Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2012 Dice Holdings, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. My name is Jocane, and I'll be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Ms. Jennifer Bewley, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at Dice Holdings. Please proceed.

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. With me on the call today is Scot Melland, Chairman, President and CEO of Dice Holdings; along with Mike Durney, Senior Vice President of Finance and CFO. Please note, this morning, we issued a press release describing the company's results for the fourth quarter of 2012. A copy of that release can be viewed on the company's website at diceholdingsinc.com. Before I hand the call over to Scot, I'd like to note that today's call includes certain forward-looking statements, particularly statements regarding future financial and operating results of the company and its businesses. These statements are based on management's current expectations or beliefs and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied by these statements herein due to changes in economic, business, competitive, technological and/or regulatory factors. The principal risks that could cause our results to differ materially from our current expectations are detailed in the company's SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K in the sections entitled Risk Factors, Forward-looking Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. The company is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by federal securities laws. Today's call also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin and free cash flow. For details on these measures, including why we use them and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings release and our Form 8-K that has been furnished to the SEC, both of which are available on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Scot.

Thank you, Jennifer. First, let me welcome all of you to the Dice Holdings Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2012 Conference Call. I'll start today by briefly discussing our fourth quarter performance, then I'll spend some time describing our new Open Web technology, which we announced this morning, as well as our plans and thoughts on key trends for 2013. I'll hand it over to Mike Durney, our CFO, to take you through our financial performance. And then, I'll make a few closing remarks, and we'll open it up for questions. Recruitment activity across our verticals has been largely stable since our last quarterly report. Generally speaking, we are operating in the same environment, moderate job growth in the U.S. combined with lower-than-average turnover, sluggish recruiting in global financial services and stronger markets in technology and energy recruiting. In the fourth quarter worldwide revenues totaled $52.7 million, an increase of 11% year-over-year. Excluding the acquisition of our media properties, revenues increased about 1% to $48.1 million. Q4 billings grew faster than revenues, up 14% year-over-year. Excluding the impact of the media acquisition, billings were up 5% year-over-year. The increase in billings was driven by a return to growth in our Dice.com business, strong performance at Rigzone and a smaller drag from eFinancialCareers. So overall, we ended 2012 on a positive note. Despite some ups and downs during the year, we grew our revenues and customer base around the world while investing in our next-generation services. So this brings me to Open Web. For some time now, we have been looking at how to integrate our services with the growing social usage on the web. Over the past year, we have invested in product development, made a key acquisition and today, we are revealing the first step in the next generation…

Great. Thanks, Scot, and thanks, everyone, for taking time to join us today. Revenues totaled $52.7 million for the quarter and $195.4 million for the full year. If you exclude the acquisition of Slashdot and SourceForge, revenues grew 1% year-over-year in the fourth quarter and 6% year-over-year for the full year. EBITDA for the quarter was $19.5 million and for the year, totaled $77.4 million. For the quarter and the year, net income was $9 million and $38.1 million, respectively. So with that quick overview, let's go to the segments. Revenues in the Tech & Clearance segment increased 19% year-over-year to $37.1 million, including Slashdot Media. The acquisition contributed $4.7 million in revenues to the segment results. So excluding that impact, Tech & Clearance grew 4% year-over-year. The Dice.com business grew 4%. Tech continues to be a good market. According to the BLS, the unemployment rate for tech professionals averaged 3.3% in Q4, but turnover continues to be below average. These trends are reflected on the Dice side, with relatively stable recruitment activity in job postings and resume views. Importantly, we continue to improve our execution, with the Dice.com billings growing 5% year-over-year, another record average revenue per customer and an improved renewal rate quarter-over-quarter. So let's get into the details. At the end of the quarter, the Dice service had 8,400 recruitment package customers, down from 8,650 at the beginning of the quarter or a net loss of 250 customers at December 31. The number of annual recruitment package customers at quarter end was 7,700, up 6% year-over-year and an all-time high for the business. As you'll recall, we experienced seasonality due to the measurement on December 31 and the reduction of the short-term contracts at the end of the year. If you exclude 2008 due to severity of…

Thank you, Mike. As you can see, 2012 was a successful year for our company. What can you expect from us in 2013? In 2013, we will focus on reaching new customers, armed with our next-generation technology. We'll continue to improve our services through investment in product development, including the rollout of Open Web to our other key verticals. We'll increase the reach and engagement within each of our communities, with Dice leveraging the active Slashdot and SourceForge audiences. We'll expand internationally, and we'll continue to refine and improve our global operations. So all in all, 2013 is going to be another exciting year for us. So I want to thank you all for listening. Let's open up the call for some questions.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from the line of Tim McHugh from William Blair. Timothy McHugh - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: First, I wanted to just ask about -- obviously the billings growth picked up, and you referred to improved sales execution, which I know was a focus for you in kind of earlier -- or middle of last year. Is the environment any different? And if not, I guess, can you elaborate a little bit more on what drove the improved sales execution, anything you would pinpoint that you did?

Well, I think the billings growth was driven by the return to growth for Dice, as well as some terrific performance in the Rigzone unit. On the Dice side of things, the environment has been pretty much the same. And I think the context for all this, too, is we should remember that in Q4 we still had lots of distractions in the marketplace. We had the elections. We had the fiscal cliff. We had sequestration. We had -- and some of those things are gone, but some of those things still remain. So that was the backdrop of the environment. But in a sense, not really a big change. On the sales side of things, we have made changes. We referred to those in Q3. We made some people changes. We made some process changes in the Dice side. And I think it's paid off for us. And then, on Rigzone, as Mike said in his comments, I think you heard that there are some timing issues in there. But all in all, essentially what's happened is during 2012, we put the sales resources in place and marketing infrastructure in place for Rigzone, and I think we're bearing the fruits of that.

Yes. I think, Tim, we always talk about timing being a driver, to some extent, of revenues since it's measured at a point in time, and we try to be consistent about that. I think there are certain things that close in December and certain that close in January, and I think the ones that closed in December helped drive deferred revenue up and billings up. But I think we're pretty happy with the ability to close a number of deals in December, given the distractions that Scot just referred to before, and that's generally across the board. Even eFinancialCareers closed a handful of deals in December that sort of deferred into January. But I think that's a reflection of the sales effort. Timothy McHugh - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: Okay, great. And then, as we think towards next year, the EBITDA -- I mean, the EBITDA margin, I think, is going to be a frequent topic of questions. So how much incremental spending is related around Open Web? I guess, as we think about the decline in margins you're projecting towards next year versus -- I guess, a certain part of that is the Geeknet acquisition as well, but just organically, I guess, if you stripped out those 2 factors.

Yes, so it's a good question. And we certainly expect it to be a topic of conversation, and we'll be prepared for it. So I think there's a number of things in there. The spending on Open Web, while we're not going to talk specifically about how much we're spending on it, it is a piece. It's not huge, but it is a piece. And it will develop over time as we roll out the products, and we expect to rollout a number of products related to that technology. So that's a piece of it. Slashdot Media is a piece. We've said that we believe that business, the steady state, is probably 25% margin business, so it will have an impact. We're still sorting through it. We are looking at ways to integrate into Dice, and that process is in place. And so there's a little bit of spending on there. So on what is a roughly $20 million business, if we spend $1 million, it has an impact on margins. The other piece is eFinancialCareers. We continue to invest in that business, and invest in this context means we're running the business as we ran it a year ago and 2 years ago, making investments in North America and making investments in Asia, but being careful where we invest -- the places -- on the business that has declined from '11 into '12 and we believe, will decline slightly into '13, that has an impact on margin, too. We're not naive to what's going on in the market. If we think that it's going to change for a while, we'll make other changes. But right now, that's not what we think. But it does have a short-term margin impact. Timothy McHugh - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: Okay. And then, lastly, on Open Web. Just 2 questions on that right now, just to be clear. Right now, is it a free product that you're just providing as a beta to clients, so we shouldn't expect any revenue impact for a while? And I guess, secondly, can you just clarify, the information that you -- that product pulls together from various sites, do you have to get the access information from job candidates or be able to pull that information without -- I guess, essentially for the employer, without the job candidate giving you kind of -- connecting to you through LinkedIn or things like that?

Sure, sure. So first, on the access to the service, what we've done now with the beta is we've included it with the package -- with the recruitment package. So if you have -- if you purchased the recruitment package from us, in other words, you have database access, as well as some jobs logs that you can use. You will have the access to Open Web included in that. And essentially, what we're trying to do is -- this is in beta, we wanted people to get familiar with it. We want to encourage usage. We want them to see the value and essentially build the usage of that and the love for that service. That may lead to things, over time, that we may charge for. But I think, right now, what our expectation is, is that we'll probably see slightly better renewal rates and some impact on new business as a result of having this capability. As far as the information itself, this is information that is -- profile information that's freely available out there on the open web. So similar to information that you would find if you were to do a Google or a Bing search on an individual, similar things would come up. So we don't have or don't require or need permission from the individual, it's already out there. Part of our product plan, though, is to take a version of this service and make it available to individuals so that users or individuals will have the opportunity to look at their aggregated profile. And that's something that we feel very strongly about because we believe people should be aware of their public personas and actively manage them.

The next question comes from the line of Jordan Rohan from Stifel, Nicolaus. Jordan E. Rohan - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: I've got a question just on the annual revenue guide. In the past, a pretty good leading indicator for where you guys will ultimately report revenue growth has been the growth in deferreds, which, from your commentary, it seems like is up 11% on a year-over-year basis, apples to apples, excluding acquisitions. But your guidance for organic growth is low- to mid-single digits. And I'm just wondering why the conservatism on that. Or specifically, if you could call out the -- if you could call out what you believe the key catalysts are in Europe that may make eFinancialCareers have some opportunity to show upside. And for that matter, what's going on in the U.S. job market, particularly in tech, which seems to be about as strong a job market as you can point to, that would allow you to grow faster than you've currently guided?

Okay. So let me start with the catalyst for tech and for eFinancialCareers. For eFinancialCareers, the market environment is still subdued for recruiting in financial services. We see better environment in the U.S. and a better environment in Asia. But what has to happen in the U.K. and Europe is essentially more confidence and more stability. And if -- many of our clients, they continue to recruit, but the volume of recruiting and the turnover associated with -- that drives recruiting will increase as the confidence expands in Europe. As far as the U.S. and Asia, the story is somewhat similar. But those markets are just, I think, further along in terms of recovery. And the profitability of the operations there, financial services operations, are higher, so there already is more recruiting activity happening. The other catalyst there is as this comes back and increases the amount of volume going through the staffing agencies, which -- many of which are our customers and so that drives that business. On the tech side of things, it's all about turnover. The tech market today in the U.S. is very tight, which in a sense is good, especially if you have skill sets and you're a tech professional. But we're not seeing turnover in -- at the levels we would expect to see, given history. And I think, as confidence in the overall economy improves, we'll see that turnover increase, and that'll be a big factor for the tech business.

Yes. Jordan, on the question of deferred revenue and leading indicator, there's 2 components, right? It's the rate of growth in billings and then, the change in deferred revenue. And change in deferred revenue is often timing-based, and so while it is an indicator, it does vary from period-to-period. So as I said earlier, measuring it year-over-year and excluding the Slashdot business, it being up 11%, part of that is based on the timing of closing deals in 2011, 2012. So I think the revenue estimate is our current best view, that is what we have historically done is just give you our view of what we think we can do. Deferred revenue is a piece of it. The other thing I would say is that we -- the components of deferred revenue and how deferred revenue ties to revenue -- anticipated revenue is going to change slightly or has changed with the acquisition of Slashdot Media business because the nature of that business is it's billed after, as is the case in the advertising business. And so it will start -- the profile will start to change slightly. The Slashdot Media business is only 10% of the revenue, but it will have an impact on how we use deferred revenue or how you would use deferred revenue to look at revenue expectations. So I hope that helps. I don't want to overstate the timing issue, but there are components that lead to deferred revenue being X versus Y on a date.

Your next question comes from the line of John Janedis from UBS.

Just, Scot, one follow-up and then one question. Just back to Open Web for a second. Can you just clarify a little bit -- meaning, is my interpretation correct in that in the near term, there is no direct impact on revenue per recruitment package customer but that could change over the long term? And then, separately, can you give us your industry outlook for U.S. and global growth?

Sure, sure. So yes, for Open Web what we've done is we've included it as part of the recruitment package today. What we believe the short-term impact is that we believe this will have a positive impact, if you will, on our renewal rates and some of our new business because this is a valuable feature that customers like. And so we didn't want to charge for it separately because we really feel that this is something that's new, and we want to get the customers to try it, to make it part of their recruitment process and have them really get the full benefits out of it. As far as the outlook, overall, I think what we're thinking about in terms of online recruiting growth for 2013 is probably mid- to high-single digit growth, both in the U.S., as well as globally. And essentially, what's going on here is, I think, LinkedIn is expanding the market because they are considered in the online recruiting numbers, at least how we measure them, and they are pulling dollars in from outside of online recruiting, especially from executive recruiting. And so a lot of that growth is not coming from sort of the existing players in the existing market. It's really LinkedIn pulling in money.

The next question comes from the line of Doug Arthur from Evercore.

Yes, Mike, you mentioned in the press release that WorkDigital was a slight drag on EBITDA in the quarter. I guess, if you look at both Slashdot -- impact of Slashdot and WorkDigital, were they -- did they sort of offset on EBITDA for the quarter? Or due to some of your comments on some of the changes you're making at Slashdot, was that also a slight drag on EBITDA?

So the net of the 2 of them was slightly positive EBITDA.

The next question comes from the line of Youssef Squali from Cantor Fitzgerald. Youssef H. Squali - Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.: A couple of questions, please. Maybe starting with you, Mike, and going back to the topic of margin. As you look at the EBITDA margin over a long horizon, historically, we've talked about the Dice business maybe supporting low- to mid-40s through acquisitions, through now the Open Web, et cetera. Maybe you can help us understand what the new profile of the -- the margin profile of the business is as you look at this business maybe 2 or 3 years out. And then, maybe for Scot, on the Open Web issue again, just to get some more clarity. Are there any limitations on content access? Does it aggregate information from sites like LinkedIn or any of the other metasearches out there?

Okay. So the first one on margin, historically, we've said we think this business is a 40% to 45% margin business. I think, fundamentally, that hasn't changed. But I would say there's a couple of components that we should think about. So one is having acquired the media business, which we think is a roughly 25% margin business, has a slight negative impact, and I want to say slight because today it's about 10% of the revenue, so that would drag it down a little bit. So that's one component. Two, we believe the eFinancialCareers business has roughly the same margin profile in a better environment. So as we've said a number of times in the past and said again today, we don't see anything that changes fundamentally about that business, other than the current environment's pretty poor in certain of the markets. So we're not scaling back on spending, and so there is an impact. The EBITDA for that business -- just by way of example, the EBITDA for that business in Q4 was roughly half what it was a year ago. And so that business is about 20% of the overall company, and so that has a slight drag, too. I think the other thing, just to think about in terms of the current margin profile, we're making investments in product development, we believe, for the long term, that has real value -- in an environment, at least if you look at tech from what drives tech market, as we say all the time, turnover is a big driver of it. The market is not great for tech recruitment as it relates to turnover, yet we're making investments. So I think when that changes and we believe it will, when that changes, I think we get back into that 40-plus percent margin relatively efficiently. And so I think, if you think about the components that I referred to, I think we have -- we don't see any fundamental change in the overall business. We need the market to be slightly better, and we certainly need that for eFinancialCareers and get the benefit of some of the investments we've made. Slashdot, it is what it is from a margin profile. And I think we're fine with 40% to 45% being the target that we've always had.

And then, on the Open Web, there really aren't any limitations. We are pulling together information that's out there in the public domain, if you will. And we're using our technology to do that and to pull that together. So there really aren't any limitations on us -- the same limitations on us as there would be, potentially, on Google. Youssef H. Squali - Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.: I see, okay. And from a monetization model perspective, is that an advertising component to that model that you can have or that is contemplated? And just one last quick one for Mike again. The buyback that you've announced, how are you guys going to be funding that?

Just on the advertising and through an advertising model, I think we have steered away from advertising embedded inside the sourcing part of Dice, and so I think -- and our other services. So I think we would stay with that strategy.

On the buyback, the $50 million, when it starts, roughly approximates the free cash flow we expect to generate with the forward 12 months. So we would -- depending on the timing, we would fund it through cash from operations and from the revolver. Youssef H. Squali - Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.: Okay. So no need to raise debt for that?

Other than to use the existing revolving credit facility we have, but we wouldn't need to go raise debt.

The next question comes from the line of Randy Reece from Avondale Partners.

This is Josh Ireland on for Randy Reece. The product development spending jumped up a bit in the last quarter. Could you provide maybe a little color on what was behind that increase in expenditures and maybe let us know what you see as a long-term target for product development spending as a percent of your revenue going forward?

Well, as far as product development across the company, we have a number of projects going on. You've heard about Open Web, but there was also the new platform at eFinancialCareers. There was some new technology added at Rigzone. We're also doing some upgrading of our overall infrastructure inside the company in terms of our business systems and customer -- our own CRM and customer -- how we interact with customers' business systems. And so there are a number of things there. As far as -- I don't think there's a strict guidance that we can give in years out. These are investments. Some of them are very strict investments, you upgrade something and you're done. And others are building out teams that are going to be supporting the products in the future. Overall, though, we expect that there will be operating leverage in the business based off of this going forward. But I wouldn't put any specific target on it at this point.

[Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from the line of Craig Huber from Huber Research Partners.

I got a few questions. The first one, I'd just be curious to hear your latest thoughts on the price environment out there. Clearly, when you look at your larger competitors for Dice and eFinancialCareers, but also the smaller niche players, what's the changes perhaps you've seen out there on the pricing front?

Really, no change in terms of pricing. When you think about our major competitors, we have some -- some of the large horizontals have been very promotional throughout the entire year, and I don't think we've seen any change in that behavior. But really, no change in price points across the board. Smaller competitors, a lot of the startups and smaller competitors are actually trying to match our price points. And so I think they're trying to use the pricing structures that are already out there in the market as a way of selling their service.

Then also, on your sales and marketing, can you just give us a little better sense, excluding the acquisition, what we should expect in 2013 for sales and marketing? How they should progress over the course of the year, again excluding the acquisition?

So I think, historically, it's been relatively flat sequentially until you get to Q4, from a marketing standpoint. Sales tend to move with billings performance, with the highest amount in Q1 and Q4 -- not in that order, sorry, Q4 and then Q1. And so I would think that the pattern would be essentially the same. We're spending on marketing today to support our new initiatives. So we've reverted back to that historical pattern from where we were a year ago. So I think, fundamentally, the structure of the company, I don't think it changes very much from what it's been historically. I think as a percentage of revenue, we've said we do believe it's now lower as a percentage of revenue than we -- it's been historically. So historically, we've said we thought it was roughly 35% to 40% of revenue, and now we're more 32% to 35% of revenue, given the investment in product development. I think that's what we've seen recently, and I think that's what we'll continue to see.

And then also, can you help me with the cost of this acquisition? I'm just curious how you would sort of break out the cost between cost of revenues, product development, sales and marketing and G&A for the acquisition. I mean, is there any 1 or 2 areas where it's a lot larger contribution?

On the WorkDigital acquisition?

No. I'm sorry, the Slashdot one.

Oh, Slashdot. Yes, I think sales and marketing, it's probably roughly similar to the rest of the business. We spend very little in marketing in that business and spend more in sales, given the nature of the advertising business. But product development and cost of revenue is where the bulk of the dollars is spent, to manage the sites and build the sites.

Okay. And then lastly, I believe on your eFinancialCareers, the data you guys put out monthly -- job postings are down like 26% year-over-year. I think it's the worst year-over-year numbers you've had out there since the very end of 2009. Just curious what your crystal ball is here. When do you think this might start to stabilize as we go through the course of 2013, if at all?

Well, I think we've started to see some signs of stabilization in Q4 in the U.S. and in Asia. So I mean, it's our belief that it stabilizes this year. I think what we -- where we're really uncomfortable is in predicting when the upturn happens. Historically, when recruiting comes back to financial services, it usually comes back with force, and that's been our experience over the last 5 or 6 years. But we have really no idea when that might happen.

And Craig, we'll use this as a reminder for everybody that we publish the job count because we think it's an important piece of information that people should have. It's only one piece of the recruitment business. And we've seen this before, especially in financial services, when their major employer is publicly announcing reductions in force and layoffs, they are still recruiting at some level and they may not want to post the fact that they're recruiting for positions while they're laying people off. And so I think the dynamics of the year-over-year change in job postings should be considered as one piece of the recruitment puzzle.

The next question comes from the line of Walter Winnitzki from Nicusa Capital Partners.

My question on pricing has already been asked. So let me ask about products such as Open Web, which appear to be value-added products. If I'm understanding you correctly, this will not be a margin-enhancing product but more focused on improving renewal rates. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the market dynamics from that perspective. Is this going to -- is the market moving more towards an environment where you're going to have to continue to offer more value-added product at the same price? Or when is there going to be an opportunity to kind of get more return on some of these investments?

Yes. I think, essentially, there has been innovation in the online recruiting space. We're now innovating in the online recruiting space. I think it's important for us to continue to offer new pieces of value to our customers, and definitely, we're doing that with Open Web. Our strategy here in terms of putting it -- including it in the recruitment package is essentially to get trial and usage and hopefully, lots of great feedback from customers so we can continuously improve this. If we're successful in that, and this is driving value for customers down the road, that leads to all sorts of positive financial things, potentially price increases, potentially add-on sales. And then, what we're -- we would expect in the shorter term is an improvement in renewal rates and customer acquisition just because it's a bigger, better, more exciting product to sell. So innovation is going to be part of what you need to do in this market, but there are financial -- positive financial impacts from that innovation.

Your next question comes from the line of Bill Sutherland from Northland Capital Markets.

Wanted to just ask one other thing here on Dice.com, the whole tech properties, I guess. Are you all thinking still pretty much North America as far as the sales and marketing initiatives for Dice and/or thinking a little bit more globally?

We are thinking globally. One of the reasons we made the acquisition of the Geeknet media properties, which we're now calling Slashdot Media, was to get access to the huge traffic that SourceForge and Slashdot have outside the U.S. SourceForge gets about 40 million unique visitors on a monthly basis; about 80% of those visitors are outside the U.S. Slashdot -- about 4 million visitors on a monthly basis; about 40% of those are outside of the U.S. and Canada. And so you've got a tremendous amount of international traffic there that we plan to use to expand our recruitment business.

Okay. So you won't need to actually expand the sales and marketing footprint, so to speak? You're just going to do it through the sites?

I think we've got a good launching point with the traffic of SourceForge and Slashdot. You do need some sales resources. You do need some on-the-ground marketing to make things happen. But I -- it's not going to be significant in the short term.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will now turn the call over to Jennifer Bewley for closing remarks.

Thank you, all, for your time this morning and interest in Dice Holdings. Management will be available to answer any follow-up questions you may have and to demonstrate our exciting new Open Web technology. Please call Investor Relations at (212) 448-4181 to be placed in the queue. Have a good day.

Thank you very much. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.