Good day, everyone, and welcome to the National Research Corporation Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Drew, and I'll be the operator on today's call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. There will be a Q&A. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Kevin Karas, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead when you are ready.

Thank you, Drew, and welcome, everyone, to today's National Research Corporation Earnings Call. Joining me on the call today is Linda Stacy, our Vice President of Finance. Before we continue, I would like to ask Linda to review conditions related to any forward-looking statements that may be made as part of today's call. Linda?

Thank you, Kevin. This conference call includes forward-looking statements related to the company that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those currently anticipated. These forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. For further information about the facts that could affect the company's future results, please see the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, I'll turn it back to you, Kevin.

Thanks, Linda, and again, welcome, everyone. Today, first, we'll talk about our strategy and addressable market. Then we'll cover financial details regarding the fourth quarter and provide a few thoughts about our outlook for 2024 before opening for Q&A. As an opening matter, I'd say the past few quarters have been relatively flat from a top and bottom line perspective, but a lot has been going on behind the scenes, and we're very excited about the base we're building and the direction of our strategic plan. Several quarters ago, we reset our strategy to address client demand for expanded market coverage, value-added solutions and greater strategic impact. Key principles of our plan include: doubling our total addressable market across market insights, patient experience, customer experience, and employee experience solutions, being essential to our clients' success by combining our unparalleled healthcare DNA and frontline coaching with innovative new technologies to deliver solutions with return on investment, helping more patients and healthcare providers by aggressively ramping up our sales efforts to gain market share, improving our associates' careers by automating routine tasks and focusing them on their most rewarding and productive activities and delivering more to stockholders through growth, margin expansion and returning excess capital. National Research Corporation has achieved significant milestones against each of these goals. We have expanded our employee experience and consumer experience capabilities. Core revenue is over 90% of total revenue. Since mid-2022, the sales team has grown by over 20%, while at the same time, overall associate headcount has been reduced by 16%. Our sales pipeline exceeds $100 million, and recurring new sales were up 18% in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared with the fourth quarter of 2022. From a productivity standpoint, our revenue per FTE was up 10% this year over last year. Our operating…

Thanks, Kevin. From a revenue perspective, our total revenue decreased slightly for both the fourth quarter and year ended 2023 compared to 2022. Year-to-date, recurring new sales for 2023 grew 24%, or $3 million, over 2022. New sales were offset by a reduction in non-core revenue and slightly higher non-renewals. The chart posted on our website shows the growth of core revenue and reduction in non-core revenue over the past few years, which is largely complete now. We've achieved sequential operating margin expansion over the past three quarters. Operating margin grew by 5% over the third quarter of 2023, primarily due to slight revenue growth and cost alignment changes implemented during the second half of 2023. The chart posted on our website reflects the sequential trend. Despite the sequential improvement, operating income decreased by 4% and 14% for the fourth quarter and year ended 2023 compared to 2022, respectively. This was primarily due to the lack of revenue growth combined with investments in marketing expenses to expand brand recognition and support sales development, technology investments and higher data collection expenses. We ended the quarter with $142 million in TRCV. Our TRCV has declined primarily due to our focus on our core digital solutions and lower net sales, although that trend did improve later in 2023. Other expense decreased in the fourth quarter and for the year ended 2023 because the 2022 – because of the 2022 period included expensing the 2.6 cumulative foreign currency translation adjustment previously carried on our balance sheet due to the substantial liquidation of our Canadian subsidiary in 2022. The effective tax rate in the fourth quarter of 2023 was 23% compared to 26% in 2022 and 22% for the year ended in 2023 compared to 26% in 2022, primarily due to lower state income taxes…

Thank you, Linda. Before opening Q&A, I'd like to say this is likely my last earnings call. It has been a pleasure serving as CFO for the past 13 years and keeping our investors informed about the company. We have a really strong team in place, so you should have a very smooth transition. This completes our prepared remarks. So Drew, I will now ask you to open the call to any questions.

We have no questions registered at this time. So I'll hand back over to Kevin for any closing remarks.

No, thank you, everyone, for attending our call today and the company looks forward to sharing results again next quarter. Thank you.

That concludes today's National Research Corporation fourth quarter and year-end 2023 earnings call. You may now disconnect your lines.