Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the HireQuest, Inc., Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2021 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Jen Belodeau. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Operator. I would like to welcome everybody to the call. Hosting the call today are HireQuest's CEO, Rick Hermanns, and CFO David S. Burnett. I would like to take a moment to read the Safe Harbor statement. This conference call contains forward-looking statements as defined within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. These forward-looking statements in terms such as anticipate expect, intend, may, will, should, or other comparable terms involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future. Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief, or current Expectations of HireQuest and members of its Management, as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, including those described in HireQuest's periodic reports filed with the SEC, and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Except as required by federal securities laws, HireQuest undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect change conditions. I would now like to turn the call over to the CEO of HireQuest, Rick Hermanns. Go ahead, Rick.

First, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us for today's call, especially our shareholders. We appreciate your continued support and your continued belief in the HireQuest model. To begin, I will provide financial and strategic highlights for the full year, and then David will share details on our fourth-quarter results. In Q4, we continued the momentum that we saw in Q3, and exceeded Q4 2019 pre -pandemic comparable revenues, while simultaneously generating strong margins and profitability across the board. Franchise royalties grew 88% in total revenue, 99% in Q4, with net income increasing 62% to $2.2 million, or $0.16 per diluted share. For the full-year franchise royalties grew 67%, and total revenue grew 64% with net income increasing a 121%, reaching $11.8 million, or $0.87 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA for the full-year was up 54% to $14.7 million. Our fourth-quarter results included annual comp -- I'm sorry. Our Q4 results included annual incentive compensation, which we have historically recognized in Q1. This change in accounting methodology results in two years’ worth of incentive compensation running through our P&L in 2021. This strong growth was both organic and acquisitions driven. Organic Franchise royalties growth in Q4 and the full year was 47% and 30% respectively. During the year we opened 14 new offices, a net increase of 13 new offices up from five new offices in 2020 with a net decrease of eight offices in 2020. Our franchises are incentivized to open new offices, given the attractive economics that our model provides them, and the fact we support them with working capital financing, technology and back-office support, amongst other things. Moreover, we support organic growth by helping our existing franchisees with part of the costs to open in new markets. We are unaware of any other franchiser that does…

Thank you, Rick. And good afternoon, everybody, thank you for joining us today. We had another solid quarter. Total Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 was $6.8 million compared to $3.4 million for the same quarter last year. An increase of 98.8%. Our total Revenue is comprised of three components, Franchise royalties, which is our primary source of revenue, and typically accounts for over 90% of our total revenue. Service revenue, which is generated from interest charge to our franchisees on overdue accounts receivable, and fees for various optional services, and third is staffing revenue from own locations. Franchise royalties and service revenue are derived from our Franchise base. From time-to-time, we may have owned location revenue as a result of acquired businesses that are not converted to franchises or held for sale. In 2021, the only owned location is the dental staffing location that we acquired late in the year. Franchise royalties for the quarter were $6.1 million compared to $3.2 million last year, an increase of 87.9%. While the addition of the acquired Snelling and LINK locations contributed to this growth, we experienced organic growth of 47.1% during the fourth quarter. System-wide sales for the quarter were $106.8 million compared to $54.8 million for the same period in 2020, an increase of 95%. System-wide sales include sales at all offices, whether owned and operated by us or our franchisees. During the quarter, our system-wide revenue surpassed pre -pandemic levels, even when the effects of the Snelling and Link acquisitions are removed. Selling, general and administrative expenses for the quarter were $4.4 million compared to $2.2 million last year. The increase in SG&A was primarily driven by increased incentive compensation expense. We have historically recognized discretionary bonuses in Q1 of the following year. However, as Rick noted, we…

Thanks, David. HireQuest had a remarkable and transformational year, and I'm proud of our team and our many accomplishments as we execute our strategy and reinforced our conviction in HireQuest's ability to provide a truly differentiated staffing solution to our customers and to create value for our employees, franchisees, and shareholders alike. Our journey is just beginning. I appreciate your support and welcome you to come along as there's never been a better time to be a part of HireQuest. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. We appreciate your interest in our company. Now, I'll open the line to questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is open for questions. And lastly, while posing your question, please pick up your handset if posting on speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Please hold while I poll for questions. The first question is coming from Mike Baker, from DA Davidson. Your line's live.

Hi, thanks, guys. Appreciate the commentary in the great quarter. I just wanted to ask, now that we're back above pre -pandemic levels, how should we think about 2022, maybe a preview on how you see this year playing out in terms of some of your franchisees opening new offices, or growth in existing offices, what kind of growth we might get from the new acquisitions, and then also talk about if we should expect any kind of increases on your expense line.

Hey, Mike, thanks for the question. I would say a couple of points. One as far as Growth for this year, as far as revenues, I would expect a fairly significant increase in revenues if only because you're comparing 2021 revenues to which we're still at pandemic influenced amounts, particularly in the first three quarters, to a full-year with presumably without significant pandemic influences. So I do need to hedge myself on that as obviously if another variant comes out, that slows things down, that would change that but, as you can tell our revenues were far, we were typically running 15%, 20% below pre -pandemic levels for the first half of the year. We caught up in the third quarter and then surpass it in the fourth. And so it would be my expectation. There's no reason for us to drop below pandemic -- pre -pandemic levels. And so that bodes well for our overall revenues for 2022. As far as openings, obviously the economy has -- there's a lot of opportunities out there with again the subsiding of the pandemic and so our franchisees were rightfully cautious to open new offices in 2020, of course, but even in 2021, there was still a recovery from that. And so I would hope that we will see even more openings this year as the pandemic goes further behind us. And already a number -- a few offices have been opened, or plan to be opened. So that's a great thing.

Got it. Okay. And then, more of a short-term question, but just wanted to ask you about, you have a great pulse on the economy, just seeing the labor market in a number of different verticals, modest stuff going on here in the calendar first quarter between cycling stimulus, and the situation in Eastern Europe, and rising gas prices, etc. What's your general view on the economy right now? Obviously, labor market's very tight. How does that impact you guys? Just your pulse on the economy would be helpful. Thanks.

Sure. So one of the things that's kind of funny even in preparing for this call, I went in and I just looked at, for example, the penetration in Western Europe of temporary staffing as a percentage of total employment in Western Europe, and it typically is around 10%, whereas in the United States it's somewhere in the 2% to 2.5% range. And so I think what we're experiencing here is with the way the economy is, I think that companies are becoming more and more attuned to keeping their labor cost down, number one because of the shortage, but also just as wages have risen. And really this was before the pandemic, wages were rising in real terms strongly in 2019 already. And as they rise, obviously companies need to look to -- in order to keep their margins in line, they need to look for ways to keep their costs in line. And so I believe, and I believe it's borne out by our numbers, is that there's going to be a greater and greater demand for temporary staffing. And even just the absolute lack of workers is going to increase that demand for temporary staffing as well, which to me goes back to beyond what's going on in Ukraine, beyond what is going on with the sort of post-pandemic sort of supply chain issues. The reality is that there's a large demographic shift in this country, as well. And as the labor force literally begins to shrink, it's going to create a keener and keener competition for workers and more and more of a requirement to be smart with your workforce. And I believe that as a temporary staffing company, we're -- and our franchisees are in a great position to capitalize on those demographic shifts.

Makes perfect sense. Thanks, I will turn it over to somebody else.

The next question is coming from Kevin Spanky, from Barrington. Kevin, your line is live.

Hey, good afternoon.

Hey, Kevin.

Hi Kevin.

I just wanted to start out by just getting that small housekeeping numbers item out of the away here. Just are you able to quantify the impact of that shift in the incentive compensation that you talked about into the fourth quarter from the first quarter?

Yes. So that moving the bonus -- moving the incentive compensation from Q1 2022 as we had for the last probably 18 years into Q4, cost us some pretax dollars, about $2.006 million, or a net effect of $1.740 million. So it was a significant impact.

Okay. No, that's very helpful. And excluding it, it really shows the operating leverage you're able to drive there, but okay. I wanted to ask too about the three acquisitions that you did in January, and those came together in pretty rapid succession. So maybe just any more color on how those came together, how long you were working on those, and any more general comments on the M&A pipeline overall.

Sure. The -- I think we started probably working -- we took them from -- each one was a little bit different. The Dickason one went on for a bit longer of a period of time simply because they had other people looking at it. So it was a -- that was a slower process, not necessarily because of us or because of them, but simply because of the desires of the seller. But as a general rule, once both sides are determined to buy -- one to buy and one to sell, it really only takes us typically from LOI to close, it usually doesn't take us more than two to three months. So really, these only started and cooking probably in November, December. And we were able to close them in pretty rapid succession. Again, though, that goes back to our franchise model because when the people on the ground generally are the exact same on day one post-close, it really simplifies what we need to do. And so we're really in a great position to do that. As far as the pipeline, we're always beating the bushes. And so the pipeline frankly, could be as big as we wanted it to be except when I say that it really won't be because we're pretty choosy on the parameters of which we'll actually go towards an acquisition. In other words, we're not going to just -- were not growing just, and I've said this a bunch of times, we're not growing just for the sake of saying that we're at $400 million, now we're at $500 million, now we're at $600 million in system-wide sales. That's not -- we have no desire to just have that top-line, it needs to always be an acquisition that's going to be accretive for our shareholders. That's all we're ever going to do. So that obviously requires more filtering of deals, but there's plenty of them, again, there are plenty of them that are out there. In part because the pandemic slowed it down, obviously, nobody wanted to sell in 2020 unless they absolutely had to because their business declined so significantly and so nobody wanted to. But now that we're -- and you see it throughout the staffing industry, I know you follow some other staffing companies, most companies have now started to exceed pre -pandemic sales levels. And so I would expect us to be able to see even more deals now, because people who have been putting off retirement are now ready to sell.

That's helpful commentary. And I wanted to ask too about driver Quest, which you launched the summer of 2021 and just adoption of that offering among your Franchise base and Just commentary on how that's progressing and helping to drive Growth.

The -- it's a good, --it's a fair question. It's not been a large driver of growth at all. The reality is we for 20 years would get requests for drivers and we wouldn't take it because of really the insurance risks are significant in trucking. And so we put together, obviously, special program in order for us to do it. And it has not -- while a fairly substantial amount of our franchisees have set themselves up so that they're able to offer drivers, I wouldn't say that a lot of them, in fact, very few have really devoted a lot of time to develop. And to be honest with you, part of that is logical and rational simply because with the shortage of, I'll call them just vanilla workers, most of our offices are still -- have more jobs than they have people to fill them. And so to go into trucking, which is an even tighter market, has a bit of masochism attached to doing that. So I do believe that in the long run it will be a good market for us, and it is helpful, it isn't nothing, but it isn't really what's driving our growth at all. We are getting significant growth. In fact, in -- we were running I think it was in the commentary, but 47% ahead of the fourth quarter of 2020, that's a really big number, and that's excluding -- that's just comparable sales. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's a lot of already business to be had without reaching into trucking. But I do believe it will be adopted as time goes on and the market for workers reaches more of an equilibrium.

No. That makes sense. I mean, it is obviously still very early on with that offering. It sounds like adoption has been pretty good by the franchisees and it is clearly up a strong long-term play for you. So that makes total sense. Just as we are hopefully getting Omicron and COVID hopefully in the rearview mirror here, knock on wood. I mean, did you detect any noticeable impact in the fourth quarter or early 2022 on numbers from the surge in COVID cases? I mean, clearly you still exceeded pre -pandemic levels, but I was wondering if you think that impacted demand at all?

It's a good question and I'm not really sure of the answer. What I will tell you is that our demand in let's say from Thanksgiving until mid-January, during the peak of Omicron, was tremendous. We had really, really strong demand throughout that period. Now, you could take that one of two ways. One is, it's just a recovery from the pandemic, you could just look at it as this is normal, or you could take the position that companies were short of workers because of Omicron and they were backfilling their warehouses and factories with temporary people. But I tend to think it's probably the former, simply because our orders -- we didn't get special orders from companies that we had never heard of before. It was just us being able to fill more and more of the existing demand. So it could be either answer, but I do -- I think it was the former, not the -- that it's just a recovery from pre -pandemic levels. But the numbers were really strong.

Okay. And just lastly, can you touch on labor shortages. Have you seen any easing there? I know you said you started to see a bit of easing towards the end of the third quarter, but I mean that maybe Omicron that things tightened up a little bit or just how significantly are labor shortages impacting your ability to fill demand, I guess?

I -- Yeah, and as I said in our last earnings call back in, I guess it'd been in the middle of November, the ending of the $300 supplemental unemployment benefits really helped us. And our business really -- our fill rates really started taking off in the second half of September. That said, we're still short of workers. If we had -- Some places, the shortage is worse than others, but it's still really tight. It might be marginally better than what it was, let's say, in October or November, but I would say, generally, we're still really short of workers. Especially ones that have a defined skill. It's gotten a little bit better for, I would say, let's say a general warehouse worker or a general construction worker. But when you start talking an electrician or a forklift driver, it's still every bit as tight, as it was back in let's say October, still better than July, but not I don't see it, I don't see it being any better than it was let's say in October or November.

Okay. That's good color. And then nonetheless, you're still able to put up really strong growth in the quarter despite that. So congratulations on the results. Thanks. That's all I had for now.

Thank you.

The next question is coming from Aaron Edelheit from Mindset Capital. Your line is live.

Hi, Rick.

Hey, Aaron.

Hey, I wanted to look forward to this year and one model. You acquired companies last year, you've acquired companies this year, and I wanted to run by just a model, assuming there's no crazy pandemic or we continue the trend we're seeing, I'm coming up with system-wide revenue of around $440 million. And when I use the model that you shared before that you generally get about 4% net, I'm coming up with EPS targets that are -- it comes up with about a $1.30 in earnings. Is there -- I know your -- anyway, I'm just curious if am I thinking about things the right way in terms of system-wide revenue, is there anything that would change the historic model or how you viewed HireQuest?

So let me break apart the two things that you suggested. As far as the system-wide sales, obviously, in 2019, if Command and HireQuest had been merged for the full year, our system-wide sales were, let's just say $290 million. The annual sales purchased in the LINK and Snelling transactions were like another $110 million. So that's $400 million, and we just bought $35 million worth of sales.

So that's $435 --

Exactly, with 0 growth. So I think that if you are using that number, I would sit there and say, well, yeah that's just math. As far as income is concerned, realizing our target is 3.5 to 4.5. And frankly with the amount of amortization that we have, 3.5 is a lot more realistic.

To amortization, I just want to confirm, that's because of your acquisitions. You're an asset like business, so this is one request I wanted to make in the future maybe you could also report a cash EPS number that's fully taxed without the amortization because it's really not reflective of your underlying cash flow, right?

Well that's, I mean that part is true. And so we'll have to sort of look at your request there. Part of it, obviously we're trying to model that with our adjusted EBITDA as well to get something close to that. But I would also caution one of the thing is needless to say, there will be costs related to converting these offices that we just bought into franchises. The cost of doing the deals, and converting them to franchises. So I just throw that out there as well. I don't want you to think that, hey Rick Hermanns’ forecasting.

No for sure, but those are just the onetime costs, right?

Yes, absolutely. That's right.

But on a normalized basis, if I just took, basically taking 2019 as you said, of what HireQuest's command center did adding in the Snelling in-lane and then your new a Acquisitions. And then using your historic framework, whether it's 3.5, which would be like a $1.14 to 4%, which would be a $1.30. And that assumes kind of know lab other acquisitions that, that's still a good framework to view HireQuest's.

Yes, I would agree with you.

And then I'm curious if you're -- you've been looking at new verticals. Obviously you've been expanding, you made acquisitions and some of the bigger ones, like security guards and others. How does the outlook look for kind of capping into yet another vertical this year?

I would simply say there's no -- with the three deals already closed, I think my ops team and my finance team, we're getting bored. I think it's -- So I think it's time. They're probably sitting there right now, probably screaming, but I do believe that we will -- there's nothing stopping us. So it's really just comes down to availability of end attractive acquisition target, not -- there's nothing limiting us at this point.

Got you. And from the last two quarters, I've gotten a sense -- And I've always appreciated your straight talk. The last two quarters I've gotten a sense that you're becoming, from your comments, that you're becoming a lot more optimistic about where HireQuest is than the quarters before. Am I reading too much into that as long-term shareholder? I'm just curious if you could comment on that.

I'm not 100% sure, I'm generally an optimistic person, so I'm not generally certain I could -- I'm saying that I could validate what you're saying there. What I can say is clearly where there is probably more confidence is that, and this is something we tried to even bear out in our presentation, is that what's crucial about the fourth quarter that we just experienced and by exceeding pre -pandemic levels, particularly including command center, means that we are -- we've demonstrated now over, let's say, a 10-quarter period that we were able to retain the business that we acquired. And the same is true with Snelling and with LINK. What that really means from a -- to me is that we've done a really good job retaining what we acquire and the real demon in service company acquisitions is retaining that business because it's service related. So when you lose people, you lose business. And with a lot of these acquisitions people go out and then the top salesperson quits, the good managers quit because they don't like the new culture. Well in our case, typically, the old -- the incumbent management team is the same people who are sticking around. And -- so if I have more confidence, it would be simply because I do believe our model has been validated now over really 10 quarters. And so in that respect I do -- I guess maybe that's come out -- it's not intentional, it's just I always believed it was going to happen, but of course it's kind of funny when you look at the history of what happened with the company, it's just -- we went, we did the acquisition, the merger, had a bunch of costs the first two quarters, and literally finally it's like, yes, we got this stuff behind us, and then the pandemic hit literally in the first quarter when we were ready to hit good things. And so it's been a long journey that way, and I do feel that we're on -- a lot of things could happen, oil could go to a $150 bucks a barrel or inflation could go to 12%. Lots of different things that can happen that can mess things up. But overall, again, I do feel like our business model has been validated. And -- which means there's no real limit to what we do.

That's great. And last question, thank you for that, is on inflation is in a weird way, you're somewhat insulated or might even benefit from inflation that flows through labor costs because your franchisees are getting a percentage of whatever the prevailing wage rate is. And then you're getting a percentage of the franchise. So in a weird way, as labor costs increase, HireQuest tags along. Is that the right way to think about it?

That's very accurate. I would say there are a few cases where maybe we're locked into a fixed price for the year. Fixed price might be $18 an hour, $17, whatever it is. That obviously can create a problem in a rapidly -- in an inflationary environment. However, we have had far more pricing control than what we've ever had. I've been in this business for 31 years, and we never had pricing power. Right now we have pricing power because -- not so much because we're just clamoring for it, but just simply the worker has the pricing power. It's just simply somebody comes to us and says, we want a janitor 14 bucks an hour. Good luck, you're not going to find them. And so from that perspective, we are very much protected. And that's a good thing.

Great, thanks again. Congrats on a great quarter.

Thank you.

This completes today's Q&A portion of the call. I'd like to turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

Well, again, thank you, everybody, for joining us on the call. I hope that you go away with a better understanding of how well the fourth quarter really did go for us, and that 2021 is really hopefully just a harbinger for the future. Thank you, again, for your tuning in, and we look forward to a great 2022. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.