HireQuest - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 revenue declined 11.2% year over year to $7.47M, with diluted EPS of $0.10; adjusted EPS was $0.13 and adjusted EBITDA was $2.80M (37% margin), reflecting persistent macro headwinds in staffing.
• Expense control was a bright spot: SG&A fell 6.5% YoY to $5.26M and net workers’ compensation expense decreased sharply to $28K from $572K in Q1 2024, supporting profitability despite lower revenues.
• System-wide sales fell 11.7% YoY to $118.4M, with management citing employers’ cautious hiring and tariff uncertainty; immigration enforcement is emerging as a tailwind for documented day-labor demand.
• Management emphasized an active M&A pipeline with more realistic seller pricing after ~9 quarters of muted demand, positioning HQI to pursue accretive deals; CFO transition to David Hartley (effective May 31) underscores continued focus on corporate development.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Cost discipline: SG&A down 6.5% YoY to $5.26M; net workers’ comp expense dropped to $28K from $572K YoY, materially aiding margins and profitability.
• Profitability resilience: Net income of $1.36M and adjusted EBITDA of $2.80M with a 37% margin; “we continue to achieve solid margins and profitability supported by the resiliency and strength of our franchise model” (CEO).
• Strategic M&A positioning: “Pricing of deals is starting to definitely get more reasonable… industry has been in a depressed state for literally nine quarters” (CEO), increasing odds of accretive acquisitions.

What Went Wrong

• Top-line pressure: Franchise royalties fell to $6.96M (from $7.83M) and total revenue to $7.47M (from $8.42M); system-wide sales down to $118.4M (from $134.0M) YoY.
• Margin compression vs prior periods: Adjusted EBITDA margin was 37% vs 40% in Q1 2024 and 47% in Q4 2024, reflecting lower revenue and mix.
• Professional/perm staffing softness: Ongoing weakness in executive search (MRINetwork) vs temporary staffing; management reiterated demand caution and tariff-related uncertainty holding clients back.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss HireQuest's financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2025. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Jennifer Belodeau of IMS Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Moderator (participant)

Thank you, Jenny. I would like to welcome everybody to the call today. Hosting the call today are HireQuest CEO Rick Hermanns and CFO Steve Crane. 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 and 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 law, HireQuest undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed conditions. With that out of the way, I'd like to turn the call over to the CEO of HireQuest, Rick Hermanns. Go ahead, Rick.

Rick Hermanns (CEO)

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our call today. Our first quarter results are reflective of the broader staffing industry, which continues to be impacted by macroeconomic headwinds that are causing employers to slow or even suspend their hiring decisions as they wait out this uncertain market. As many of you know, this has been a trend for several quarters now, and despite this challenging environment, we continue to achieve solid margins and profitability supported by the resiliency and strength of our franchise model. Expense management remains a key focus for us as well, and we continue to drive cost reduction initiatives across our business. I'm pleased to report that we're making progress on our expense management goals supported by consistent reductions in SG&A expense on a year-over-year basis. We will continue to strategically reduce costs and reallocate capital in ways that position us for sustained long-term growth.

Our M&A pipeline is strong, and we're encouraged by the many opportunities that we're seeing in the market. Acquisitions are a key part of our strategy and allow us to expand into new geographic regions and market verticals more quickly than we're typically able to through organic growth. With our visibility today, we believe that we are well-positioned with a strong pipeline of potential deals and the resources needed to execute our strategy. While the industry as a whole experienced a challenging first quarter, we continue to see encouraging progress on the legislative front as more stringent immigration laws are enforced under the Trump administration. As we mentioned last quarter, relaxed immigration policies throughout the previous administration had a negative impact on our temporary and day labor offerings as employers frequently chose to hire undocumented workers at lower costs, therefore reducing demand for staffing services that comply with E-Verify regulations.

Enhanced immigration enforcement by ICE is now requiring employers to hire documented workers, and as an E-Verify employer, we are ideally positioned to benefit from this increased demand. I'd like to take a moment to thank Steve Crane for his contributions as Chief Financial Officer of HireQuest. Steve has been a valuable member of our leadership team since he joined as CFO in November of 2023. We wish him well in his retirement. Steve will be succeeded by David Hartley, our current Vice President of Operational Finance and Corporate Development, effective May 31st. David has extensive financial experience and a deep understanding of both our business and staffing industry, making him ideally suited to take over as CFO in a planned transition that follows multiple years of preparation and planning.

Importantly, in his current role, David has served as the main architect of more than 15 acquisitions completed over the past several years, giving him the experience and knowledge needed to continue growth and shareholder value. To conclude, we're pleased to have delivered another quarter of profitability, and we're energized about what is on the horizon for our business. We believe that we are well-positioned with a strong team and a flexible model to drive enhanced value for our shareholders in 2025. With that, I'll now turn over the call to Steve to provide a closer look at our first quarter financial results.

Steve Crane (CFO)

Thank you, Rick, for the well-wishes, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Total revenue for the first quarter of 2025 was $7.5 million, compared with revenue of $8.4 million in the same quarter last year, a decrease of 11.2%. Our total revenue is made up of two components: franchise royalties, which is our primary source of revenue, and service revenue, which is generated from certain services and interest charged to our franchisees, as well as other miscellaneous revenue. Franchise royalties for the first quarter were $7 million, compared to $7.8 million for the same quarter last year. Underlying franchise royalties are system-wide sales, which are not part of our revenue but are a helpful contextual performance indicator. System-wide sales reflect sales at all offices, including those classified as discontinued.

System-wide sales for the first quarter were $118.4 million, compared to $134 million in the first quarter of 2024. Service revenue was $512,000 for the first quarter, compared to $588,000 in the year-ago period. Selling, general, and administrative expenses for the fourth quarter were $5.3 million, compared to $5.6 million in the prior year period, a decrease of 6.5%. Shifting to our profitability metrics, net income after tax was $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2025, or $0.10 per diluted share, compared to a net income of $1.6 million for earnings per diluted share of $0.12 in the first quarter of 2024. Adjusted net income for the quarter, which excludes amortization of acquired intangibles and other non-recurring one-time expenses, was $1.8 million, or $0.13 per diluted share, compared to adjusted net income of $2 million, or $0.15 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2024.

We have provided a table in the press release issued earlier this afternoon with a detailed reconciliation of adjusted net income to net income. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.8 million, compared to $3.4 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 37%, compared to 40% in the first quarter of 2024. We believe adjusted EBITDA is a relevant metric for us due to the size of non-cash operating expenses running through our P&L. A detailed reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income is provided in our 10-Q, which we filed this afternoon. Moving now to the balance sheet. Our total assets as of March 31st, 2025, were $93.7 million, compared to $94 million at December 31st, 2024.

Current assets as of March 31st, 2025, included $2.1 million in cash and $42.2 million of net accounts receivable, while current assets at December 31st, 2024, included $2.2 million of cash and $42.3 million of net accounts receivable. Current assets exceeded current liabilities by $27.4 million at March 31st, 2025, versus December 31st, 2024, when working capital was $25.1 million. Current liabilities were 46% of current assets at March 31st, 2025, versus 49% of current assets at December 31st, 2024. As of March 31st, 2025, we had $5.5 million drawn on our credit facility and another $34.8 million in availability, assuming continued covenant compliance. We believe our credit facility provides us with the flexibility and room for short-term working capital needs, as well as the capacity to capitalize on potential acquisitions. We have paid a regular quarterly dividend since the third quarter of 2020.

As stated on our fourth quarter call, we most recently paid a $0.06 per common share dividend on March 17, 2025, to shareholders of record as of March 3. We expect to continue to pay a dividend each quarter, subject to the board's discretion. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Rick for some closing comments.

Rick Hermanns (CEO)

Thank you, Steve. As always, I'd like to thank our employees and franchisees for their hard work and commitment. We look forward to speaking with you again when we report our second quarter results. With that, we can now open the line to questions. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you very much, Rick. At this time, we'll be conducting our question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you can do so by pressing star one on your phone keypad now. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For anyone using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before you press the keys. Please wait a moment whilst we poll for questions. Thank you very much. Your first question is coming from Kevin Steinke of Barrington Research. Kevin, your line is live.

Kevin Steinke (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you. I just wanted to start off by asking about recent trends you may be seeing in your business. Obviously, you referenced the macroeconomic headwinds impacting the broader industry as well as your results in the first quarter, but we started to see a lot of the major headlines around tariffs, etc., at the beginning of April. I do not know if you have any commentary on maybe what you have seen in April and the first several weeks of the second quarter.

Rick Hermanns (CEO)

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Kevin. There has not really—there has been no dramatic shift either way since the second quarter began. There has not necessarily been a tangible impact from the tariff standoffs sort of in the real world that we work in, and yet it is still holding people at bay. I mean, frankly, as I said in the last earnings call, we had started to pick up a bit towards the end of the year, but then that stopped, and that is just continuing on.

Kevin Steinke (Managing Director)

Okay. Understood. You referenced again, as you did last quarter, more stringent immigration policies just helping the overall market for your services. I believe you've referenced in the recent past that you've actually—I think you've picked up some new business because of that. I don't know if you've continued to see more of that in terms of your pipeline or new business wins related to—if you think you could tie that pretty directly to the stricter immigration.

Rick Hermanns (CEO)

Oh, yeah. There's no question that there are some wins that we're definitely getting as a result of it. There are, this week, we had a lot of our franchisees in Charleston for basically a training seminar. And just in talking with some of them, there are a lot of stories of clients coming back or clients that are saying, "Yeah, we were raided," or they know of somebody who was raided. It's definitely opening, it's reopening doors for us that had been kind of closed off to us for years. It's happening. I'm not saying that it's not obviously every client because we still had a lot, a lot of clients. Again, there is good movement that way and good positive movement.

There are certain companies that are very large users of staffing that historically haven't taken much care as far as whether they were hiring documented workers or undocumented workers. We are very hopeful about immigration helping us.

Kevin Steinke (Managing Director)

Okay. That's helpful. Wanted to ask also about the trend in SG&A, and you mentioned continuing to work on cost reduction and expense management. Wanted to hear more about that, but also specifically to the first quarter SG&A, $5.3 million was up sequentially from the fourth quarter, although you had a sequential decline in workers' comp expense of about $300,000 fourth quarter to first quarter. Just kind of wondering what influenced the trend quarter to quarter and then what you're working on from a cost management perspective.

Rick Hermanns (CEO)

There were a few different anomalous numbers within the first quarter. That probably masked that, in particular, there was in the prior year about $190,000 of professional fees that had fallen into the second quarter of 2024 that actually fell in 2024, that were the equivalent charge was in the first quarter of 2025. There was a timing difference on that from a comparative standpoint, which would have then put us right back to where we really needed to be. Again, there were a couple of other smaller things. We did a minor RIF in the first quarter also, but there were a couple of people who had pretty long tenure. In reality, it had the effect of increasing the expense in the first quarter versus, again, where by the second quarter, obviously, it will all be off.

There are a few items like that. It probably masked it in a negative way. The improvement was masked a bit by, like I said, the timing difference on the professional fees and a little bit on the RIF costs.

Kevin Steinke (Managing Director)

All right. Yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned the strong M&A pipeline. You feel like you're well-positioned to make some deals. It sounded to me, maybe I'm reading into it a little bit too much, but it sounds like maybe you're a little more confident of getting some deals done. Any comment on just the pipeline or potential near-term opportunities and if the environment continues to create more opportunities for you?

Rick Hermanns (CEO)

I think a lot of it is definitely driven by sort of the ongoing weakness in demand. For a staffing company that is not very well capitalized, I am not talking about us. I am talking about, let's say, the people who we may well have opportunities to acquire. It is one thing to go through one or two quarters of suppressed demand, but now we are in—we just finished basically quarter nine of fairly muted demand. It is just showing up now where we are starting to see ones that are more distressed and are becoming more realistic with their prices. We are definitely more hopeful of not just the number of deals we are seeing. Those are always fairly consistent, but at price points that make a lot more sense for us.

Kevin Steinke (Managing Director)

Okay. That's helpful. Just lastly, on the CFO transition, congratulations to Steve on your upcoming retirement. With David taking over the CFO role, as you mentioned, he's done a lot on the corporate development side and sourcing deals and acquisitions. I was wondering if you're maybe looking to backfill that a little bit now that David's going to take on more responsibility, if you'd like to maybe add on the corporate development side.

Rick Hermanns (CEO)

That is a possibility. It is more apt to be filled not at his level, but more at a level of—but still finding a deal sourcer. I mean, keeping in mind, David came from the investment bank that represented Command Center in our merger. He served as a classic investment banker. We do not necessarily need another full-on dealmaker on our staff. To your point, in fact, we have already had that discussion, that we will almost certainly add a person to sort of source deals and at least get them to—you know what I am saying? Get them to a point. Will we see another VP of corporate development? No, that is unlikely. Not in the short run. That is not likely.

Kevin Steinke (Managing Director)

All right. Thanks for all the good answers. Appreciate the comments. I'll turn it back over.

Rick Hermanns (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you very much. We appear to have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I will now hand back over to Rick for any further closing comments.

Rick Hermanns (CEO)

Thank you, Jenny. I just thank everybody for tuning in. We remain optimistic and confident of our model. One of the things that we're seeing in these difficult times, and certainly hope the investment community sees, is that through our franchise model, we are very, very well situated to remain profitable at other times while some of our competitors are really struggling with maintaining profitability. It's a great time to see that value. As I've said, going back to as long ago as really 2019, the one good point of suppressed demand is the fact that it does tend to create buying opportunities. We're, again, hopeful and confident that that will prove itself to be true. Again, thank you for joining today. Thanks for the questions, Kevin. Thanks, and talk to you again in a few months.

Operator (participant)

Thank you very much. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation.