Korn Ferry - Earnings Call - Q3 2021

Transcript

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Korn Ferry Third Quarter Fiscal Year twenty twenty one 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 cornferry.com, a copy of the financial presentation that we will be reviewing with you today.

Before I turn the call over to mister Gary Burnison, let me first read a cautionary statement to investors. Certain statements made in the call today, such as those relating to the 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 annual report for fiscal year twenty twenty in the company's soon to be filed quarterly report for the quarter ended 01/31/2021.

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 will turn the call over to Mr. Burnison. Sir, the floor is yours.

Speaker 1

Well, thank you, Steve,

Speaker 2

and hello, everybody. Welcome to our third quarter earnings call. You know, this is the first call of the calendar year. And before we talk about where we're going, I wanna step back for a moment and discuss just how far we've come. You know, it's almost a year ago, the great uncertainty filled the world.

And I predicted that we would see more change in ensuing two years than in the past ten. And as a leading global organizational consulting firm, Korn Ferry is now right at the center of that stage. And during this time, our colleagues have shown incredible resilience, Resiliency and purpose, resiliency and hope, and resiliency in serving our clients. And the success is deeply rooted in our vision, our values, how we see the world, how the world sees us, and how we've been translating all of this into executing our strategy. To fulfill our vision and position our company for accelerated growth and long term success, we focused on a few key strategic pillars.

We're driving an integrated solutions based go to market approach that facilitates growth and enduring partnerships with our marquee and regional accounts that are central to more scalable and durable revenues. We continue to advance Korn Ferry as the premier career destination to attract and retain top talent. In the last two quarters, we've brought on about 70 senior commercial colleagues to strengthen our bench of talent across the globe. And as we look forward, we're focused on opportunities that will strengthen our solutions and create shareholder value. The focused execution of our strategy has transformed our business into a more efficient, profitable, growth oriented organization.

We are far less economically cyclical today than in any point in our history. The time to recovery, much shorter. The trajectory of the recovery, much steeper. Our revenues, more visible and scalable. Our client solutions, more impactful.

Our people, the absolute best in the industry. And our data and IP, it's deep, rich, and absolutely best in class. An important part of what differentiates us is we're the only consulting firm to combine org strategy, leadership and professional development, assessment and succession, rewards, and talent acquisition. And we take an integrated approach across these categories to help clients execute on their strategy in a increasingly digitally enabled world. Underpinning all of our offerings and solutions is our world class IP, putting us in an unparalleled position of strength.

As

Speaker 3

I

Speaker 2

think about it, we've got more than seven decades of experience, data, and innovation. At the end of the third quarter, we hold rewards data for over 20,000,000 people. Over 70,000,000 assessments have been taken. We've got organizational benchmark data on 12,000 entities. We have 3,900 individual success profiles covering almost 30,000 job titles.

Our proprietary recruiting AI tool has compiled more than 550,000,000 profiles of potential candidates across the globe. Every year, we train and develop nearly a million professionals. And certainly, last but not least, each business hour, we place a candidate in a new job every three minutes. You know, the best way to demonstrate all of this though is through our performance. During this last quarter, our third fiscal quarter, we delivered results that were substantially higher than in prior cycles.

Our business rebounded dramatically. Revenue was up about 9% sequentially to 475,000,000, and our earnings and profitability reached record highs with about 97,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA and a little over a 20% adjusted EBITDA margin. And the sharp improvement that we saw in free fee revenue in our fiscal second quarter continued in the third. And it just you know, it doesn't just reflect improved global market conditions. These results are directly attributable to our strategy.

And I'd like to share a few proof points from the quarter that highlight how far our long term strategy is taking hold. Our diversified business exhibited more resilience now than in the great recession. Back then, our fee revenue in the quarter immediately following the peak quarter was down approximately 43%. Two quarters out, it was still down 32%. Now if we fast forward a few years and look at the COVID nineteen recession, the decline in fee revenue from the peak quarter was only 16%.

In two quarters out, we're only down 8%. That's a substantial improvement from the great recession. When looking more closely at our go to market strategy, we're seeing measurable progress in selling subscription based solutions in our digital business. Year to date, subscription based fee revenue grew 27%, while our third quarter new business that was subscription based was up a 123 year over year and almost 48% sequentially. And we're also as we've talked about, we're continuing to see success engagements.

We would classify those that are have a value of 500,000 or more. And these engage these engagements are absolutely driven by our integrated solution strategy that provide us with more enduring client relationships of scale. Year to date, large new business consulting engagements were up 23%. And these large engagements are also driving a growing backlog of 24% year over year, which obviously enhances revenue visibility and durability. As I mentioned earlier, our marquee and regional account programs continue to deliver less cyclical, more resilient new business and revenue than the rest of the portfolio.

In the third quarter, our marquee and regional account fee revenue declined only 2% year over year, while the rest of the portfolio was down about 11%. And on a year to date basis, our marquee and regional accounts, they've been relatively impressive. It's up 1% year over year, while the rest of the portfolio declined 13%. And our cross line of business referrals, again, validates our strategy. It's about three years ago, our cross referrals were about 15% of our portfolio.

Today, that number stands at 26%. We're proud of what we've accomplished and how we've continued to extend, elevate, and recast the Korn Ferry brand, both externally and for our colleagues. Our brand absolutely embodies the way the world sees us, understands us, and wants to be a part of what we're doing. We've never been more committed to helping people exceed their potential with an abundance of opportunity. We're changing people's lives.

The work of our DNI practice is absolutely breaking barriers. This is one of the top areas of focus for our clients, and we're the leader in that area. I'm also very proud of the launch of Leadership Youth for Humanity, a nonprofit venture of the Korn Ferry Charitable Foundation focused on developing the total mosaic inside communities and within corporations. Our long term goal is to take our expertise in IP and develop 1,000,000 new leaders from diverse backgrounds using our Korn Ferry Advance and Leadership U platforms. I've always said that it's our people first, clients next, and everything else will follow.

That's why we're also offering the Leadership U for Korn Ferry to develop our own colleagues from all backgrounds, providing them with opportunities to grow and advance. It's this commitment and focus that make Korn Ferry a career destination, accelerating the development of colleagues across the firm. No doubt the pandemic has caused seismic changes in society and in business. Different work is absolutely getting done, and that work is getting done differently. And Korn Ferry is at the center of that transformation.

We know that problems are never solved in the absence of people. Solutions will only emerge by cultivating a workforce that is diverse, collaborative, and motivated. Looking ahead, it's about leveraging our data and IP, delivering larger, more impactful consulting engagements, addressing the megatrends that are reshaping the corporate landscape, and driving accelerated revenue growth for the firm. I truly feel we have the right focus with the right people at the right time to accelerate through the turn. In calendar twenty twenty one, we'll continue our commitment to build the preeminent global organizational consultancy.

I look forward to what the year brings us, and I'm going to turn the call over to Bob Rozak, who's joining us as well as Greg Kubocek. Bob?

Speaker 3

Great. Thanks, Gary, and good afternoon, good morning, everybody. As Gary said, we're very proud of our third quarter results. We view them as a testament to the efforts of our Korn Ferry colleagues. They also represent validation that we have successfully transformed into a less cyclical firm with more resilient and durable base of fee revenue that will generate more sustainable, scalable earnings.

Gary made reference to megatrends that are changing the corporate landscape, items like accelerating digital transformation driven by the pandemic, calls for long overdue social change, and increased corporate emphasis on ESG issues. Our comprehensive set of solutions informed by your deep rich collection of data and intellectual property are highly relevant and aligned to help our clients' needs in each of these areas. And importantly, they serve as a real point of differentiation for Korn Ferry. Now let me turn to some of our third quarter results. As Gary mentioned, fee revenue in the third quarter was $475,000,000 Now that growth was broad based with fee revenue improving sequentially for the second consecutive quarter in each of our business units.

Additionally, fee revenue growth in the third quarter, this is measured year over year, was up 7% for RPO, was flat for North American Executive Search, which is actually seeing business activity back at pre pandemic levels. We also saw substantial improvement in consulting that was only down 3% year over year, and in professional search that was only down 2% year over year. More importantly, earnings and profitability surged to record highs in the quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA grew $31,000,000 or 46% sequentially to $97,000,000 and our adjusted EBITDA margin improved five ten basis points to 20.3. Adjusted fully diluted earnings per share also reached a record level in the third quarter, improving to $0.95 Now that was up $0.41 or 76% sequentially and up $0.20 or 27% year over year.

Now it's important to note that full employee salaries have been reinstated effective 01/01/2021. In addition, we booked accruals for November and December to pay all employees their full salaries for both of these months. So similar to the second quarter, our cost structure in the third quarter reflects 100% of all employees' compensation costs. Now let me turn to new business. That also continued to improve in the third quarter.

On a consolidated basis, our new business awards excluding RPO were down only 1% year over year. On a sequential basis, the new business growth in the third quarter also showed broad based improvement. Consulting was up 8%, digital was up 14%, executive search was up 8%, and professional search was up 31%. Our balance sheet and liquidity remained very strong. At the end of the third quarter, our cash and marketable securities totaled $897,000,000 Now if you exclude amounts reserved for deferred comp and accrued bonuses, our investable cash balance at the end of the third quarter was approximately $534,000,000 which is up $73,000,000 sequentially and up $112,000,000 year over year.

Our balance sheet strength is due in large part to the steps we took in late twenty nineteen to refinance our debt with long tenured public debt securities, and we also restructured our credit facility in anticipation of a potential downturn. And we did that because we wanted to position ourselves to be able to weather a storm and invest into the recovery. Now today, obviously, we have successfully managed and adapted our business to the changing environment, and we are now investing back into the recovery, as Gary mentioned, by hiring 70 senior commercial colleagues over the past two quarters. So with that, I'm going to turn the call over to Greg, who will review our operating segments in more detail.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Bob. Starting with our Digital segment. Global fee revenue for KF Digital was $76,000,000 in the third quarter. Consistent with the second quarter, the subscription and licensing component of KF Digital fee revenue in the third quarter was $23,000,000 Global new business in the third quarter for the Digital segment grew 14% sequentially to $100,000,000 the best quarter of new business since the beginning of the COVID recession. Additionally, 43% of new business in the third quarter was subscriptions and licenses, which is the highest portion of any quarter to date.

Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter for KF Digital was up $4,000,000 sequentially to $27,100,000 with a 35.8% adjusted EBITDA margin. Now turning to Consulting. In the third quarter, Consulting generated $136,300,000 of fee revenue, which is up approximately $9,500,000 or 8% sequentially and down only 3% measured year over year. Growth in each of our solution areas improved in the third quarter, enhanced by our virtual delivery capabilities. Consulting new business also improved in the third quarter.

Sequentially, global new business was up 8% with growth in every region. Adjusted EBITDA for consulting in the third quarter was up $7,300,000 sequentially to $27,500,000 with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.2%. RPO and Professional Search global fee revenue improved to $95,200,000 in the third quarter, which is up 11% sequentially and up 4% year over year. RPO fee revenue was up approximately 4% sequentially, and professional search fee revenue was up approximately 24% sequentially. As previously mentioned, measured year over year, RPO fee revenue was up 7% in the third quarter.

With regards to new business, in the third quarter, Professional Search was up 31% sequentially, and RPO was awarded another $44,000,000 of new contracts consisting of $12,000,000 of renewals and extensions and $32,000,000 of new logo work. Adjusted EBITDA for RPO and Professional Search in the third quarter was up approximately $5,800,000 sequentially to $19,600,000 with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.6%. Finally, for Executive Search, global fee revenue in the third quarter was $168,000,000 up $20,000,000 or 14% sequentially with growth in every region. Sequentially, North America was up approximately 16%, while EMEA and APAC were up approximately 144%, respectively. The total number of dedicated executive search consultants worldwide at the end of the third quarter was five twenty two, which was up 10 sequentially.

Annualized fee revenue production per consultant in the third quarter improved to $1,300,000 and the number of new search assignments opened worldwide in the third quarter was 1,300. In the third quarter, adjusted EBITDA grew approximately $13,400,000 sequentially to $41,700,000 with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 24.8%. Now I'm going

Speaker 3

to turn the call back over to Bob to discuss our outlook for the fiscal fourth quarter. Great. Thanks, Greg. Over the past two quarters, the volatility that challenged our visibility into monthly new business activity has subsided. In addition, the global business environment appears to be becoming more stable.

We're now in a position to identify trends and how it will impact our business. And as a result of that, we've decided to reinstate guidance. Historically, the fourth quarter has been our strongest quarter in any fiscal year. If current new business activity continues and the normal seasonal patterns hold, we expect that new business in our fourth quarter will remain pretty strong. Considering this and assuming no new major pandemic related lockdowns, changes in worldwide economic conditions, financial markets and foreign exchange rates, we expect our consolidated fee revenue in the 2021 to range from $475,000,000 to $500,000,000 and our consolidated diluted earnings per share to range from $0.95 to $1.05 Our third quarter reported and our fourth quarter expected adjusted EBITDA margins are benefiting from elevated levels of profitability flow through due to our top line recovering faster with a trajectory that is much steeper.

However, our current execution capacity is pretty stretched. Our current levels of utilization are not sustainable to support new business growth. To that end, we are in the process of adding additional resources. Further, we want to take advantage of the opportunity in front of us. And as previously discussed, we've recently begun to aggressively invest back into our business, making a number of key consultant hires, and we plan to continue such hires going forward.

With that, as you think about our near term operating boundary for our adjusted EBITDA margin, think about it along the following line. If you go back prior to the pandemic, we were essentially a $2,000,000,000 business with an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 15% to 16%. As we return to the pre pandemic levels of fee revenue, our business will benefit from previously mentioned structural changes and we're going to add around 200 basis points to our adjusted EBITDA margin. And as a result, we expect near term consolidated margins beyond the fourth quarter to range from 17% to 18%. Now before I open up the call to your questions, I just want to reiterate how proud Gary, the entire management team and I are of the strong third quarter performance we announced today.

We've taken significant steps in recent years to strengthen our business model, enhance our financial profile and really position Korn Ferry for success. The sharp acceleration in our financial performance in the second and third quarters gives us tremendous confidence that our strategy is working, that we have the right initiatives in place to continue to increase our market share and deliver sustainable value to all of our stakeholders. With that, I'll conclude remarks, and we'd be glad to answer any questions you may have.

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session of today's conference. If you wish to ask a question, please depress the one followed by the zero on your touch tone phone. You'll hear a tone indicating that you've placed yourself in queue, and all the questions will be polled in the order they are received. You may remove yourself at any time by once again depressing the one Our first question will come from the line of George Tong of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, thanks. Good afternoon. You indicated that new business ex RPO was down 1% year over year in fiscal 3Q. Can you elaborate on the trends by month in the quarter and also talk about how the trends have evolved through the month of February? And perhaps also touch on digital.

I noticed that it was down 12% year over year in the quarter. Just what was happening there?

Speaker 2

Bob, why don't you handle that?

Speaker 3

Sure. Okay. Hey, George. You look at the the hey. How are doing?

If you look at the new business trends in the third quarter, there there was no real discernible pattern. Each month, from a year over year perspective, was essentially flat with where we were last year. We saw, this is from an overall perspective, in Exec Search the patterns were the same. In Pro Search we actually saw a large spike in new business in December. November and January were down a little bit year over year, but the new business growth in ProSearch, we had a big spike in the month of December.

On the consulting side, really strong new business every month in the quarter, particularly in North America. North America consulting businesses has just done a fantastic job. On the digital side, what we're seeing is we actually had the highest new business since the pandemic started, although it was down 12% year over year. And I would say the decline that we saw in the digital new business was primarily focused in two areas. One was pay.

Coming through the pandemic, the desire for pay data, for pay raises was dampened on a year over year basis. But the larger impact comes from the the the training, the in classroom training. And what we've seen there is the, you know, the the in classroom training when the pandemic first hit virtually stopped. And then there was a shift from in classroom to to virtual training. In fact, if you go back to the sort of January, February time frame, our in classroom training was about '97 or ninety eight percent of what we delivered.

Today, it's about 3% of what we deliver. 97% is virtual. What we haven't seen yet, George, is the volume in the number of trainings delivered bounced back quite yet. That's on the horizon for us and should stimulate good growth once that comes back you know, pre pandemic levels.

Speaker 5

Got it. That's helpful. And and how have those new business trends evolved through the month of February, and what's contemplated currently in your quarterly guidance?

Speaker 3

Yeah. So I would say, George, if you look at the month of February, and it it's it's a little bit challenging because, you know, we do get a lot of new business at the end of the month. But through you know, right now, we're about 75% of the way through the business days in a month. And I'll I'll do it from two perspectives. One is geography, and then I'll look at it from a line of business perspective.

So from a geography perspective, North America is just firing on all cylinders, year over year The rest of the geographies still have not caught quite up to where they were last year. But from a sequential perspective, they continue to make very good progress. From a line of business perspective, Exec Search and Pro Search are starting to gain momentum. Consulting is performing very well sequentially and year over year.

And then RPO continues to have a strong backlog of, or pipeline I should say, of opportunities. So we expect that new business to continue very strong. And then I already touched on digital.

Speaker 5

Yep, very helpful. And just as a quick follow-up, you mentioned that longer term EBITDA margins beyond 4Q should range in the 17% to 18% area. When do you expect to fall within that range? Is it going to be a fiscal twenty twenty two event or some other time frame beyond that?

Speaker 3

No. It'll be it'll be fiscal twenty twenty two.

Speaker 5

Got it. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Our next question will come from the line of Tim Mulrooney of William Blair. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Good afternoon. Hey, Tim.

Speaker 1

Yes. Hey. So a couple of questions. First, just on your verticals, you guys give a breakout for fee revenue by industry. I'm wondering if you could discuss which of these verticals stood out as pockets of strength in the quarter or those that are currently strongly recovering versus those that have either decelerated or have yet to recover.

Speaker 2

Well, we've seen a sequential increase across the board in all of the all of the industries and markets that we operate in. And when you look sequentially, technology was clearly a big driver that that was up about 16%. Sequential life sciences and health care, which is a bellwether practice of ours, I think we've got the best practice in the business. That was up 11%. And even industrial, which is the largest piece of Korn Ferry today, it's about 28% of the overall portfolio, and it was as high as 31%.

That was up too. That was really good to see. And even energy, as counterintuitive as it may sound, that was that was up about eight percent as well.

Speaker 1

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Surprising to hear about the energy. That's that's good news.

Moving to your digital business just on the profitability. The revenue was down 25%, right, but I I think. But EBITDA margins expanded nearly 10 percentage points year over year. And I know there's been some cost takeout, but were there other contributing factors as well, like maybe a sales mix issue, or were there any, I guess, onetime or seasonal factors you'd point to here? Or is 35% profitability a good run rate to think about for this business?

Speaker 2

Yeah. It's it's probably not. I mean, you know, as Bob talked about, there's a there's a major transformation that's happening within that business. And, you know, many quarters ago, we went to take our IP and try to to change thousands of people's lives and to alter the destination of our clients, giving them IP that they could license and use to improve their performance. And so what you're seeing there is there's a massive shift that we're making, not only in the in the consulting services that we deliver where we're purposely over the past two years, two and a half years, we've been jettisoning smaller consulting engagements and pursuing bigger, more impactful engagements.

And on the digital side, we've shifted towards a subscription based model. And with that model, we're finding that that revenue will be more durable, visible, but it'll also be recognized over a longer period of time. So that's a pretty big change from, say, two, three years ago. And so we're very pleased and happy to see that and to see the integration between the consulting and the digital businesses. And so the the the margin of 35, I forget Bob can tell you what a year and a half ago when we first broke out the digital segment, what we were targeting as sustainable margins.

That's clearly, I think, was 35%, I think, was definitely at the upper end of that target that we laid out. And so I would I would tend to look at something more like a a 30 or so, could be a little less, could be a little bit more. I think that's more realistic given the investments that we wanna make to capture the market opportunity there.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Tim. The only thing that I I think Gary's spot on. The only thing I would add to that is is you mentioned the digital revenue being down 25%.

And just in terms of what the drivers are for that, there's probably about 20 to 25% of that relates to the shift from point sale solutions to longer term subscriptions. Another 20% relates to the, you know, temporary decline in demand for pay data. And then the rest of it would relate to the the issues that I talked about on the the training delivery of the training days.

Speaker 1

Yes. Okay. That's helpful. I appreciate that color. Thank you, and congrats on a nice quarter.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Mark Marcon of Baird. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hey, good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you are. Congrats on a great quarter. And more importantly, just the overall trajectory of the business and the long term progress. Gary, was wondering if you could talk a little bit about where you're making the investments. You mentioned that you brought on 70 tenured, highly qualified professionals.

Just wondering what areas are they in? It also sounds like you're making more additions. So where should we think about the internal investments going? Where are you seeing the highest level of incremental demand relative, to your current capacity?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Mark, for the kind words. Well, the place that, I'm very excited about, and we're not gonna necessarily see that in in a quarter or a few months, but the professional search market is a massive market, and, it's probably $25,000,000,000, could be as high as 50,000,000,000. And our business today is probably about a $160,000,000 annually, something like that. And so it it represents a real opportunity. It's obviously we're in the business today, and that's something that I think we can we can seize over time.

And so you will see us making more investments for sure into that into that segment. We've been we have been investing heavily into not only the digital platform, but our consulting capabilities across the board. So whether that's the consulting business or the executive search business, we've we've definitely been bringing in people to add talent to the bench. So those would be the the areas. The RPO business is is doing very well.

We continue to to add talent and add logos there. So it's, you know, it's it's been split pretty evenly between between our businesses, but the one you really haven't seen yet is ProSearch.

Speaker 6

And within within ProSearch, can you talk about, like, the areas where you're seeing the highest level of incremental demand? It sounds like December was a blowout month. Are there are there any sort of common characteristics in terms of of where that surge came from?

Speaker 2

Digital and technology, for sure, and even finance and accounting. So, you know, it's it's probably what what you would expect. We're seeing an incredible appetite in the world to get people that are digitally savvy that are, you know, technology enabled. And so we've seen very, very good drivers there. But, you know, the business quite candidly is just woefully undersized to the market opportunity.

And, you know, that's a pretty so that's, you know, kind of a blanket statement. I mean, whether it's in The Americas or Asia or Europe, I think we've got a substantial runway ahead of us. And that runway, again, it's not in a few months. It's it's not a quarter out. But here in the very, you know, near term, I think you'll see us seizing on that market.

Speaker 6

Are are you sourcing those clients through existing executive search

Speaker 2

or

Speaker 6

RPO relationships? What's the obviously there are other competitors within that space. None with kind of the type of reputation that Korn Ferry has. But there are other competitors out there. Just wondering who you're gaining the business from.

Speaker 2

Yeah. You look at the one thing that I'm very proud of is the cross referrals. And so it's been going up every quarter. This last quarter, it was 26%. And when you look at ProSearch, last quarter is actually 53%.

RPO was 49%. So, yeah, that's really coming from the exact executive search channel. So even though the the the market size of executive search is a fraction of the market opportunity for us, it's incredibly strategically important. People return our calls. And so I think we've demonstrated that we can take that access, that brand permission, and do other things with it.

So, yeah, Mark, it's coming from the executive search channel in a big way. Great. And then can

Speaker 6

you talk on the consulting side, which which areas are you seeing the strongest growth in within pure consulting at this point?

Speaker 2

Well, the it's again, I'm gonna it's it's been pretty broad based. I mean, it ranges from our executive pay business where we've won a a number, Fortune 100 mandates to do compensation, advisory services, to organizational transformation. I can think of two Fortune 100 companies that are trying to get into a new business, and they're turning to us around the org structure, around the people they need, assessment, development. And then the, you know, the DNI business continues to flourish, and that has for a a few months. But it's pretty broad based when you look at the the things that we're doing in our our, you know, training business, our learning and professional development business is also doing well where we've won some pretty substantial mandates for companies basically using our Korn Ferry Advance platforms, our Leadership U platforms, and outsourcing, their development to Korn Ferry.

Speaker 6

Great. Can you just, one last one on the DNI. Can you give us an update in terms of the size? And then just to be clear, to what extent does DNI also include potential engagements either on the executive search or the professional search side in terms of broadening out the the candidates or the talent that your that your clients have?

Speaker 2

Yeah. The when we talk about DNI in this context, we've just been talking about pure, advisory or digital services. Now there's a much broader thing that's happening in the world, in the c suite. And whether that is executives that are have decided, you know, it's it's time to to to move on, you know, this this whole pandemic, I think, has given a lot of people reason to kinda reset and to look at life and say what's important. So we're seeing, and I think you're gonna continue to see, a lot of c suite change there as well as companies that are having to reposition their business.

And then another megatrend within that would be the focus around diversity and inclusion. And so that is also we're benefiting from that in our search businesses. And so we've made some pretty significant investments, and we're gonna make more around our executive search and professional search recruiting platforms to, you know, capture to capture that that change. So, yeah, the the DNI consulting business is it's almost nine digits. I mean, it's a it's a substantial part of today's corn trade.

Speaker 6

Congrats. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 0

Our next question will come from the line of Mark Riddick of Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hey. Good afternoon.

Speaker 3

Hey. It

Speaker 7

was feast clusters anyway. First of all, I I just wanted to address so so much of the the planning and and the work that's that's been done over the years to sort of put yourself in the position to succeed here was certainly evident in a lot of the numbers that were reported in your commentary. And we really do appreciate the color and the detail on that. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about, I think you've mentioned, as you've mentioned DNI quite a bit in in prior quarters, I think you made mention of ESG a little bit. And I was wondering if you could touch a little bit of maybe what you're seeing there and and how that might relate to some of the commentary that we're getting from your customers.

Speaker 2

Well, we you know, purpose is not a slogan. You know, purpose is the why a company is in business. And, you know, every CEO, you know, a business is started for a reason. That's the why, and and and that's the purpose. And over the last several years, that purpose has expanded, and it's expanded to take on, different different lenses.

And so we we clearly have been positioning the company as you alluded to to take that on. And when it comes to ESG, you know, we'll see. We we are, today, marketing capability is there, and we'll just have to, you know, see see where the world goes in terms of, you know, what the what the environment's really gonna look like. Mhmm. But we clearly are positioned to help companies there.

There there's no question question about it. And, you know, the the starting point for us was the the diversity, equity, and inclusion business. That was an investment that we made about eight years ago. Mhmm. And I can't say we were necessarily, you know, predicting what the future was gonna hold.

But the theme on which you hit was that these are consistent decisions that have been made over many days, many months, and in fact, many years. And Bob alluded to it in his comments. I mean, you know, it was, you know, back in 2019 where we got concerned about maybe a possible recession, and we took a number of actions to position the company to accelerate through the term. So you know? And that's exactly that's exactly what what we've done.

Speaker 7

Great. And then I was I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about maybe, with the benefits and and progress that you've made with Marquier Council. And in some of these cases, these are global, you know, players that they can maybe provide, I would imagine, some greater visibility and insight as to what plants may be outside of North America. So I just wanted to touch a little bit on maybe how, maybe some of the initial things that you're seeing outside of North America or maybe some of the learnings that you're getting from North America that could then be translated to, you know, Asia Pac and and and, and Europe going forward?

Speaker 2

Well, I think the biggest, you know, the the biggest for sure is, culture, which is, you know, the way an organization gets things done. So, clearly, that's been a megatrend across the world. How they engage with customers, what the customer experience looks like, that's that's been pretty consistent. North America has clearly been more agile in for a a whole host of reasons in terms of responding to the environment. And, there's no reason to believe that that will not happen, in Europe and in Asia.

You know? As, you know, we're now into this iron man, We're definitely, I think, more than halfway there. And with the vaccines, with The UK, you know, schools opening up March 8, you know, there there's a lot of lot of positives out there. So I I would expect the same kind of, you know, agility, adaptability change that's gonna happen with our clients in South America and in Europe and Asia as we've seen in North America.

Speaker 7

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.

Speaker 0

Our next question will come from the line of Tobey Sommer of Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Thanks. Could you elaborate on the transformational opportunities referenced in the slides that that accompany the call? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Well, you know, as we look at, we we really think the market opportunity is about $250,000,000,000. And there's a couple very big pieces of that beyond the beyond the digital business that we have and taking our IP and and trying to to change a lot of people's lives. The biggest is around learning and professional development. That that's a massive market. And I really do believe that we can create a business like we did with RPO around LDO, learning and development outsourcing.

And so, part of that may require, an investment, may require acquisition, but that's that's in front of us. There there's no doubt about it. The other one is around the professional search market, around professionals, whether that's finance and accounting professionals, technologists, health care. It is a big market. And we're clearly into a a, you know, mobile work, digital everything, career nomads, work that works for everybody.

And I think that Korn Ferry can capture a much larger share of of that megatrend that's happening. So those would be two that would come right to mind. And I'm certainly not minimizing anything around org strategy or anything around compensation. But, clearly, those are sizable markets, and our revenue today is a drop in the bucket compared to that market opportunity.

Speaker 8

I appreciate that. I had a follow-up question about the profitability. If If next year is sort of a couple of 100 basis points higher in the 17% to 18% EBITDA margin range, is it fair to assume that that's not sort of a terminal end state point, but the business, if revenue continues to grow from there, would generate some operating leverage. How how should we think about that?

Speaker 2

Yeah. We tried to the the way we thought about it was basically to say, you know, we're continuing to make investments, obviously. We've been doing it now, since the pandemic so a year. You know, it's been a year now. We had a we had a playbook.

And so the way we thought about that was, okay, let's assume the company is, you know, $2,000,000,000 or so. What would we wanna target as an ongoing EBITDA margin? And that's where we're kind of guiding to 17 to 18%. We feel pretty comfortable with that. Now, yes, there absolutely, could be upside to that.

And that upside could come from a few different pathways. One could come from the digital business, but that that may not be in this next fiscal year. That may be the year after, actually. The other place it could come from is the executive search and professional search businesses, for example, outside outside The United States. That's a very clear pathway as well.

So, yes, it's possible, but, you know, we're obviously trying to to balance, you know, between our clients, our colleagues, and shareholders. And so that's what we're targeting for the EBITDA margin for the next few quarters.

Speaker 8

Thank you very much.

Speaker 0

There are no further questions in queue. I'd like to turn the call back over to mister Burnison for any closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Well, you know, I just thank you for for listening. You know, as as paradoxical as it may sound, when, you know, when nothing seems to be progressing, one can actually make the most progress. And when everything appears unchanged externally, we experience tremendous growth internally. And when things seem, you know, so far away, they're much closer than they appear. And when we clearly see how far we've come, we appreciate more fully just how capable we've become.

And I'm very, very proud of Korn Ferry and for what the future holds. And, thank you very much for listening, and we look forward to speaking to you next time. Thanks, everybody.

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, today's conference call will be available for replay for one week starting today at 3PM eastern time running through March 1 ending at midnight of that day. You may access the AT and T executive playback service by dialing (866) 207-1041 and entering the access code 8533730. That access code once again is 8533730. For our participants that may be dialing in from an international location, please dial (402) 970-0847 in the access code of 8533730. Additionally, there will be a playback available on the company's website at www.cornferry.com in the investor relations section.

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