DHI Group, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the DHI Group first quarter 2024 financial results conference 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 your question, please press star then 2. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Todd Curley of MKR Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to DHI Group's 2024 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. With me on today's call are DHI's CEO, Art Zaley, and CFO, Rainey Levy. Before I turn the call over to Art, I'd like to cover a few quick items. This afternoon, DHI issued a press release announcing its 2024 first quarter financial results. The release is available on the company's website at dhigroupinc.com. This call is being broadcast live over the internet for all interested parties, and the webcast will be archived on the investor relations page of the company's website. I want to remind everyone that during today's call, management will make forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Please note that except for the historical information, statements on today's call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements reflect DHI management's current views concerning future events and financial performance. and are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from the outcomes contained in any forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause these forward-looking statements to differ from actual results include risks and uncertainties discussed in the company's periodic reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. DHI undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Lastly, during today's call, management will be referring to specific financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and non-GAAP earnings per share that are not prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Information about and reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings release, a copy of which you can find on our website at dhigroupinc.com in the investor relations section. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Art Zailey, CEO of DHI Group.

Thank you, Todd. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our 2024 first quarter earnings conference call. We appreciate your time today as we discuss our financial performance and provide an update on our outlook. First, let's discuss the state of the tech labor market, which is one of the main growth drivers for our business. While we suffered from a slump in hiring demand last year, the first three months of 2024 have been more promising, with tech job postings increasing from a low point of 142,000 in December to 191,000 in March, as reported by CompTIA. The pre-pandemic average was 300,000 job postings per month in 2019, So we aren't back to normal yet, but we see small signs of improvement. We are also seeing an increase in the demand for AI-skilled professionals as corporate America starts to implement generative AI in their business models. 16% of all of our job postings in March contained AI-related skills, which is a significant uptick year over year. We are also seeing that consulting companies like Deloitte, Accenture, IBM, and others are hiring tech professionals at elevated rates, indicating that large firms are actively prototyping and piloting AI solutions. Tech is the second largest long-term occupational growth trend in the United States, behind healthcare, and is projected to grow twice as fast as the overall U.S. workforce, with the U.S. becoming a more digital economy over time. As businesses accelerate their investment in technology initiatives, including the implementation of Gen AI, they will need our subscription-based offerings and proprietary search algorithms to find the perfect match for their job posting from our over 8 million technologist profiles. Our clients have seen increased success in attracting and hiring top tech talent using our platform. One example is MC Dean, a leading provider for mission-critical facilities who became a DICE client at the end of 2023. Within their first week of coming on board, they made a hire through the DICE platform. During their 60-day check-in, they told us that DICE has already paid for itself. Another example is Beaconhill Staffing, one of the largest staffing and recruiting firms in the United States. In a recent call with our team, Beaconhill told us that they keep track of the cost per candidate on an annual basis and Dice consistently delivers above the average return on investment. I'm also grateful to report that they told us that our support team is absolutely unequivocally the best. A final example is Montefiore, one of New York's premier academic health systems, who is using our employer branding solutions to attract tech talent in a very competitive environment. Now let me dig into our performance during the first quarter and what we see ahead for the remainder of 2024. In the first quarter, our total revenue declined 7% year-over-year. DICE revenue decreased 14% while CJA revenue increased 10%. The decrease in DICE revenue was due to lower previous quarter new business bookings and renewals and lower one-time transactional revenue as a result of the difficult market environment. Excluding transactional revenue, our total recurring revenue declined 2% year over year. Looking at our bookings performance, while our total bookings were down 9% year over year in the first quarter, approximately 50% of the first quarter renewal book takes place in the month of January, with a lot of the actual contracts signed in November and December of 2023 before we started to see an improvement in the tech job market. Notably, We did see strong sequential improvements in transactional bookings in the first quarter for both Dice and CJ, which, as we have said in the past, we view as a leading indicator of demand for our platforms. Dice secured several notable customers this quarter, including Coca-Cola, First National Bank, and the City of Kansas City, as we continue to focus on those industries and companies hiring tech professionals even in this weakened economic environment. The data continues to indicate that these industries include aerospace, business consulting, healthcare, financial services, and education. Clearance jobs bookings for the first quarter increased 5% year over year, which is below its trend line. We believe that booking activity was suppressed by the continuing threat of a potential government shutdown during the majority of the quarter. In March, The president signed into law the full fiscal year 2024 appropriations package. With the certainty of government funding in place, we expect to see our CJ bookings improve. Despite these headwinds, during the first quarter, CJ secured several new customers, including Cushman and Wakefield, Rocket Lab, and Ascendian Incorporated. Moving on to account management. Our DICE and CJ revenue renewal rates were 82% and 98%, respectively, in the first quarter. Retention rates for DICE and CJ were 100% and 115%, respectively. These are significant sequential improvements for both DICE and clearance jobs. During the first quarter, we delivered a 24% adjusted EBITDA margin, which is up from 21% a year ago. Our operating cash flow was $2.1 million for the quarter versus $0 in the year-ago quarter. We continue to focus on operating our business efficiently, as evidenced by our 10% reduction in total operating expenses year over year. Now let me quickly touch on what we're doing to drive increased adoption of our two brands. Dice announced a partnership with TopResume at the beginning of the quarter. Candidates can now send resumes from within their Dice profile to TopResume for a free or a more advanced paid evaluation. Several tens of thousands of candidates have tried the evaluation since the launch of this service. Dice also announced the release of Discover Companies, a new experience on Dice that enables technologists to easily discover companies that align with their preferences. A technologist can now browse and view company profiles based on location, industry, size of the company, remote work policies, and whether they are actively hiring. Dice also launched a new job alert service that displays job opportunities better tailored to our candidates' experience and career aspirations. As a result of our many new candidate engagement features, total applications on the Dice platform were up 67% year over year in the first quarter. And we are successfully delivering our target of over 10 applications per job posting for subscription customers. We also continue to deliver product innovation in clearance jobs, with CJ Live going into production at the end of the quarter. CJ Live allows employers to produce and catalog streamed video content to better engage with their target candidates. We have already signed up over 100 CJ recruiters for this new service. At the end of the last year, we also released comprehensive subscription packages to combine unlimited job postings, a company page, and selected job boosts for harder-to-fill positions. During the first quarter, almost all our new business bookings across all our teams were sold in this format, highlighting the value our prospects see in this combination of services. the new subscription package pricing has improved average contract value sold quarter over quarter. Before I turn the call over to Ramey, I want to talk about our expectations for the rest of 2024. As I stated earlier, we believe there are emerging signs that the demand for tech professionals is improving as evidenced by the increasing number of tech job postings. As the past has shown us, as the demand for tech talent climbs, Competition for skilled professionals intensifies, and as this competition heats up, companies will increasingly need our platforms to find, attract, and hire the best tech professionals for their digital initiatives. We continue to forecast a return to year-over-year bookings growth in the second half of 2024 and maintain our commitment to a full-year 24% adjusted EBITDA margin. As we move forward, We continue to focus on improving our products and our go-to-market execution so that we are ready to capitalize on the anticipated increased demand for our tools. On that note, let me turn the call over to Rami, who will take you through our financials, and then we'll take any questions you may have. Rami?