Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kelly Services First Quarter Earnings conference call. All parties will be in a listen-only mode until the question and answer portion of the presentation. Today’s call is being recorded at the request of Kelly Services. If anyone has any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host, Mr. George Corona, President and CEO. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Greg, and good morning. Welcome to Kelly Services 2017 First Quarter conference call. With me on today’s call is Olivier Thirot, our CFO. Let me remind you that any comments made during this call, including the Q&A, may include forward-looking statements about our expectations for future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those suggested by our comments, and we have no obligation to update the statements made on this call. Please refer to our SEC filings for a description of the risk factors that could influence the company’s actual future performance. Before we dive into Kelly’s first quarter results, let me take a moment to thank our past President and CEO, Carl Camden, who officially began his retirement earlier this week. Carl was a tremendous leader for Kelly, I know he’s listening to the call today, and we congratulate him on a successful 22 year career with the company and wish him all the very best. Now turning to Kelly’s first quarter results, let me remind you that year-over-year comparisons are impacted by two items: the joint venture we finalized in July 2016 and the restructuring charges we incurred in the first quarter of 2017. For the sake of clarity, I’ll start by walking through our company-wide results with and without these impacts. As reported, including the impact of the APAC JV and Q1 restructuring, Kelly’s revenue was $1.3 billion, down 4.4% compared to the first quarter last year. We achieved earnings from operations of $16.4 million in the first quarter, up 11% over the $14.7 million we delivered last year. Diluted earnings per share were $0.31 compared to $0.29 per share last year. Now as adjusted for the impact of the APAC JV and Q1 restructuring, revenue was up 2.6% year-over-year in the first quarter. We…

Thank you, George. Revenue totaled $1.3 billion, down 4.4% compared to the first quarter last year. As George described, our 2016 Q1 results included our APAC staffing results, which we had deconsolidated during the third quarter of 2016. Excluding the APAC staffing results in 2016, revenue increased by 2.6%. Our Q1 performance reflects a solid improvement after three quarters of flat revenue growth and is driven by improving trends in our staffing business in the Americas and international. Staffing placement fees were down 19% year-over-year. Excluding the APAC staffing results from 2016, perm fees were down 3% as fee growth in international was offset by a decline in Americas staffing and global talent solutions. Overall gross profit was down $1 million. Excluding the APAC staffing results in 2016, GP was up $15 million or 7% year-over-year. Our gross profit rate was 18%, up 70 basis points when compared to the first quarter last year. Our overall GP rate reflects an improving GP rate in all three segments. Our GP rate in Americas staffing benefited from lower workers’ compensation expenses, and in international from one-time employment tax savings. We continue to experience structural GP rate improvement in our GTS segment. SG&A expenses were down 1.3% year-over-year. Excluding the impact of the APAC staffing business in 2016, SG&A expenses were up 4.3%. Included in SG&A expenses for the quarter are $2.4 million of restructuring costs related primarily to optimizing our GTS service delivery models, which we expect to deliver cost savings in 2017. Excluding the restructuring costs and APAC staffing business, expenses were up 3.2%. Approximately half of that increase is related to the timing of performance-based incentive expenses that are a component of corporate expenses. In our operations, expense increases were in line with GP growth and leverage expectations. We continue…

Thank you, Olivier. While Kelly’s reporting segments have changed in 2017, our commitment to growth and profitability have not. In fact, we are focused on accelerating profitability in the year ahead and our first quarter results demonstrate that we’re already delivering on that commitment. Kelly returned to top line growth. Each of our segments delivered double-digit year-over-year improvements in operating profit, and we continue to improve our conversion rate. Our Americas staffing segment demonstrated targeted focus and strong execution in our local markets, holding expenses flat, increasing GP, and delivering 24% growth in operating profit. Our international segment drove higher revenue across Europe and improved fee-based income more than doubling total operating profit. Our global talent solutions segment improved GP, continued making strategic investments for additional growth, and delivered 26% higher operating profit over last year, excluding restructuring. With these short-term results confirming our commitment to profitability, we also continue to make progress against our long-term strategy. Our Americas staffing segment demonstrates the strength and flexibility of Kelly’s local operating teams and Kelly education staffing continues to excel as a market leader, posting double-digit growth year after year. Our operating structure in Americas staffing is now designed to accelerate growth, and we will continue to refine our sales and recruiting processes to ensure we are connecting customers and talent as efficiently as possible. Our international staffing segment is tightly focused on pursuing core specialties across Europe and capturing the growth opportunities available to us. We expect continued growth in our GTS segment as companies continue to adopt a more holistic approach to talent fulfillment and continue to outsource their non-core functions through outcome-based solutions. As a whole, we’re very pleased with Kelly’s first quarter performance and our ability to deliver top line growth, solid operating earnings, and strategic progress. We will continue to keep a watchful eye on the state of the global economy and labor markets, yet we are moving forward with confidence knowing we are prepared to respond to market trends and committed to maintaining our relentless pursuit of profitable growth. Olivier and I will now be happy to answer your questions.

[Operator instructions] Your first question comes from the line of John Healy with Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.

Hi John.

Mr. Healy, your line is open.

Thank you, guys. George, wanted to congratulate you on the new position; and Carl, if you’re listening, I wanted to wish you well. Wanted to ask a little bit about the gross profit rate expectations for the year. I know in the guidance, you talked about them being up year-over-year, and pretty impressive performance in 1Q, I think up about 70 basis points, 80 basis points or so. Is it reasonable to expect that type of year-over-year improvement throughout the remainder of the year, or should it moderate?

Well I mean, when you look at the 70 basis point improvement for Q1, I would say roughly half of it is what I’d call structural improvement, which is driven by basically our mix. The second half is more what George was alluding to, mentioning the French tax as well as our workers’ comp, which are good news. We’ll take them, but they are more one-time, I would say, good news. So that’s why I was mentioning that on the quarter over quarter, I would say we expect Q2 to be slightly below Q1, because again half of the 70 basis points are one-time events. But when you look at structurally, we continue to improve, and when you think about where we were in 2014, our GP rate was about 16.3, and where we are now, I think we have done structural progress over time, sometimes with one-time events that can derail a little bit the trend, but I will say still positive versus last year.

Great. Wanted to ask on the revenue trajectory throughout the first quarter, was there any sort of nuances that you would call out? If you looked at kind of the U.S. business as well as southern Europe, was there any sort of rate differential? Did you end the quarter at a different level than maybe you started the quarter on and what you reported?

Well, what I would say is that we saw improvement in the first quarter over the trends that we saw in the third and fourth quarter of last year, both in Americas staffing and in international. From a progression perspective, we continue to see improvement at a slow pace.

Yes, slow pace. I mean, Europe is probably the area where we have seen progress over time. If you look at Q3, Q4 of last year and Q1 of this year, 8% revenue growth is good. Now, you need to be mindful of the economic environment. The good news is that this 8% was all over our countries. The U.S., I would say we have seen and continue to see slow improvement quarter after quarter, starting Q3 last year to Q4 and then to Q4, but it’s at a slow pace.

Great, and then just final question, I know on the previous--last quarter’s call, you mentioned that you didn’t expect a material contribution from the JV relationship to income this year. Is there any change on that, and any updated thoughts there?

No, we continue to see that as an area where we’re going to invest to grow and it’s more of a growth engine for us, so we don’t expect to see in 2017 any material change to what we said.

Okay, great. Thank you, guys.

Thanks John.

Thank you.

If there are any additional questions, please press star then one. At this time, there are no further questions.

Okay, thank you, Greg.

Thank you.