Insperity - Q1 2024
May 1, 2024
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good morning. My name is Jenny, and I will be your conference Operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Insperity First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions after the presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your phone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to introduce today's speakers. Joining us are Paul Sarvadi, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, and Douglas Sharp, Executive Vice President of Finance, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Douglas Sharp. Mr. Sharp, please go ahead.
Douglas Sharp (CFO)
Thank you. We appreciate you joining us. Let me begin by outlining our plan for this morning's call. First, I'm going to discuss the details behind our first quarter 2024 financial results. Paul will then comment on our recent accomplishments, including the progress we have made in implementing our Workday strategic partnership solution. I will return to provide our financial guidance for the second quarter and an update to the full year guidance. We will then end the call with a question-and-answer session. Now, before we begin, I would like to remind you that Mr. Sarvadi or I may make forward-looking statements during today's call, which are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. In addition, some of our discussion may include non-GAAP financial measures.
For more detailed discussions of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures, please see the company's public filings, including the Form 8-K filed today, which are available on our website. Now, let's discuss our first quarter results, in which we reported earnings above the high end of our guidance. We reported Q1 Adjusted EBITDA of $142 million and Adjusted EPS of $2.27. These results reflect the average number of paid worksite employees within the range of our forecast, continued strong pricing, lower than expected benefit costs, and operating expenses in line with our budget.
As for our growth metric, the average number of paid worksite employees in Q1 was approximately 304,000, a decline of less than 1% when compared to Q1 of 2023. As you may recall from our prior earnings call, this slight decline was expected due to net layoffs in our client base over the second half of 2023 into January of 2024, and the loss of a handful of large accounts during our year-end transition. Additionally, we experienced a 42% decline in net hiring in our client base in Q1 of 2024, when compared to the first quarter of 2023. Worksite employees paid from sales was at a similar level compared to Q1 of 2023, and when combined with client retention, came in at forecasted levels.
Gross profit increased by 4% over Q1 of 2023, as strong pricing through our year-end transition of new and renewing accounts, combined with a lower than expected benefit cost trend. This lower Q1 benefit cost was associated with a favorable adjustment to our reserves at the end of 2023, based primarily on subsequent claims runoff through the end of February of 2024. Regarding the last month of Q1, we believe the timing of claim payments under our plan in March were affected by the industry-wide impact of the cybersecurity breach at Change Healthcare. Upon a detailed review of our claims data and discussions with our insurance carrier, we believe we have appropriately reserved additional amounts for Q1 2024 claims incurred but not yet reported due to the impact of this breach.
The combination of our other direct cost areas, including workers' compensation and payroll taxes, were generally in line with our forecast. Q1 operating expenses were also managed to budgeted levels, increasing 12% over Q1 of 2023. Operating expenses reflected our continued investment in our growth and our service and technology offerings, including approximately $5 million of costs related to the initial phase of implementation of our Workday strategic partnership. First quarter's effective tax rate came in at 29%, which was higher than our Q1 of 2023's rate of 23% and our forecasted rate of 26%. This was primarily due to changes in our stock price that resulted in less tax benefit on employee stock awards vesting at the end of February.
Now, we believe that our financial position and liquidity remains strong as we continue to invest in our long-term growth plans while providing returns to our shareholders. During the quarter, we repurchased 233,000 shares of stock at a cost of $23 million and paid out $21 million in cash dividends. We ended Q1 with $206 million of adjusted cash, an increase of $35 million over the December 31, 2023 balance. We continue to have $280 million available under our credit facility… Now, at this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Paul.
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Thank you, Doug, and thank you all for joining our call. Today, I'll begin with comments on our solid first quarter performance, including initiatives supporting our plans for future growth. Second, I'll provide insights from our view into the economic climate and the reactions within the small and mid-sized business community. Third, I'll provide an update on the initiation of our new strategic partnership with Workday, and provide a glimpse into our upcoming Investor Day. Overall, we had an excellent quarter, exceeding the high end of our Adjusted EBITDA range against the backdrop of an economic slowdown. Our fundamentals are solid, and we expect our plan for the balance of the year will help mitigate the effects of the economic climate on our target small to medium-sized business clients. New book sales for Workforce Optimization solution were strong in the first quarter.
We experienced a double-digit increase over the same period last year, reflecting the growth of our BPA team and an improvement in closing rates, driving sales efficiency. This improvement reflects the experience gained over the last year by Business Performance Advisors and effective incentives for prospective clients and the sales team. Booked sales by our mid-market Business Performance Consultants was the highlight of the quarter. They continued their excellent performance since the last half of last year, exceeding budget. Sales of our larger accounts have become more consistent over the last year. The steady flow from BPAs funneling qualified leads into this process and our growing number of BPCs is the reason for this improvement. This is well-timed for our new Workday strategic partnership I will discuss in a few minutes.
We also had a strong quarter in our traditional employment Workforce Acceleration business, as our WX employee count on this service increased 21% over the same period last year, including a notable improvement in client retention. Total client retention in our Workforce Optimization business for the first quarter was in line with last year, except for the large accounts we discussed last quarter. We also achieved an important marketing objective, exceeding our lead generation goal for the quarter. However, conversion of these leads into discovery call appointments was just under 90% of target. Reaching sales activity objectives remains challenging in this environment. We have several initiatives to drive sales activity, including the launch of our Account-Based Experience, marketing, and sales strategy.
This approach, made possible by our investment in Salesforce, provides insights from advanced technologies to leverage the ideal client profile and buyer intent signals to improve BPA effectiveness. This is a more strategic approach in sales, research, planning, and execution, focused on high-value accounts and building relationships with key decision-makers. All BPAs will begin with assigned target accounts this quarter, which we believe can lead to more BPA time in front of qualified prospects. We have additional incentives initiatives underway, leveraging our investment in Salesforce and AI-enabled technology to drive efficiencies, speed, quality, and insights for our teams as they serve our clients and operate and grow the business.
The move to our enterprise-wide Salesforce platform, as well as our implementation of modern data engineering and analytics technologies, are well underway, allowing us to put in place a data strategy that we believe will accelerate predictive analytics, AI, and other emerging capabilities. Now, let me provide some insight regarding the economic climate our clients are facing, evident from our client data, our interaction directly with business owners, and our recent national survey. The key data elements we monitor to assess the small, medium-sized business climate are net hiring, wage inflation, overtime hours worked, and commissions paid to the sales staff of our clients. As Doug mentioned, net layoffs incurred in our client base over the second half of 2023 has continued through the first quarter of this year.
Wage inflation, which peaked nearly 7% in 2022, has continued a downward trend all the way to slightly below 2%. Overtime, as a percentage of regular pay, is down to 9%, the lowest number in a few years. The most important metric that provides some insight into client sales and near-term revenues in their businesses is commissions paid to their sales organization. This metric was down to 6%, also the lowest number in the last couple of years. Recently, we've also had the opportunity to have direct discussions with a representative number of clients. While normal business owner optimism is still alive and well, comments about the effect of interest rates, inflation, and an economic slowdown were common. Our recent client survey reinforced these anecdotal comments across the broader nationwide client base.
Clients who feel their organization will perform better during 2024 than during 2023 has decreased to 66% from 74% just one quarter ago. The percent of clients who expect increased staffing has dropped to 39%, compared to 54% a year ago. One-third of the respondents expect the economic climate to have at least a somewhat positive impact on their organization, while 42% anticipate a negative impact. Consistent with past quarters and looking forward to 2024, client optimism about their own business performance exceeds that of their expectations for the economy. 2/3 of clients surveyed were still optimistic for their own company performance, which was similar to January.... Now let me shift to the exciting update about our newest significant catalyst for growth, our exclusive Workday strategic partnership.
My enthusiasm for this opportunity was evident on our last call, and after the first three months working together and gathering client feedback, has been reaffirmed. Our view of this strategic partnership as a potential game changer in the marketplace, and at the same time, significantly elevating the trajectory of our company, driving long-term growth, profitability, and value creation for Insperity, has been strengthened. As a reminder, through this strategic partnership, Workday and Insperity are committed to jointly developing, marketing, selling, and supporting the preeminent solution for targeted small and medium-sized businesses that combines Workday's HR technology with Insperity's HR services. We expect to offer this unique combined solution to the target market for less upfront capital costs, ongoing expense, complexity, and implementation time than currently available to those businesses. We believe this new solution has the potential to be competitively disruptive.
Insperity and Workday are now strategic partners focused on four major objectives. All four of these priorities are off and running after just the first few months working together. First, the foundational step for this strategic partnership to be effective is Insperity becoming a Workday customer for our corporate staff, which is ideal for our 4,300 employee company with dynamic future growth. We believe it's important to have our entire staff on Workday to be ready to support our clients as we launch this new solution. Our corporate Workday tenant project plan is progressing on schedule. A significant milestone for this to be started and completed effectively is the completion of the initial corporate HR data workbook in order to build the foundation tenant to use in configuration sessions. This was submitted to Workday, and the development site is up and running.
Second, we are developing and embedding an instance of Workday as the client-facing HR technology within our Workforce Optimization offering to create this new joint solution for the target market of larger accounts. Now, this new Insperity Workday client tenant instance is a significantly more complex implementation. It's challenging to even describe how much work and detailed planning has already happened on this project. We are very pleased significant progress has been accomplished, detailing out the master plan for this project, and the teams are working together extremely well. Third, we're establishing a deployment and enablement team within the Insperity service organization with the help of Workday. Our goal for this team is to deliver implementations and provide support for the new solution in a similar, efficient, and effective manner as we do today. We're also off to a great start establishing this Insperity enablement team.
A significant number of our service professionals have already completed training programs to establish a foundation for this team. The fourth major objective of this strategic partnership is a go-to-market plan for Insperity and Workday to address this target market, including co-branding, co-marketing, and co-selling. The most significant effort accomplished since the launch has been the organization, staffing, and alignment of teams to ensure the success of this strategic partnership and the go-to-market plan. We're very pleased with the demonstrated commitment reflected in the leadership of both companies' roles and responsibilities to make this partnership dynamic and effective for both companies. The first three months establishing the framework for this strategic partnership has not been without challenges, as this type of relationship is new to both companies. However, the corporate culture match between the two firms continues to reaffirm my confidence around our opportunity for long-term success.
My confidence is also supported by the client-centric nature of this strategic partnership and the potential to deliver a highly scalable HR technology and service solution to a significantly underserved market. Dialogue with clients and prospects about this solution has also been exceptional. We were able to have personal interaction with over 200 business owners at our recent client event, and the energy from these discussions was encouraging. We're very excited about our upcoming Investor Day, coming up on May 16 at our corporate office and available remotely online. The focus of this event will be an update on the fundamental drivers to our powerful business model and the specific ways we expect our new Workday strategic partnership to be a catalyst to improve the likelihood, degree, and speed of our success into the future.
At this point, I'd like to pass the call back to Doug.
Douglas Sharp (CFO)
Thanks, Paul. Now, let me provide our Q2 guidance and an update to our full-year 2024 guidance. While we outperformed our earnings guidance in Q1, we are forecasting Adjusted EBITDA over the remainder of the year, consistent with our initial guidance. We are now thinking uncertainty and weakness in the macroeconomic environment could persist over the remainder of the year. Based upon these factors and our starting point going into Q2, we have reduced our 2024 outlook for worksite employee growth to a range of flat to 2%. However, we expect the impact of this lower growth rate on our full-year earnings to be mostly offset by continued strong pricing and slightly lower direct costs and operating expenses. We are now forecasting full-year 2024 Adjusted EBITDA in a range of $254 million-$293 million.
...While we have lowered our overall operating expenses from our initial budget, we expect 2024 operating costs relating to our Workday strategic partnership to remain in the neighborhood of $60 million. As for Adjusted EPS, we are now forecasting full year 2024 in a range of $3.17-$3.90. This revised guidance assumes an increase in our 2024 effective income tax rate from 26%-29%, primarily due to less tax benefit on employee stock awards vesting in Q1, as I have previously mentioned. As for Q2, we are forecasting paid worksite employees to remain down by about 1% compared to Q2 of 2023.
As for Q2 earnings, we are forecasting Adjusted EBITDA in a range of $53 million-$66 million and Adjusted EPS from $0.61-$0.83. This guidance considers our typical quarterly earnings pattern, where our Q1 results are typically higher than subsequent quarters, as we earn a higher level of payroll tax surplus prior to worksite employees reaching their taxable wage limits, and benefit costs typically are lower in Q1 and step up over the remainder of the year as deductibles are met. Now, at this time, I'd like to open up the call for questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you very much. We will now be conducting our question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press 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 wish 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 while we poll for questions. Thank you. Your first question is coming from Andrew Nicholas of William Blair. Andrew, your line is live.
Andrew Nicholas (Research Analyst)
Great, thank you, and good morning. I wanted to start with a couple of questions on the Workday partnership. Paul, a lot of really good color here as you work through that partnership for the first couple months. I guess two questions specifically. One, are there any kind of early signs on the productivity or opportunity around the sales leads that Workday is funneling your way? And then second, and I apologize if I missed it in your prepared remarks, but do you have any additional insight or detail on the expected timeline now that you've done, you know, what sounds like a pretty considerable amount of planning work and some implementation and integration conversations?
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Yeah, thank you for the question. That's great. We, I'll start with your second question first. But, you know, we are not ready yet to actually pin down, you know, a detailed launch date, if you will. But we are certainly, well down the road in terms of looking at all the elements of what has to happen for the launch to occur and are comfortable that it's within an acceptable timeframe within the range that we had anticipated, when we, put the deal down. So, you know, we... Again, this is the kind of thing that gets more and more clear, literally on a week-to-week basis.
The teams are really working super together, and they're making great progress at a really appropriate rate that I think it's important that both of our companies are looking at this, you know, as a product launch. So, you know, it's a different frame of reference on how we're approaching getting to the finish line. And so making sure that we do that in a, you know, a product that fully fits what we're designing, but getting there as quickly as possible to take advantage of the market opportunity that's out there.
So, you know, I can't give you a timeframe yet, but we will go into more detail about what we're doing here in just a couple of weeks at our Investor Day meeting, and you'll have a better sense of that when we get through that. Now, also, it's very exciting on the lead front, as I mentioned last quarter, you know, our go-to-market efforts would start with a whole planning process around lead flow back and forth between the two companies. The focus has really been on the process and, you know, what it takes to make sure that these are not just, you know, dumping a bunch of names from one group to the other, but rather a warm handoff.
So, you know, keep in mind that just lead flow, I'd put that in the co-marketing category, but, you know, we want people to land on sites that have some co-branding in it. We want to make sure that, as leads are handled by both firms, that there's a co-selling component, where there's dialogue between the two companies about specific accounts and appropriate warm handoffs going on. So we're well down that road. There's also technology work that has been advanced to get to the point, you know, where we can literally flip a switch and have this stuff going.
You know, my original- our original plan was for this to get planned out in that first quarter or so, get implemented within that second period in a way that those leads flow, and we start to see, literally start to see sales results in the last half of the year. And I feel very good that we're on target for that.
Andrew Nicholas (Research Analyst)
... Great. Thank you. That, that's really helpful. And then I guess for my second question, I wanted to revert back to the core business. It does sound like net hiring expectations have come in a bit versus maybe what you expected at the beginning of the year with your initial guidance. If you could just kinda clarify or quantify that, that would be helpful. And then also, you know, what is the assumption now on the worksite employee front in terms of the back half of the year? I think even at the low end of your revised worksite employee growth guidance, there's a decent amount of sequential improvement baked in the second half. So, you know, is that a function of some of those warm leads converting from Workday?
Is it an expectation that the macro environment stabilizes or even improves some? Any, any additional context on kind of macro assumptions embedded in the worksite employee guidance would be super helpful.
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Yeah, thank you.
Andrew Nicholas (Research Analyst)
Thanks.
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Thank you for that question. It really is more the simple fact of the way the business model actually works in terms of how sales flow throughout the year. Each quarter, our sales, our budget, and, you know, what we sell every quarter goes up, and the retention goes up, you know, throughout the year, you know, once you get past that first quarter, which we've already got past. So, we have really built in, you know, this outlook that I discussed, that we're seeing in the client base, where even though they're, you know, optimistic on the sentiment side, they are not doing what aligns with that optimism. They, you know, they have battened down the hatches.
And so, you know, we've built that into our going forward, that, you know, we're not expecting to see in an election year, with that as a backdrop. So we're not assuming, you know, any benefit to speak of from the net change in existing in the client base. And actually, I'm not really, you know, budgeting, you know, a huge upside from even the lead flow, because I just don't think it's prudent to take a new strategy like that and build stuff in when you don't really haven't done it yet.
You know, I'm optimistic about that, but this forecast is really based on, you know, some benefit from that, but more just the continued execution of this BPA team that, you know, is further down their, on their effectiveness, that already evidenced in their sales efficiency in the first quarter, and the work that we're doing to make sure we have good lead flow. You know, our leads, I mentioned from our own marketing efforts, were strong in the quarter.
Some of that backdrop of the economic climate, you know, affected some of the appointment setting, so we're working other ways to make sure we are effective in that area, especially that ABX system or that we've got to actually assign specific accounts and work specific relationships to, you know, target high-value accounts that are more likely to be more ready to visit and to, you know, potentially to find a solution. So that should help you with that approach. You know, what happens in our business model, if sales increase throughout the year, retention is low, the balance of the year, so that's what's really driving the quarter-to-quarter growth.
Andrew Nicholas (Research Analyst)
Very helpful. I'll get back in the queue. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Toby Sommer of Truist. Toby, your line is live.
Toby Sommer (Managing Director)
Thank you. How do you compare and contrast the seemingly mixed signals conveyed by higher mid-market client turnover around the year-end transition with what you've described as sort of enhanced new sales momentum in that category over the last few quarters?
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Yeah, I think if you go back to kind of our discussion from last quarter, it was, you know, seven large accounts that moved at the end of the year. Four of those moved specifically for technology reasons. And so, you know, it's our success penalty, and another two of those were due to, you know, just the businesses being sold. So you know, they, your question of contrasting the two, you know, don't really connect that well. You know, we know that we're providing a powerfully good service to an underserved community now, and we believe that once we have this new option for... this new solution, this new option for these clients in this category, it's gonna secure them for a much longer period of time.
In fact, you know, I really have this mindset around ultimate scalability in both technology and service. That's what we're about to bring to the market. You know, even the dialogue with all these customers over the first quarter, you know, we've got prospects in the pipeline that are already, they're not only interested, I mean, it's elevated, but we'll talk more about this in a couple of weeks. Some of the interaction with, not just the business owner or the chief financial officer, but even the technology people and the HR people within these larger accounts, their energy around the potential of this solution is very high. So, you know, I know we've piqued the interest and just among the few that we've gotten out to, you know, put this in front of.
You know, I see this as a really dramatic change in our ultimate issue around both sales and retention of accounts in that target.
Toby Sommer (Managing Director)
That makes a lot of sense. So, is it fair to say that the customers that churned were probably larger than the new sales achieved?
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Yeah
Toby Sommer (Managing Director)
In recent quarters? Is it kind of a size difference?
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Yeah, on average, of course, these were accounts that we brought on at a smaller size and grew them substantially over, you know, half a dozen years or more. And,
Toby Sommer (Managing Director)
Right
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
... they ended up, you know, two of them actually went to a Workday solution, and two went to, I guess it was, UKG. But, you know, the very interesting part, you know, I've went out to talk to other clients that are large, that have also fit that description, and, you know, ran into some that had actually evaluated those two, and they. It was very interesting. We'll talk more about this in a couple of weeks, but their view of having to choose between the significant investment to deal with the scalable technology solution, and they saw it having to give up some important service capability that they have with us. So, you know, new solution carries those two together, and those customers don't have to make that decision.
So I feel good about it at this point, you know, even from, although it's, you know, anecdotal feedback, but it is among those types of customers that are a good sample of those that we want to understand their thinking.
Toby Sommer (Managing Director)
Terrific. I just have two more questions. Could you sort of dimensionalize the change in your assumption for health care expenses throughout the year as a result of Change, whatever that commentary you could give? And then, Paul, from a strategic standpoint, I wanted to ask how significant could Insperity's Workday implementation be in a handful of years? And do you envision the company performing implementations for non-PEO customers? So I'm trying to get a sense for the TAM. Thanks.
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Yeah, you know, that's a great question that we're going to spend a little more time on in a couple of weeks. So I won't steal some thunder out there, but I will just tell you that there's no question in my mind that, you know, when we look at that total addressable market of these mid-market accounts, you know, 40 million worksite employees or more, we, we've always said, "Hey, that we can attack some of that market with what we've already been doing." But it's, it's an appreciable percentage of that market now that this is, this will be the best solution in the marketplace, and no one else will have anything like it. So because it's, like I say, it's the ultimate scalable solution in both technology and services.
Now, some clients will get to a size where they want their own, you know, more customized version of Workday, but at that point, we will already have been their support infrastructure. And it's gonna be a very natural progression for us to be that team that not only helps them implement their new solution, which will be much more readily definable and, developed because they've already been on it, and we're the ones who've been servicing them. So for us to continue to be their service provider going forward is a very natural progression. And, and, you know, so... You know, will we go out to the market to be an implementer for, those accounts? That's not really the strategy. We don't-- Could we do that? We would have that capability, but that's not the plan.
The plan is to bring them onto our service and then be able to keep them much longer and have a little different version of the service when they're ready to go out into their own instance of Workday, and us remain that service support that they need, you know, even though they've grown to that size.
Operator (participant)
Okay. Thank you very much.
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Of the benefit side.
Toby Sommer (Managing Director)
Yeah, uh-
Operator (participant)
Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Jeff Martin of Roth MKM. Jeff, your line is live.
Jeff Martin (Director of Research and Senior Research Analyst)
Thanks. Good morning, Doug. I'll let you answer the question, and then I'll ask mine.
Douglas Sharp (CFO)
Appreciate that.
Operator (participant)
Sorry.
Douglas Sharp (CFO)
Okay, no problem. So what we saw on the healthcare side, you know, specific to Q1, was the upside in that particular area, not only had to do with the cost side, but the pricing side. So the pricing side, it's been a focus of ours, because of recent experience on cost trends, and we've been able to exceed our pricing targets, and so that's, that's a part of the equation. On the cost side, the upside that we got from the first quarter, you got to look at it really in two different pieces.
The upside for the first quarter really had to do with our reserves at the end of last year, in hindsight, being conservative, and we had reasons for doing that because of some of the volatility we've experienced in 2023. And then we look at subsequent claim runoffs to measure against those reserves. And yes, at the end of the day, the claim runoff was favorable relative to those reserves that were set up. And a lot of that, you're looking at claim runoff through the end of February for that. Now, we all know that in March, there was a breach at Change Healthcare, which is sort of the intermediary between the providers and the insurance companies, and therefore, would expect some sort of disruption in the claim payment pattern.
We did a deep dive into the details of that. We've also had conversations with the insurance carriers. And because of that, we felt it appropriate to provide some incremental reserve at the end of the first quarter for claims that were incurred but not reported yet as a result of that cybersecurity breach. Now, I'll tell you that we feel like we again have made a conservative IBNR adjustment as a result of that event, ending the quarter with what is our largest IBNR level over the course of our history, and even on a per participant basis, being a larger number. So at the end of the day, we feel like we have appropriately handled the issue with the breach at Change Healthcare.
And again, the upside is really coming from the reserves that we, in hindsight, were conservative that were set up at the end of 2023.
Jeff Martin (Director of Research and Senior Research Analyst)
Hey, Doug, I'll follow up with that. Yep. Thank you. So in terms of the benefit cost trend for 2024, is that unchanged versus your last commentary in Q4?
Douglas Sharp (CFO)
For the most part, yeah. I mean, I think we talked going into the year in my last prepared remarks, a benefit cost trend of 4.5%-6%. And so it's still, you know, sort of near the midpoint, but still within the range, but probably a little bit down based upon our Q1 experience, but still within that range.
Jeff Martin (Director of Research and Senior Research Analyst)
Great. And, and then with respect to the Workday relationship, is it still the expectation that initially you'll be doing a lot of conversions of existing clients prior to taking on new clients, or will you be able to straddle both? And then secondly, you know, how do clients perceive the value in your, in your view? I know it's still early, of doing the combined solution versus doing, Workday independently and, and going without, you know, the, the services that, that you provide.
Douglas Sharp (CFO)
Sure. So, you know, we are doing a tremendous amount of research and even working with some outside consultants to evaluate different aspects of this approach. And, you know, again, treating this as a new product launch, so appropriately gathering information from both prospects and current clients. And again, looking at value perceived, pricing, relationships, and, you know... So I think we're on a very good track to gather the appropriate information, assess it properly, and determine these launch dynamics. At this stage, I think there's gonna be a nice mix between both, you know, current clients or even new clients coming on this year that want to upgrade once that is ready to go.
The current clients that are already here, like I said, had great conversations and, and yes, several, you know, on that list already, some more than happy to be our even beta test type customers. We have a number of clients that are gonna be involved in literally the configuration design effort to make sure that, you know, we've got how much is pre-configured for all the, for the whole base, versus how much are, is customized or customizable for, for clients. So, you know, we're doing those things properly, but yeah, there'll be a mix. And I think there'll also be a backlog of, you know, customers that, you know, are signed up to come on the service on the new offering.
So, you know, our launch time for the offering, timed with, you know, when it's actually coming out and, and having more of a pipeline for these accounts to come on, you know, that's kind of the mindset that we, we are, we are in today. There's a lot of work, you know, to get to that point and, and make sure that's effective, but we're, we're on that track.
Jeff Martin (Director of Research and Senior Research Analyst)
Great. And then one more, if I could. You know, the $60 million of planned incremental spend in 2024, how might that progress as we, you know, move through the quarters? And then, how much support staff are you anticipating hiring in advance of that?
Douglas Sharp (CFO)
So, you know, there's a process going on there now also, and, you know, basically we're on track in that or very early first quarter, which is, you know, when we had, you know, but not very much information to, you know, to try to estimate this, and it came out very good. We're still very comfortable with that number for the year. And, you know, you do have to weigh in also the, you know, hiring people versus contracting out for certain components, depending on whether it's just a surge of need for a short time, or whether it's part of the ongoing picture. So there's a lot of that type of thing going on as well.
But I think the mindset, between, you know, launching a new product effectively in a timely fashion and managing the investment side and the ongoing expense side, has really been impressive to me already in a short time. So we feel good about how we have looked at this and been conservative in those kind of estimates, but there's a lot yet to go on. So we're, you know, not getting into that much detail about that yet.
Operator (participant)
Okay, thank you very much. Just as a reminder, if there are any more questions, you can press star one on your phone keypad now. We have a final question in from Andre Childress, who is on for Mark Marcon of Baird & Company. Andre, your line is live.
Andre Childress (Senior Research Associate)
Hey. Hey, Paul and Doug, thanks for taking our questions. My first question is just as you look back at the key selling and enrollment period, you know, what did you see from a competitive perspective, particularly on the pricing front?
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Yeah, we saw, you know, through this period, kind of like I mentioned on the last quarter, where, you know, when the climate is more difficult, you know, you see more competitive approaches. And so, I think a lot of that was more in the fall of last year; it kind of peaked. It's still out there, but I think the way we have looked at it and responded and, you know, has been effective, you know, this first quarter, you know, having a strong quarter like we did, significantly, you know, double-digit up from last year, was evidence of that. And I mentioned that was a combination of, you know, the experience factor and the growth in the number of BPAs, but then also, you know, the right incentives for both clients and the sales team.
So we're in a good shape on that front, but I would expect it to stay pretty competitive out there. You know, I do, as you talked about the Workday comparison, that's a different animal because it's an exclusive relationship. No one will be able to even have that. And I think that, you know, frames our offering really, really well against others. So, you know, that's more of the long-term view on that front, but for this year, you know, we're expecting it to remain competitive, and we like our winning the right clients that we're after. You know, we're in great shape on that front.
Andre Childress (Senior Research Associate)
Great. And then, as a follow-up, in your prepared remarks, you talked about various initiatives to drive BPA productivity. Could you provide an update on just how you are leveraging AI, or how you plan to leverage AI across both the sales, service, and maybe even the R&D organization? Thank you.
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Yeah, absolutely. I think the main point to take away on that front is we are really structured and staffed and organized and working through processes, and even the technology investments we've already made have put us in a very strong position to flush out all these possibilities. There are so many possibilities, and certain things are pretty obvious. You know, there's, like I mentioned in the prepared remarks, you know, we're talking about things that drive efficiency or provide insights and things of that nature. You know, we're on a great track to bring those forward. Now, we also believe that, you know, a lot of this is not there yet. You know, we've flushed out certain areas we've looked at, and we said, "Wow, that's gonna be really good." It's not really that good yet.
But we're in a good position to capitalize on these things as they happen. And, you know, it was great timing for us to put Salesforce in place, you know, which was significant to making sure that all our internal data is in one place. That's powerful for this. And, you know, we've done a tremendous amount of work relative to implementation on modern data engineering and other analytics technologies, and I just think we're in a great position to do this, but it's not time to, you know, go into a lot of detail about that. But, you know, that's coming soon.
Operator (participant)
Okay, thank you very much. That appears to be the end of our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to Mr. Sarvadi for any closing remarks.
Paul Sarvadi (CEO)
Well, once again, I'd like to thank everyone for being with us today for this update. I'd like to have a special invite to all of you to be a part of our Investor Day coming up later this month. There is also an opportunity for you to be here in person, and a way to go through that process on our website. There's also a link within our announcement that we put out today.
But we'd love to have as many as possible, either in person or remotely, and look forward to answering a lot more questions, not only about the status of our current business model and the drivers, but how those are linked to this new strategic partnership, and our expectations about how that will directly affect our likelihood, degree, and speed of success going forward here at Insperity and delivering shareholder value. Thank you again for your participation today, and we look forward to seeing you soon.
Operator (participant)
Thank you very much, everyone. This does conclude today's conference. You may now disconnect your phone lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.