Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the TrueBlue Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Derrek Gafford, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, you may begin your conference.

Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining today's call. I'm joined by our President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Cooper. Steve joined the Company in 1999 and served as Chief Financial Officer and later as President before serving as CEO from 2006 to 2018. He was also Chairman of the Board from 2018 until recently and is now serving as the Company's Chief Executive Officer. It's good to have you here, Steve. Okay. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that today's call and slide presentation contain forward-looking statements, all of which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and we assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties, some of which are described in today's press release and in our SEC filings, could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. We use non-GAAP measures when presenting our financial results. We encourage you to review the non-GAAP reconciliations in today's earnings release or at trueblue.com under the Investor Relations section for a complete understanding of these terms and their purpose. Any comparisons made today are based on a comparison to the same period in the prior year, unless otherwise stated. Lastly, we will be providing a copy of our prepared remarks on our website at the conclusion of today's call and a full transcript and audio replay will also be available soon after the call. Okay, let's now turn the call over to Steve.

Thank you, Derrek, and welcome everyone to today's call. We have a talented management team here at TrueBlue and across all of our operating brands and we have the right strategies to position us for long-term growth. I'm impressed with the exceptional level of execution and engagement I see across our teams, in providing quality workforce solutions to meet our clients' needs. Our employees possess an unwavering commitment to serve our clients and the people we put to work. It's gratifying to be part of a Company that is committed to be in true to our values and to ensuring our employees and partners have a vibrant workplace, that is inclusive and welcoming. Now turning to our results. I'm pleased to report strong performance during the second quarter with revenue and segment profit margin growth across all three segments. PeopleReady is our largest segment, representing 58% of total trailing 12-month revenue and 57% of total segment profit. PeopleReady is a leading provider of on-demand labor and skilled trades in the North American industrial staffing market. We service our clients via national footprint of physical branch locations supported by our JobStack mobile app. Like others we did experience a slowdown in demand as overall commercial staffing hours declined across the industry, throughout the quarter. But revenue continued to grow 6% compared to Q2 a year ago. Our highest margin segment PeopleScout represents 14% of total trailing 12-month revenue and 34% of total segment profit. PeopleScout is a global leader in filling permanent positions through our recruitment process outsourcing services. PeopleScout delivered a quarter of impressive growth with revenue up 39% compared to Q2 a year ago. Volumes at existing clients and project work and new clients drew performance as open positions are at historical levels. Turning to our third segment, PeopleManagement,…

Thank you, Steve. Total revenue for Q2 2022 was $569 million, representing growth of 10%. This was driven by strong overall demand in all three segments reported revenue growth this quarter. PeopleScout continued to see significant volume increases with from existing clients resulting in double-digit revenue growth, while PeopleReady and PeopleManagement revenue grew at mid-single digits. Revenue growth across all three segments favorable bill pay spreads at PeopleReady in a higher mix of people scale business grow strong bottom line results. We posted net income growth of 51% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 53%. Our net income and adjusted EBITDA margins grew 110 and 190 basis points, respectively, driven by revenue growth and gross margin expansion. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded more than net income margin due to government subsidies received last year, which were excluded from adjusted EBITDA. Gross margin for Q2 2022 a 27.8% was up 140 basis points. Our staffing segments contributed 100 basis points of margin expansion, driven by 60 basis points from positive spreads between bill and pay rate inflation and 40 basis points from customer mix. The remaining 40 basis points came from PeopleScout, our highest margin business, as it now constitutes a higher mix of total revenue and it also benefited from operating leverage. SG&A expense increased 10%, which was in line with revenue growth for the quarter and was the same as Q2 last year on a percentage of revenue basis. On an adjusted basis, SG&A was up 8% or 50 basis points better than Q2 last year, which was more favorable than our GAAP trend primarily due to government subsidies received in Q2 last year, which were excluded from our adjusted results. Our effective income tax rate was 18%, which was close to our expectation and nearly the same as the rate…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Thanks so much. Steve, welcome back to these calls. Good to hear you again. Let me ask you a couple of questions just early on, I know you've been around the industry a long time, you've been through a few of these recessionary fear type of virus, et cetera. What lessons did you learn from going through this with the company beforehand? And is there anything that you might do differently this time if we are really heading into a downturn?

Thanks, Jeff, and good to visit with you again. Yes, these economic cycles all look a little bit different for us, in particular have been here over 20 years, 22 years and seen a few of them. And this pandemic was the worst, and the way our team is adjusted and stayed focused on what our clients needed was pretty impressive. If I have to look at the commonality between over that 22-plus year cycle, that's the main thing, you've got to be able to keep a team focused on the client's needs, at a time when we're trying to stabilize our own business. And we just have to put the client first, we put the customer first in every one of those situations, it works out well for us. And then we can trim those costs of our client facing and customer facing need. So that's first and foremost is keep those objectives right there, square in front of us, Jeff, each time. Obviously, the big recession before the pandemic in '08 was construction and credit-related and we were highly focused on construction. Since that period of time, we've spent a lot of effort, energy on diversifying our organization, ensuring that we weren't -- didn't have all the eggs in one basket like we did back in a way where we felt a good two-thirds of the Company was focused on construction in big states, the California, Texas and Florida in particular. We remain big in those states today, but we're a little more balanced in the industries that we serve. And so we don't feel it as deeply as we felt it back then. That's the number two thing is. So first stay focused on the customer. Second, ensuring that we are diverse and who we serve is…

Okay. That was helpful. And you alluded to this in your remarks that we can get a little bit more color. On the labor supply obviously demand has been slowing down, I think everybody realize that. If the labor supply getting any looser and if so, how is that impacting wage rates?

Well, definitely the last six months, we've seen additions back to the labor force, maybe not as fast as we'd all like, meaning us and our customers. But if there is supply coming back into the marketplace and that's been improving month-by-month, really going back to last fall we've seen improvements there. But really continuing up through the summer, it's not as great as the demand though, which I call it a good thing, because it comes right back to the heart of our business. And why we exist and what we do well is in tough labor markets is when we shine best for our customer. So as far as our own personal flow of applicants, it's slightly improving still.

Your next question comes from the line of Kartik Mehta with North Coast Research. Your line is open.

Maybe a little bit of a unfair question, so I apologize. But any thoughts on maybe the trends you're seeing in PeopleReady for July. We're almost to the end of the month and I'm wondering if the trends you saw in June continued or if there was any change?

I think so the question -- this is Derrek, I'll take that one. We finished June at 3% growth for PeopleReady. The last two weeks of June were flat and then that trend has held steady at flat as we've moved through the month of July.

And you mentioned services as being an area where you're seeing some slowing -- what categories and services would you call out that maybe aren't seeing the growth that you were seeing previously?

Well, we've talked about a couple of different industries, just as a point of focus that have seen some softening, but you know it has been really across all industry groups. So I'll just give you a little bit of perspective, I know that you are asking really about services dropping down there a level. But if we compare Q1 to Q2 on a year-over-year basis, yes, we saw some in services, we saw that slowdown, same with retail, while retail slowed by the way is still grew by 16% at PeopleReady. We also called our hospitality at slowing. That's an exceptional growth rate that we were up over 100% in Q1 and dropped down to the mid-60s. So I could go through each one of the industries, but I think the main point here is, this is the step downs that we've seen are fairly widespread from a geographic and industry perspective. So I don't want to make it that it's about one industry that has impacted the demand trends.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Marcon with Baird. Your line is open.

Good afternoon and great to hear you again, Steve. Welcome back. I'm wondering from a strategic perspective, you're mentioning the pause button being hit. How does that end up impacting kind of the strategic plans around some of the pilot programs in terms of centralizing some of the offices in PeopleReady, the continued shift towards JobStack? How do we think about that part of the business, particularly in the back half of this year and going into next year?

Mark, good, talk to you. Thanks for the question. You know the ongoing daily execution is really our challenge now, because we don't want to backed out on the number of teams and what we're doing and focused on helping our clients find people. So finding that balance between what is operations look like in July versus what are we going to do on these programs and change programs that we've had underway the last year or more actually. The answer is pretty easy, we are committed to these strategic ideas that we've been working on the digital platform of which in our PeopleReady brand, JobStack, remaining committed to that because of the stickiness that it builds in that relationship with our client matter so much. The program of -- can we centralize some of the functions that exist in the branch network, we've been underway for a good 10 years on that program of pulling payroll out of the branch, pulling various aspects of the brand's duties out. And so that's been a journey, that's been happening for quite some time, of which we are not going to stop that journey. It not only reduces operating costs over time, it improves customer service ratings and how the customer views us, because in those consolidated or wherever we have a chance to bring light duties into a centralized location, it's good for the business, it's good for the client. So we're going to continue down that path. As far as the programs you've heard over the last -- I don't know, three to four quarters, maybe a little bit longer of opening market centers in replacement of branches, that's definitely going to slow a bit, Mark. Our strength is the branch network. And behaving locally around those local customers and the supply of labor around these local branches. And that remains really important to us. And even with a pause button like we've mentioned being hit and you've asked about it's no time to pull back on the strength of that asset. And it's no time to pull back on the strength of what JobStack does to support that asset. So it's really a combination of local presence with that digital platform, that brings the strength. And I'm really talking about that relationship between the customer and ourselves and the goal of making it sticky. So anything that adds in our strength to that idea, Mark, we're going to continue with. Because in an on-demand environment where things are very difficult for our customers, they're really turning to PeopleReady in a time when the turnover in key positions is just too high, and so they need an associate and there to fill a tough to fill job. We need to be there and we need to be top of mind when that customer needs us. So, we're going to feel that, we're going to continue to feel that while we watch the operating expenses day-in and day-out upon our execution.

Great. And Steve, how would you say, Chicago and Dallas are performing relative to the rest of the country in terms of PeopleReady? Like for the last quarter, last recent trends.

Well, Mark, we've got -- this is Derrek here, I'll take that one. We've got four markets where we've been doing some level of experimentation and having a more centralized service offering to the clients that we serve. It is mixed and so what we have, we have about half of those that are performing better and half of those that are performing worse than the rest of the population. And when I talk about performance it does mean the P&L revenue and pricing. But more importantly, the underlying drivers of what's behind that. So if you think about our client satisfaction is, about rating of the workers that we're sending out there, we look at our employee satisfaction scores, we take a look at the turnover of our field-based employees. So it's really split between the two. And so I would call it right now, those -- that the collection of those market service centers and their contribution as neutral to the rest of the branch network. You asked about this two earlier, I'm just going to highlight this a bit. You know the things hitting the pause button, we're not looking at that as a reason to accelerate movement into the market service centers. We still like that idea. We think that idea has got a lot of legs with it. It also to do it and do it well, the way that we think we need to do it, we need some more technology in place, really around the workflow management and how we manage the customer, the customers that we have in their experience as well as the associates. Because it's different in a virtual setting when we got people remote versus in the branch. Our current stuff systems are somewhat set-up for people to be able to talk within a three person branch. When we got a broader market that we're trying to serve, we need to add some workflow management there to keep track of where everybody is. So we've got a plan to do that. I suspect, you won't see us move forward with that in a lot more earnest fashion until we have that technology in place, towards the middle to end of next year. And like Steve said for now, we're going to keep those in place, but really focused on getting these jobs filled for customers versus moving those market service centers forward in the next quarter or two.

Got it. And then with regards to PeopleReady, you mentioned the fourth quarter and some retail clients. Can you just elaborate on that exactly like how much the impact is? And why some of those retail clients wouldn't be renewing or doing the same programs?

Sure. Well, if you take a look back to the fourth quarter when it comes to retail, I'm going to go -- I'm just going to post this to you to give you some perspective in this. In the fourth quarter, our retail business grew by almost 100% and in the first quarter of 2022 by 75%. So the retail market is still strong for us. It's at -- we grew at 17% this quarter. Back in the fourth quarter and the first quarter, there were some clients in retail that were -- I hate to use this word. Maybe I should be able to come up with one that's better, but somewhat desperate. They were in some really bad spots, and they used a surge of labor that just doesn't fit with their business model on an ongoing basis. Are they still using our service? Yes, they are. They're just great clients for us, we got nice relationships with those folks. Those were just peak periods and we called out those peak periods or surge periods, that were really kind of more a special projects. So that constitutes probably about four or five points of headwind as we go into the fourth quarter. Now because our current run rate is dropping by that amount and creating that much a headwind, it's more about the prior-year comparison that we're facing as we go in the fourth quarter. Just want to make sure everybody was aware of that.

Yes. And really appreciate that Derrek, and that 4% to 5% of headwind is that for TrueBlue overall or for just for PeopleReady?

Yes. That's overall.

Overall? Okay, great. And then on PeopleScout, obviously you're doing phenomenally well, great quarter, this quarter. Can you talk a little bit about like the new business trends and new engagement trends as it relates to the end of the quarter, relative to the beginning and middle of the quarter and what you're seeing in July. Like how should we think about PeopleScout, because there is obviously still lots of excess demand out there. But just wondering to what extent the pause ends up filtering over to PeopleScout?

Well, we haven't seen any pause really with the PeopleScout business. From a new business perspective, it is down slightly year-to-date this year versus where we were last year, but we got off to a really strong start of last year. It's not up by much. We take a look at what our three or even five-year averages as far as new business. When we talk about new business wins, we're talking about a deal that we've landed, and then we count the annual amount of revenue that will come from that engagement once we've had it for a full year. But even compare back to those averages, we're still up this year at PeopleScout, it's looking really nice. Our customers -- they just haven't so much churn in these employed in their customer bases. So we're still getting a lot of business there. We haven't seen any of that really back itself of. And I don't know if we'll see any of that really in the immediate future. You know so many jobs that are open right now and the jobs that were placing by the way, these are jobs that most of them require you to be there in person. So it's not just a tight labor market, it's a tight labor market for our customers, compared to a population of labor that's available, many of which want to have a virtual work experience. And work from home which makes the supply of labor even tighter for our clients. So that's what's driving a lot of wind in the sales for PeopleScout right now, it looks really strong. No, no signs right now that any of that is on its way down.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Marc Riddick with Sidoti. Your line is open.

So, I wanted to touch -- some of my questions is already been answered, but I just want to touch a little bit on maybe what you're seeing on a couple of fronts. One, I wanted to get a sense of maybe how you're viewing the competitive landscape and maybe the sort of where you stand -- competitively now maybe versus six months ago or so. Because it seems as though you've certainly gain -- the interaction maybe certainly seems relative to some peers. And I was wondering if you could sort of talk a little bit about maybe some of the things that are sort of clicking with clients, maybe more. If not -- to your expectation that or at least more so than maybe some of your peers in market. And then I have a follow-up around maybe some future acquisition opportunities.

Hey, thanks Marc, this is Steve. As I've obviously been studying this heavily the last 45 days, since coming back understand where the demand is in the market, who is out there competing against us and how we might be doing in that marketplace. Let me just talk about two different areas for -- if we'll first talk about what Derrek just finished, which is full time hiring. And the demand that exists out there for all these open positions, probably over 11 million open positions in the United States alone in the -- with the bulk of those in the categories we're accrued in. So demand has never been stronger. As we mentioned a little bit, the supply is not getting tighter, it's getting slightly looser. So in that demand environment, we are operating pretty well at PeopleScout. And Derrek just mentioned the surge that our clients feel even with stable demand and supply getting slightly better, there has been this huge surge. And a lot of that is employees trying to figure out where they want to end up and what type of company they might want to end up in. That's where I think when you come back to our core business and not earlier referred to the marketplace or our clients, we're doing a great out there in the PeopleScout environment. Being a leader in RPO recruitment process outsourcing here in the United States with a pretty good start on a global basis of being in United Kingdom and being in Australia. Within the United States, North America -- we win more often than we lose, we win a lot. And I think we're the preferred provider here in the U.S. When you look at that situation on a competitive front, where we need to be…

Great. And then I guess a little quick follow-up that -- just wanted. I guess as much of comment as a question I suppose. But it certainly can't be argued with as far as using some of your cash to repurchase shares when you're looking at an attractive valuation to take advantage of. And certainly you've shown the willingness and ability to do that. Just -- if you sort of maybe just update thoughts as to what we may see there going forward? And certainly, it's a pretty good in compelling return proposition there as well.

Yes. Thanks for that question, Marc. Yes, you're absolutely right. Fundamentally nothing has changed in our strategy about allocating the capital back to shareholders. We don't want to sit on the capital, we want to leverage, turn it back. We think that's the most efficient way to do it for everybody. And do it somewhat consistently with some emphasis when we've got opportunity. And we've kind of shown our cards there during the last recession. I'm not making a prediction about recessions, but we are priced at a pretty attractive level. So that's something that we continue to talk about on how we could do that. And what we want to make sure of is that we -- our opportunistic has certain times because we want to make sure over the complete economic cycle that we can return that capital back at the average share price or better over that cycle. So being opportunistic does weigh into this as well.

There are no further questions. This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you very much for joining. You may now disconnect.