CBIZ, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the CBiz second quarter and first half 2024 results and the Markham acquisition 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 telephone keypad. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. As a note, today's event is being recorded. 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 on today's conference call to discuss CBIS second quarter and first half 2024 results and the Markham acquisition, which was also announced this morning. As a reminder, this call is being webcast and a link to the live webcast can be found on our investor relations page of our website, CBIS.com. A replay and transcript will also be made available after the call. The press releases and investor presentations for both our second quarter and first half results and the Markham acquisitions have been posted to the investor relations page of our website. We will begin with our prepared remarks of our financial results and then discuss the Markham acquisition, followed by Q&A. The presentation for the Markham acquisition will be referenced during this call and again is posted on our website. 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 releases and investor presentations. Today's call may also include forward-looking statements regarding our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, strategies, and prospects, as well as with respect to the Markham transaction. 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 haven't yet occurred, These statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause future results to differ materially and SEVIS assumes no obligation to update these statements. A more detailed description of such factors can be found in today's press releases and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Finally, we would also like to refer you to important information in today's press releases related to the Markham acquisition and the related proxy solicitation that we will be undertaking. Joining us for today's call are Jerry Grisco, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ware Grove, Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Burrio, President of our Financial Services Division. I will now turn the call over to Jerry. Jerry?

Thank you, Lori. Good morning, everyone. Earlier today, we announced our agreement to acquire Marble. The 13th largest accounting firm in the country. When this transaction closes, our combined business will have revenues of approximately $2.8 billion, comprise a team of over 10,000 professionals, and serve more than 135,000 clients. Together, we will solidify our position as a leading provider of professional advisory services to middle market clients and become the seventh largest accounting services provider in the nation. We plan to devote a considerable amount of our time this morning walking through some of the specific details around this transaction. But before I do that, I want to first outline our financial performance for the second quarter, and then we'll ask Mergrove, our CFO, to provide additional details on our results. So let's begin with our financial results. We were pleased to report that our second quarter results were generally in line with internal expectations and that the overall health of our business remains strong. For the second quarter, total revenues up 5.4%, with total revenue up to 7.2% for the first half of the year. To better understand our performance to date and some of the factors impacting our results, I want to start by unpacking some of the unique headwinds we face this quarter. As a reminder, we typically caution against comparing any given quarter in a year to the same period in the prior year, as we occasionally experience more volatility in our financial results quarter over quarter. I want to start by describing a specific event within our property and casualty insurance business. Our results for the second quarter and first half include the impact of the exit of a small team of producers and support personnel within this business and the loss of a number of clients served by this group. Fortunately, this type of event is very rare for CBiz and we have contractual agreements in place to mitigate these scenarios. We are currently pursuing our legal remedies relating to this matter. That said, the impact of this event equates to $0.03 adjusted EPF for the second quarter. For the first half of the year, in addition to the business impact, we also saw an increase in related legal expenses. Next, we incurred approximately $6.7 million in expenses in the second quarter relating to the marketing transaction. And finally, while the business climate has remained fairly stable through the first half of the year, we did experience some delays for our more project-based discretionary services, and did see some businesses shift timelines for investments in systems and implementations in areas like payroll. In our experience, any client concerns around economic uncertainty and the potential for regulatory changes are only amplified during a major election year like the one we are facing. As a reminder, our business model includes a significant number of variable and discretionary expenses and other levers that we can pull to mitigate the impact on the bottom line revenue for the remainder of the year comes in lower than expected. Now, I would like to briefly touch on the performance of our two major divisions. For our financial services division, we were pleased to experience continued steady demand for our core accounting and tax services. However, our revenue in this division was impacted as a result of a significant amount of project revenue realized in the second quarter of last year that did not recur to the same degree in the same period this year. Also, within our advisory services, we experienced the impact of a more subdued M&A market than expected, with transaction volume being mainly smaller multi-deals compared with larger platform deals. That said, we continue to see strong demand for services that support the private equity industry, including strategic FT&A and office of the CFO services, as well as our valuation services. Our government healthcare consulting business continued its rebound demonstrating strong momentum with growth in new projects when compared to the same period last year. Looking ahead, this group enters into the second half of the year with a healthy pipeline of new opportunities. Turning to our benefits and insurance division, where after we adjusted the impact of the P&C event, we achieved total revenue growth across each of our major service lines. The quarter over quarter comparison of margin and earnings contribution was negatively affected by staffing investments that we made within this division and in the second half of 2023 to support the growth that we've experienced over the past several years. In summary, our quarter-over-quarter earnings were impacted by the items discussed earlier, but the underlying health of the business remains strong, and we are optimistic about the prospects of the business for the remainder of the year. I will now turn it over to Ware to discuss more details on our performance in the second quarter and the first half of the year. Ware.