our clients take steps to capitalize on opportunities to accelerate growth in the future, these actions should translate into additional project-based advisory work for us. Within our government healthcare consulting business, we are experiencing a rate of growth in the mid single digits. While this growth is consistent with our experience since the onset of the pandemic, We would expect to see accelerated growth in the months ahead as more states fully reopen and some delayed work resumes. A complementary acquisition that provides actuarial services that we made this past summer is creating additional opportunities for us to bring even greater value to our government clients in the administration of complex health care programs. Now turning to our benefits and insurance group. We are also experiencing the continuation of the strong performance that we saw for the first half of the year. We continue to see steady demand for our core employee benefits, property and casualty, and retirement plan advisory businesses. As we discussed on prior calls, we've made substantial investments over the past several years to accelerate organic growth within our employee benefits business by adding to the number of producers. We are very pleased with the results that we are seeing in this area, and the impact of our efforts are evidence in our results today. Within these results, I also want to emphasize the importance of client retention. We continue to see retention rates of over 90% within our employee benefits business and for many of our other businesses within our benefits and insurance group. These levels of client retention speak to the value that our clients receive from our team and our commitment to bring them solutions that are unmatched in our industries. Within our property and casualty business, we continue to see steady demand and production for both the commercial and program components of the business. We've described in the past earnings call how some industries, like hospitality, lodging, and adventure sports, were disproportionately impacted during the pandemic. We are seeing the return of these businesses, and while some are not yet back to pre-pandemic levels, the trend is positive. The strength of the market is also providing additional lift to our retirement investment services business and an increase in demand for more project-based work, such as our executive recruitment and our compensation consulting services. Our payroll business is the one area where we continue to experience some softness. As we mentioned on previous calls, this business serves a larger number of smaller employers that continue to be disproportionately impacted by current business conditions, including labor shortages. Overall, we couldn't be more pleased with our year-to-date results and the performance of our business. I will remind you that during our last earnings call, we raised our full-year revenue guidance. Today, we are pleased to be in a position to raise our revenue guidance and our adjusted earnings for share guidance for the remainder of 2021, and Ware will walk through what we expect in his comments. With that, I will turn it over to Ware.