Hello and welcome to the DHI Group's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants’ will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Todd Kehrli of MKR Investor Relations. Todd, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to DHI Group's fiscal 2022 fourth quarter and year-end earnings conference call. With me on today's call are DHI's CEO, Art Zeile; and Chief Financial Officer, Kevin Bostick. Before I turn the call over to Art, I'd like to cover a few quick items. This afternoon, DHI issued a press release announcing its fiscal 2022 fourth quarter and full year 2022 financial results. The release is available on the company's website at DHI Group, Inc. com. This call is being broadcast live over the Internet for all interested parties, and the webcast will be archived on the Investor Relations page of the company's website. I want to remind everyone that during today's call, management will make forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Please note that except for the historical information statements on today's call may constitute forward- looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements reflect DHI Management's current views concerning future events and financial performance. and are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from the outcomes contained in any forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause these forward-looking statements to differ from actual results include the risks and uncertainties discussed in the company's periodic reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. DHI undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Lastly, during today's call, Management will be referring to specific financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin and adjusted diluted earnings per share that are not prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Information about and reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings release, a copy of which you can find on our website at dhigroupinc.com in the Investor Relations section. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Art Zeile, CEO of DHI Group.

Thank you, Todd. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our fiscal 2022 fourth quarter and year-end earnings conference call. Thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to report that we delivered solid revenue growth in both our fourth quarter and full year as employers continue to use our subscription-based offering to find, attract, engage and hire the highest quality tech professionals. With a significant supply-demand gap created by the large number of tech job openings, more employers need access to our growing community of 6.5 million tech candidates. There continues to be strong demand for technologists across all industries, even in this difficult environment as they ramp their technology initiatives. December represented the 25th consecutive month of tech employment expansion in the United States, and employers posted job openings for over 833,000 tech jobs during the fourth quarter, according to Information Technology Trade Group, CompTIA. Notably, this is a deceleration from the 1.6 million posted job openings in the second quarter of the year. Nevertheless, because the unemployment rate for technologists dropped in December to 1.8%, there remains two job openings for every one tech worker looking for employment. And 72% of all laid-off tech workers have found new jobs within three months according to a recent study by Revelio Labs, a workforce data provider. Our two subscription-based offerings, Dice and ClearanceJobs are both tech-focused career marketplaces that attract the highest quality tech professionals. Dice has over 5.1 million technologists, while ClearanceJobs has 1.4 million tech professionals with government clearances, and we continue to grow the number of technologists on both marketplaces each quarter. Our marketplaces are solely focused on serving the technology workforce where candidates are measured by their technology skills that they've acquired over their careers and not their job titles. Both marketplaces use our proprietary…

Thank you, Art, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me go into a bit more detail on our fourth quarter financial results. We reported a total revenue of $39.8 million which was up 3% sequentially and 18% year-over-year. Total bookings for the quarter were $37.7 million, up 4% year-over-year. Dice revenue was $28.2 million, which was up 3% on a sequential basis and 16% year-over-year. Dice bookings were $25.7 million down 1% year-over-year. We ended the quarter with 6,311 Dice recruitment package customers, which is down 2% from last quarter and up 5% year-over-year. Our average annual revenue per Dice recruitment package customer was up 3% sequentially and 11% year-over-year to $15,384. Approximately 85% of Dice's revenue is recurring and comes from annual or multiyear contracts. Our Dice revenue renewal and retention rates remained strong during the quarter with the revenue renewal rate at 94% and the retention rate at 107%. These metrics continue to demonstrate the value of the Dice products in recruiting technology professionals. ClearanceJobs revenue was $11.6 million, up 4% sequentially and 23% year-over-year. Bookings for CJ were $12.1 million, up 17% year-over-year. We ended the fourth quarter with 2,064 CJ recruitment package customers, which is up 2% from the third quarter and 10% year-over-year. Our average annual revenue for CJ recruitment package customer was up 3% over last quarter and up 11% year-over-year to $19,872. Approximately 90% of CJ revenue is recurring and comes from annual contracts. For the quarter, our CJ revenue renewal rate was 98% and CJ's retention rate was strong at 117%. These outstanding renewal metrics demonstrate the continued value CJ delivers in the recruitment of cleared professionals. Turning to operating expenses. Fourth quarter operating expenses were $39 million compared to $33.6 million in the year ago quarter, as we continue to invest in…

Thank you, Kevin. I'd like to close by once again thanking all of our employees for their hard work this past year. It is a pleasure to be part of such a great team. With that, we're happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Zach Cummins with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, Art, hi, Kevin. Thanks for taking my questions. Just starting off with Dice here in terms of new business, I mean, it sounds like you're starting to see some extended sales cycles towards the end of December. I mean, can you talk a little bit more about that dynamic? And are a lot of those opportunities completely going away or just put on pause for now as many of these companies figure out their hiring plans for the coming year?

Great question. And again, kind of big picture-wise, we do have three new business teams. There are two that are associated with Dice, and that's a team that specifically looks for commercial accounts and another team that works with staffing recruiting agencies. We have that third team that is new business for CJ. And I just want to reiterate that we really didn't see any kind of material change for CJ, ClearanceJobs new business during the quarter. But what we saw were sales cycles that basically lengthened for the purposes of commercial accounts from roughly 35 days during the third quarter of last year to about 45 days. So approximately a 30% increase in the sales cycle. I personally believe that a lot of companies are still trying to figure out their forecast for 2023, given the uncertainty of the economic environment. And what that means is they have basically lengthened their budget making process and without having that budget in place, our clients, our prospective clients for these new business teams are having a hard time figuring out what their hiring plan is for the year. And so I think that those deals that are in the pipeline will get signed eventually if the companies believe in the growth prospects that they have for 2023 and they need technologists. But that's the reason why we essentially are talking to them in the first place. But it has been a lengthening of that sales cycle that has caused our drop in bookings.

Understood. And then just talking about the retention side of it, I mean, nice to see it holding up pretty well for Dice despite all the layoffs that we've seen in the tech sector. But I mean can you just talk about how that's been trending in recent months. If I recall, the majority of your renewals typically happen in December and January time frame. So just curious of how the overall renewals have been trending? And any particular areas of churn that particularly stand out more than a new sector? Or it sounds like it's at the lower end when it comes to company size.

Yes. So just to be clear, and you mentioned it in your question, we do have seasonality to this business in the sense that a lot of renewal activity takes place in Q4 and Q1 with a large amount within the quarters themselves that are ascribed to December and January. And that's really a matter of thinking about that budget cycle for our customers. They have generally in the past, at least historically, wanted to tie the contracts to their calendar year because that's where they get their budget authority. So we did see our customers, for the large part, renew at elevated rates. And if you think about our Q4 '22 renewal rate for revenue, it was 94% for Dice. That compares to 91% in the Q4 period of 2021. So I believe that we've made sustainable progress in the way that we essentially manage our accounts. We've talked about it in past earnings calls where we essentially have a health score that dictates what we think is the right set of metrics that show the health of our relationship with our customers, that's really working for us at this point in time. I would say that the retention rate, which is at 107% for this past quarter for Dice, also compares favorably to the 101% figure that we had for Q4 of '21. So we're doing a good job of retaining those customers and also upselling them. Now as I pointed out in my remarks, we did see customers churn in this fourth quarter at what I would consider to be a little bit of an elevated rate. And what I mean by that is that our renewal rate on count for Dice was 83% in the quarter. That compares to 86% a year ago. So those customers, when you look at the actual customers that left us for the most part, almost exclusively, we're in the category of $10,000 or less in ACV, denoting the fact that they were really small customers. And as we think about it, we think that when times are tough, when you go into economies that are uncertain, it's those smaller customers that are obviously the ones that are most at risk for going out of business or for cutting back expenditures greatly, including our platform.

Understood. That's helpful. And just a final question for me, geared towards Kevin. I mean when we're thinking about margins, it sounds like they're expected to kind of hang around this 20% level for maybe the next couple of quarters. But how do you see margins trending towards the back half of the year as you get more operating leverage to the bottom line?

Sure. We're expecting that margins will expand a couple of percentage points over the coming quarters. So we think for Q1, Q2, it will be, as we said, on or about that 20% level, and then we'll start to see some modest level of expansion. It's not going to be material, but it will be 1% or 2% as we exit 2023. And that's really based to your point, on the economies of scale. And we're not going to shift much of our spending as we think that on the sales and marketing side that there continues to be value in creating those relationships that while the sales cycle may be extended, that they are still ultimate buyers of our product.

Understood. Well, thanks for taking my question and best of luck with the coming quarter.

Appreciated, Zach.

The next question comes from Eric Martinuzzi with Lake Street. Please go ahead.

Yes. I wanted to take a look at the 2023 outlook here. Just first of all, a clarification. The double-digit growth. Are we talking 10% to 12%, 10% to 13%? Is that what we're talking about?

Yes. I think the first comment you made in that 10% to 12% range is how we think about the low double-digit range.

Yes. And then the bookings assumption, the bookings growth rate assumption for 2023, obviously, we're Q4 kind of caught you off guard with the 4% bookings growth. But we were at 20% bookings growth for the year. What is implied in the 2023 growth rate for bookings?

Given that we're saying 10% each quarter growth rate on revenue, it would be a similar type of metric for bookings. So again, that low double-digit that, as you said, 10% to 12% range.

Okay. And then your -- as we look at the sales force productivity, have you been -- is this strictly a macro issue? Or were there execution issues in the fourth quarter?

I'd describe it as macro issues. It is that following of the sales cycle in particular to Dice, not to CJ and their new business team.

Yes. And definitely great to see those renewal rates staying so strong. Last question for me, the repurchase plan. What can you tell us about -- you're pretty close to exhausting that with, I think you said $2 million or so remaining, yes, $2.1 million remains through the end of February. What's the intention? Do you plan to reload there? Do you plan to pause and take a break?

Well, I can tell you that we have consistently had a stock repurchase program in place during the almost five years that I've been on board, and I don't foresee changing that this year. And you're absolutely accurate that we're almost exhausted for the plan itself.

Got it. Thanks for taking my question.

The next question comes from Kevin Liu with K. Liu & Company. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon, guys. It sounds like you're planning to continue investing significantly in sales and marketing at least in the near term. Can you just talk about whether you've seen any sort of changes in terms of the number of marketing qualified leads or other metrics we pay close attention to? And what is giving you that confidence to continue to invest even as some of the sales cycles slow a bit on the Dice side?

Yes. I would say that we are continuing to invest in sales and marketing. That's a very accurate way of looking at the current positioning of the company. We believe that there are headwinds that we're facing right now, but we want to make sure that we are in a posture to take advantage of the market conditions once they get better and more clear for everybody that's involved. And so when I think about our marketing spend, what we're doing right now is we're trying to make sure that we're much more targeted in terms of those MQLs that we are searching for. And so our campaigns are looking in those categories, those industry verticals that still have an elevated number of tech positions. And I kind of mentioned them in my remarks, aerospace, defense consulting, meaning companies like Deloitte and Accenture and also health care and banking finance. So I'd say that what has transpired due to our experience in Q4 is we've sharpened our marketing spend to be geared towards those industries that we think are less prone to any kind of recessionary impact. And so again, I would say that we're actually expanding the number of MQLs Q4 to Q1. That is our plan. But we're much more targeted and more laser-focused on those areas of the economy that we believe are going to continue to need tech professionals at elevated rates.

Understood. And just within the framework of the outlook you laid out for 2023 here, should we expect that Dice continues their bookings growth at more kind of depressed levels at least early in the year, whereas ClearanceJobs has the potential to accelerate? Or how you guys are thinking about the contribution from the two marketplaces over the course of the year?

Yes. I think you're spot on, Kevin, is that we do expect CJ to continue performing at levels that we have seen over the last several quarters. And we will be lower on the Dice side. And so all in, I would say the combined rates will be in those low double digits.

And then just lastly, with kind of the positive reception you've seen to the corporate branding product on CJ so far. Is that expected to kind of accelerate their growth rates over the course of the year as more customers have exposure to that? Or how material do you think it gets out of the gate here?

I would say that I believe when you think about the current psychology in the market and particularly for commercial accounts, they are going to essentially realize one way or another that they have a hiring plan and they need to essentially enact it sometime in the first quarter, second quarter of this year, and then we should see what I would consider to be a more normalized pattern of a sales cycle for us for Dice. And as we've said, ClearanceJobs is really unaffected by the current economic situation. In fact, we believe that there is a tailwind that we want to take advantage of because of the larger defense budget in fiscal year 2023. And so again, that's our view is that we should see the sales cycle stabilize just because at some point, people are going to have their view of the economy to come and they're going to place their bets by virtue of their budget, and then that will open up their hiring plan for the remainder of the calendar year.

I appreciate that context. I was actually asking specifically about the new corporate branding product. I was just wondering with some of the reception you had that whether you would expect that to accelerate CJ's bookings even more so?

Oh, I'm sorry, I missed that aspect of the question. So I will tell you that we have booked roughly about 10 of these company pages in the last month or so, a little bit over a month. We have another dozen that are in the pipeline. So it's pretty early days for ClearanceJobs. And it's the kind of product where the salesperson needs to be able to show a representative sample. So now we're going to have two dozen representative samples for our sales team to really point out to the prospective ones that they're trying to talk through the sales cycle with. I do think that it's going to help CJ over the course of the year, but we have not modeled that into any of our budget, our plans, our forecast, the description that we've just provided.

Understood. I appreciate you taking my questions and good luck for this year.

The next question comes from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Great. And thank you for taking my questions. In terms of the churn, you're talking about that being smaller customers. Have you learned any sort of assessment on potential further churn among those?

For the existing smaller customers in quarters to come, is that what you're asking about, Anja?

Yes.

I think that -- go ahead, Kevin.

Yes. I was going to say, to be clear, as we saw churn from our smaller customers, it wasn't necessarily significantly different than what we had seen maybe up a little bit. What we did not see was churn from the larger customers or as big of an addition of larger customers because of the new business kind of extended sales cycles. So while our customer count came down and it was heavily, heavily driven by those customers with $10,000 or less in contracts. It was not materially different than what we had seen in previous quarters. So it is -- when you think about what is driving a reduction in customer count, it is the churn of the smaller customers. but it's not significantly different than we had seen previously. They're definitely -- whether it's customer size, whether they're small or larger, they do get treated the same way by the NASH team, which is that new account special handling. And they also do work with our client success organization in the way of QBRs, et cetera. But I would say it wasn't as if the churn in smaller customers spiked significantly more than we had seen previously.

Okay, thank you. And then in terms of AI and the noise around the GPT and Bard, how do you think that might affect your business? Is there something you can leverage or...?

That's a really great question, actually. So our Chief Technology Officer, Paul Farnsworth, actually is investigating a number of different AI technologies that are available right now in the market, including chat GBT, we think that they could be additive to our platform. In other words, we could essentially create a better, especially technologist experience by using the open API to chat GBT to essentially enable much more kind of personalized content, meaning if a technologist comes to the site and is a cybersecurity professional. They could essentially enter in questions that are focused on their area of specialization and get content that is proprietary to our site because it's written by our editorial team as well as other content that is available through at GPT to answer specialized questions about their careers. So, it's an area that we are investigating, but there's nothing that's on the product road map right now. But great question. And I can tell you that a big percentage of our engineering team is very fascinated with the opportunities that are available by TAT GBT [ph] and the number of different kind of variants of AI that are emerging in the market.

Okay. That sounds exciting. And just the last one from me. Have you seen any changes in the competitive landscape?

No. In fact, I would say that the competitive landscape has been very stable over the last year or so. I would say that the last competitor that left the market was stack overflow, and there really hasn't been any new additions to the competitive landscape for technology workers or people that have dropped out, it has been kind of roughly the same for the last year.

Okay, thank you. That was all for me.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to DHI Group's CEO, Art Zeile, for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today. As always, if you have any questions about our company or would like to speak with management please reach out to Todd Kehrli, and he will help arrange a meeting. And thanks, everyone, for your interest in DHI Group, and have a wonderful day.

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