Korn Ferry

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Korn Ferry fourth quarter and fiscal year end April 30th, 2024 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Following the prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. We have also made available in the investor relations section of our website at KornFerry.com a copy of the financial presentation that we will be reviewing with you today. Before we turn the call over to your host, Mr. Gary Burnison, let me first read a cautionary statement to investors. Certain statements made in the call today, such as those relating to future performance, plans, and goals, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although the company believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements. Actual results in future periods may differ materially from those currently expected or desired because of a number of risks and uncertainties which are beyond the company's control. Additional information concerning Such risks and uncertainties can be found in the release relating to this presentation and in the periodic and other reports filed by the company with the SEC, including the company's soon-to-be filed annual report for fiscal year 2024. Also, some of the comments today may reference non-GAAP financial measures such as constant currency amounts, EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA. Additional information concerning these measures, including reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, is contained in the financial presentation and earnings release relating to this call, both of which are posted in the investor relations section of the company's website at www.cornferry.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Gary Burnison. Please go ahead, Gary.

Thanks, Leah. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. Our team, I'm joined by Bob and Tiffany and Greg. They'll get into the results in more detail. But the earnings and profitability were really strong in the fourth quarter. They increased year over year and sequentially. We came in with an adjusted EBITDA margin of over 16%, which is our fourth consecutive quarter of profitability improvement. And, in fact, when you adjust for the mixed change of us getting into a brand-new business line that has a huge market opportunity for us interim, our adjusted dividend margin is about 300 basis points higher than pre-pandemic levels, and the revenue is way higher compared to four years ago, probably 35%, 40% higher for sure. You know, much has changed. over the last four years, not only in how we live, but also in how we relate to others and how we work. The one thing that hasn't changed, though, is our purpose to enable people and organizations to be more of that. And as the premier organizational consulting firm in the world, we're a company that impacts the lives and careers of tens of thousands of people across thousands of organizations, a company that continues to innovate and align our business to help our clients perform and transform. A company, Korn Ferry, that sits at the intersection of a client's business strategy, their talent, to ultimately drive superior performance. It's clear that our strategy is working. The cyclically sensitive talent acquisition offerings are being buoyed by growth and stability from our diversified offerings, particularly consulting, although that's complemented by digital. They've both generated very, very solid performance during the year. It all begins with data. 109 million assessments we've done, 6 million professionals developed, a million people put to work, more than 10,000 success profiles. Compensation information on 30 million professionals covering 30,000 organizations around the world. And more importantly, our incredible colleagues who transformed that data into unique and scalable insights and compelling solutions for our clients. And nowhere is that more pronounced than in our marquee and regional account programs. which represents 37% of our portfolio for the fiscal year. And these accounts benefit from the breadth and depth of all things Korn Ferry, from our IP to our full suite of offerings to the expertise of our colleagues. And to put that into perspective, today the growth from these accounts is outpacing the rest of the company. And almost all of our marquee clients use at least three of our business lines, which is a key contributor to our success in cross-line of business referrals. And we exit the year at about 26% of total fee revenue in cross-business referrals. In everything we do, we are really striving hard to work more interdependently, more horizontally, less vertically, scaling our data, insights, and offerings more Our purpose, our vision, strategy, I think really put us at the threshold of even greater opportunity, regardless of the environment, from one cycle to the next. So with that very high-level overview, I will now turn it over to Bob.

Great. Thanks, Gary, and good afternoon or good morning. We ended fiscal year 24 on a high note, generating $691 million of fee revenue in the fourth quarter. And that was at the upper end of our guidance. And more importantly, we delivered really strong earnings and profitability. Adjusted EBITDA over $112 million at a 16.3% margin. And that margin is up nearly 300 basis points year over year. Additionally, our adjusted fully diluted earnings per share were $1.26. And GAAP fully diluted earnings per share were $1.24. As Gary indicated, the fourth quarter marked a full year of quarter sequential margin expansion. And it really highlights our strong cost management and improvements in our consultant and execution staff productivity. Overall, fiscal 24 was another example of the success of our long-term diversification strategy and really a clear demonstration of the relevancy of our solutions. Additionally, our growing earnings power in today's environment, which is pretty challenging, also demonstrates the resilience of our business model and the diligent execution of our strategy by all of our colleagues. Now let's take a step back and look at the pieces that really helped shape the year. One of our key growth drivers, marquee and regional accounts, which represents over a billion dollars, or 37% of our FY24 total fee revenue grew 3%. even though our overall business was down 3% for the full year, year over year. These accounts include many of our largest clients with several accounts exceeding $10 million in annual fee revenue. And those are the accounts or clients that are consuming multiple lines of our business. Two of our less cyclical segments, consulting and digital, both reached all-time highs in fee revenue for all of fiscal 24. underscoring both relevance and durability of their solution sets. Additionally, our full year average bill rate for consulting increased 11% year-over-year, and we exited the year at $437 per hour. Now, across the business, consultant and execution staff productivity continued to improve. Our productivity in the fourth quarter, measured by fee revenue per headcount, was up 31%, versus the third quarter of FY20, which is a quarter right before the pandemic hit. And finally, fee revenue generated by cross-line of business referrals was about 25% of total fee revenue in FY24, and it grew sequentially in both Q3 and Q4. And as Gary mentioned, we exited the year at about 26%. All of these are important factors that help drive stability in our fee revenue despite the cyclical moderation in the talent acquisition market, and they were also key factors in driving the improvement in our earnings and profitability throughout fiscal year 24. Last, I'd like to provide an update on our capital deployment. Return of capital to shareholders has been a priority for Korn Ferry, and in fiscal 24, we returned $107 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. In the fourth quarter, we repurchased approximately $23 million worth of stock. It's about 365,000 shares. It brought our total share repurchases for FY24 to about 930,000 shares. In addition to the 83 percent increase in our dividend earlier this year, our board has just approved another increase in our dividend of 4 cents per share. It's about a 12 percent increase. And that brings our quarterly dividend to 37 cents per share, which is actually double what it was at the beginning of the year. All of our capital allocation initiatives really speak to the confidence we have in the outlook for our business and our future earnings power. Now I'm going to turn it over to Greg, who will take you through some overall company financial highlights. Okay.