DHI Group, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the DHI Group Inc. First Quarter 2026 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, and to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Todd Curley of Pondo Wilkinson. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to DHI Group's first quarter earnings conference call for 2026. Joining me today are DHI's CEO, Art Zaley, and CFO, Greg Skippers. Before I hand the call over to Art, I'd like to address a few quick items. This afternoon, DHI issued a press release announcing its financial results for the first quarter of 2026. The release is available on the company's website at dhigroupinc.com, and 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 the 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, on today's call, management will reference specific financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, free cash flow, and non-GAAP earnings per share, which are not prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Information regarding those non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings press release, which can be found on our website at dhigroupinc.com in the Investor Relations section. With that, I'll now turn the conference over to Art Zaley, CEO of DHI Group.

Thank you, Todd, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. At DHI, our mission is simple. We help employers connect with highly skilled technology professionals through two platforms, clearance jobs and DICE, both of which serve critical roles in the tech hiring ecosystem. Our exclusive focus on tech occupations combined with ongoing product innovation gives us a durable competitive advantage. Today, approximately 6,000 employers and staffing and recruiting companies subscribe to our platforms, and approximately 90% of our revenue is recurring. Clearance Jobs is the leading marketplace for professionals with active U.S. security clearances, serving approximately 1,700 customers, including Lockheed, Booz Allen Hamilton, Leidos, Raytheon, and many others. With 2 million candidates on our platform, we have the largest number of profiles of U.S. cleared professionals, giving CJ a significant competitive advantage as a platform for hiring cleared tech talent for the defense sector. DICE is essentially LinkedIn for tech hiring, built over 35 years with 7.8 million profiles in our database, representing the vast majority of technology professionals in the United States. While LinkedIn emphasizes that person's title, we focus on tech skills, of which there are over 100,000 distinct skills in our data model. Tech professionals on Dice actively update their profiles with new skills, making Dice the most relevant platform for recruiters who need to source tech talent. With these two platforms, we have become an essential software tool used by employers and recruiters to find top tech talent for their open positions. This quarter reflects a company executing well against a clear strategy with strong momentum in clearance jobs and encouraging early progress across our strategic initiatives. Let me start with clearance jobs, which remains the primary growth engine of DHI Group. In the first quarter, we achieved revenue growth of 5% and bookings growth of 7% year over year. Additionally, CJ delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 40%. This underscores the strength of the underlying business in improving demand trends. We are also seeing a more positive market environment following the passage of the U.S. defense budget in late January. While there is typically a lag between budget approval and hiring activity, customer sentiment has improved significantly, and we are beginning to see that reflected in stronger engagement and demand. The $1 trillion US defense budget for fiscal year 2026 represents a substantial one-year increase over the previous year's budget. Additionally, NATO countries are increasing their defense budgets, aiming to allocate 5% of GDP, which could lead to more than $500 billion in additional spending annually. with U.S. contractors likely to receive a substantial share of this expenditure. These dynamics are promising for clearance jobs. With over 10,000 employers of cleared tech professionals and more than 100 government agencies in need of them, CJ has a significant growth opportunity as government contractors look to staff new projects. We believe we are in the early stages of this growth cycle. Consistent with CJ's expand the mission strategy, we acquired point solutions group or PSG inside the quarter and are encouraged by the early results. In a short period, we have increased the number of contractors deployed and grown the number of active contracts with major prime contractors. We are also seeing strong engagement from those partners as we develop and deepen relationships and pursue additional opportunities. While still early, the initial performance supports our strategy to expand the clearance jobs platform into adjacent high-value services and further monetize the relationships we have built over the past 24 years. Our Agile ATS business also continues to make steady progress. While still modest in scale, we are consistently adding customers and increasing sales investment to support future growth. We are also seeing early traction with our premium candidate subscription on Clarence Jobs. Since its formal launch in mid-February, adoption has surpassed expectations with quick growth in paid subscribers. Although the immediate revenue impact is modest, this is an important new long-term monetization opportunity. Stepping back, our strategy is clear. We are leveraging the strength of the Clearance Jobs platform in our long-standing relationships with top government contractors to grow into related services in talent acquisition and management. This platform-driven approach positions us for sustained long-term growth. Turning to DICE, we are beginning to see the signs of stabilization in the tech hiring market. As CompTIA stated in its report on the month of March, Companies are beginning to move away from the more conservative approaches of the past year and are considering investments in talent to support strategic digital initiatives. Leading indicators, including job postings and customer activity, are improving, and we are seeing increased engagement from both staffing firms and commercial customers. There were more than 537,000 job postings for tech positions in March, including 254,000 New postings, an increase of 19% year over year. While we are not yet seeing a recovery in DICE bookings, the trend lines are encouraging. AI continues to be the most important long-term driver. As of March 2026, 67% or two-thirds of U.S. tech job postings required AI-related skills. more than double the 29% we saw a year ago. Over that same period, job postings requiring machine learning skills have increased 167%. We view this as a powerful validation of our strategy. Rather than reducing the need for talent, AI is increasing demand for highly skilled technical professionals. DICE is well positioned here with a deep skills-based model that allows employers to identify candidates based on more than 360 distinct AI-related skills. Rather than treating AI as a single generic category, DICE enables employers to identify and match candidates based on specific skill sets, an increasingly critical capability as AI roles become more specialized. We have also made it easier for candidates to access Dice job postings by being the first career platform with a cloud connector. This is only one of many Dice features that implement an AI model solution. As you recall, we enabled two self-service options for Dice late last year, and we are already seeing a steady progression of transactions as we ramp our marketing campaign spend. While near-term performance will depend on the pace of recovery in the broader tech hiring market, we believe Dice is strategically well-positioned, especially as demand for AI-related skills continues to grow. From a financial perspective, VHI continues to generate strong free cash flow supported by our subscription model and disciplined cost structure. This allows us to take a balanced approach to capital allocation, investing in growth initiatives, pursuing strategic acquisitions, and returning capital to shareholders through an active share repurchase program. As a reminder, our board approved a $10 million share repurchase program in the first quarter, demonstrating our confidence in the company's long-term value. In summary, we believe DHI is uniquely positioned at the intersection of two powerful and durable trends, increasing global defense spending, and growing demand for highly specialized technology talent, particularly in AI. ClearShops continues to demonstrate strong growth and expanding opportunity as government and contractor demand accelerates, while DICE is well-positioned to benefit from an eventual recovery in tech hiring, supported by our differentiated skills-based approach and continued product innovation. At the same time, we are successfully extending our platforms into adjacent services, creating new monetization opportunities, and deepening our relationships with customers. Importantly, our highly recurring revenue model and strong free cash flow give us the flexibility to invest for growth while continuing to return capital to shareholders. Taken together, we believe we are building a more durable, high-growth business with multiple levers for value creation. With that, I'll turn the call over to Greg to walk you through the financial results in more detail.