CBIZ, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the CBiz fourth quarter and year-end 2024 results. 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 a touch-tone phone. 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 Lori Novickis, Director of Corporate Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's conference call to discuss CBIS fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. As a reminder, this call is being webcast and a link to the live webcast along with today's press release and investor presentation is can all be found on the investor relations page of our website, CDIS.com. A replay and transcript will also be made available after 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 our expectations, estimates and projections as of 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 except as required by law. A more detailed description of such factors can be found in today's press release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Joining us for today's call are Jerry Grisco, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ware Grove, Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Furio, President of our Financial Services Division. I will now turn the call over to Jerry Grisco for his opening remarks. Jerry?

Thank you, Lori. 2024 was an exceptional year for SEVIS. Building on our strong momentum coming out of 2023, we are pleased to have achieved growth across nearly every major service line. We achieved these results in the face of some uncertainty through much of last year, resulting in our client base pausing discretionary projects, pending more clarity on interest rates, inflation, and the outcome of the national elections. That said, our results reflect ongoing strong demand for our services, our ability to continue to realize price increases, and the ability to expand margins that comes from the significant size and scale of the business that CBiz has now achieved. On top of another strong year for legacy CBiz, we completed a transformational transaction in November, the largest in our history, with the acquisition of Markham. With Markham, we solidified our position as the leading provider of professional services of our kind to middle market businesses, offering a breadth of service and depth of expertise unmatched by our competitors. It's a testament to both the strength of our business model and the dedication and commitment of our team that we're able to achieve our financial results while also completing this monumental deal. Later on in the call, I'll provide an update of our early progress with the integration of Markham, But first, I want to provide some additional detail on our results for the year. Overall, we're pleased to report that our results for 2024 came in generally as expected when we consider the standalone performance of CBIS and were within the revenue and EPS ranges we provided in our guidance for the year. With the addition of Markham for the last two months of the year, it does create an unusual optic with our results, which we'll walk through in just a few minutes. This was expected given the timing of the closing and the seasonality of the accounting and tax business that makes up the bulk of Markham's revenue. Let me begin with our finance or services division for Legacy CBiz, which had another very impressive year with growth coming from every major service line, including accounting and tax, advisory, and our government healthcare consulting business. Growth for this division was driven by a combination of pricing, yield, increased realization within our advisory businesses, and new projects within our government healthcare consulting group. For our accounting and tax business, we saw growth across all major markets. For advisory, strong demand for our private equity-focused services, combined with increased production and valuation and increased billable hours in our forensic group, contributed to strong growth. Our government healthcare consulting group also benefited from a higher volume of new project work. Now, turning to our benefits and insurance division, we also saw strong growth across nearly every major service line, including our employee benefits, retirement investment services, and payroll businesses. Growth was driven by a variety of factors, including high client retention and strong production. The only outlier with this division was within our property and casualty insurance group, where our results were impacted by the departure of a small group of producers in the southeast region that we discussed in our second quarter earnings call. Aside from this isolated incident, we saw growth in this business as well, driven by impressive performance within commercial lines. Again, our results for the year reflect our team's exceptional focus in execution and delivering strong financial results, while at the same time completing the Markham transaction. Despite the complexity and demands of this milestone, we never took our eye off the ball and remained disciplined in our overall operations, driving growth and executing on our strategic priorities. Our achievements over last year speak volumes about the dedication and resilience of our team and their ability to balance their day-to-day performance with long-term value creation. Obviously, in terms of M&A, the Markham transaction was our most significant accomplishment for the year. At the same time, we completed two other strategic acquisitions and two token acquisitions. During the first quarter of 2024, we acquired Erickson, Brown, and Kloster, an accounting, tax, and financial advisory services provider located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. EBK complements our growing Denver practice and services clients across a broad set of industries. In March, we also acquired CompuData Inc., a provider of technology services and solutions located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. CompuData enhances our technology-focused advisory service offerings, including cloud hosting, ERP solutions, IT security, and managed IT services. As we look to 2025, we begin the year with a healthy pipeline of M&A opportunities. The Markham transaction has enabled us to further refine our approach to integration, and based on our track record of successful acquisitions in a wide range of businesses, we continue to be recognized as an acquirer of choice within our industries. With that, I'll turn it over to Ware to review our financial results in detail before we talk more about our progress on the Markham acquisition. Ware?