CBIZ, Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the CBiz first quarter 2026 results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please send to 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 touchtone phones. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Please also note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Chris Sikora, VP of IR and Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss CBiz's first quarter 2026 results. We posted an investor presentation that tracks to our prepared remarks, and it is available on our investor relations website. Before we start, I'll remind all participants that you will hear forward-looking statements during this call. These statements reflect the expectations and beliefs of our management team at the time of the call, but are subject to risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. You can find additional information on these factors in the company's filings with the SEC. Participants should be mindful that subsequent events may render this information to be out of date. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. As noted on slide three, a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found in the supplemental schedules of the presentation. Joining us for today's call are Jerry Grisco, President and Chief Executive Officer, Brad Licchia, Chief Financial Officer, and Peter Scavuzzo, Chief Information and Technology Officer. I will now turn the call over to Jerry, who will start on slide five.

Thanks, Chris. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We entered 2026 with a clear plan, and our overall first quarter performance was in line with our expectations. We delivered year-over-year growth in revenue, profitability, and free cash flow, while returning value to shareholders through highly accretive share repurchases. Our organic growth improved throughout the quarter and is up sequentially compared to the fourth quarter. We remain confident that we will exit the year growing at our mid-single-digit organic growth target rate and be in a position to return to our long-term growth algorithm. As we will discuss on the call, we also advanced our strategic growth priorities and made meaningful progress on our efficiency initiatives while continuing to invest in our AI capabilities, and we believe that we're positioned to be the clear leader in the middle market. I want to thank our CBIS team members for their exceptional performance as we completed our first busy season as an integrated company, a significant milestone for our organization. Our teams delivered strong results for clients, coordinated effectively across the platform, and maintained solid utilization during our most critical period. We are operating fully as one company with unified teams, aligned culture and vision, common systems, and a strengthened go-to-market approach and our scaled operating model is beginning to work as intended. In the fourth quarter of 2025, organic revenue growth was flat as we completed a year of significant transformation and integration. As we moved into 2026, we are beginning to realize the benefits of the foundation we put in place. Combined with a more favorable market backdrop, organic revenue growth improved as we progressed through the first quarter. Our Q1 growth in financial services was still impacted by headwinds related to prior client exits tied to our risk and profitability standards and residual integration-related productivity impacts that shifted some tax revenue into the back half of the year, as previously discussed and contemplated in our full-year guidance. We estimate that these temporary factors reduced reported organic revenue growth by approximately 200 basis points in the first quarter. We continue to expect these impacts to abate by the second half. With our solid start to the year, we are reaffirming our revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow targets, while increasing our adjusted EPS outlook, reflecting confidence in our underlying earnings power and the impact of our accretive share purchase activity. Now moving to slide six. We are advancing our four strategic priorities to drive growth. These priorities will strengthen our ability to win new business, retain and expand client relationships, and enhance pricing. First, CBIS continues to attract, retain, and elevate top talent. We are proud to have been recently named a top workplace in the nation by USA Today for the sixth consecutive year, and see that reflected in our strong employee retention performance across the company. Also, we are capitalizing on the greater scale and investment opportunity of our new platform, by bringing in high-caliber talent to SEVIS. Within financial services, our labeled hiring initiative is identifying and advancing high-impact, high-producing MDs with several new hires recently completed and a robust pipeline of senior candidates who are drawn to SEVIS. Within benefits and insurance, we have added a variety of net new quality producers in the quarter and expect high momentum to carry into the second quarter as we work towards our full-year target of approximately 15 percent increase in producers. I'm also pleased to have Peter on the call today. With Peter's appointment as Chief Information and Technology Officer and President of CBIS Technology, we're making a deliberate convergence. One leader, one platform, one roadmap. Peter brings close to 20 years of industry experience and is widely regarded as one of the leading voices in technology and AI in our profession. Second, we recently launched our Spring National Brand Campaign, featuring targeted national televised ads across our key markets. This year, our focus remains on translating increased visibility into stronger engagement for our services and reinforcing our position as a trusted partner during transformational events. Our brand and marketing investments are a key complement to both our go-to-market and talent recruitment strategies. We have already seen these investments paying dividends with early traction reinforcing brand awareness and strengthening our connection with clients and talent. Our 12 industry verticals are an increasingly important driver to how we go to market and serve our clients. This structure was designed to lead with insights, anticipate client needs, and deliver coordinated tailored solutions that drive stronger retention, accelerated growth, and reinforce our value-based pricing. We are making meaningful progress implementing the strategy, including the development of new industry-focused managed services that bring together capabilities across tax, advisory, and benefits to address specific client needs. We are seeing positive results from the greater connectivity these industry verticals provide for our national experts. In alternative investments in real estate, collaboration between our national experts is enabling us to secure a variety of new engagements, and areas where clients were unaware of our capabilities. As we continue to strengthen our industry practices, we are seeing increased new client pipeline activity across several key verticals, including consumer and industrial products, capital markets, alternative investments, and construction. Finally, we are delivering a more coordinated client experience across our service offerings. With our highly recurring revenue base and strong client retention, Our most immediate growth opportunity is expanding relationships with existing clients. We are already seeing good progress as we take a more systemic approach to cross-selling across services and geographies. We are systematically increasing the number of clients using multiple services, and we expect these efforts to contribute to organic growth over time. Taken together, we believe strong execution against these four priorities positions us to drive attractive levels of growth in 2026 and beyond. Now moving to slide seven, I've asked Peter to join us today to provide you with a more detailed walkthrough of how we're advancing our AI roadmap. But first, let me briefly reiterate how we're thinking about AI and why we believe our strategic approach to AI will be a catalyst for CBiz breaking away from many of our competitors. Our business is built on longstanding client relationships and services, often delivered in regulated environments, that require licensed professionals to take accountability for outcomes. These engagements serve as a critical third-party validation for lenders, investors, and regulators, which creates a high bar for substitution and reinforces client stickiness. Further, our middle market clients rely on us for judgment, context, expertise, intuition, and ethics, and typically do not have the scale or capital to build and govern AI-driven solutions themselves. The combination of our trusted relationship with our clients and our continuing investment in improved tools, processes, and systems, including AI, create a defendable moat around our position with our middle market clients. We have also largely transitioned to a value-based pricing model, which positions us to benefit from the AI-driven efficiencies. As we adopt AI, we expect it to enhance our ability to deliver insights, expand wallet share, and improve margins, while reinforcing, not replacing, the valued role we play for our clients. With that, I will turn it over to Peter to share more detail on what we're delivering.