CBIZ, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the CBiz fourth quarter 2022 results 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. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Laurie Nobikis, Director of Corporate Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the CBiz fourth quarter and full year 2022 results conference call. In connection with this call, today's press release and quarterly investor 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 can also be found on our site. An archived replay and transcript will also be made available following the call. Before we begin, 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 investor presentation. Today's call may also include forward-looking 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 call and are not intended to give any assurance of 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 these statements. A more detailed description of such factors can be found in our 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?

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. On today's call, we're proud to share our fourth quarter and full year results for 2022 and our outlook for this year. Last year on this call, we discussed our record performance and results for 2021. We are pleased to report that our momentum continued throughout 2022, and from nearly every measurable perspective, our results for last year were exceptional and at or near our strongest performance in recent history. Most notably, for the full year, total revenue was up 27.8%, where organic revenue grew by 10.9%, Adjusted EPS was up by 28.3%. Adjusted EBITDA improved 28.1%. Our stock price increased by 19.8%, and we made two sizable acquisitions, adding over $154 million in annualized revenue. At CBIZ, We always strive to achieve success by design and our full year results are the product of the strategic plan that we set for our business over five years ago, and then diligently executed by our devoted team of over 6,500 professionals. Our results are also a product of the fundamental attributes of our business, which include the combination of the essential recurring services that we provide to our clients on a regular basis, supplemented by a number of more project-based discretionary services. Also, We serve a diverse client base that includes companies of all sizes doing business across a broad geographic footprint and representing a wide range of industries. Those attributes make us less susceptible to market conditions that may disproportionately impact businesses of certain sizes or industries or that are located in specific geographies. And it's based on those attributes that we entered 2022 confident in our ability to continue to perform well regardless of the business climate. While the year presented a number of challenges for many businesses, including labor shortages, increased wages, rising interest rates, supply chain shortages, inflation, and threats of a recession, our strong performance throughout the year is a testament to the strength of our business model and the confidence and resilience of the clients that we serve. And while we expect that 2023 may also present a more challenging business climate for many, we remain equally confident in the resilience of both our business and our clients which will enable us to perform relatively strong as we move forward. As we demonstrated over the last year, our essential services help our clients to run their businesses and to take advantage of opportunities regardless of the business climate. We are also uniquely positioned to help them with services and solutions to help navigate emerging challenges. Now turning to the performance of our individual divisions. Our financial services division had an especially strong year with a record 37.6% increase in total revenue when compared to 2021. This double-digit growth was driven by strong demand for all three major service lines, that being our core accounting and tax services, our advisory services, and our government healthcare consulting services. Our growth within this group also reflects our ability to continue to improve pricing with our clients. This allowed us to respond to wage pressures in a highly competitive labor market. We also saw remarkable traction with many of our more bespoke services that we offer, including our work to support our clients in securing the employee retention tax credit. As we demonstrated through the early days of the pandemic, our teams are always proactively identifying new ways to support our clients and guide them through emerging opportunities. In the second half of the year, we also saw the investments focused on attracting and retention of talent yield results as we accelerated hiring to drive an increase in much-needed capacity. Within our advisory services, each of our significant service lines experienced strong demand for their more discretionary and project-based services that we provide to our clients, which created opportunities to drive rate increases and value billing. Our government healthcare consulting business also experienced nice growth through both new project work and the expansion of existing projects. We were also able to drive some pricing improvement, which is a more complex process given that much of this work is structured through multi-year contracts and published rates. Finally, throughout the year, we did see the return of some work that had been on hold or delayed due to the pandemic. During our quarterly calls throughout 2022, we talked about the importance and impact of a number of multi-year investments that we've been making to improve our processes, tools, and training aimed at enhancing client and team member experience and maximizing profitability. The cumulative impact of these investments is evidence in our results. As we look ahead in 2023, we will build on these efforts with a keen focus on innovation that includes how we use data to better serve our clients and adopt automation and improve processes to drive even greater efficiency. Now turning to our benefits and insurance division, where we also experienced strong growth and performance across every major service line, resulting in organic revenue growth of 8.3% for the year. While the key drivers of that growth varied slightly within the four major service lines, all benefited from strong sales and continued favorable client retention rates. One service line that is worth noting is our retirement investment services business, where approximately $25 million of their revenue is tied to assets under management. As one would expect, those fees were down last year due to the performance of the broader stock market. Despite this, the team was able to grow revenues by increasing fees for other services, improving sales, and continuing strong client retention rates. We are extremely pleased with the performance of our business throughout 2022. While it's difficult to predict the business climate in 2023 and how it may impact demand for certain of our more discretionary services, based on our strong financial performance over the past two years, the continued high demand for our services that we've experienced in recent months, the investments to accelerate growth that we've made in the business, and our access to capital, we will once again be providing financial guidance for the year. With this, I will turn it over to Ware Grove, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide more specific details on our financial performance for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2022, and our thoughts on guidance for 2023. Ware?