CBIZ, Inc.

Hello and welcome to the CBiz Q1 2023 earnings 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 telephone keypad. To withdraw from the question queue, 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 First Quarter 2023 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.

Thank you, Lori. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for today's call. We are pleased to share our first quarter performance for 2023 and to discuss our outlook for the remainder of the year. As I outlined during our last earnings call, we started 2023 following a second year of record performance for our business. From nearly every measurable perspective, our results last year were exceptional and provided strong momentum going into this year. I am proud to share that our growth has continued with another strong quarter to start this year. To highlight our results for the first quarter, our total revenue increased 16.1 percent and our adjusted EPS is up 23.7 percent compared to the same period a year ago. That growth is a result of outstanding performance from both of our major divisions. Our financial services division experienced total revenue growth of 18.8 percent and organic revenue growth of 10.5 percent in the first quarter. As you're aware, The first quarter is the traditional busy season for our accounting and tax businesses, and demand for those services remained robust. Our revenue growth in the first quarter reflects our ability to continue to capture price increases, an increase in the volume of work, and the contribution of our most recent acquisition, Somerset CPA and Advisors, which joined us effective February 1. We also benefited from demand for a number of services that we provide to assist our clients with emerging opportunities, such as the employee retention tax credit, as well as continued strong demand across nearly all of our major project-oriented advisory services, including our risk and advisory services, our valuation services, our services focused on the private equity industry, and our forensic accounting services. We also experienced growth over the last year within our government healthcare consulting business. As we discussed on prior calls, long-term, multi-year projects make up a sizable component of this business. So timing on the start of those contracts and any pause in that work can impact revenue growth in a particular period. And in fact, we did see some delays in project timing through the first quarter, but we expect those delays to be short-lived and for those projects to get back on track later this year. Over the past couple of years, the accounting industry has experienced labor constraints, which somewhat reduced the rate of growth that would have occurred had more capacity been available to meet the high demand for those services. We're pleased to see that the talent appears to be more readily available in recent months, and we're happy that the investments that we've made in our recruitment team over the past several years have put us in a position to attract top talent to our team. Now, turning to our benefits and insurance division, where we were also off to a very strong start to the year, with total revenue growth of 8.2% compared to the prior period. The growth within this division came from all four of our major service lines, largely fueled by strong sales production and favorable client retention rates. We also benefited from rising premiums within our employee benefits and our property and casualty insurance service lines, increased pricing for our payroll services, and increased project work within the actuarial group embedded within our retirement investment services business. Now, before I turn it over to Ware, I'd like to make a few comments on our full-year guidance that we provided in February. To remind you, in February, we guided full-year revenue growth within a range of 8% to 10% and adjusted EPS growth within a range of 11% to 13% over the full-year results delivered in 2022. Based on our exceptionally strong performance in the first quarter this year, We currently anticipate that our full-year results will come in at the high end of that range. So with this, I'll turn it over to Ware Grove, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide additional information on our financial performance for the first quarter and more details on our full-year guidance. Ware?