Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good morning and welcome to Kelly Services’ Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2017 Earnings Conference Call. All parties will be on listen-only 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, John and good morning. Welcome to Kelly Services’ 2017 fourth 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. As we walk through and results this morning, let me point out that our year-over-year comparisons represented in nominal currency with the exception of our international staffing segment, which is in constant currency. 2017 was a year of focus and acceleration for Kelly. We drove strong top line growth, increased our GP and operating earnings and improved our conversion rate, while also making strategic investments in talent and technology that will help power our future success. Turning to Kelly's fourth quarter results. Revenue was $1.4 billion, up 9% compared to last year and for the full year, revenue was $5.4 billion compared to $5.1 billion in 2016, excluding our APAC staffing operations. For the quarter, we achieved earnings from operations of $28 million compared to $20 million last year and for the full year, we reported operating earnings of $83 million compared to $63 million for 2016. Kelly's fourth quarter earnings from continuing operations were $0.45 per share compared to earnings of $0.51 per share for the same period last year. For the full year, earnings were $1.81 per share compared to earnings of $3.08 per share for the same period last year. The year-over-year differences are attributable in large part to the 2016 APAC joint…

Thank you, George. Revenue totaled $1.4 billion, up 9% compared to the fourth quarter last year. Our reported revenue was favorably impacted by 170 basis points due to foreign exchange. So on a constant currency basis, revenue growth for the fourth quarter was up 7.3%. Our Q4 performance also includes the result from our acquisition of Teachers On Call, which added about 130 basis points to our total revenue growth rate. Overall, our Q4 revenue growth rate reflects our continued strong top line performance in both Americas and International Staffing, as well as modest top line performance in Global Talent Solutions. Staffing placement fees were up 31% year-over-year with strong fee growth in Americas and International Staffing. Excluding the impact of currency, fees were up 27%. Overall, gross profit was up $35 million or 15%. Our gross profit rate for the quarter was 18.5%, up 100 basis points when compared to the first quarter of 2016. Our GP rate improvement reflects effective management of employee related cost in our GTS and Americas Staffing businesses, as well as continued structural GP rate improvement in GTS as we shift to higher margin solutions within that segment. This was partially offset by changes in business mix in our Americas Staffing segment. SG&A expenses were up 13% year-over-year. About half of our year-over-year increase is due to higher performance based compensation expenses in both our operating unit and at corporate as a direct result of our solid improvement in both GP growth and earnings from operations. In addition, we have continued to invest in our Americas Staffing operations to capitalize on market opportunities. And we are we are accelerating our investment in several initiatives designed to improve our technology and process automation. Earnings from operations were $28.4 million in the fourth quarter compared with…

Thank you, Olivier. 2017 was a good year for Kelly. We created and carried solid momentum throughout all four quarters, delivering strong top line growth and profitability gains even as we invested in our future. We improved our GP rate, delivered year-over-year growth in earnings from operations and improved our conversion rate as we demonstrated gains in both volume and value drivers. Our Americas International Staffing operations continue to execute with energy and focus. We’re seeing benefits from our investments in sales and recruiting talent and we are pleased with the growth rate we achieved in 2017. In global talent solutions, we continue to invest in higher margin solutions that align with market demands and deliver higher GP growth rates. We are pleased with the strong GP and operating earnings growth delivered by GTS in 2017. As we look with confidence at the year ahead, we are committed to invest in the talent and technology that will drive our future. We are focusing on our strengths, accelerating our investments where we know we can win and leveraging technology to connect with talent like never before. Our acquisition of Teachers On Call and decision to exit healthcare exemplifies our commitment to focus and grow in the solutions that can make the biggest difference now and in the future. I would like to personally thank Kelly’s teams for all their great work in 2017 and for connecting companies and talented people with excellence and integrity. Olivier and I will now be happy to answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And we’ll go to line of John Healy with Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.

George, I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about the revenue cadence for 2018. Is it that the growth rate should accelerate year-over-year as we move throughout the year? I was just hoping that you can help us understand some of the contract items as well as how the M&A that you’ve done this year may impact things. And then along with that just the general cadence and if there is a segment level where some of those accounts might be that you’ve lost.

Let me start and then Olivier will fill in a lot of the details. So yes, as we’re saying, the first quarter will be a little bit lower growth rate and the growth rate will increase as we go throughout the year, primarily the result of customers that we've exited, because of pricing discipline as we look at them and we look at the profitability of those accounts. And so as we've been doing that and we accelerated that pace in the fourth quarter of this year, you'll see a little bit of growth rate come down a bit in the first quarter, and then it will accelerate throughout the year. I'll let Olivier talk about some of the details associated with that.

I mean to follow up on what George was saying. Of course, I mean, pricing discipline is good for GP and value improvement, but we know that on the pure revenue side might be equal, especially at the beginning of the year. Knowing that these customers, staffing customers, are usually at low margin, we don’t expect a big impact on GP side or even less on a bottom line basis. I mean to give you an idea the value profile of these customers when you look at their GP margin, it’s about half of the GP we have overall as a GP margin or GP rate we have for GTS staffing. I think the other thing to consider is our divestiture of healthcare that is of course is going to push a little bit our revenue down in the first, at least at the beginning of the year. Looking back at the guidance, I mean 5% to 6% growth in revenue. If you look at 2017, we have been overall at 5.7%. We expect to continue to improve our GP rates as we have seen for the last two years, because as George was explaining, we move more and more to more added value type of solutions. And as we have seen in 2017, we see the pure volume dynamic accelerating overtime from Q1 to Q2 and Q3 and Q4.

And John, I would say we see good demand in the marketplace for our services, which has given us the confidence to be able to reevaluate our portfolio and make sure that we’re doing the things that make a big difference.

And I just wanted to ask about the conversion rate, I think you mentioned it was 9% in the quarter, which is a nice acceleration for you guys compared to previous years. Just curious your thoughts on where you would ideally like to see that number, where you think that you can maybe push that maybe over the next couple of years?

John, as we’ve talked before, we don’t give forward guidance on that. But what we have said is that we see that there is still a significant room for Kelly to improve, and we expect every year into the future to continue to make progress on improving that number. There is a lot of room to move based on what we see out there.

And just one final question for me, this year is probably the first acquisition I’ve seen you guys do in many years, and you also sold the business in the fourth quarter. Do you think there is much trending of the portfolio that will take place in 2018, maybe accelerating or is there not much left to do?

As we look at the portfolio, John, we will continue to evaluate it now and into the future. So there is nothing on the horizon right now, but we continue to look at the portfolio to see what we can do. And we’ll also look at the other side of the transaction as well to say should we deploy capital to continue to invest in the things that we’re really good at as we expect that we want to continue to be a significant player in the areas where we have strength. And Teachers On Call is a perfectly example of that.

I think, it’s all about focus and making sure we are most selective on where we invest.

[Operator instructions] And while in a few moments, Mr. Corona, no further questions coming in.

Okay, well thank you John and thank you everyone. Thank you.