CBIZ, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the CBiz fourth quarter 2023 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 and then one on your touch-tone telephones. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Please also note today's event is being recorded, and at this time, I would like to turn the floor over to Lori Novickis, Director of Corporate Relations. Ma'am, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the fourth quarter and full year 2023 CBiz Results Conference Call. In connection with this call, today's press release and 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 be found on our website. 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.

Thank you, Lori, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased to share our fourth quarter and full year results for 2023 and our outlook for the year ahead. Last year at this time, we reported on record performance in results in 2022. We are pleased that this momentum continued in 2023 and that despite uncertainty at the start of the year about a potentially challenging business climate ahead, we successfully continued our trend in 2023 of achieving growth across every major service line of our business. Over the past year, SEVIS posted strong growth, achieved new milestones, and demonstrated the resilience of our business model in an uncertain environment. Most notably, for the full year, total revenue was up 12.7%, organic revenue grew by 7.4%, earnings per share was up by 18.9%, Adjusted earnings per share was up by 13.1%, and our stock price increased 33.6%. The fundamental attributes that define our model, including a blend of essential recurring services combined with more discretionary project-based services, a diverse client base that spans companies of all sizes, and a broad and growing geographic footprint, continue to drive our success. As we head into 2024, we expect the economic climate to remain favorable for the types of services that we provide to our clients. Now turning to the performance of our business divisions in 2023. Our financial services division demonstrated impressive growth across every major service line, including our accounting and tax, advisory, and government healthcare consulting businesses. Our accounting and tax services remained in high demand, which has allowed us to continue to achieve price increases in excess of our wage increases. Our work to support clients in securing employee retention tax credit also helped to bolster our results. Our advisory services also continue to experience robust growth and strong client demand translated into steady production for our private equity advisory business, our risk and advisory, valuation, and forensic consulting groups. While demand for our technical accounting services group, a group that specializes in assisting companies in preparing to go public, reflected a somewhat muted market for IPOs in 2023, we are seeing signs of improvement for these services in the coming year. Finally, our government healthcare consulting business finished the year strong in terms of both kicking off project work and securing new business. We reported on our last earnings call that this part of the business experienced some softness due to a number of large contracts being delayed. The new work that we were seeing in this space more than made up for these timing changes. I will remind you that project delays are common when serving certain types of public sector clients, and the business continues to navigate these changes well while maintaining strong performance. Now turning to our benefits and insurance division, where we built on our momentum coming into the year to achieve strong growth and performance across every major service line. While the key drivers for growth varied slightly within the four major service lines, all benefited from high client retention rates, new sales, and continued improvements in pricing. For our employee benefits business, growth came from higher starting valuations, new business, increased contingents, and improved client retention rates. Our producer count was also up, along with another key metric we monitor, average production per producer. The strong activity from our producers is evident in our full year results and should provide some strong momentum going into 2024. Moving to our property and casualty business, we experienced growth in both the program and commercial sides of the business. Higher starting valuations, new production, strong client retention, and trend also bolstered our favorable results. The retirement and investment solutions business saw growth through increased demand for our actuarial project work. We're also able to increase our producer pool within this business. Finally, our payroll business had another strong year of performance driven primarily by demand for our upmarket payroll platform, which also included high client retention rates for this service. We are extremely pleased with the performance of the overall business throughout 2023. As we look ahead to 2024, we remain confident in our ability to continue to perform well and to capitalize on this momentum. Based on our strong financial performance over the past three years, the high demand for our services, our ability to retain clients, 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 2023, and our thoughts on guidance for 2024. Ware?