Good morning. My name is Phyllis and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Crawford & Company Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Earnings Release Conference Call. In conjunction with this call, a supplementary financial presentation is available on our website at www.crawco.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, Tuesday, March 15, 2022. 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 relate to, among other things, the impact of COVID-19, our expected future operating results and financial condition, our ability to grow our revenues and reduce our operating expenses, expectations regarding our anticipated contributions to our underfunded defined pension plans, collectability of our billed and unbilled accounts receivable, financial results from our recently completed acquisitions, our continued compliance with the financial and other covenants contained in our financing agreements, our long-term capital resource and liquidity requirements and our ability to pay dividends in the future. The company’s actual results achieved in future quarters could differ materially from results that may be 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 from 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-Q for the year ended December 31, 2021, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly the information under the headings Risk Factors 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. Rohit Verma, Chief Executive Officer of Crawford & Company. Rohit, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Phyllis. Good morning and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings call. Joining me today is Bruce Swain, our Chief Financial Officer; Joseph Blanco, our President; and Tami Stevenson, our General Counsel. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Before I review our results, I would like to extend my thoughts to our colleagues, clients, and partners who have family and friends in and around Ukraine. As you all may know, we do not have any assets on the ground in Ukraine or Russia but we hope for the safety of the Ukrainian people, especially all those who are directly in harm’s way and for a swift and peaceful resolution. We will continue to monitor this evolving situation to understand how this might affect our colleagues in Ukraine as well as Europe. Crawford finished the year with the record revenue and strong momentum and continued its growth trajectory. Adjusting for the 2018 sale of the Garden City Group, we reported our highest quarterly and fully revenue in Crawford’s history. I am incredibly proud of the team’s hard work and dedication in what has been a challenging environment. Our impressive top line growth underscores the strength of our technology and people focused growth strategy, which is driving results across the company. Full year revenue was $1.1 billion, representing a 12% increase over 2020. In particular, we saw strong performance from our US operations where we continue to gain market share across all segments of our business. Our focused efforts to scale our offerings resulted in revenue growth from both established relationships and new clients. We continued to deploy a record number of capped resources in 2021 and responded to the increasing demand for major and complex specialist edjusters. Despite a continued…

Thanks, Rohit. Before we turn to our business line results, as promised, we are continuing to streamline our business for efficiency and effectiveness. As a result, we realigned our management responsibilities to create better scale and synergies and have moved to a geographic reporting structure effective January 1st 2022. Moving forward, our reportable segments are comprised of North America Loss Adjusting, International Operations, Broadspire, and Platform Solutions. North America Loss Adjusting which services the North American property and casualty market is comprised of the previously reported profit and loss adjusting segment in the US and Canada, including Global Technical Services and edjuster. The Canadian operations will include all operations within that country, including those previously reported within the Crawford TPA solutions, and Crawford Platform solution segments. International Operations which services the global property and casualty market outside of North America is comprised of the previously reported Crawford Loss Adjusting segment outside of North America and includes Crawford Legal Services, which was previously within the Crawford TPA solutions segment. Similar to Canada, the individual countries in International Operations will include those service lines previously reported within the Crawford TPA and Platform Solution segments. Broadspire provides third-party administration for workers compensation, auto and liability, disability absence management, medical management, and accident health of the corporations, brokers, and insurers in the US. Platform Solutions consists of contractor connection networks and subrogation service lines in the US. The network service line includes catastrophe operations, and WeGoLook. We believe that this new geographic center reporting structure will not only create greater synergies, but also give greater impetus for our sales and client engagement, as well as provide greater cross selling capabilities. Turning now to our business line results for the year, which we are reporting under our structure from 2021, in loss adjusting, we continue…

Thank you, Joseph. Company-wide revenues before reimbursements in the 2021 fourth quarter were 292.9 million, up 14% From 257.4 million in the prior year fourth quarter. Foreign exchange rate benefits increased revenues before reimbursements by 3 million. On a constant dollar basis, revenues before reimbursements totaled 289.9 million. GAAP diluted EPs in the 2021 four quarter was $0.03 for both CRD-A and CRD-B compared to EPS of $0.18 for both CRD-A and CRD-B in the 2020 period. On a non-GAAP basis, fourth quarter 2021 diluted EPS was $0.07 for both CRD-A and CRD-B compared with $0.27 for both share classes in the 2020 period. The company’s non-GAAP operating earnings totaled 9.1 million in 2021 fourth quarter or 3.1% of revenues, decreasing from 18.5 million or 7.2% of revenues in the prior year period. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was 17.6 million in the 2021 fourth quarter, or 6% of revenues, compared to 27.5 million for 10.7% of revenues in the 2020 quarter. I’ll now review the fourth quarter 2021 performance of each of our segments. Crawford Loss Adjusting revenues totaled 123.1 million in 2021 fourth quarter, increasing 10.5% from 111.4 million reported in last year’s quarter. Foreign exchange rate benefits totaled 2.1 million in the 2021 quarter. The segment reported operating earnings of 4.9 million in the 2021 fourth quarter, decreasing from 16.3 million reported in last year’s quarter. The operating margin was 4% in the 2021 quarter compared to 14.6% in the 2020 quarter. Operating earnings and margin weakness during the quarter were pressured by lower CEWS benefits, higher centralized support cost, and weakness in certain international business lines in the UK, Canada, and Asia. Revenues for Crawford Platform Solutions were 70.6 million in the 2021 fourth quarter increasing 40.7% for the 50.2 million in the prior year quarter. Foreign exchange…

Thank you, Bruce. Overall, we are pleased where we ended 2021, especially given the uncertainty that plagued the year. We enter 2022 in high spirits and we will continue to work on our strategy and refine it to represent the new geography-based operating model that has been implemented for 2022. We will also continue the cultural evolution throughout the organization, which we believe is the underpinning of our strategy, execution, and profitable growth. As we look ahead, we remain keenly focused on our pursuit of restoring lives, businesses, and communities. We are confident in our growth trajectory and are committed to delivering further value to our shareholders. Thank you for your time today. Operator, please open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Kevin Steinke with Barrington Research.

Hi, Kevin.

Good morning. Good morning, everyone. How are you?

Good.

Good. Hey, I wanted to start off by asking about, obviously, some continued challenges in international markets and you had, I think, referred last quarter as well to taking a fresh look at just the cost base in some of those markets, given the slower than expected recovery. I’m just trying to get a sense as to whether you’ve started to implement measures or you’re still just taking a look and figuring out what the steps are just how far along are you in that process?

Yeah, Kevin. Great question. We are extremely excited about the growth that we’ve had. But obviously that excitement is dampened by the margin challenges that we’ve had in the international markets and Europe is only one part of that one part of that story. However, we have started to make some changes and realign our cost structure to the new market realities. The diversification that we’re starting to do in Europe is a step in that direction. We’ve started to increase our penetration in the loss adjusting space by onboarding some more teams. Also looking at diversifying our TPA clients outside of just travel and hospitality and we’re starting to see some success there. But it is a slow it is a slower journey. I expect to see real results coming really after Q2 where you’ll be able to see them on flow through in the P&L.

Okay. That’s helpful and you mentioned the efforts to diversify you referenced BosBoon, is the diversification, it is partly organic. You mentioned adding clients in different areas outside of travel and entertainment as well as continuing to look for acquisition opportunities.

Yeah, it is both. But as you know, we are extremely disciplined about the acquisitions that we make. We need to make sure that the structure of the acquisition is right. The return profile of the acquisition is right. So I think it will be a balanced approach between organic and inorganic ways to diversify the business.

Okay, that’s helpful. This is starting to hopefully move into the rearview mirror here. But obviously the fourth quarter, we saw a spike in COVID cases driven by Omicron and even in the early 2022, do you think there was any noticeable impact on your business, either from your ability to access labor or impact on revenue or anything that measurable that you might have seen there?

Yeah, as long as economic activity doesn’t slow down, we don’t get impacted by COVID from a labor pool perspective. We did see a little bit of labor issues when there was some storm activity last year and COVID was at its high to deploy some people where people were not keen on going to geographies where COVID was high and the safety measures were not prescribed by the government. But I would say that shorting -- short of actual lockdowns happening where economic activity comes to a stop, I don’t see that to be a big issue.

Okay, good. Just following up again, on international, I think you referenced some challenges in some specific international markets. Specifically, in the press release, you mentioned, increased competition for talent in Asia and you mentioned how you’re ramping up your hiring efforts there. And then you also mentioned pressure in one of your UK businesses. I don’t know if you could expand on those areas, internationally and any others if they’re worth highlighting.

Yeah, let me see if I can talk a little bit about Asia first. If you look at our Asian operation, it was really an operation that was built by stringing together a bunch of entrepreneurial operations, right. So it wasn’t sort of operating as a formal enterprise operation. And what we felt was as the Asian market was, excuse me, transitioning to be a much more structured market than it has been in the past, it was important for us to start to build much more of an enterprise infrastructure in Asia and that’s what we’ve been focused on. But as you build that, you always bring about some changes, you’re moving towards a much more structured approach than an entrepreneurial approach that may have been used before, so it’s bound to cause some consternation and I think that’s what we’re sort of going through and making sure that we’re putting on the right people in the organization that we want. As far as a specific business operation in UK is concerned, we’ve had one aspect of our operation, which has actually done extremely well for us, but in the short term on these themes and issues with it, which relate to labor shortages, lead times on construction projects, which have resulted in some profitability challenges in that business, we believe that those challenges are largely behind us, but we’re still working through them. And again, it might take a quarter or two to work through the tale of those challenges. Bruce, I don’t know if you want to add to that.

No, I think that’s right. We see it largely as transitory issues.

Yeah.

Okay, great. And then you mentioned how you’re continued to actively invest in your core business. You talked about some of the areas there like the major and complex hiring specialists edjuster. It looks like the direct compensation expenses across your three segments are in each segment or up a little faster than revenue. Should we think about some of the investments as being people based or what other investments might you want to talk about that you expect to drive growth in the future?

Yeah, so true to our strategy, we have three strategic pillars, quality, expertise, and digital, and our investments are very much aligned in those. In the area of large and complex losses, we have been investing quite a lot in people. I think we mentioned that we’ve hired 82 edjusters. Our target is to hire 200 edjusters. And these are what we call edjusters that are deep and eminent in their fields. We’re also investing in technology, which is a major part of our strategy where we’ve already initiated the process of moving towards cloud, which we believe in the longer term will give us resilience, it’ll also give us flexibility and scale, which usually requires a higher upfront investment than and the results start to come through over a period of time. We continue to innovate, which we believe is resonating with our customers. We’ve already talked about Asservio in the past, we’ve talked about some other investments in data and analytics, particularly in our Broadspire space, which are really creating the differentiation that we need and it’s evident in the $103 million of new business that we wrote last year, which we believe is largely due to this differentiated strategy that we’re taking. So, as you can imagine, oftentimes technology and people investments tend to be front end loaded and that’s what we’re seeing in our business as well. Look, I think we’ve talked a lot about growth for almost a decade but what happened is, every time we would talk about growth, we would immediately shift our focus to just pure margin and start to take expense reduction initiatives that probably were much more short-term results oriented than a long-term result oriented. I think we are squarely focused on growth right now. We are absolutely expense aware. We’re actually going to be prudent in our expense management but we’re not going to take our focus away from growth.

Right. Now, that makes a lot of sense to that in terms of being able to drive the long-term growth that you’re looking for. Can you talk about -- obviously, the quarter had some really nice growth on the top line, can you talk about your market share gains you’re seeing specifically in the US? You mentioned within the US cat business areas, just maybe progression of market share gains and penetration that you’re seeing there?

Sure. In the US, I still don’t think that we or anybody for that matter truly has a meaningful share of the market. I think it’s a highly fragmented market and we continue to be a participant in that highly fragmented market. So I believe there is a tremendous amount of headroom that exists. We believe, again, that our strategy of quality expertise in digital is the right strategy to create the necessary differentiation. We bought a great brand recognition but I think we need to work on our brand awareness. And what I mean by that is, people understand who Crawford is, but they don’t understand exactly all of the things that we do, and that’s been a major focus area for us. And as we’ve done that, we’ve seen our share of wallet grow with the large carriers where there’s an opportunity for us to grow our share of wallet. But we believe there is still a huge opportunity with mid-sized carriers as well. We’ve been making quite a lot of investments in the sales infrastructure, which we’ve talked about over the last couple of years. And I’m pleased to see that that investment is starting to show the results in the US. So we believe that there is continued momentum in the US. Our challenge always is that the results are often dependent on the weather, so we will continue to gain new clients but if there is volatility in the weather, it might not show up in our numbers. But if we look at on a pure client basis, our market share is continuing to grow.

All right, great. You did touch there on more of a small and mid-sized carrier market in the US and the investments you’re making there. I guess, can you just again, talk about maybe some early traction you’re seeing there and I think you’re very early on in that opportunity but it seems like that could be a fairly significant opportunity over the longer term.

It is. We truly believe it’s a fairly significant opportunity but it does require, as you can imagine, one top five carrier wins is equal to sometimes 10 or 12 mid-size carrier wins, right. So it just takes a little bit of longer for those wins to start to show but those wins tend to be stickier, they tend to have more repeatable business, and we are seeing success there. Another place that we’re seeing success is what I call early stage companies, which are starting out and don’t have the claims infrastructure. We’ve seen success there as well. So, overall, I believe that’s why I made the statement that we’re seeing growth across all our segments in the US. I think we will continue to see this growth if we stay true to our strategy, which we plan to be.

Okay. I just wanted to ask a couple more here. This is more just the numbers or question around -- I’m trying to just recall in terms of unallocated corporate costs, if there’s some seasonality associated with the fourth quarter where they kind of spike up sequentially, I know that’s happened in the last couple years or if there’s true ops or something going on there. I just can’t [Technical Difficulty] progression is.

Yeah. Hi, Kevin. This is Bruce. There really shouldn’t be seasonality per se. In the last couple of years we’ve seen higher than the normal amount hit in the fourth quarter. On a quarterly basis, we go through ups of bad debt provision, self insured reserves, and the like and those items, be then credits or debits, will show up in corporate unallocated, so you’ll see a little bit of volatility and we saw a little bit higher number this year than we were anticipating. But as far as seasonality, you really shouldn’t expect the fourth quarter to spike year in, year out.

Okay. All right. Got it. And just lastly, can you just talk about the health of the overall new business pipeline across your segments and what you’re seeing there? Did you see any slowdown related the Omicron or is it just continuing to build as you would hope?

The new business pipeline continues to build. We haven’t seen, in the US, slowdown in Omicron. And, I must admit, we saw slowdown because of the Omicron in Europe and in UK to some extent, but we haven’t really seen a slowdown from a pipeline perspective just because of Omicron. So we feel good about -- we continue to feel good about the pipeline that we have.

Okay, great. Thanks for taking all the questions.

Thanks, Kevin.

Thank you, Kevin.

Appreciate it.

And at this time, there are no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Verma for closing remarks.

Thank you, Phyllis. In 2021, we made tremendous strides in advancing our purpose of restoring lives, businesses, and communities. Our long-term strategy enables our growth plans and envision future, as we continue to deliver innovative and market-leading solutions. Above all else, we remain deeply committed to protecting the health and safety of our employees, while continuing to provide best-in-class service to our clients, despite the current global environment. And in that spirit, I want to thank our colleagues in Australia and UK, who under the leadership of Lisa Bartlett and Tim Jarman are doing a spectacular job under very difficult conditions to deliver on our purpose, post the storms and floods there. As we embark on 2022 and beyond, we are committed to moving forward from a position of strength as we find new ways to excel for our clients, while also delivering further value to our shareholders. Our fourth quarter and full year 2021 growth trajectory is not only indicative of Crawford strength and resilience through 2021 but also evidence of our incredible momentum moving forward. We look forward to having you join us on the journey ahead and thank you for your support. Thank you and God bless.

Thank you for participating in today’s Crawford & Company conference call. This call will be available for replay beginning at 11:30 AM Eastern Standard Time today through 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time on April 15, 2022. The conference ID number for the replay is 4285212. The number to dial for the replay is 800-585-8367 or 416-621-4642. Thank you. You may now disconnect.