Good morning, and welcome to the Dice Holdings' Third Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Constance Melrose, Vice President of Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Gary, and good morning to everyone. With me on the call today is Mike Durney, President and Chief Executive Officer of Dice Holdings; along with John Roberts, our Chief Financial Officer. This morning, we issued a press release describing the company's results for the third quarter of 2014. A copy of that release can be viewed on the company's website at diceholdingsinc.com. Before I hand the call over to Mike, 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 the 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 the 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. And now I'll turn the call over to Mike.

Great. Thanks, Constance. Let me welcome you all to the Dice Holdings' third quarter earnings results conference call. First, I'll turn it over to John and he'll give you details on our Q3 financial performance. Then I'll cover the progress we're making on our strategic plan, with a fair amount of time today being spent on product improvements, the pace of these advancements has been accelerating, which highlights the sense of urgency we have adopted the team. And then finally, we'll open up to your questions. So with that quick overview, I'll turn it over to John.

Thanks, Mike. In the third quarter, we continue to have a healthy environment to work on our operations, and the signs of progress continue. Overall, recruitment activity was fairly consistent in Tech, Energy, Healthcare and Hospitality, with momentum improving in financial services. For this quarter, I want to highlight a few areas that are important to our results. One, year-over-year organic billings growth, although modest for the third quarter in a row, including an increase in Dice.com billings. Two, continued stabilization of the number of recruitment package customers at Dice.com from Q2. Three, with better revenue performance in our Finance segment, we're seeing profitability of that segment improve after having kept the cost structure in place during the financial services downturn. And four, we had better results from Slashdot Media for the second quarter in a row. Third quarter revenues increased $15 million or 29% year-over-year to $67.6 million. The majority of the growth, $13.2 million, came from businesses that we acquired over the past year. The rest of the growth came from improvements at Slashdot Media and eFinancialCareers. Our profitability remained strong with adjusted EBITDA at 33% of adjusted revenues and up 23% year-over-year to $22.4 million. For the Tech & Clearance segment, revenues increased 3% year-over-year, with all the growth attributable to the acquisition of The IT Job Board last year. For Dice.com, revenues declined 1% year-over-year. At September 30, Dice recruitment package customers were 8,000, flat to the count at June 30 and March 31. While we have some distance yet to go, we are encouraged by another quarter with more evidence of a stabilizing trend. Within the Dice recruitment package customer base, there were minimal shifts quarter-over-quarter between shorter term and annual customers with more than 90% or 7,400 of our customers under annual contract at…

Okay. Thanks, John. A year ago, we identified a number of goals for the company, both short term and long term. On the professional side, we wanted to focus on the arc of their careers, providing value to professionals through the life cycle of their career. On the customer side, we wanted to deliver access to talent most efficiently and make their recruitment process as efficient and effective for them as possible. We aim to leverage the power of data and improve our business and to provide more vertical specific content, and we wanted to improve our capabilities in mobile. Our company goals for 2014 specifically focused on improving the Dice.com product in the areas of product development, sales and marketing, on innovating across the company and, in particular, in WorkDigital and we wanted to bring the Open Web service to market as a commercial product. And actually that we did in 2013. And lastly, we want to build a culture of high performance and innovation throughout the organization. Our specialty value proposition has always been strong, but as we've communicated to you and all of our stakeholders over the past year, we needed to deliver new and better products that are developed faster and are more responsive to customers and candidates' needs. Simply stated, we embarked on our mission to reposition the company for growth and to instill a sense of urgency throughout the organization. Today, it's clear that we are making progress on many fronts. The third quarter offers a number of proof points from my perspective. One, it's our third straight quarter of year-over-year organic growth in sales; two, the Dice.com business had year-over-year billings growth for the first time in 2 years; three, Open Web product reached 600 customers; four, we won a handful of awards…

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Tim McHugh with William Blair. Timothy McHugh - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: I guess, just real fast one numbers question, I guess. So Dice.com you said it was up for the first time in a couple of years, I think, was the comment. I guess, can you give us, specifically, I guess, what the organic was for that and then the overall billings on an organic basis, I guess, what the growth was?

Sure, Tim. So overall organic billings growth was 5%. And if you look at Dice specifically, that was up 3% organically year-over-year. Timothy McHugh - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: Okay. Great. And obviously, I think, eFC was the strongest part of that. Can you just talk in context given that so much of that business is in Europe and I understand the U.K. trends are -- macro trends are a lot stronger than we've seen in the continent, but there's a lot of uncertainty right now about what's happening there. But your comments about billings activities suggest you're seeing otherwise, I guess. So can you just talk a little bit about, I guess, the macro environment and how it fits into what you're seeing in Europe?

Sure. So I think there probably is more trepidation today than there was a few months ago, specifically on the continent, not so much in the U.K. But I think from our standpoint, I think our processes and our coverage have improved, so we've continued to see benefits across the business. I would say, the other thing is, Asia continues to be quite strong. And I think we're making some good progress in the U.S. with a new management structure in place for the U.S. organization. And so I think across the board, the business is performing really well. I think those headwinds maybe are there, but we haven't really seen them yet in our business. Timothy McHugh - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: Okay. Great. And then Energy, I guess, for the segment, you talked about the headwind from the biannual event. How much was that, I guess, from a revenue drag, I guess, or a tough comp that you had to overcome this quarter? And then I guess, just similarly from a macro perspective, can you comment on -- this is the price of oil and things like that have come down a lot, but yet your bookings growth, I don't know what it was organically there, but still seemed, I guess, solid. So any signs that the macro environment is changing the demand equation in that market at all?

Yes. So the -- let me take the -- couple parts of that and then Mike will take a part. So the billings growth is basically flat to down a little bit in Rigzone. So if you look at the Energy segment, here we talked about billings growth being up, but it's related to OilCareers. I'm sorry, what was the other -- the first part of your...

[indiscernible] offshore Europe.

The offshore Europe -- I'm sorry, was -- that runs about $0.5 million. It depends a little bit on the size and it changes a little bit every 2 years, but think about it as roughly $0.5 million.

Tim, on the broader question, I think from a price of oil standpoint, we've always said that $70 to $75 is a level where there continues to be investment, and I think that's still true today. When there's pretty big swings, I think there ends up being a fair amount of hesitation because nobody knows where the bottom is or the top one when it goes in the other direction. So I think we have seen some impact from what's happened to the price of oil. We also saw some impact, I wouldn't say it was great, but some impact leading up to the Scottish independence vote, specifically around the North Sea and a lot of -- the majors operate in the North Sea. I think, honestly, our overall performance in the Rigzone business has not been this year what it has been in the past and we're focused on making some improvements in that, including now we're focused on integrating the 2 businesses; which will be a relatively short-term item, but will take a number of months to do that and in the interim, we're managing through the overlaps between the 2 businesses, so that does have some impact. But I think the changes we're making to the business will improve it going forward. Timothy McHugh - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: Okay. And then one last one and I'll turn over. Just -- I don't know if I missed it, but for -- Healthcare and Hospitality, do you have a sense for the underlying bookings growth there on -if you had owned these 1 year ago, I guess, what's the trend line in terms on a pro forma basis or something like that?

We do and the way the business was run was slightly different than the way we run it from a bookings and billings and sales standpoint. So I'm not sure I can give you apples-to-apples. I would say, on Hospitality, it's up year-over-year in the mid-single digits, mid- to high-single digits, roughly. Healthcare, on -- the HEALTHeCAREERS business is up in the single digits, somewhere partially offset by as we roll off the Health Callings business some of that business goes away because of the overlaps, which is what we expected. So net-net, it's relatively flat.

The next question comes from Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Markets.

Wanted to focus on the tech side. Some of the publicly held companies in this space, specifically those that have exposure to contract IT staffing have been seeing some volatility and some slowing growth. Are you seeing that in terms of job postings or any other metrics?

No, we haven't seen it. Yes, I would say if you go -- if you look at what John said about revenue per customer, that's driven by a couple of things, but one of them is the bigger staffing companies continue to buy more of our services.

All right. That's good to hear. I know this is a small portion, but the U.S. business in the eFinancialCareers continues to be weak. If you can give us a little bit of more color on what's going there. Are you doing anything to reaccelerate that business?

Yes, I think it has been weak through the beginning of this year. We've reorganized the sales and marketing leadership of that business and I think we've seen the last few months have actually been quite good for that business. So we're expecting that to continue. It is the market in which we have the toughest competitive environment, that's been the case for a number of years. But I'm actually really optimistic at what we've done structurally in that business, and I think it will turn. I think it has turned already.

And in fact, it has turned a little bit this quarter with some improvement in the billings performance this quarter.

Okay. I know it's a bit early and I know you're not giving guidance for next year, but based on current trends, where do you see things going? Can we keep this momentum going and how much longer?

You're right, we're not giving guidance for next year at this point. But I mean, I think -- but we've seen some positive trends this quarter. I think you see reflected in the guidance for Q4 and the remainder of the year the continuation of those trends reflected in the guidance. There's nothing as we sit here today that makes us think that there's going to be something dramatically different moving into next year, but that's sitting here as of today.

The next question comes from Youssef Squali with Cantor Fitzgerald. Kip N. Paulson - Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Research Division: This is Kip Paulson for Youssef. Just a couple of questions. First, your 4Q guidance calls for a 30% adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint. What is driving this 3 percentage point contraction, especially given the pickup in organic growth in the quarter? And second, with the eFinancialCareers pickup, could you provide some color on how many eFC customers you have and how growth customer additions and churn impacted the segment this quarter?

Sure, Kip. So let me take the first part on the Q4 guidance. So what you see reflected in there is -- so one of the things we've talked about over the course of the year is increased investment in a number of areas. If you look at what's built into the guidance for Q4 on the expense side, what you see in there is some increase and some acceleration really in the marketing expense, primarily driven by Dice Tech & Clearance and some of the other businesses, but primarily Dice and the Tech & Clearance segment is driving that increased marketing expense in Q4. It's been lagging a little bit over the course of the year and we do expect some catch-up in Q4 on that.

On the eFC customer count, that's not something we've disclosed in the past. We don't talk about the raw number of eFC customers. Kip N. Paulson - Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Research Division: Okay. Fair enough. And one last one, if I might, Dice.com recruitment package customers have stabilized at the 8,000 mark, but it seems to be kind of stuck there. Could you talk a bit about what it will take to get that customer count up and what do you view as your addressable market there?

So yes, it has been stuck at about 8,000 for us, given the trends it was on. We view it as relatively good news. So one of the things that we have to crack and we've talked about this for a while and having quite cracked it yet is the shorter-term customer count, which has an impact because if you look at the annual customer count, that hasn't changed very much over the last couple of years, but the number of shorter-term customers has declined because people found other sources, including with us buying through the WebStore, which is not in the recruitment package customer account. So we need to crack the shorter-term customers. The number of shorter-term customers and the impact on our revenue is relatively small, but it is a pretty good lead generation source for us and so we are quite focused on it. I think if you look at our addressable market in the past, we've described that there are tens of thousands of companies that we've identified would be likely recurring users of the service and that number fluctuates, but it's been in the 30,000 to 40,000 range. And so that's how we view our addressable market from an annual customer count and then we think there's hundreds of thousands of entities that can use our service on the shorter-term basis.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Randy Reece with Avondale.

Impressed with the progress in the -- in your average revenue per recruitment package customer. Does that reflect the impact of Open Web? Or are you getting some, maybe, internal growth other than that?

Yes, so the impact of Open Web certainly drives the average number, Randy, but on a pretty small amount actually. It's more driven by expansion with some of the larger customers that we have. So expansion with some of the larger staffing firms and direct hire companies as well.

In this quarter and comparing with the previous couple of quarter's trends, other than the very largest customers, how would you describe business trends inside of Dice -- Dice.com?

Yes, I think -- in terms of previous quarters, I would say, it's about the same to slightly better. I think our sales and lead-gen process continues to get better, and I'm impressed with what the team has done in terms of building the pipeline. So I think our access to customers and our conversations with customers and meetings with customers are higher today than they were recently. So I think putting aside the very biggest customers who we've had great relationships for a long period of time. I think when we get to the mid-size and smaller, I think it's improving.

Am I correct in saying that the attach rate on Open Web is creeping up as the percentage of new and renewing customers who are taking product?

Yes, think the math would say that. So we have 100 more customers roughly and -- who are using Open Web on a relatively consistent customer base. The other thing that we're happy about is that the engagement with Open Web has continued to increase since we launched the product as a paid product. And ultimately, that will help us as we try to leverage what we have in terms of customer count to date. Yes, it has increased.

There's a, really, a large number of relatively new products competing in that same general profile aggregation space. What do you think will be the most important competitive distinctions to focus on for Open Web to become the leading product in space?

So there are other competing products, and I think there are a number of them that are pretty good at what they do or very good at what they do. As I believe Open Web is very good at what it does. I think there's a number of ways that these products compete generally. So if you put them all into the same bucket, so one is source of and accuracy of data, so the accuracy of the data is a huge issue. We think ours is as or more accurate than others, but I'm sure the others believe the same thing. So accuracy of data is one. Two is the ability to provide contact points. That is a big item that customers look for, and we each have varying amounts and varying degrees of accuracy in terms of touch points for reaching professionals. Three is formulating signals around likelihood to move. So if you think about it from a lead generation standpoint and a sourcing standpoint, that's really important. And lastly, we believe that combining the source of data through Open Web together with our proprietary databases provides a great value because you get the best of both worlds and it's one of the reasons why we've been focused on rolling out Open Web together with the individual properties. And we think we have that competitive advantage.

The next question comes from Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners.

It's Greg Stein for Craig. I was wondering if you can go a little more in detail into both Slashdot and Rigzone. Slashdot for a while was really, really challenged and seems like, all of a sudden, pace has really accelerated, so just like to know what's driving that. And then Rigzone, you touched upon just it's been a little bit disappointing revenue wise this year, there's been some volatility, but I was wondering if there's anything else to that.

So I'll take Slashdot first. I think Slashdot really underperformed for a period of time. We made a number of changes over the course of the last year or so after looking at its performance. And I think there's a handful of things, John touched on a few of them before. But I think there's just a better focus in that organization now on monetizing the assets. I don't think that existed in the past. I think they tried to sell advertising and to sell advertising and sell lead generation. But I think our focus is -- was to step back and look at different ways to monetize the assets, and I think we do a far better job at that now, and I think we've done some work on streamlining the organization and made the organization more, what I would refer to as succinct. And so I think that's had a top line benefit and I think it's had a bottom line benefit. And now the margin in that business is comparable to the margins in our other high-performing businesses. But I'm not sure if there's anything deeper than that other than we've just done a better job at focusing on how to monetize the asset. So Rigzone, I think there are some industry pressures on the business, I mentioned a couple of them earlier. And I think from an integration, we bought OilCareers to fill in some gaps in our international part of that business. I think that has happened, so we're getting the benefit of now owning OilCareers and the value of that business; which supplements where we had strength in Rigzone; which was in different pockets around the world and certainly in the U.S. And so I think as we put the 2 together, there are integration items that have to be taken care of, and I think there is the tendency for customers who use both to take a wait-and-see approach until we put the 2 of them together and that has had an impact. I don't think it's a huge impact, but it is an impact. And we're quite focused on executing the plan to put the 2 businesses together.

Okay. On the expense side, I was just wondering maybe what do you see for the sales and marketing line, that's the biggest line. And then just going forward, is there any of the 4 items that maybe you expect to ramp-up fourth quarter? I know you mentioned marketing a little bit and then going into 2015.

So in Q4, I would expect a -- certainly an increase in the marketing spend, again, primarily around Dice. I think you'll see some continued increase in some of the other lines, primarily product development, as we continue to catch up on some of the hiring that we laid out in the beginning part of the year, which is part of the investment strategy we've been talking about. So...

Okay. And then just lastly. I was wondering if you would talk a little bit about the pricing environment. Last quarter, I believe, Monster, on their earnings call talked about some pricing pressure. Just also in connection, I was wondering if you expect to do anything with annual pricing, I know for Dice, the annual package has been around $6,500 now for probably about 4 or 5 years. I was wondering if you might make any adjustments to that.

So I think I'll take the second one first. At the moment, no, we're not looking at any pricing changes on the base level service, but we continue to play with pricing as you go up the chain in terms of volume deals. From an overall pricing standpoint, we haven't really seen much change. I think Monster has placed, as a generalist and the impact of aggregators and other generalists and what's going on, I believe that, that does have an impact on pricing in that realm, but for our services, as specialty services we really haven't seen any impact from pricing. For my view across the spectrum of our businesses, it's been relatively stable for quite a while now.

The next question comes from Bill Sutherland with Emerging Growth Equities.

And just a couple at this point. Interested, Mike, as you have completed a number of M&A deals, the appetite or the direction at this point for the company on that front?

So, yes -- I mean, we continue to look for acquisitions. We think there's services and functionality that we think we can bring to the business that would help the business, so we continue to be searching for acquisition opportunities. We continue to generate a lot of cash and have borrowing capacity. Having said that, we're executing currently on the businesses we have. We think there's a lot of opportunity in those businesses and we think we're executing across the board better than we were in the past. And so from my standpoint, I've said this before, publicly, my standpoint is while we -- we would like to do acquisitions and we keep looking for them. But hurdle today is a little bit higher than it's been in the past. And I mean, from an operational standpoint, not hurdle rates and returns. But just the hurdle to pursue an acquisition today and integrate it is slightly higher than it's been in the past as we really focus on executing with the businesses we have.

Right. And then, obviously, regarding hurdle rates, you got to think about your own shares. I mean, is that maybe the preference?

Well, I don't -- I think generally speaking, and John can supplement this, I don't think our view has changed. I think we view that cash we generate in the businesses belong to the shareholders and we continue to, roughly equal basis, return that cash to shareholders and we think it's attractive. But as I've said many times in the past, and I use this phrase somewhat loosely, is that we can -- we think buying our shares is a good investment for the cash we generate in the business, but we want to be mindful that acquisition opportunities come along and I'd hate for the company to miss an acquisition opportunity because we ramped up share repurchase, and I think it would be unfortunate if that were to happen. And we're a relatively conservative financial structure organization and we're not going to have that change. So we're mindful that we may be presented with acquisition opportunities, and we want to have a flexibility to be able to do it.

Sure. John, I was just noticing the cost structure -- it stepped up quite a bit in terms of cost of revenue this year. How should we think about that going forward? It used to be more in the 11% range.

So there's something specific in there, Bill, which is the cost of revenues related to the health care business that we bought. So they have arrangements with health care associations for -- basically to drive traffic to the sites. And the costs related to those health care associations goes into cost of revenue. So that's what's been driving the increase up and it's been driving it up to the level we expected actually as we fully integrate that onTargetjobs business and HEALTHeCAREERS business into the company.

Right. I knew about that impact. I just didn't know if -- I mean, directionally, it just seems like it's trending down slightly, but maybe that's noise -- guess I should ask the question more that way.

Yes, I know. I think that's just -- I don't think there's anything specific in there. I think the main driver continues to be the costs related to the health care associations.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Constance Melrose for any closing remarks.

Thank you for your time this morning and for your interest in Dice Holdings. Management will be available to answer any follow-up questions you may have, and please call me at (212) 448-4181 to be placed in the queue. Have a great day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.