Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to today’s HireQuest Inc. Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference 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, John Nesbett of IMS Investor Relations. John, the floor is yours.

Thank you, and good afternoon. I’d like to welcome everyone to the call. Hosting the call today are HireQuest’s CEO, Rick Hermanns; and Chief Financial Officer, David Burnett. I’d like 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 in 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 and 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 higher 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 law, HireQuest undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed conditions. I would now like to turn the call over to CEO of HireQuest, Rick Hermanns. Go ahead, Rick.

Thank you for joining us for today’s call. To begin, I’ll provide an overview of the financial and strategic highlights for the quarter, then David will share more details surrounding our third quarter results. This was a very strong quarter for us in which we saw continued revenue growth. Franchise royalties increased 13.7% to $7.4 million, excluding acquisitions made in 2022, royalty growth was 7.3%. Staffing revenue from owned locations was $1.5 million. Gross profit increased 19.7% to $8.2 million compared to $6.9 million in the prior year period, and we continued to drive very strong profitability in the business with net income from continuing operations increasing 29.9% to $4.1 million or $0.30 per diluted share. We also reported adjusted EBITDA of $6.6 million up from $5.3 million in the prior year period. I’d also like to point out that for the first nine months of 2022, we’ve reported adjusted EBITDA of $17.8 million, up 86% from $9.6 million for the first nine months of 2021. This growth really starts to demonstrate the magnitude and success of the growth strategy we are executing. Multiple factors drove our strong performance for the quarter. First, our franchise locations continue to perform well. A key component of our model is supporting our franchisees as they build out their own businesses. For example, our franchise expansion incentive program helps with startup costs by providing existing franchisees with credits on the royalty fees they pay for existing offices, freeing franchises from financial constraints and giving them access to growth capital empowers their organic growth. We also eliminate two of the highest cost barriers for franchisee – franchise expansion, capital and worker’s comp. Second, we continue to benefit – we continue to see the benefit of the strategic diversification of our geographical coverage and end markets.…

Thank you, Rick, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. As Rick mentioned, gross profit for the third quarter was $8.2 million compared to $6.9 million for the same quarter last year, an increase of 19.7%. Our gross profit is comprised of three components. Franchise royalties, which is our primary source of revenue, service revenue, which is generated from fees for various optional services and interest charge to our franchisees on overdue accounts and third is growth staffing revenue from own locations, net of direct staffing costs for those locations. Franchise royalties and service revenue are derived from our franchise base. From time to time, we may have own location staffing revenue typically from acquired businesses that are not converted to franchises. Franchise royalties for the quarter were $7.4 million, compared to $6.5 million last year, an increase of 13.7%. In addition to the contribution from acquired locations, royalties from our existing franchises saw a strong growth of 15.4% during the third quarter. System-wide sales for the quarter were $123.2 million, compared to $101.9 million for the same period in 2021, an increase of 21%. Excluding acquisitions made in 2022, system-wide sales increased 13.1%. System-wide sales include sales at all offices, whether owned and operated by us or our franchisees. Selling, general and administrative expenses for the quarter were $2.4 million or 1.9% of system-wide sales compared to $3 million or 3% of system-wide sales in the same quarter last year. The decrease in SG&A was driven by a $982,000 third quarter benefit and net workers’ compensation expense. During this quarter, we reduced our reserves based on recent claims resolution and experience. Most of this benefit relates to the Snelling workers’ compensation reserves assumed at the time of acquisition that are now in runoff mode. This decrease was…

Thanks, David. Our solid third quarter was very telling of the strengths across our business and the success we’ve seen in acquiring companies that significantly broadened the scope of our offerings. I would like to thank our team, our franchisees, and their workers for the continued excellence demonstrated throughout the quarter, especially given the unusual economic environment we are all currently facing. We have a long established history, and this is not the first time we have experienced economic uncertainty. I am confident we are well positioned to handle any challenges that may come. As always, we remain focused on providing unparalleled support for our dedicated team of franchisees. With that, I’ll now open the line to questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. [Operator Instructions] And your first question today is coming from Mike Baker from D.A. Davidson. Mike, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Okay. So a couple questions. One, just – how would you characterize your results, sales, gross profit, EBITDA relative to your internal expectations? What I’m getting at is, there are estimates out there, they’re my estimates the only one with estimates, I do my best job to project. My numbers are a little bit higher than yours. But what’s more important I think is how the results were relative to your own internal expectations rather than my estimates.

So I appreciate the question, Mike. So I would say a couple of things is, one, the sales really were not significantly different than what – really than what I would’ve expected. And I realize, I – historically, we offer – and we kind of look at a bit more of an increase in sales in the third quarter, because of the prominence of HQD, HireQuest Direct. That division tends to be more seasonal than our Snelling division and also now with Northbound. And so part of that, your expectations weren’t necessarily probably as wrong based on history as much as we’re just more influenced now by Snelling. But if you look at the billings by sort of individual week, they’re – they were definitely well within our expectations. And as far as EBITDA, I would also say that they were pretty much within our expectations, frankly, every quarter has – always has a number of sort of adjustments, both positive and negative. And I would say that this was one of those quarters where it was probably kind of balanced. There were a few things that maybe I wasn’t expecting, and there were a couple of both ways. And so I would say that it was a fairly indicative quarter. The one thing I will admit that took me by surprise, and this is just me not being a tax accountant, was the increase in the effective tax rate. Otherwise, we’ve probably hit almost exactly where I would’ve expected.

Okay. That makes sense. I appreciate that. I wanted to ask you, I always like to ask, you were in a – it’s very confusing employment situation, I think everyone keeps expecting employment to go down, but the unemployment rate is still very low. It looks like everyone’s still hire people, yet we’re hearing about all these layoffs and freezes. You’re in a unique position, I think, to help us understand what’s going on in the labor market in general. So if you could give us your insights into labor in general, and then if we do go into a recession, what do you expect to happen and how does that impact your business?

So those are a lot of good questions, and I’ll do my best to answer all of them, hopefully. It’s interesting that different – this was true the pandemic, and it’s true throughout, I guess, basically throughout the history isstates each region tends to have a different effect. So some areas in the country do better than others in a recession. I found it interesting, for example, our – probably our closest competitor would be TrueBlue’s PeopleReady division. And I was interested in seeing that, for example, for their Q3, their PeopleReady division was down 4%, whereas even excluding our acquisitions from the past year, we were actually up 7.3%. I think it was 7.3%. It was reported that maybe it was 9%. Anyway, so we did significantly better than PeopleReady. Now, I don’t – I’d like to say that that’s partially because of a validation of our franchise model, but they’re also heavier in certain other markets. I would say – so with that caveat that we really haven’t seen, certainly not in the third quarter any real slowdown to speak of in any market. For us, it’s – even the last unemployment numbers, you’re still holding it 3.5%. So it’s a very strong employment market as far as our customers are. I would say that part of that might be in why we haven’t maybe experienced the slowdown that’s being spoken of is we really don’t do a lot of business with, let’s say, certain large e-commerce companies that you’re seeing some of the larger layoffs with as an example. And so I think that we’ve – I mean, even let’s say a FedEx or something like that, like we’re not – we’re really not very heavily exposed, certainly not directly to those companies. So maybe some of…

Yes. That’s fascinating. Really great color on how it all works and I appreciate it. Thanks. I’ll pass it on to someone else.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Kevin Steinke from Barrington Research. Kevin, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good afternoon. Rick, I wanted to make sure, I heard correctly in your comments. Did you say, you’re now – you now touch all segments of the $168 billion U.S. staffing industry?

Well, I would say a majority of it would be the better way of saying, if it was spoken anything differently. We do. That said, obviously, we are not nearly as heavy in – we have a lot of room to grow, let’s say, for example, in healthcare. But we do have a presence in healthcare now as an example.

Right, Okay. Yes. So I guess, given that you’re touching most or large majority of the industry, I just kind of wanted to focus on really the long-term organic growth engine here. Still massive opportunity to gain share in the market through new office openings rolling out, new service offerings to your franchisees et cetera. So maybe just any thoughts on that in terms of what you’re seeing in terms of new franchisee openings or willingness of franchisees to launch new offices and kind of the pipeline of maybe some of the new services you’re thinking about or planning to roll out. I know you’re, I think, still working on the dental offering. But just maybe touch on some of those key long-term organic growth drivers as they’re developing now.

Kevin, I’m really glad you asked that question actually. The – so one of the sweet spots we need to try to hit is creating, and there’s sort of like two different ways we can go about this. One is, is we want to hit that sweet spot where we have enough of a name recognition that selling franchises becomes easier. Obviously, it’s far more difficult if we were to just sort of hang a shingle out and say, HireQuest technical services and we’re doing engineers, but we only have one office, it’s hard to sell that franchise, right, because you’re not getting nearly as much name, power and knowhow. And so for example, buying Snelling was important that way. And yet obviously – although, our Snelling division is reasonably large, we have a long ways that we can continue to develop that. And so we – and we’ll continue to do that probably in other areas as well, so for example, on the other hand, our healthcare, for example, is minuscule, really what we offer is minuscule. And therefore, without forecasting anything, but we going out and buying, let’s say for example, a healthcare staffing company is reasonable if only to put up bigger – to have a bigger presence to improve our ability to sell more units. And so I would say this year, going back to your question, is that we’ve been able to open, I can’t – I’ll have to get back with you on the actual number of openings we’ve had this year, but I would say that it’s been a fairly good number of offices this year given the uncertainty in the overall economy. So I’m not displeased at all with that. On the other hand, one of the things that we’re always seeking…

It does. I mean, I guess, you have to kind of build up that brand recognition or improve that you can – you’re able to provide that capability. And I mean, I guess that might entail perhaps more acquisitions in the future or do you feel like you can develop some things organically as well? What does that mix look like?

If we can do it without acquiring someone, we’d much – we’d rather do that. The – and I think there are certain product lines that that’s easier to do within what we already have. But sometimes it just depends on what type of traction we get. I don’t kind of want to tip the cards, but there’s something we have in the – that we have in the offering as far as sort of a new product line, I’ll call it. Well, whether or not we buy anything in that, it really depends on how well it’s received by our franchisees. And if it takes off, we’re not really going to – I wouldn’t do an acquisition to build on to it. So I don’t know if that answers the question, but ultimately you have to have enough scale to some – you need that certain amount of scale before the franchise itself has value to a prospective franchisee, if that makes any sense.

Yes. Understood. Thank you. I wanted to circle back on the – just the labor market as well. And you’ve talked about the last couple quarters here, that demand has been good if demand has been strong, but maybe a bit of a gating factor has just been labor supply. I guess, the numbers being reported on the labor market wouldn’t indicate it, but has there been any loosening or has there been any improvement in your ability to find supply and to what extent is that a factor now that you think is playing into your growth?

Yes. I don’t think there’s any question that in certain markets there’s been a bit of a slackening of demand and perhaps even somewhat of an increase in supply, which would be completely consistent, obviously with the slowing economy and with interest rates going up, et cetera. However, there’s such a pent up demand, and there’s such a large number of openings that at least in the clients we’re servicing, we’re just not getting to that point where we’re like looking around at each other and saying, gosh, we need to go out and find new clients. It’s still more – we need to find more people to fill the orders we already have. I literally had a conversation with one of my franchisees today, and we were just talking about this, because we have a reservoir of potential clients that we’re sitting there and we’ve intentionally not even engaged, because we don’t want to stimulate orders that we can’t properly fill. So I would still – and now that’s just one segment within all of that we serve. So I’m not suggesting that’s throughout our network, but I’m just saying that, there’s still more of a struggle defined good people than there is defined good clients.

Okay. Yes, that’s helpful color. Appreciate it. And I’ll turn it over. Thanks for taking the questions.

Sure.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Mike Albanese from EF Hutton. Mike, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hey, Rick, David. Hope you guys are doing well. Thanks for taking my questions here and congratulations on a really strong quarter. That was some really nice context you gave kind of regarding the macro outlook and what your organic growth is. And I just want to build on that just a little bit first in regards to kind of the macro environment and this – we’ll just say undersupply of temp workers, are you seeing an improvement kind of in pricing power at the franchisee level?

I would say that that improvement in pricing power was way stronger, let’s say at the beginning of this year and at the end of last year than it is now. A lot of that has somewhat deteriorated. That said, margins are generally – are definitely generally better. The – but part of the issue for part of the benefit is more for and this is why I’m still kind of bullish on our demand is most of our franchisees have taken the rational position of – well, okay, I only have X number of workers and I’m going to focus on clients that are willing to pay a better wage and a better rate and properly value the service. Whereas in – let’s say four years ago, it would’ve been more – the buyer had more purchasing power and could lay down a bunch of conditions, which were very unfavorable for staffing companies. And frankly, our franchisees are able to walk away from a lot more business now. Now at some point they may want to bring it back and there’s always that fine line of let’s say, allowing a client to walk. But right now, if again you have a fairly limited pool of workers, there’s no point in killing yourself trying to fill an order for a client that really doesn’t value your services as much as another client does. So you go to who values you the most.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. And then just to kind of touch back on organic growth, and I think this will go online with what you were just talking about, but you saw a really strong organic growth, obviously part of that was due to a weaker 2021. But what’s kind of the sentiment you’re seeing from your franchisees regarding organic growth in the ability to open new locations? I know you mentioned that and you didn’t have the number off the top of your head, but you have opened a number of new locations, but you’re also kind of dealing with that undersupply of temp workers, which I feel like would kind of negate the ability to do that. So my question really is what is the sentiment that you’re seeing from your franchisees about growing organically through opening new locations?

So I think that where we’re seeing most of our growth isn’t necess – organic growth isn’t necessarily, let’s say our franchisee in Omaha saying, let me open in Lincoln as well, rather, it’s our franchisee in Milwaukee. This is really isn’t – I’m using hypothetical, this is really happened, but let’s say our HireQuest direct franchise in Milwaukee then saying, let me also open a Snelling that is more the organic growth that we’re getting rather than geographic expansion. And part of that is because right now it’s very difficult, recruiting environment is still very difficult. And so I’m not suggesting that we have all sorts of people looking to open all sorts of offices. By the same token, like I said to extend their existing product line, we’re seeing a fair bit of demand for that. And I would hope and expect that to be the future, which is part of going back to one of the earlier questions as far as even offering like niche products is that it’s obviously easier for a franchisee, let’s say, it would be far easier for our franchisee in – again in Colorado Springs to where we only have a HireQuest Direct. It’d be far easier for him and for us for that matter to say, hey, I’m going to open a Snelling in HireQuest or in Colorado Springs as well versus opening in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It just – it’s simpler. So the more we can offer, the more they can leverage their local staff, the more we can drive organic growth without in a way that’s easier for them I think.

Sure. Yes, no, that makes a lot of sense. I mean I think ultimately what you’re saying is rather than geographical expansion, there’s opportunities for you to expand within a region across different products and services and that will be a driver of organic growth. Okay. And then my last question, it kind of goes with that or at least with how you’ve expanded across industry verticals. My understanding is Q3 is typically the peak in terms of seasonality that you see, but now that you’ve expanded and then you did three acquisitions and beginning of the year and what is your expectation regarding seasonality moving forward? Do you expect that to be exasperated or dampened in any way or really just kind of maintained as what you’ve seen historically?

So I would say that if you pull out acquisitions made in the prior four quarters, right? So in other words, we’re going to have growth if – as long as we continue to do acquisitions, our number comparisons are always going to look what I’m saying are going to look stronger. To the extent, you pull out those acquisitions, I do believe that our seasonality will be more muted than it has been in the past simply because HireQuest Direct, which is really, really seasonal, is making up a smaller percentage of our overall system-wide sales. So I would just say we’ll still have it. You got to realize too is even like Q3 has more business days than any other quarter. So just based on the number of business days, it’s going to always be in almost probably any business other than like a retailer or something. It’s going to be fairly common for the Q3 to be bigger. Why? Because there’s – again, there’s more business days, so it makes sense. So seasonality will absolutely always exist and Q1 will always be somewhat lower. It’s just – it won’t be as pronounced.

Got it. Awesome. Thanks for taking my questions guys.

Yes. Thanks.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Aaron Edelheit from Mindset Capital. Aaron, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Hey, Rick, my question I wanted to ask was more of how you think about capital allocation going forward. When I look at this quarter and I see the machine that you have now built, you’re generating $4.5 million a quarter or so, $4 million to $5 million a quarter of free cash flow, just assuming kind of flat accounts receivable, you’ve built this cash machine with like 55%, 60% operating margins. It doesn’t really acquire CapEx. When I look out in the 2023, assuming that it’s not the apocalypse, how do you think about like what you do with that cash? Obviously there’s acquisitions, but you pay a small dividend. I know that you guys are big shareholders, so you could buy back stock, but that lowers the float. I’m just – I’m curious if you could share any thoughts you have with what you would do in the New Year with your cash flow.

So that’s a again obviously a fair and – fair question and it’s interesting and I’m glad you asked the question because there are two number comparisons that I think are really important and kind of bear out what you started your question with. One is that we right now have less debt than what we did at the end of basically on September 3, 30, 2019, we had more debt than we do right now, and yet, we have obviously made numerous acquisitions. And to the extent that our adjusted EBITDA this year, if it just continues at the same rate, we’ll literally exceed our total revenues for 2021, which is pretty amazing, right? I mean that’s like a – that’s a pretty – that’s a – that’s something that…

I agree that is amazing. I didn’t realize a lot of that.

Rarely – that rarely happens. So of course, what do you do with the money, right? So and the funny part about it is that we have a certain cadence in which we want to grow and growth takes money. And we’re frankly pretty conservative when it – not pretty conservative, we are conservative. When it comes to employing a lot of leverage. We’re just not that, we’re just generally not that company. So part of the reason, even if you go back, I think it was in the second quarter of last year, we filed a Shelf Registration thinking we would potentially need from time to time to issue some stock to do to fund growth. But to be honest with you, our cash flow has increased to such a point that I think the – we have the ability to continue to fund what would be acquisitions at a level of what we’ve been doing the last three years from straight out of cash flow and hopefully maybe even a little bit more. But realistically, I think that we will probably – we don’t have so much extra cash that it’s going to be burning a hole in our pocket either. We have a lot of opportunities out there to continue to grow. And that’s why I wanted to draw it back to those two numerical comparisons at the beginning is to simply say our – the deals we do them in – or sort of in view of the fact that they provide a fair return on our capital. And so I don’t – there’s no shortage of deals out there, I guess is what I’m saying, the shortage…

Well, that’s good to hear. So what you’re saying is that with the cash that you’re generating every quarter, that in your pipeline you see enough deals that you could put that cash to work to continue your strategy and you’re confident because that, that is obviously just based on your previous comment that adjusted EBITDA now larger than 2021 revenue like I want to see that keep going. So if you’re confident that that that you can put that cash to work, that, that makes me happy as a shareholder.

No, and I think that that’s a fair statement, again and that can change on a dime, but I don’t really – I don’t see anything that does, and frankly we have a very resourceful VP of Corporate Development, David Hartley who goes out and he finds all sorts of deals. So it’s not – we just don’t have a shortage is really what it comes down to. Now I’m not saying we have – there’s a lot of – we go through a lot of – we have to go kiss a lot of frogs before we find that prince, but we’re working – there’s plenty out there.

Got you. It – my follow-up question is to that, because you’ve been able to create so much value through acquisitions and it’s been such a driver of your model. When I think about the economy in your mind, in a weird way, does a weaker economy help you acquire more companies while it may slightly weaker – weaken your business, assuming it’s not like a total collapse or how should I view the – or how do you think about the lens of potential acquisitions or distress because you obviously took advantage of it during COVID when there was a lot of distress.

So that is the big silver lining for us. Again, as I said before, and I never push back on it a bad economy is bad for our current results, but if it’s bad for our results and we maintain a clean capital structure, it’s going to be extraordinarily bad for levered competitors and that’s going to create more opportunities. And so the best deals that we tend to see are distressed companies. And I’m a believer in the service business, especially, frankly, I’m not necessarily interested typically in let’s say finding a company that’s like been the best run company for the last 40 years and the couple that have been running it want to retire because there’s really no place to go but down, right? I mean kudos to them for running a great ship, but if they’re leaving, it’s hard to best I can do typically is to sustain it. I’d far rather see somebody who’s had some difficulties because they went out and they bought too big of a house and they had a strip – they had a – they kind of had a – they or some large client went bad on them and they’re in a little bit more of a desperation mode that creates a lot bigger opportunities for us. So all that being said, that’s the silver lining. Short run it still sucks [ph]. Our numbers are down, our numbers – our results are worse and stuff like that. But again, we retain our good capital structure. We’re in a position to scoop up companies at a better price than what we can in a normal – sort of a normal economy. And frankly, Snelling would be the perfect example of that.

Yes, no, and just the last question I want ask because I just want to make sure, again, assuming there’s not just like this epic collapse, the way I understand at least your accounts receivable is that while you’re not seeing any slowdown now, if there was a slowdown, you would – your accounts receivable would start fallings. So your cash would – I remember from 2020 watching your cash balances explode higher when things slowdown. And so in a weird way, you become suddenly over capitalized in a – if there was a significant slowdown, which would probably help your ability to acquire any distressed companies. Am I thinking through that correctly?

No, that that’s right. To give you an idea, basically and we were never debt free until the great recession, but we lost 40% of our business. Of course, that means our AR dropped by 40%. So we went – we were conservatively leveraged even going into that recession. But obviously that made a big difference. If we’re – let’s just say for the sake of argument, we did $123 million this last quarter, so let’s just say it’s just shy of 10 – we’ll just use $10 million as a proxy, right? Well, obviously if our sales go down 40% in a severe recession, well, you’re probably looking at $20 million to $25 million of AR coming in and even you lose some on your accruals and stuff, but basically you’re talking about recapturing something like $20 million of working capital. Well, we’re sitting with I don’t know, $3 million of total debt. So we’d be sitting with $17 million of cash on our balance sheet.

And this is the value of your model…

We’re using that scenario.

Yes, so this is your – this is the value of your model of why you have no debt is because if things do hit the fan, you’ve built this in a way that you’re actually much stronger and then just can keep growing and find those future Snellings, right?

Well, hopefully, that’s right, hopefully. Look, and I want to caution one thing to make sure that, so that somebody five years from now, eight years from now, doesn’t sit there and say, hey, wait a second buddy. Because one of the things that the interesting part, and I had said it earlier, that every recession is different. And one of the things that made, for example, the great recession such a bad event for the staffing industry is how many people didn’t pay their bills? How many real estate projects went bad. And so even though AR did collapse, there were also a lot more bad debts out there, which fall on our franchisees, but historically we provided some support for them to get them through that type of a time. So I’m not – I want to make sure that I’m not completely sweeping.

No, no, for sure. And I appreciate, I just – I appreciate how conservative. One of the things I appreciate the most is how conservative and on top of this you are. So as a shareholder, thanks, great quarter. Thanks for answering my questions.

Thanks, Aaron.

Thank you. And this does conclude today’s question-and-answer session. I would now like to pass the floor back to management for closing remarks.

So thank you, everybody for tuning in and I think that again it was a very good quarter for us and I am again confident in the future of the company. I think that if you just look at what we’ve done over that last three years and project that going forward, I think you can see why we’re so excited about the company. Again, I want to thank our franchisees, I want to thank my employees and I just thank the shareholders for supporting us again. Have a good night.

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