Good afternoon. My name is Suzy, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I’d like to welcome everyone to the Crawford & Company First Quarter 2015 Earnings Release Conference Call. In conjunction with this call, a supplementary financial earnings release presentation is available on our Web site at www.crawfordandcompany.com under the Investor Relations section. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. Instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded today, Thursday, May 7, 2015. Some of the matters to be discussed in this conference call and in the supplementary financial presentation may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements may include, but are not limited to statements regarding the funded status of our defined benefit pension plans, our expectations related to future revenues and expenses, expectations regarding the timing, costs and synergies from our recently announced Global Business Services Center, our acquisition of GAB Robins in the UK as well as other restructuring activities, our long-term liquidity requirements and our ability to pay dividends in the future. The Company's actual results achieved in future quarters could differ materially from the results that maybe implied by such forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly release revisions to any forward-looking statements made in this conference call to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of the call or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. In addition, you are reminded that operating results for any historical period are not necessarily indicative of results to be expected for any future period. For a complete discussion regarding factors which could affect the Company’s financial performance, please refer to the Company’s Form 10-K for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly the information under the headings, Business, Risk Factors, Legal Proceedings and Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, as well as subsequent company filings with the SEC. This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules. As required, a reconciliation is provided for those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. I would now like to introduce Mr. Jeffrey Bowman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Crawford & Company. Jeff, you may begin our conference.

Thank you, Suzy. Good afternoon and welcome to our investors, clients and employees. I’m Jeffrey Bowman, President and CEO of Crawford & Company. Joining me from the global executive management team this afternoon is Bruce Swain, our CFO; and [indiscernible], our Associate General Counsel who is sitting in for Alan Nelson next quarter. I will begin with a brief overview of our first quarter 2015 results, followed by an update on our strategic initiatives. Bruce will then review the financials in more detail and I will wrap up with an update of our 2015 guidance. For the first quarter, we reported companywide revenues before reimbursements of $287.8 million which compares to the $275.3 million in the year-ago period. First quarter 2015 diluted earnings per share was $0.06 for CRDA and $0.04 for CRDB compared to diluted earnings per share of $0.12 for CRDA and $0.11 for CRDB in the first quarter of 2014. Before the special charge reported in the 2015 first quarter, our first quarter EPS on a non-GAAP basis was $0.07 for CRDA and $0.05 for CRDB. As I have discussed on prior calls the claim environment continues to be challenging given the lack of major weather events worldwide. The results of this environment is a continued shift in our claims businesses from higher margin property claims which typically result from severe weather to high volume, low valued claims most in the U.S. and internationally. The shift continues to way our results leading to margin and earnings pressure. Given this backdrop we have made strategic decision to further rationalize our cost structure as well as further align our senior management team. I am confident that these steps will better position our global claims business for the current challenging environment. I would expect the impacts of our realignment to…

Thank you Jeff. Companywide revenues before reimbursements in 2015 first quarter were $287.8 million, compared with $275.3 million in the prior year's first quarter. Consolidated operating earnings, a non-GAAP financial measure, totaled $10.7 million for the 2015 first quarter, down from $14.1 million reported in the 2014 first quarter. The company’s selling; general and administrative expenses or SG&A totaled $60.4 million up from 59.7 million in the prior year quarter. However as a percentage of revenues these cost declined to 21% of revenues in the 2015 first quarter from 21.7% of revenues in the prior year quarter. Our net income attributable to shareholders of Crawford & Company totaled 3 million in the 2015 first quarter down from 6.7 million in the 2014 period. First quarter diluted earnings per share were $0.06 for CRDA and $0.04 for CRDB, compared to $0.12 for CRDA and $0.11 for CRDB in the 2014 period. On a non-GAAP before special charges first quarter 2015 diluted earnings per share were $0.07 for CRDA and $0.05 for CRDB. I will now review the first quarter performance for each of our business units starting with the Americas segment. As Jeff mentioned the benign weather in the U.S. persisted in 2015 and negatively affected revenues for the segment. In addition a stronger U.S dollar reduced revenues by 5% during the 2015 first quarter however these two headwinds were more than offset by higher special project revenues in the U.S. Revenues from the Americas segment totaled 89.5 million up from 87.9 million reported in last year's quarter. This overall increase was due to higher revenues associated with an outsourcing special project with a major U.S property and casualty. Operating earnings in our Americas segment were 5 million in the 2015 first quarter or 6% of revenues compared with operating earnings…

Thank you, Bruce. We have a high confidence level and improved performance in our total operations in 2015 based on our existing pipeline combined with the strategic actions that we have undertaken. As previously discussed 2015 guidance will include both the impacts of acquisitions and special charges related to the GAB acquisition and the Global Business Service Center. In addition, we expect to incur an additional pretax special charge estimated at $4 million related to restructuring activities in the EMEA/AP and Americas segment. In the aggregate, these 2015 charges are expected to total approximately 20 million pretax or $0.23 in diluted earnings per share. So as a result, our 2015 guidance is updated as follows. Consolidated revenues before reimbursement remained between $1.16 billion and $1.19 billion, consolidated operating earnings increased to between $87 million to $97 million, consolidated cash provided by operating activities unchanged between $40 million and $50 million, reflecting special charges discussed, net income attributable to shareholders of Crawford & Company on a GAAP basis remained between $29.5 and $35 million of $0.57 to $0.67 per CRDA share and $0.50 to $0.60 diluted earnings per CRB share. Before the special charges net income attributable to shareholders of Crawford & Company increased to between $41.5 million and $47 million or $0.80 to $0.90 per CRDA share and $0.73 to $0.83 per diluted earnings per CRDB share. In closing, thank you very much for your time. We look forward to your questions. Operator will you please explain the process for asking the questions to our audience.

[Operator Instructions]. And your first question comes from the line of Mark Hughes of SunTrust.

The couple of questions, Contractor Connection was influenced by the better weathers this year, how is the underlying growth if you I don't know whether you looked at a April numbers or outside of the weather impacted period any change in the growth trajectory there?

We still see Contractor Connections growth in the U.S. increasing as we take on new client and we see the effectiveness of the Contractor Connection model on some of the middle tier insurance carriers that we’re winning. Also in the period we've grown the Contractor Connection business in Canada, we re-budgeted and are growing it in the United Kingdom GAB had a small Contractor Connection model which we are consolidating into one with us, we've also opened up in Australia. So we are still excited about the opportunities in front of us in the Americas and Canada and we expect to see improvements in the overseas operations.

What do you think the growth rate will be there for the balance of the year, excluding Q1?

For the full year we expect a double-digit growth rate on the top-line and we still believe that this business is its early innings and there is a tremendous amount of growth opportunities that remains here. The one thing about Contractor Connection is that it does tend to have a relatively long sales cycle and this is a consultative sale and these our clients typically look at it they will implement pilots in a few states we will look at the results of those operations and recalibrate and expand it. So the new client acquisition can take time and be deliberate, but once we bring new clients on board the revenues are fairly sticky as I think they [indiscernible].

Can you talk about the Broadspire, it looks like your claims are up pretty sharply but your revenue growth is more modest than that, still good revenue growth but not nearly up as much as your claims count, then at the same time margin leased compared to the second half of 2014 is down a little bit.

The number of claims Mark is slightly distorted in the quarter where we transferred the accident health business from our Americas division to our Broadspire division. Part of that was to ensure that we have synergy within our own operation on a global basis for Broadspire being branded both in the U.S. and in the all of the international operations for our client. So we put all of that business now into the Broadspire operation.

Are they getting revenue associated with those extra claims?

There will be revenue in the quarters coming up associated with to those claims. And there is revenue in first quarter as well.

And then the margin compared to last half of last year down a little bit what’s driving that?

The first quarter is usually probably the weakest quarter in nearly all of our businesses frankly but including Broadspire we've got a number of heavier cost that have been in the first quarter of the year compared to the back half things around payroll taxes [and certain benefits] and then it's just coming off of the fourth quarter which tends to be a period of high activity related to handling workers compensation claims there is just a little bit of pull back in the first quarter. But we still expect to see the Broadspire business show good growth in terms of revenues, operating earnings and profitability this year.

The potential project revenue that seems very nice. I might have asked this before but what are the prospects for similar type of opportunities? Is this really just really one off or is there potential to take this and there should be effectiveness to other potential claim.

Just to take this special project is linked around particular claim and we see that growing over the balance of this year. And we see it going up probably several years as well and this is proving to be a very, very good contract for the cooperation it could lead us into looking at doing something very similar with our customers in a different type of model and that’s something is strategically we are looking at for the future.

I'll ask my usual question on the deepwater horizon down a little bit. But legal settlement really was not down too much this quarter. What's the prospect there?

We expect this trend to down the trend continue is in 2015 with just lower levels of activity until we are advised otherwise the revenue will continue to decrease as we go through the balance of this year.

How should you think about the margin in that business? 2014 was down pretty meaningfully from 2013. I think historically that always had a higher margin? Is there is something structurally that will keep that margin lower than it where it was before or is there some potential to bring that back up?

We think that the 2014 margin was impacted by two kind of isolated issues one was we've designed, built and implemented a new [placing] and link system within GCG all 2020 system. And so that was implemented in '14 it was just an operational drag on introducing a new system to the employees and some inefficiency there. Ultimately we think that system is going to provide improved efficiency for the GCG employees and we should see that as improving the margin as we go forward. The other thing other cost you had in '15 that we don’t think we have going forward is our investment in a new product line in GCG around [indiscernible]. So that’s an area that we are started out last year we've got some traction with the program or two and as that investment gets behind us and we get some revenues to support the productive capabilities that we put in place we think that that will be margin enhancing as well. So as we talked about in the past we think in the absence of the deepwater horizon project the GCG operating margin is mid-teens and we still believe that in the fact there operating earnings held up this quarter compared to last quarter of revenue decline is really related to the lack of drag from that 2020 system in the investment in the mass toward business.

It is same out with the backlog we reported in the business in this quarter was up on the last year quarter as well which is very encouraging from it.

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from the line of Peter van Roden of Spitfire Capital.

First question can you give us a little bit of guidance on the GAB deal in terms of revenue contribution. And maybe the effective synergies from the deal.

Sure we think the revenues in 2015 will be about $100 million for the year. We think at the bottom line level as we integrate business in a curve the restructuring charges around that that it won't be accretive to EPS and may in fact be slightly dilutive. The main synergies that we see in that business are related to removing duplicate layers and management position and also integrating the back office support functions around finance and technologies, human resources and those sort of operations.

As we came in the entering the second quarter we've actually taken a decision to exit from both the Americas and EMEA/AP operations somewhere around about 400 positions. We considered about 170 of these in our initial plans of which 100 was the GAB integration. So we are going to be increasing that over our initial actions.

Got it and then I'll make cost savings initiative, just gave us a little bit of guidance for 100 positions, are you willing to share kind of high level amount of cost that you hope to take out?

The cost savings and the additional restructuring charge are included in the guidance that we put out today, so we have baked that into the numbers that we shared earlier today.

And there are no further questions in the queue. Mr. Bowman, do you have any closing remarks?

Thank you for your time and questions this afternoon. I would like to thank everybody to taking time to join with us today. We wish you good rest for the day and thank you very much. Goodbye.