Q4 2022 First Advantage Corp Earnings Call

Speaker 1: I'll see you next time.

Speaker 2: Good day everyone. My name is Chelsea and I will be your conference operator today.

Speaker 2: I would like to welcome you to the first advantage fourth quarter in full year 2022 earnings conference call and webcast.

Speaker 2: Hosting the call today from First Advantage is Stephanie Gorman, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Speaker 2: At this time all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode to prevent any background noise.

Speaker 2: After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance.

Speaker 2: please press star zero. Please note today's event is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Stephanie Gorman. Please begin. Thank you, Chelsea. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to First Advantage's fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. In the investors section of our website, you will find the earnings press release and slide presentation to accompany today's discussion. This webcast is being recorded and will be available for replay on our investor relations website.

Speaker 2: or implied in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors. These factors are discussed in more detail in our filings with the FEC, including our 2021 Form 10-K and our 2022 Form 10-K to be filed with the FEC. Such factors may be updated from time to time in our periodic filings with the FEC, and we do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements.

Speaker 2: Throughout this conference call, we will also present and discuss non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures to the extent available without unreasonable effort appear in today's earnings press release and presentation, which are available on our Investor Relations website.

Speaker 2: I'm joined on our call today by Scott Staples, first advantages, chief executive officer, and David Gamzee, our chief financial officer. After our prepared remarks, we will take your question. I will now hand the call over to Scott. Thank you, Stephanie, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. Thank you.

Speaker 3: 14% and increased adjusted EBITDA by 10% compared to last year when we saw exceptionally high 40% revenue and 54% adjusted EBITDA year-over-year growth.

Speaker 3: We also generated record operating cash flow of $212.8 million in 2022, growing an impressive 43% versus the prior year.

Speaker 3: Our record year came despite a soft end to the fourth quarter that resulted from a slow down in hiring demand in the US that began in late November as our customers became more cautious in their hiring approach, driven primarily by the pandemic.

Speaker 3: by the macroeconomic headwinds of ongoing inflation and higher interest rates. The slowdown happened earlier and to a greater extent than we expected. International markets, particularly India and APEC, remained sluggish, consistent with what we shared in Q3. However, strong new customer growth continued upsell and cross-sell momentum, and high customer retention rates offset some of this weakness. Sequentially, fourth quarter revenues exceeded third quarter revenues. Revenue flattened out on a year-over-year comparative basis as we cycled over.

Speaker 3: term. As we have demonstrated in the past, we have a highly variable cost structure and we have acted quickly to adjust costs. As we have seen demand shift, we also continue to proactively strengthen our mission critical solutions and product offerings through our thoughtful strategic investments in technology, machine learning and automation.

Speaker 3: These investments drive flexibility and agility in our operations, which in turn drives margin expansion and our ability to move quickly as labor markets change. Additionally, these actions have enhanced our capabilities to meet the needs of our customers by providing faster turnaround times, increased accuracy.

Speaker 3: and a better overall customer and applicant experience. These actions have also enabled us to add to our already robust and diverse customer base across the verticals we serve. In 2022, we completed over 100 million screens on behalf of our approximately 33,000 active customers, which includes over half of the Fortune 100 companies.

Speaker 3: and approximately one-third of the Fortune 500 companies. We ended the year with a total of 235 enterprise customers up from 189 a year ago. In the fourth quarter, we booked seven new enterprise customers bringing us to a total of 27 new logo enterprise customer wins during 2022 compared to 20 in the prior year. The October Fighter efforts without the ??panion of recovery demand

Speaker 3: Consistent with our strategic priorities, we are committed to continued investment in technology and automation to drive client satisfaction and new business, which will ultimately result in enhanced shareholder value. We remain highly confident in our ability to weather varying macroeconomic scenarios because of our focus on enterprise clients, our vertical strategy, and our highly variable and lean cost structure. Now turning to slide five. From a long-term perspective, we believe that fundamental changes in how people work in

Speaker 3: Our verticalized go-to-market approach is a competitive advantage and a key driver of our growth strategy. The majority of our revenues are derived from high volume, high velocity customer verticals, where an increasingly greater importance is placed on speed and turnaround times.

Speaker 3: which we continue to deliver through our investments in automation. Our vertical approach and innovative technology offerings provide mission critical solutions to align with these growing trends. Our vertical strategy further deepens our competitive advantage and differentiates us within our industry, positioning first advantage to meet the needs of the hiring market of the future. Our sales and product teams are also aligned to our key verticals which drives new logo, upsell, cross-sell opportunities, new product development, and geographic customer expansion.

Speaker 3: This enables us to be subject matter experts in these industry segments and to use industry specific data to advise our customers on topics such as leading practices and product optimization. Given the importance of verticalization to our business, we have provided you with our revenue breakdown by Vertical on Slide 5 to help you better understand how each contributes to our business. As I mentioned, we grew revenues nearly 14% during the year with broad-based...

Speaker 3: Overall, we feel we are well positioned to weather a variety of macroeconomic scenarios due to our large number of high-volume hiring customers across diverse verticals which we believe continue to maintain favorable growth prospects.

Speaker 3: Before I turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, David Gamzee, for more details on our financial results, I'd like to reiterate that I am excited about the opportunities ahead for first advantage. We are well positioned on our industry and have effectively executed our cost savings playbook to address the near-term demand environment. We will continue to focus on driving operational efficiencies.

Speaker 3: expanding the use of our proprietary databases and leveraging our G&A infrastructure. Our long-term focus remains on delivering outstanding service to our customers and long-term value to our shareholders. And with that, I will now turn the call over to David. Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Let's begin on slide seven.

Speaker 4: Our fourth quarter revenues were $212.6 million, flat versus the prior year, and up 1.8% to $216.3 million on a constant currency basis. This was compared to exceptionally strong revenue growth of approximately 36% in the fourth quarter of 2021. On a sequential basis, revenues grew approximately 3%

Speaker 4: compared to Q3 2022. In our America's segment, revenues of $188 million were up 3% from Q4 2021, which is incremental to the strong Q4 of 2021, which was up 26.7%. We saw a slowdown in hiring begin in late November in the US, which was more pronounced and earlier than we anticipated.

Speaker 4: US-based growth, which represents light for light hiring within our existing base when slightly negative, though we were able to overcome instill achieved growth through our new logo and upsell performance. In total, America's represented 88% of consolidated revenues in the quarter.

Speaker 4: In our international segment, revenues of $26.2 million were down 17.6% from Q4 2021, as we cycled over a strong Q4 of 21, which had 83.8% year-over-year organic growth.

Speaker 4: On a constant currency basis, our Q4 revenues would have been $3.5 million higher, or down only 6.6% year over year. Demand in our Amea region continued, offset by lower volumes in negative base growth in our APAC and India regions. Several countries within the APAC region continued to feel the impact of COVID-19 restrictions during the fourth quarter. The APAC region continued to feel the impact of COVID-19 restrictions during the fourth quarter.

Speaker 4: Most of those restrictions have now been lifted, and as a result, we now expect to see summer recovery in these regions, primarily home calling in China in the next several months. In the fourth quarter, year over year, revenue declined from existing customers was $13.7 million, and can be attributed to both their Americas and international existing customer bases. Revenues from new customers contributed a positive $8.3 million, or approximately 4% to our year over year growth.

Speaker 4: Upsell was also a positive contributor to air growth. Revenues from our acquisitions contributed $5.4 million during the quarter, as we laughed at corporate screening in multilateral acquisitions from November 2021. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $70.3 million.

Speaker 4: basis, our adjusted EBITDA would have been approximately $1.2 million higher or $71.5 million.

Speaker 4: On a sequential basis, adjusted EBITDA grew approximately 10% compared to Q3 2022. Flat year-over-year revenues and a difficult FX environment impacted our adjusted EBITDA growth rate. However, despite these factors, we were still able to expand our adjusted EBITDA margin by 40 basis points year-over-year to 33.1% and an impressive 190 basis points on a sequential basis.

Speaker 4: As Scott mentioned, we have effectively executed our cost savings playbook to address the near term demand environment, leveraging our flexible cost structure and removing costs from the business as we saw demand shift. Specifically, we began taking measures to reduce our overall cost structure, including rationalization of facilities and selectively lowering headcount throughout the organization to match demand. Given our technology and automation efforts, as well as their move to a hybrid working model for our employees,

Speaker 4: We do not anticipate these costs coming back into the business even as demand grows. Our cost savings approach enables us to continue to remain agile and responsive as the macroeconomic environment evolves in the coming months. Additional headwinds, which we identified and discussed last quarter, and which we were able to grow over, included year-over-year increases in insurance premiums and third-party verification costs.

Speaker 4: and the mixed impact of integrating acquisitions with historically lower margins. Adjusted net income decreased 3.4% to $45 million from $46.5 million in Q4 2021. This was primarily attributable to higher interest expense and an increase in depreciation and amortization associated with investments in the development of our proprietary platform. Partially mitigated by our interest bearing deposits and our interest rate hedge. Adjusted diluted EPS with 30 cents for the quarter.

Speaker 4: growth of 39.9% in full year 2021. In our America segment, revenues of $695 million were up 15% from full year 2021 driven by acquisitions in new business growth. In total, America's represented 85% of consolidated revenues for the...

Speaker 4: 1% year-over-year. The increase in revenue was due to contributions from acquisitions and new customer growth offset by negative base growth in India and APAC in the second half of the year. In total, international represented 15% of consolidated revenues during the year. For full year 2022.

Speaker 4: Your over-year revenue from existing customers increased by $25.3 million and can be attributed to strength across our America's business in the first half of the year, offset by the impact of slower hiring and the effects of changes in foreign currencies. Revenues from existing customers in our America's segment remained positive for the year, but declined in the fourth quarter. Revenues from new customers contributed $35.4 million or approximately 5%.

Speaker 4: to our year-over-year growth. Revenues from acquisitions contributed $37 million during the year. Adjusted EBITDAF for full year 2022 was $248.9 million, an increase of 10% year-over-year. Overall revenue growth attributable to new and existing customers, primarily during the first half of the year, selective price increases, cost reductions implemented primarily in the second half of the year, acquisitions, and cost structure benefits due to increased automation.

Speaker 4: Operational efficiencies and operating leverage were partially offset by those items previously discussed. On a constant currency basis, our adjusted EBITDA would have been approximately $3.4 million higher or $252.3 million. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was solid at 30.7% for the full year 2022.

Speaker 4: Adjusted net income increased 9.9% to $156.5 million from $142.4 million in full year 2021. This was largely due to the drivers of our Adjusted EBITDA growth offset in part by interest expense and an increase in depreciation and amortization. This was largely due to the drivers of our Adjusted EBITDA growth offset in part by interest expense and amortization.

Speaker 4: Adjusted diluted EPS was $1.3 for the year, an increase of 2% year-over-year. Excluded from the adjusted net income calculation is the $11.4 million gain associated with our interest rate SWOT, which represents the difference between the fair value gains or losses and actual cash payments in the receipts. On a pre-tax basis,

Speaker 4: This represents $0.7 per share for the full year. We have excluded this positive gain from our adjusted net income from comparability purposes. The adjusted effective tax rate for the year was approximately 24.7% consistent with prior periods. Slide nine is included to demonstrate our track record of delivering growth across the business cycle. We are very pleased with their three year track record with a total compound annual revenue growth rate of 19 per

Speaker 4: points to 33.1%, underscoring our ability to manage costs through our dynamic and flexible cost structure. Turning now to cash flow, leverage and capital allocation on slide 11.

Speaker 4: We ended 2022 with a record level of cash and cash flow from operations as well as a healthy balance sheet with very low leverage. We continue to prioritize deploying our capital in ways that creates the most value for our shareholders, including returning a portion of our cash through our share repurchase program. For full year 2022, cash flow from operations was a robust $212.8 million of 43% year-over-year due to our strong cash flow conversion, which we expect will continue going forward. During the year, we spent $28.5 million on purchases of cash flow from the capital.

Speaker 4: $39 million year-over-year after funding the Form I-9 compliance acquisition and after repurchasing approximately $61 million in stock. We also have $100 million in untapped borrowing capacity under a revolving credit facility.

Speaker 4: with no outstanding balances. Based on our full year 2022 Adjusted EBITDAB $249 million, we had a net leverage ratio of 0.7 times as of December 31st. Over the last 12 months, net leverage has declined from 1.2 times.

Speaker 4: Our debt structure has us well positioned for the rising interest rate environment. We have an interest rate collar with approximately 50% of our long-term debt, capped at 1.5% one month live or rate through February of 2024 and we have no principal payments due before 2027.

Speaker 4: We further hedged another approximately 20% of our long-term debt earlier this month. Our interest rate exposure on the un hedged amount of our debt is currently offset by our interest earnings on cash deposits. Our strong balance sheet, ample drive powder, low leverage, and expectations for continued free cash flow generation and able us to flexibly deploy capital. We continue to evaluate M&A opportunities that align with our strategic-

Speaker 4: $150 million share buyback program by an additional $50 million. We believe that at the current stock valuation, share repurchases are an excellent use of our capital. As a reminder, we currently have $392 million of cash on our balance sheet and we generated operating cash flow of $213 million in 2022 and $70 million in Q4 alum.

Speaker 4: No shares under the existing plan will be purchased from Silver Lake or its affiliates. Through February 23rd, 2023, we have repurchased $75.7 million of common stock or approximately 5.8 million shares.

Speaker 4: including the increased authorization we have $124 million remaining under the program. Especially in today's environment we believe it is important to maintain a healthy balance sheet, conservative capital structure and flexible leverage profile. With significant ripowder and consistently strong cash flow generation we expect to fund future acquisitions.

Speaker 4: from available cash on the balance sheet. We routinely evaluate our capital allocation priorities to achieve a balance between M&A, returning capital to our stockholders, and investing in the continued growth of the company to maximize shareholder value.

Speaker 4: Slide 12 introduces our guidance for full year 2023. Based on the current environment and discussions with our customers, our 2023 guidance assumes that existing macroeconomic conditions, foreign currency headwinds, and hiring trends that we are currently experiencing will continue through most of 2023.

Speaker 4: with modest improvement in the second half of the year, along with easier year over year comps. Specific to our existing customer bids, our guidance assumes a continuation of the slower hiring environment we began to experience in late November . We expect customer retention to remain in line with their stellar historical performance of over 96%, and successful execution of upsell and new logo additions consistent with prior years, offsetting macro-driven based declines. As a result of the above, we expect to generate full year 2023 revenues in the range of $770 to $810 million, resulting in flat to negative 5% year-over-year growth, all of which is organic.

Speaker 4: On a constant currency basis, we expect revenues of $774 million to $814 million with the high end of the range exceeding prior year results. As a result of the cost savings actions taken in Q4, we anticipate full year 2023 adjusted EBITDA margin expansion to slightly over 31%.

Speaker 4: We expect 2023 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $240-255 million, representing negative 4% to positive 2% year-over-year growth. This further demonstrates our commitment and ability to manage costs and maintain what we believe are industry leading margins. We expect our 2023 adjusted net income to be between $145 and $155 million primarily due to the previously discussed factors. This year, we are introducing adjusted diluted earnings per share guidance to provide additional visibility into our business. We expect our 2023 adjusted diluted EPS to be between $1.5 million

Speaker 4: $1.00 and $1.00 7.00. This assumes the continued execution of Air Shareer Bibach Program. We have included a summary of these and other selected modeling assumptions on slide 12. Looking now at the quarterly phasing of our 2023 guidance, based on actual financial results to date, we expect Q1 year-over-year consolidated revenues to decline 8-11 percent as the macro economic headwinds previously described continue and we cycle over Q1 2022, which saw exceptionally high revenue growth of 44 percent. We do have seasonally and air business, and historically the first quarter has typically been our slowest quarter of each fiscal year.

Speaker 4: In Q2, we expect sequential revenue growth, though it will still be negative on a year-over-year basis. We will also be cycling over double-digit revenue growth in Q2. We anticipate adjusted EBITDA growth rates to slightly exceed revenue growth rates for the full year.

Speaker 4: Regarding the phasing of adjusted EBITDA margins, we expect Q1 adjusted EBITDA margins to be between 27 and 28 percent consistent with Q1 of the prior two years. Please keep in mind that Q1 typically represents their lowest margin quarter as a result of seasonality. Starting with Q2, we expected adjusted EBITDA margins above 30 percent and to improve in the second half of the year following a similar pattern to 2022. We expect your full year adjusted EBITDA margins to be approximately 31 percent.

Speaker 4: Additional evidence of our focus on managing the business for profitability and leveraging our flexible cost structure. We remain confident and our proven formula to grow above our underlying market and reiterate our long-term organic revenue growth targets of 8 to 10%. We will remain vigilant on dynamically managing our cost space and focus intently on the things we can control. We have successfully managed through challenging times in the past, notably during the 2020 COVID-related downturn and have a strong operating discipline and proven track record around doing so. We remain confident in our resilient operating model.

Speaker 3: Scott, I'll now turn the call back over to you. Thank you, David. I will conclude our prepared remarks today by rooting my belief that first advantage is well-positioned to not only whether the current macroeconomic environment, but to continue to serve our customers with excellence and to create long-term value. I would like to thank our first advantage team members across the globe for your efforts in 2022. And for continuing to do an amazing job helping our customers higher smarter and on-board faster. I would also like to thank our investors for your ongoing support. At this time, we will ask the operator to open the call for your questions. Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session.

Speaker 2: At this time, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. If you are using a speaker phone, we request that you pick up your hands set while asking your question to provide optimal sound quality. Our first question will come from a sheet sabadrope with RBC capital markets. Your line is open.

Speaker 3: Thanks for taking my question. You highlighted certain areas of strength, but in terms of weakness, I was wondering, are there any verticals or job roles where you saw any significant slowdown and hiring? And how should we think about that continuing particularly in the first quarter and the first half of the year? Yeah, yes, I see. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I think like we said in the script, we can continue to see sort of a mixed bag with our verticals. And we don't want to go vertical by vertical and give you, you know,

Speaker 3: you know, projections, but I think consistent with what we said in the script is that, you know, we continue, we expect to see continued, you know, demand in areas like transportation and healthcare, which are, you know, which have, which did well in Q4 and we expect to do well in Q2 and 2023. But certainly other verticals are sluggish and some geographies, you know, are sluggish as well. But we don't think we don't want to go vertical by vertical, because that just gets a bit messy. Yeah, no, understood. And that was very helpful color. And then obviously pretty good momentum on the new inside the new logos and upsell are helping offset a lot of the weakness, particularly in the fourth quarter. I was wondering if you could talk about the pipeline for new logos and upsell opportunities, particularly in 2023. Thanks. Yes, happy to do so. So our 2023 pipeline of new logos is the highest pipeline we've ever had in company history.

Speaker 3: So we expect new logo and upsell cross-sell to continue to perform as they've done historically. We're especially bullish on the new logo pipeline in our AMIA markets, which is driven primarily by our new product offering digital trust, which we announced last quarter is getting significant momentum. We have a hundred, we have over a hundred customers, which we have signed contracts with and 40 are now live on that product. So, pipeline in AMIA is extremely strong and pipeline in America's, as I mentioned earlier, is the historically highest it's ever been.

Speaker 4: That's a really helpful color. Thanks again. Thank you. Our next question will come from Kyle Peterson with Needham. Your line is open. Hey, one of guys, thanks for taking questions. I just want to do a touch a little bit. I know you guys gave some really helpful color on kind of the year-to-date trends in one queue expectations. But I guess just trying to parse out some of the seasonality, versing what you guys kind of started seeing in November , December , because hiring in the macro got more challenging year-to-date or is what you guys are seeing so far, at least when adjusting for seasonality, kind of similar to what you started to see later in 4Q. I would...

Speaker 4: up on capital allocation, you guys give some good color in the buyback and been pretty active on that front. But you want to follow up on the M&A pipeline. It seems like there might be some interesting opportunities and you guys obviously have a really strong cash position. But I guess have, how are some of those conversations been going and evaluations gotten?

Speaker 4: You're more attractive now that financing in the operating environment might be a little tougher for a person with smaller guests.

Speaker 3: Well, I think, you know, number one is, is M&A remains our number one top priority of capital allocation use. We would love to do deals and do more deals. We are definitely seeing a smaller pipeline of deals. It doesn't mean that there's no deals. There certainly are deals, but it's a little bit of a smaller pipeline as some companies have also taken a wait and see approach or sit back and kind of let this play out a little bit.

Speaker 3: But I think the overarching issue that we still have in M&A is valuations. Valuations have not come down to where we feel they are realistic. And we're certainly just, we're not going to overpay just to do M&A. It doesn't mean that there aren't deals out there that we can do. And we continue to talk with companies and we're definitely in the hunt on deals, looking for deals. But valuations just haven't come down to where we think they need to be. And so...

Speaker 2: We'll see how M&A pants out this year, but it absolutely is our number one priority. All right, make sense. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephanie Moore with Jeffries. Your line is open. Hi, good morning. Thank you for the question. I just wanted to focus on the 2023 guidance and the underlying assumption that there's some improvement mid-year. Maybe if you could provide a little bit more color on what you're seeing or what gets you confident in that recovery in that recovery is that new logo expectations and your pipeline conversations with customers. Any color would be great. Thanks.

Speaker 2: paying out this year, but it absolutely is our number one priority. All right, make sense. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephanie Moore with Jeffries. Your line is open. Hi, good morning. Thank you for the question. I just wanted to focus on the 2023 guidance and the underlying assumption that there's some improvement mid-year. Maybe if you could provide a little bit more color on what you're seeing or what kind of gets you confident in that recovery through the exit. In that recovery is that new logo expectations and your pipeline conversations with customers. Any color would be great. I think it's so there's a rough back.

Speaker 3: I'll start and you can jump in about that. There are several factors that go into it. First of all, we're going to have a lot easier comps in the second half of the year and we're still given very conservative guidance. So we do think there will be some modest improvement and that's really going to come from international. We see that recovery taking place towards the end of Q2 and the beginning of Q3. We think most of the US pruning, if you will, will be behind us. And we don't see any kind of hockey stick recovery, but we're not seeing based on conversations with our clients any kind of doom and gloom scenario in the second half either. Yeah, I would just say you're still seeing the ease overarching changes to the labor market. We're still seeing an amazing number of job openings, 11 million. We're still seeing four million quits per month and that's been going on for now like 19, 20 months straight. And we do have a really good mechanism for talking to our top customers. And we are in ongoing discussions with our customers about their businesses and about their hiring demands. And most of those discussions are all short term in nature.

Speaker 3: They themselves believe that, you know, as David said, good opportunity to do some pruning right now and take a, you know, 60 to 90 day sort of wait and see approach, but they're fundamental businesses haven't changed. And there's a strong demand for their products and services. And then we also are, you know, are talking to and looking at, you know, what some of the economic analysts are saying. And based on that, that's how we came up with our guidance for the year. Great, that's really helpful. And then just as my follow up, first I think, and apologize if I didn't fully hear the number. I think you called out some.

Speaker 3: in 2023. So we feel very good about that. We also continue to match headcount with demand. We have a very flexible operating structure. As we previously noted, we can operate five days a week, six days, seven days a week, two shifts, three shifts. We have overtime available to us.

Speaker 3: So as demand moderated, we scaled back on our shifts, we eliminated over time, and we matched headcount with demand. So we will continue to do that to manage our margins. Yes, Stephanie, also you might see from the slides we are now well over 3,000 bots. And all that automation.

Speaker 3: that we do replaces headcount. And that headcount never needs to come back once those automation, those bots are in place. So there's a lot of good signs in the business that we can grow without linear early adding headcount. Great, well thank you so much.

Speaker 3: replace his head count and that head count never needs to come back once those automation those bots are in place so there's a lot of good signs in the business that you know we can grow without linear early adding head count. Great, well thank you so much. Thank you.

Speaker 5: Our next question will come from Andrew Steinerman with JP Morgan. Your line is open. Yes, hi, this is Alex Hess on for Andrew Steinerman. I wanted to maybe ask about pricing and base growth. You mentioned some selective pricing increases. Was that just sort of passing through third party verification costs and then maybe what was your base revenue growth exiting 4Q and what are you assuming for 23? So everything he could say or mean.

Speaker 3: So from a pricing perspective, keep in mind that we always pass through our third party cost. And we also have the right to pass through any increases in our third party cost. So we've always done that historically, we will continue to do that. We have been able to pass through some moderate and selective price increases in addition to that as well.

Speaker 3: From a base perspective, we do expect negative base growth, particularly in the first half of 2023. We hope to overcome that through our new logo and our upsell crosssell. Our attrition has been very, very low. And so we think it will turn to slightly positive in the second half of the year.

Speaker 5: Got it. That's very helpful. And then on the margin improvement that you're expecting year on year, how much of that for the full year is some sort of re-alignment of third-party verification policies and maybe using alternative vendors versus how much is those actions that you've already spoken to around and across controls.

Speaker 3: The verification piece is a small portion of it. I mean, keep in mind we have a very variable cost structure. About 37% of revenues are represented by third party costs. So if we don't perform a search, we don't incur those costs.

Speaker 3: So those are 100% variable. Then we have the operations flexibility that I just talked about. Then we took out facilities. We've taken out some selective headcount. We're prioritizing investments. I mean, we're basically running the entire cost savings playbook and we're looking at everything.

Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you. Our next question will come from Menav Petnig with Barclays. Your line is open.

Speaker 6: Hi, good morning, Mrs. Roni Kennedy out for a Monop. As follow up to that question kind of on pricing and verification, et cetera. At a higher level, can you just confirm whether there have been changes to broader screening economics such as the price per screen, you know, in the margins on the screen, et cetera. And then also your broader revenue mix in terms of pre-higher screening, post-onboard, monitoring, et cetera, what that is currently and how you expect that to change.

Speaker 3: perspective, everything is pretty consistent. There have not been any fundamental changes in the cost of background screening relative to the criminal side. Most of that is coming from government databases. We have not seen any significant changes in pricing relative to those government databases since the state of New York did it about three years ago. So the cost of the criminal element of the background screen.

Speaker 3: has remained the same. As you alluded to, verifications has gone up. We passed through all of those costs, and there are certain other elements that do change, but we do pass through all of those third-party costs. So it's a fairly stable pricing environment. OK, thank you. And then could I just ask for your assessment of industry competitive dynamics in the current and expected environment for the Render 23 perhaps even two out of years and highlight 90 emerging?

Speaker 6: areas of differentiation between yourself and public peers. Obviously, there's a much greater distinction to the smaller players, the regionals and the mountain pops, but also how you think they will fare in a challenging macro environment. And if that will kind of accelerate the pace of consolidation. Yeah, so we haven't seen much change in competitive dynamics. As we've mentioned before, there's really three buckets of competition. There's the three public companies, there's the mid-sized companies and the mountain pops. And we continue, and I've mentioned this for the last couple of quarters.

Speaker 6: We continue to take market share almost, almost equally from those three buckets, so a third or third or third. And so those competitive dynamics really haven't changed. And I think the big difference is technology. Technology continues to be the winning formula for us. So we continue to invest in product and sales, and that's always been a good model for us.

Speaker 6: I think that the moves that we've made on verifications has really helped with our announcement of our SmartHub technology last quarter. It's really helping us provide alternatives in the verification space that our peers and our competition don't have yet. And so that's giving us a little bit of a competitive advantage. But I think in general, this is a market that hasn't changed too much.

Speaker 3: on the competitive landscape and it really just comes down to good sales execution and continued investment in product. Thank you. All right, thank you. As I remind you, that is Star 1 to get into the question queue. Our next question will come from Heather Balsky with Bank of America. Your line is open. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Hi, thanks for taking my question. On the topic of M&A, can you just remind us?

Speaker 2: what your priorities are in terms of M&A targets, what you're looking for, especially given your how you prioritize that. And then in addition, given that we're going into a tougher market, how do you think about M&A versus taking, you know, accelerating share gains organically?

Speaker 6: Yeah, so M&A for us, first of all, the number one priority is strategic. If you look at the four acquisitions that we've done over the last 18 months or so, they've all been strategic and they all have exceeded expectations. They've been, you know, we've been four for four on M&A. They've been, you know, phenomenal acquisitions for us. So our first lens that we look at is strategic.

Speaker 6: And when I say strategic, it then also falls really into three buckets. One is, we love international expansion. We'd love to increase our footprint around the globe. We do screens today in 200 countries and territories around the world, which is basically covers the world. But we'd love to have more feeding the ground in certain regions that we think are our high growth reach.

Speaker 6: enhance that vertical message, get us deeper into those verticals, or maybe even open up a new vertical for us that we don't want to build. And then the third view is product. Anything that we could sell to same buyer, we really love that. So a great example of that is warm I nine compliance with we bought last January of 2022. That is a great add on to our sales team to just.

Speaker 6: and we continue to look at them as well, but those valuations have to work in order for those synergies to work. So, you know, that's on our radar, but we'd love to look at strategic first, although we will look at synergy plays. And then, you know, we think we can do both of M&A and the share buyback because of our strong cash position. So we're not doing an either or here.

Speaker 6: across firm size. I know you're high indexed to the large enterprise, but curious to hear what you're seeing small business gig workers, that kind of activity there that would be helpful. Thank you. So keep in mind that only 4% of our revenue comes from SMB. We really are an enterprise play. We feel we...

Speaker 6: Obviously it's not a huge thing for us. And also on the gig side, which we would lump in with tech, that's only 3% of our business as well. So these are small percentages. It may be an opportunity for us in the future. But as of right now, our main focus is verticals that are high volume, high turnover. ...

Speaker 6: And the fortune 2000 type of market, those are our ideal targets for us. Thank you. And then I'm just curious, if you look at non-spawn payroll, the data that's been coming through lately, and it's pretty consistent, certainly with your comments of what happened in 4Q, then we saw this nice bounce back in the January numbers, about 500,000.

Speaker 6: I'm just curious to what degree do you think your performance is aligning with some of the non-farm payroll data that's been coming out. Thank you. We continue to look at Joel's data and other labor market factors, but I think January , non-farm employment numbers, the gain yet you mentioned, the numbers that you're mentioning, the gain of 517.

Speaker 6: You know, a thousand. We're a little misleading because those were seasonally adjusted. So primarily government hires in hospitality is what drove that. So if you take out the seasonal adjustment, they actually, the US actually lost 2.5 million jobs in January . So I think you really need to dig into those numbers, which we do on a consistent basis to see where that true growth is coming from. And I think it does align nicely to our vertical strategy. Maybe the main area that we want to close the gap on a little bit is in the hospitality space.

Speaker 3: So we expect to continue to have significant pre-cash flow. If you think about it in terms of start with adjusted EBITDA back off CAPEX, which we're estimating to be around $30 million that includes CAPEX dev software, we have CAPEX taxes. premium-only promise.

Speaker 3: that will have to pay in 2023 of around $40 million. And then working capital should remain pretty consistent and or it should be slightly positive depending on where we end up the year in revenues.

Speaker 2: So we'll still be throwing off a tremendous amount of cash. My other questions are answered. At this time, we have no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Staples for any additional or closing remarks. Welcome to the documentary. R

Speaker 3: Thank you, Chelsea, and thanks everyone for your participation. Have a great day. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude the first at Vantage 4th quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call and webcast.

Speaker 1: Thank you for your participation and at this time you may disconnect your line. Have a wonderful day.