Good afternoon. And welcome to the TriNet Group Inc. First Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Alex Bauer, Executive Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to TriNet's 2018 first quarter conference call. Joining me today are Burton M. Goldfield, our President and CEO; and Richard Beckert, our Chief Financial Officer. Our prepared remarks were prerecorded. Burton will begin with an overview of our fourth quarter operating and financial performance. Rich will then review our financial results in more detail. We will then open up the call for the Q&A session. Before we begin, please note that today's discussion will include our 2018 second quarter and full year guidance and other statements that are not historical in nature, are predictive in nature, or depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, such as our expectations, estimates, predictions, strategies, beliefs, or other statements that might be considered forward-looking. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and are inherently subject to uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstance that are difficult to predict and that may cause actual results to differ materially from statements being made today or in the future. Except as may be required by law, we do not undertake to update any of these statements in light of new information, future events or otherwise. We encourage you to review our most recent public filings with the SEC, including our 10-K and 10-Q filings. For a more detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties that may affect our future results or the market price of our stock. In addition, our discussion today will include non-GAAP financial measures, including our forward-looking guidance for non-GAAP net service revenues, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted net income. For reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to our GAAP financial results, please see our earnings release or our 10-Q filing for our first quarter of 2018, both of which are available on our website or through the SEC website. A reconciliation of our non-GAAP forward-looking guidance to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Burton for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Alex. During the first quarter, we delivered strong financial results, completed the SOI migration and continue to position the company for our next phase of growth. We grew total revenues 7% year-over-year to $861 million and we grew our net service revenues by 11% year-over-year to $220 million. Professional service revenues grew 7% year-over-year to $129 million. Professional service revenues benefited from our efforts to target the right customers with the right products and services at the right price. We grew insurance service revenues by 7% year-over-year to $732 million while net insurance service revenues grew 16% year-over-year to $91 million. Net insurance service revenues in the quarter benefited from administrative cost savings and improved Worker's Compensation performance. Our Q1 GAAP earnings per share grew 83% year-over-year to $0.75 per share and our Q1 adjusted net income per share grew 78% to $0.80 per share. We finished the quarter with 317,000 worksite employees and by completing the SOI migration, we have fully transitioned our entire install base. All of our clients totaling almost 16,000 and their WSEs now reside on our common platform. Our clients are beginning to benefit from our scale as we invest in our platform, products and services. We are focused on driving process improvements for the benefit of our clients and we are strengthening our operating management team. Olivier Kohler has joined us as our Senior Vice President in charge of operations. Olivier brings extensive client service and operational experience from his prior senior roles at Bridgewater Associates, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard. Olivier will manage the largest organization within TriNet. His primary focus is to unify our customer facing services with our back office operations. Through this process we expect to improve the client experience gain efficiencies and ultimately improve customer satisfaction and retention. As…

Thank you, Burton. As a review the financials, I would like to focus on the GAAP and non-GAAP numbers where appropriate. During the first quarter GAAP total revenue increased 7% year-over-year to $861 million. Net service revenue increased 11% year-over-year to $220 million. We finished the first quarter was 317,000 worksite employees down 4% year-over-year. Average WSE count for the first quarter was 315,000 down 4% year-over-year. As discussed in previous quarters, our average WSE count in the first quarter was impacted by increased attrition, largely attributable to our SOI migration. We expect this specific attrition trend to conclude during the second quarter of 2018 as clients complete their SOI migration. Professional service revenue for the first quarter increased 7% year-over-year to $129 million. When compared to the same quarter last year, professional service revenue benefited from improved pricing and a mix shift away from blue and gray verticals. These benefits were offset by reduced average WSEs. Insurance service revenue for the first quarter increased 7% year-over-year to $713 million and net insurance service revenues increased 60% year-over-year to $91 million. Net insurance service revenues benefited from continued positive Workers Comp performance, where we saw favorable development across our whole book, continued reduction and administrative costs and continued increased medical plan enrollment rates due to change in mix and growth in our core verticals. We offset a portion of these benefits, by prudently increasing our health reserves in anticipation of flu seasonal headwinds. GAAP net income increased 88% year-over-year to $54 million or $0.75 per share compared to $29 million or $0.41 a share in the same quarter last year. Our GAAP effective tax rate was 20%, primarily due to the 2017 tax reform legislation and the tax treatment of employee equity compensation. We entered the quarter with a non-GAAP…

Thank you, Richard I was pleased with our first quarter financial and operating performance. We made significant progress as we positioned ourselves for the next phase of growth. We intend to accelerate our market position by leveraging the vertical strategy at a broader scale. We returned to mid-teens new sales growth in the first quarter and we remain on track to return to sequential volume growth in the second half of 2018. Finally, we are committed to improving our client experience by unifying the customer-facing operations with our back office. We expect this effort to enhance customer satisfaction, retention and gain operating efficiencies. Now with that, I would like to return the call to the operator. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And the first question today will come from David Grossman with Stifel Financial. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I guess, first you know maybe Burton, you gave us some nuggets in terms of why the professional services growth rate accelerated in the quarter. But, despite the decline in WSE’s perhaps, you can go on a little more detail as to whether this is prominently, pricing, was it predominantly mix or retention, or what other factors may have really driven this number and how we should expect that to trend as the year progresses.

So, thanks David. And there was a -- there was a couple different factors that are really important. The first is that, we returned to mid-teens new sales growth, which I was very pleased with. The market is accepting the products. The PEPM’s were higher, which was really important from my standpoint and they were pretty much higher across the Board. And the mix was good which was also important. So I think that the vertical products which command somewhat of a premium price have taken hold. And obviously, there's still more work to be done to grow the main mainstream product which has a slightly lower PEPM. And I also think that the tax reform is a benefit to small businesses and we're going to continue to focus on the strategy which is retention of the sales force, increase in productivity and selling the value which increases the PEPM’s.

And just on that - the sales force and the attrition and the better performance in the quarter, I don't know if we have these comparable numbers on a year over year basis or not. But how much of that you think was actually driven by product and all the things that we've been talking about versus maybe user comparisons in the prior year? Are you still expecting positive sales growth for the year, which is I think something we talked about last quarter?

Yeah. I think the first driver is retention in the sales force. So, retention of sales force is up significantly year over year. So I would put that number; one, to be honest, they have to get productive. Once they're productive, it's incremental net new PEPM for the company. I expect that to continue. I'm happy with both the strategy and the leadership of our new sales executive who has now been in the Saddle about six months. And then secondly is the traction that the vertical products are getting in the market. And finally, the comparison I would say is that since our Main Street is a little lighter. What you're seeing is higher PEPM’s on average, because the mix of Main Street is less.

If I could just add to that David, all the verticals performed well. And as we’d said, most of last year all the verticals with the exception of Main Street were growing with or faster than the market and we saw that happen again in Q1.

Okay got that. And then, I guess looking at the underlying kind of the dynamic that you guys talked about, we have one more cohort of clients to renew, I guess in the June quarter. So maybe you could talk a little bit about, just how the growth in the underlying core is ex that migration? So in other words, if we breakout WSE growth is the non-SOI portion still growing. I guess end market rates which we would consider around 10% with the balance of the decline coming from SOI or is there a different underlying dynamic in the mix?

No. So clearly the decline was driven only by the SOI migration. The other segments as I said earlier are actually growing with or higher than the market. So we were quite pleased with how the quarter performed. In 2Q, this is really just the tail end of the SOI population will have less due to the repricing to mix. And we really now see ourselves continuing in that high single digit, low double digit as a company, we will really start sequentially. And as Burton had said in his comments in the back half of the year, that you're starting to see the headlights of that in currently sales.

Got it. Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Just a fallow-up to David’s question is - when you return to growth in WC or volumes in the second half of the year as you mentioned, can we still expect a similar result in revenue per WSE? So, just curious how that might compound your -- what you're seeing in terms of revenue per WC on the PS revenue side – sorry, Professional Services Revenue per WSE?

We'll still see as the year progresses that the Main Street is still catching up as a percentage of the total population. So it'll be a little bit heavier than how you normally would have seen it historically. But as Main Street continues to ramp, we’ll actually come to slightly less PEPM. That being said, overall for the year, we've been very happy with what we saw with our PEPM growth rates. So we continue to sell the value of our product set. And that's really in a pretty disciplined way with what you would say is good solid revenue.

Yes. Make sense.

And Tien-Tsin just add to that, the other thing I'm particularly excited about is the tax rate of medical benefits. So it's tangential to your issue of PEPM, but that's significant for me to have the declining WSE with an increase of 5% in my medical attach rate. So I think that's going to have a positive effect in the back half as well. Even on the SOI, both the business.

And remember what we've seen is the people that have left as tended to not to take medical. So as a percentage of the book of business that remain they are a higher percent that beat medical. So as Burton said the 4% that we saw grow in the base business compounded with the SOI book of business that stays at fixed medical, bodes well for that side of the business.

Okay, yes. And obviously at natural hedge as you're going through this migration SOI you see some uplift and then so it sounds like its more back to back to normal. Okay. I get it. I think my follow up question just on sales and marketing I caught the 9 million. Just curious how tie the strong sales -- the new sales performance you say are not quite good. I would have expected a bigger sales and marketing sort of number adjusting for the 606 piece, the 9 million? Am I missing something else that's in the sales and marketing piece maybe this quarter?

No. Its $9 million for 606, we benefit a million to the good on the revenue side and that’s the total associated with 606. So the other pieces of those, we're just being prudent as we manage the business. I think what you're seeing is -- as Burton said, Barrett coming in has been very disciplined with how he's executing the sales team. So we're very happy with that.

Thank you for that.

Your next question comes from Timothy McHugh with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Hi thanks. Just following up on that, I guess I am trying to understand -- the underlying question is, as you get past some of the SOI migration challenges do we need to see sales force growth accelerate a lot? And for sales and marketing expense to come up as growth improves? Just I am sure, part of the underlying question is what's normal there as we go forward, the next few years?

So we’ll continue to grow our sales force as we said. We grew the direct sales piece this quarter. There's a mix going on underneath there. So there are some pieces that were not direct that we don't necessarily have to grow at the same rate. We will - in the back half you'll see more dollars spent on the marketing side of the engine, especially with Michael coming on-Board. And we kind of highlighted that when you see Q2 forecast and back half forecast. So going into the busy part of our season Q4 especially you'll see a definite uptick in the marketing.

Okay. And I guess that - the 9 million the 606 is that a fairly constant number for the rest of the year. So if we think a full year boost of 36?

That's about, right.

And is that right then that you get - you lose half of that in ‘19 and then the rest you normalize fully in ’20?

It takes three years to become normal, so third, third and third we’ll normalize that out.

And then second just the sequential -- the comment about second quarter a -- I thought Burton in your remarks you talked about healthcare pricing, but then you've also touched by bigger kind SOI migration. I know there is some linkage, but I guess what's the driver, the attrition still in Q2 more so, is it both? Is it more one than the other as we think about it?

So what you have is - there is a subset of people that left on the last day, they'll be out for full quarter, so if they hold on our average WSE count in quarter as we start to backfill that, that will all be back end of the quarter. So it doesn't move the needle on average WSE count which drives the revenue element of that. Moving forward, that's why we talk about back half of the year and sequentially back half of the year.

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator Instruction] The next question comes from Vasu Govil with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Quickly first, I wanted to follow up on that. ASE 606 impact, I think you said it would be 36 million for the year. I think last quarter you're going to mention 25 million if I'm not mistaken. Was there any change in the estimate - estimated impact from...

That was – we didn’t give precise number, but there’s also revenue in there. So when I give the total you have revenue impact and cost impact.

Understood. So there is no real change from what you were expecting before?

No. Correct.

Got it. Thanks for that. And then on, I know you guys called out the mid teens new sales volume growth number, I don't know if you have given that number in the past. I was just looking for some comparability versus how that had been performing the last few quarters?

We have not given that up, historically. We were trying to give some people some headlights to how the year is progressing. As we have said probably before we should be growing at the market which we think is high single digit, low double digit.

Got it. And then on just the sales force improvement in retention, I'm wondering if you can show any metrics around sales force productivity improvement to give us a sense of like the magnitude of improvement you're seeing versus the need to hire new sales?

Yes so, what Burton had alluded to is, we've seen are the number of people leave the firm year over year has reduced by half. And so that the second piece of that is the people that stayed now are much more productive. So our least productive employees are people for the first 18 months. So a large portion, several - almost 10% of that business now is now getting into the productive phase. So we're feeling pretty good about that as the year progresses.

Got it. Thanks for that. And the very last one, on one worksite employee growth, I know you've guided to sequential improvement in the back half, but now we're almost done with April. So I'm guessing you have good visibility into what the attrition levels would be in the second quarter. I mean how are you thinking about year on year growth in WSE’s exiting 2018?

We don't give forecast, WSE growth for the year. Well you can imagine it would be a suppressed through the first half and then we’ll see it accelerate in the back half. And we're not going to give guidance out for that.

Got it. I had to try. Thank you.

Good try.

And this concludes our question-and-answer session as well as today's conference. Thank you for attending today's presentation. And you may disconnect your lines at this time.