Q4 2024 Barrett Business Services Inc Earnings Call
Stan WALKER A TELEVISION FILM
Speaker Change: Joining us today are BBSI's President and CEO, Mr. Gary Kramer and the company's CFO, Mr. Anthony Harris.
Speaker Change: Following their remarks, we will open the call for your questions.
Speaker Change: Before we go further, please take note of the company's safe harbor statement within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
The statement provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements.
Speaker Change: The company's remarks during today's conference call will include forward-looking statements. These statements, along with other information presented that does not reflect historical facts, are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties.
Speaker Change: Actual results may differ materially from those implied by these forward-looking statements.
Speaker Change: and to the company's quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for more information about the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements.
Speaker Change: I would like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay through March 26th starting at 8 p.m. Eastern Time tonight.
Speaker Change: A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in today's press release as well as available on the company's website at www.bbsi.com.
Speaker Change: Now, I would like to turn the call over to the President and Chief Executive Officer of BBSI, Mr. Gary Kramer. Sir, please go ahead.
Speaker Change: Thank you. And good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the call.
Speaker Change: I am pleased to report that we had a strong fourth quarter, capping off an equally strong year.
Our financial results exceeded our expectations.
and we are optimistic for the future.
Speaker Change: Before I speak about our financial performance, I would like to recap some of the key operational and strategic accomplishments for the year.
Speaker Change: We are successfully selling and servicing BBSI benefits in every one of our markets.
Speaker Change: We entered into an additional strategic multi-year partnership with a new carrier that set us up for a great 1-1-25 selling season.
Speaker Change: Of the new clients, we are seeing success in white-collar verticals that we previously had a difficult time penetrating.
Speaker Change: Our strategic sales initiatives have been operationalized and are resulting in a greater velocity at the top of the sales funnel, resulting in record WSE ads. We have more referral partners that understand and appreciate our value proposition and are referring more business to BBSI.
Speaker Change: We continue to invest in our asset light model and have successfully expanded into new geographies and continue to gain momentum.
Speaker Change: We continue to invest in myBBSI and in our tech stack which resulted in multiple product releases in 2024
Speaker Change: and we are executing on exciting new product releases in 2025.
Speaker Change: We also made further advancements on our Employer Choice Initiative and earned the Great Place to Work designation for a fourth year in a row.
Speaker Change: Every year we conduct a survey of our clients to evaluate customer needs and satisfaction and I am pleased to report that our net promoter score increased five points to 69.
Speaker Change: This gives us great confidence in the value our clients place on the service and solutions we provide.
Speaker Change: Our clients love what we do and they are ready and willing to spread the word about BBSI.
Speaker Change: This is further illustrated in our record client retention rate for the year.
Speaker Change: 2024 was a great year with great results, and I am proud of what our team has accomplished.
Moving to our financial results and worksite employees.
Speaker Change: During the quarter, our gross billings increased 10% over the prior year quarter, which is greater than we expected.
Speaker Change: We continued to execute various strategies to increase the top of the sales funnel, and we achieved a record number of worksite employees from new client ads during fourth quarter and for the full year.
Speaker Change: Our client retention set a record and exceeded our expectations in both the fourth quarter and the full year. I like to attribute that to the work we do with our clients and the value our teams provide.
Speaker Change: The result of all these efforts, or what I refer to as our controllable growth.
Speaker Change: is that we added approximately 4,000 worksite employees year-over-year from that new clients.
Speaker Change: While our clients' growth remained below our historical averages, our clients' workforce continued to grow modestly in the fourth quarter and was up sequentially and year over year.
We anticipate these hiring trends will continue in 2025.
Speaker Change: To summarize for the quarter, we grew our worksite employees by 5.2% as we sold and retained more business.
and benefited from our client net hiring.
Speaker Change: For the year, our gross billings grew 8%, driven by 4.2% growth in average WSEs.
Moving to our staffing operations.
Speaker Change: Our staffing business declined by 9% over the prior year quarter and 7% for the year.
Speaker Change: Please note the rate of decline in our staffing business has slowed significantly compared to the previous year, and we are forecasting our staffing business to modestly grow in 2025, as our higher value recruitment offering for our PEO clients commands a higher share of the business.
Speaker Change: In fact, we continue to execute our strategy to recruit for our PEO clients and place the 103 applicants in the quarter.
Moving to the field operational updates.
Speaker Change: We are very pleased with our entrance into new markets with our Asset Light model. We have 21 total new market development managers in various stages of their development.
These folks have been gaining traction and consistency.
January was a big month.
Our MDM added over 500 new WSEs.
Speaker Change: In three of the markets we hired additional local talent to support our clients. We anticipate having ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the new brick-and-mortar branches by the end of second quarter.
Speaker Change: We continue to see positive results from our investments in new markets and are actively recruiting additional new market development managers.
regarding product updates.
Speaker Change: We continue to execute on the sale and service of BBSI benefits, our new health insurance offering.
Speaker Change: To recap, we started off the year with 275 clients on our various plans, with more than 6,800 total participants.
Speaker Change: Our plan was to double the book in 12 months, and I am pleased to say that we have exceeded our plan.
Speaker Change: At the end of January, we have approximately 575 clients on our various plans with more than 16,000 total participants.
Speaker Change: As a reminder, we partnered with Kaiser Permanente and added their best-in-class HMO product to our offering mid-year. We saw strong momentum in Q4 that carried into Q1 of this year due to the attractiveness of a national PPO side-by-side with Kaiser HMO in California.
Speaker Change: I'm very pleased with our teams, our progress, and our financial results.
Speaker Change: As we look forward to 2025, this product is now a profit center for us, and we reap the benefit of leverage through scale.
Speaker Change: Our value proposition resonates well and we are having success with small and large clients in white and blue collar industries, in every state we operate, and with a diverse distribution channel.
Speaker Change: Next, I'd like to shift to our 2025 IT product objectives.
Speaker Change: I previously mentioned that we have been investing in our tech stack on the product side to service and support our clients better.
Speaker Change: Over the last couple of years, we've made additional investments in MyBBSI to support our BBSI benefits offering, learning management systems, and to integrate with additional third parties.
Speaker Change: As we evolve and look forward to 2025, we will be making additional investments to round out the employee lifecycle experience.
Speaker Change: We think of the employee life cycle from a client perspective, from when an employee is hired to when the employee retires, and everywhere in between.
Speaker Change: We will be replacing or bolstering attributes of the life cycle with additional product launches throughout the year.
Speaker Change: On Monday, we issued a press release for our first new product launch of the year, BDSI Applicant Tracking System.
Speaker Change: This cutting edge tool allows for our clients to create job postings from our centralized system which integrates with various third party job boards. Clients can manage the interview process in our system and then when employees are hired they integrate seamlessly with our payroll and timekeeping systems.
Speaker Change: This will help our clients with organization and create multiple efficiencies.
Speaker Change: You may ask, why are we doing this now? Simply put, our clients are asking for it.
Speaker Change: With our benefits offering, we are seeing larger clients, and we are also seeing more white-collar businesses.
Speaker Change: This does not replace BBSI Recruiting, which is our product that is utilized by our PEO clients for hard-to-place candidates or clients who don't have much velocity in hiring.
Speaker Change: We are excited about this launch and the future launches as we execute on our Prada roadmap in 2025.
Speaker Change: We are also making investments in systems and AI that will launch in 2025 to better support our employees and create efficiencies that Anthony will discuss in his prepared remarks.
Speaker Change: Next, I would like to shift to my view of 2025.
Speaker Change: We have consistently achieved strong controllable growth by focusing on the needs of our clients and by adding new clients.
Speaker Change: Furthermore, we have also seen improvements in client hiring in 2024, especially in Q4, and we expect these hiring trends to continue in 2025.
Speaker Change: We have been executing on the sale and service of BBSI benefits. This has become one of our core competencies.
Speaker Change: We have IT product enhancements rolling out, more products to sell, more folks selling, and more referral partners recommending BBSI. We will execute on our additional IT initiatives that are going to increase our efficiencies and also increase our financial results.
Speaker Change: We have a culture of taking care of our clients and for executing to a plan, and I live looking forward to 2025.
Anthony Harris: Now I'm going to turn the call over to Anthony for his prepared remarks.
Anthony Harris: Thanks Gary and hello everyone. I'm pleased to report that we've finished the year with strong results and we're off to a strong start in 2025.
Anthony Harris: For the quarter, our gross billings increased 10% to $2.25 billion versus $2.05 billion in Q4 2023, while diluted earnings per share increased 17% to $0.63 compared to $0.54 in the prior year quarter.
Anthony Harris: For the full year, growth billings increased 7.9% to $8.3 billion in 2024 versus $7.7 billion in the prior year, while diluted earnings per share increased 7% to $1.98 compared to $1.85 in the prior year.
Anthony Harris: Looking at the quarterly results more closely, PEO growth billings increased 10% in the quarter, while staffing revenues declined 9% to $20 million.
Anthony Harris: Our PEO worksite employees grew by 5.2% in the quarter, which, as Gary noted, was driven by a record number of WSCs added from new clients in a fourth quarter.
Anthony Harris: This continued a strong trend of controllable growth during the year and was once again combined with positive and improved client hiring in Q4.
Anthony Harris: The pace of client hiring exceeded our expectations in the quarter, but still remains below our long-term historical averages.
Anthony Harris: We continue to see consistency in client hiring across most regions and across industries.
Anthony Harris: Looking at wage rates and hours worked, total hours remained stable in the quarter, while overtime hours increased modestly year over year.
Anthony Harris: Wage rates continue to increase and average billing per WSE increased 3.3% in the quarter.
Anthony Harris: Looking at year-over-year PEO gross buildings growth by region for Q4.
East Coast grew by 21%.
Southern California grew by 11%, Mountain grew by 10%.
Anthony Harris: Northern California grew by 5% and the Pacific Northwest declined by 4%.
Anthony Harris: Southern California represents our largest region and has improved a double-digit growth through a combination of consistent client ads and stable customer hiring.
Anthony Harris: The strong East Coast performance represents the 15th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in that region, also driven by a combination of strong controllable growth and above-average client hiring.
Anthony Harris: The Pacific Northwest region is our smallest region, comprising about 5% of our gross billings.
Anthony Harris: and continue to have the weakest client hiring. However, those trends have begun to stabilize and the region had a successful year-end selling season. As such, we expect the Pacific Northwest region to return to growth in 2025.
Anthony Harris: Turning to margin and profitability, our Workers' Compensation Program continues to perform well and benefit from favorable claim frequency trends and favorable claim development.
Anthony Harris: This strong performance has once again resulted in favorable adjustments for prior year claims.
Anthony Harris: In Q4 2024, we recognized favorable prior year liability and premium adjustments of $2.4 million compared to favorable adjustments of $5.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Anthony Harris: As a reminder, our client workers' compensation exposure is now primarily covered by our fully insured program with no retained claims risk by BBSI.
Anthony Harris: As with past quarters, the cost savings we recognize in workers' compensation expense
Anthony Harris: continued to offset pricing pressure in the workers' compensation insurance market, which continued to move overall rates lower.
Anthony Harris: Moving to SG&A, fourth quarter SG&A expense increased 7% on a year-over-year basis, primarily due to increases in variable employee compensation and incentive pay related to stronger financial results compared to the fourth quarter of 2023.
Anthony Harris: For the full year 2024, SG&A expense increased by approximately 6%.
Anthony Harris: We continue to see efficiencies from our operating investments in 2024 and prior, including investments in technology and new product support. As such, we expect our SG&A growth rate to slow in 2025 compared to 2024.
Anthony Harris: Moving to investment income, our investment portfolios earned $2.5 million in the fourth quarter, down approximately $300,000 from the prior year due to lower average interest rates.
Anthony Harris: Our average investment balance is expected to remain stable in the year ahead, but average book yield will come down with short-term rates decreasing year-over-year, leading to lower investment income in 2025.
Anthony Harris: As a reminder, our investment portfolio continues to be managed conservatively with an average quality of investment at AA.
Anthony Harris: Our balance sheet remains strong with $122 million of unrestricted cash investments set to December 31st and no debt.
Anthony Harris: Our approach to capital allocation remains consistent, and that includes first making investments back into the company where we can.
Anthony Harris: In 2024, these investments included several initiatives that Gary mentioned, including technology investments related to ongoing product development as we continue to invest in and expand our value proposition.
and investments in our sales team.
including our asset light expansion in 2024.
In 2025, we expect to continue these investments.
Anthony Harris: and we'll launch additional systems and initiatives that will make our internal operations more efficient across our team.
including leveraging modern systems, AI tools, and streamlined processes.
Anthony Harris: We are also excited about the launch of additional sales technologies that should further improve our sales velocity, increase our operating efficiency, and help accelerate the success of our new sales team members.
Anthony Harris: After investing in the company, we continue to generate excess cash flow, and we continue to distribute excess capital to our shareholders through our dividend and stock buyback plan.
Anthony Harris: Under our $75 million July 2023 repurchase program, BBSI repurchased $7 million of shares in the fourth quarter at an average price of $43 per share.
Anthony Harris: with $30 million remaining available under the program at quarter end.
Anthony Harris: In total, in 2024, we repurchased over 3% of the company's shares outstanding through purchases of more than $29 million. We also paid over $8 million in dividends for the year, bringing total capital return to shareholders in 2024 to $37 million.
Anthony Harris: Looking ahead to 2025, we expect to continue to generate excess available cash and to continue these capital allocation strategies.
Now turning to our outlook for 2025.
Anthony Harris: We expect growth billings and average WSEs to strengthen from 2024, with 2025 growth billings expected to increase between 7% and 9% and average WSEs to increase between 4% and 6%.
Anthony Harris: However, we expect that to be more than upset by continued growth in our net client ads, a trend that has continued throughout 2024, and from continued but modest improvements in client hiring.
Anthony Harris: There are two variables that I would like to call out.
Anthony Harris: First, client payroll tax rates have increased in 2025, similar to the increases we saw in 2024.
Anthony Harris: These rates are being reflected in our pricing, but may have some lag impacting the shape of our earnings.
Anthony Harris: Second, we expect continued softness in workers' compensation pricing, offset by savings in our workers' compensation costs.
Anthony Harris: And finally, we expect our effective annual tax rate to be between 26 and 27 percent.
Anthony Harris: I will now turn the call back to the operator for questions.
Thank you, sir.
Speaker Change: Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a question and answer session.
Anthony Harris: If you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on the telephone keypad.
Speaker Change: A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue.
Speaker Change: You may press star and 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue.
Speaker Change: For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys.
Speaker Change: Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while we poll for questions.
Speaker Change: And our first question comes from Chris Moore with CJS Securities. Please go ahead.
Chris Moore: Hey, good evening guys. Thanks for taking a couple questions and congrats on another good year and on the NPS score.
It will talk about you know
Chris Moore: Obviously higher wages in a vacuum positive for you guys. What are you hearing from clients in terms of being able to continue to grow in the current environment? You know it sounds like hiring is picking up a little bit but just any further thoughts there?
Chris Moore: recovery in those metrics. So first of all you mentioned you know wage inflation. We've continued to see consistent wage inflation every year and that's a baseline driver of growth for us and we're seeing that rate remain stable. We continue to see on a year-over-year and sequential basis wage inflation remain consistent.
In terms of hiring, we've seen that trend.
Chris Moore: improved during the year, and notably in Q3 and Q4 we also saw overtime hours improve in the year, also indicating kind of increased activity in our clients.
Chris Moore: As I mentioned in my remarks in our outlook, we're cautiously optimistic, we're expecting only modest improvement for the purposes of our outlook, but we see the trends are favorable.
Got it. I appreciate that.
Chris Moore: Average WC growth is targeting around 5% this year. The majority of those come from new clients, correct?
Chris Moore: It's going to be the lion's share of our growth is going to come from our controllable growth which is the
Chris Moore: clients we add and the WCs they have and the clients we retain.
Got it. And maybe...
Chris Moore: One more, on the health care side, can you just maybe talk a little bit about the mechanics of how you get paid on health care, you know, like reseller fees versus admin fee expansion and where that looks to go over time in terms of that split?
Chris Moore: We had a very, I mean, when we were, last quarter when we were given our earnings call and we kind of talked about how we saw.
Chris Moore: 25 shaping up and it was going to be similar to 24. That was before we had a really good close of the year, a really good start of the year. So we closed out the year really strong and we had a great
Chris Moore: January selling season. The best January selling season we've ever had by far. Like 20% more new business than we did in any other January.
Chris Moore: We really finished strong and started strong and because of that we moved up our gross billings estimate by like 200 basis points from what we originally thought if you would ask me a quarter ago.
Chris Moore: A portion of that was allocated to the strength in how we closed with our benefits product.
So we
Chris Moore: We doubled the number that we wanted for 1-1 business, so we crushed our plan for 1-1 and we crushed our plan for the back half of the year.
Chris Moore: So, if you just think of, you know, getting that finishing strong and starting strong, you get the compounding effect of having that.
earned through your financials for the full year.
Chris Moore: So for the earned through the financials for the full year, you know on the health care number one We don't take any health insurance risk, right? We we don't take any risk on the on the workers comp or marginal small risk on the workers comp and no risk on the on the health insurance for the health insurance
Chris Moore: We get a think of it as a seller's fee So we get like a commission from the market for selling the product number one and then number two because we handle the administration the compliance the enrollment the IT and
Chris Moore: we're able to provide good value with that product. We're able to charge a little more for our PEO admin. So we get a little bit from the market and we're able to charge the clients a little more because the value is there.
Got it. And I'm sorry, last one.
on the health care revenue side.
Chris Moore: Is that something that you would eventually break out on the financials to give investors a look a couple of years down the line of what's being generated there?
Chris Moore: kind of income generated from that program is two-fold, right? It's kind of the reseller fees, but it really is packaged together.
Chris Moore: with our overall admin fee that represents the value we're providing to our clients, right? And a big part of that now is health benefits.
Chris Moore: As we think about the profitability of that program, the income is more than just the reseller fee. It's also that admin fee expansion. So we're being thoughtful about how we present that and disclose that, but absolutely we'll continue to expand those disclosures.
I appreciate it. I'll jump back in line.
Thank you.
Hi Kramer, hi Anthony, how are you doing? Good.
Chris Moore: So, Kramer, I wanted to drill down on the tech investments. It sounds like this is in part. I mean, I'm sure this is part of a roadmap that had been planned for quite a while,
Chris Moore: curious if you've enhanced your technology initiatives or your technology product initiatives as a result of starting to attract you know non-traditional clients in the white-collar space and larger clients
Chris Moore: yeah so we you know when you're running a company the biggest decisions you have to make is strategy and allocating capital and if you think of how we've shifted over the years right we've
Chris Moore: We've repositioned the product to sell health insurance to have a learning management system for all these different things and
Chris Moore: And those all have an IT component to them, right? So we have been really investing and bolstering up our IT tech stack for the last three years to support the business.
Chris Moore: and that was really designed for the products that we were trying to launch. Now we're really thinking of using software as a, I don't want to say software as a service, but using software to help support our business.
Chris Moore: and to help support the business. The first one we've launched is the applicant tracking. It's pretty cool because if you're a client and you hire a lot, and it could be anything from a.
Chris Moore: from a franchise to you name it, right? It doesn't need to be just like an office worker. It could be anything in that space that has a lot of volume in the hiring. But the basic idea is.
Chris Moore: You can post it. It posts out the different job boards. People go in and apply. When they apply, they come into our system. When they come into our system, depending upon how the client has it set up, they can ask them questions, do screening, do the interviews in there, push out emails and calendars and all those things.
Chris Moore: Now we want to hire the person, hire the person, boom, we push out, you know, the I-9s, the background checks, the different forms through our system, okay, now they've passed all that, boom, we want to hire them, and then they go right into payroll, into our payroll platform, and into our timekeeping systems, if they buy our timekeeping systems.
Chris Moore: You know, that's the front end, and that's what we talk about on the...
Chris Moore: on the employee life cycle, right? So it's how do you attract clients? How do you bring them in? How do you hire them? That's the first step I would say that we're building out in 25 and we launched it.
Chris Moore: this week and we're going to start selling it in March.
Chris Moore: But the idea is that's the front end, and then throughout the year...
Chris Moore: We're going to have additional products that come out that support that employee, that client-employee life cycle. So you'll see more of this coming out in the back half of the year. We've got a roadmap that's going to be a couple years until we get to, you know, what I would call best in class.
Chris Moore: And on the payroll tax side, you know, I think you were I think rates were
Chris Moore: Due for a catch-up, did the rate come in in line with your expectations? Did it surprise you to the extent that it cost you a little bit of margin relative to your initial budget for the year? Is there an ability to recapture some of that, if that's the case?
with pricing.
Chris Moore: Yeah, Jeff, this is Anthony. You're correct that rates were due for a catch-up to some extent, right? They had been coming down for multiple years in a row. Last year they went up.
Chris Moore: This year they went up as well, but I would say very much in line with expectations, you know we saw that trend coming we see the unemployment activity and
Chris Moore: So we have processes to do that, but as I mentioned, there is some lag in that at the end of the day that will be captured. But there may be some change in the shape of our earnings, a little bit more of a loss in Q1. You know, we saw that trend last year as well.
Chris Moore: But overall, especially over a rolling 12 months, we're not expecting margin degradation.
Speaker Change: Okay, great. And then one more, if I could, a two-part question.
One, uh, any, any...
Speaker Change: signs of a turnaround in the pricing side of the workers comp market? And then secondly, what is your exposure to businesses that have been affected by the California wildfires?
Thank you.
Speaker Change: kind of the joke of being in the organization is I've been trying to call the bottom for workers' comp for six years and I've been calling it wrong.
You're seeing a deceleration in rate decreases now.
Speaker Change: It hasn't flattened. It's still trending downward, but at a much smaller rate, so I would think I would think workers comp is going to
Speaker Change: decelerates slower from here and we're seeing that in the market but it's still there's still pressure if it's a good account it attracts a lot of buyers and when there's a lot of buyers
Speaker Change: It drives down the price, if that makes sense. So, we don't see the bottom yet. We're hopeful that we're going to see the bottom soon, but, you know, ultimately it's...
Speaker Change: It's the market doing what the market does, and I think it's going to turn sooner than later, but I can't pinpoint when it's going to turn.
Speaker Change: For the California wildfires, directly, for us, I'd say for our employees, there was minimal employees that were affected. There was minimal branches that were affected.
Speaker Change: We did have to evacuate a couple times, but no, there was no loss of property on our branch side. When we think of our clients...
Speaker Change: You know, the Palisades and Malibu per se are not big.
Speaker Change: grounds for our clients. So we had minimal client effects. I think we had one client who had his facility burned down, but out of, you know, call it 8,500 clients, having one that was affected by it, we'd call it, you know, almost, you know, nothing.
The real question that we think is...
Speaker Change: Unfortunately, when there's a tragedy the way it was, it's got to get rebuilt, and when it gets rebuilt...
Speaker Change: We think of our clients being prone in position to capitalize on the, you know, especially in our blue, our blue-gray collar.
to capitalize on the rebuild.
Speaker Change: You know, so we think a lot of our clients will get business.
Speaker Change: from the rebuild. We've seen it with our restoration companies already.
Speaker Change: Think of the restoration types of companies that go in and do the rehab for the water damages and the fire damages, we've seen them boom already.
Speaker Change: What we haven't seen yet is the construction uptick, but ultimately that will follow. I don't know if that's going to be a 25 event, or if that's going to be 26 by the time all the permitting and everything shakes out, but we definitely think that that...
Speaker Change: that business specifically is going to have a tailwind in California for us.
Great, appreciate the thoughts.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Ladies and gentlemen, a reminder to all participants, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on the telephone keypad.
Speaker Change: Our next question comes from the line of Mark Riddick with Sidoti & Co. LLC. Please go ahead.
Hey, good evening.
Kramer. Hello.
Speaker Change: I wanted to follow up on your comment on the strong finish to the year and strong beginning to the year. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about maybe if you're seeing any particular client industry verticals that are kind of leading the way. You touched a little bit on construction, but are there any sort of call-outs that you're seeing that might be leading the way in that activity?
You know, Mark, I would say.
Speaker Change: It's not so much related to anyone's geography or anyone's industry. I would say broad-based. The company just did well in Q4 and the company did well in January.
Speaker Change: The one call-out I did give in my script was our asset light, our market development managers. They added over 500 WSEs in January, which is a really good accomplishment for them. We're starting to see
Speaker Change: consistency out of that group and I'm looking forward to watching that grow.
Speaker Change: Great, and then I was wondering if you could maybe sort of discuss with benefits the
Speaker Change: I know it's sort of, you know, early into a new year or what have you, but maybe can you sort of talk about where, where you are currently from a, from a
From a competitive
Speaker Change: positioning standpoint, maybe some of the call outs that give you confidence in the strength of the of the ads that you've seen to date, and I appreciate the detail and update on that data, but maybe some of the things that you think sort of are helping you sort of stand out in that area, particularly with the pickup on the white collar side that you alluded to earlier in your prepared remarks.
Speaker Change: You know if you just kind of take a step back and look at our value prop right we're gonna we've got more products now with benefits and with other things in IT we're going to have more IT products coming out.
Speaker Change: but they will never replace our core product which is our people.
Speaker Change: right so people are a product they will always be our product that's our differentiator in the local market
Speaker Change: So, if I can have a local team that is second to none, and then I've got all of these additional products, and if those products are, you know, even if they were equal to the different marketplace, if you can be equal to the marketplace plus have that killer team there.
Speaker Change: It's going to be hard to beat us, right? If the price is the same and you get our teams, it's going to be hard to not go BBSI. And that's why we're seeing the uptick in sales.
Speaker Change: Great, and congratulations again on the net promoter progress that you made there as well. That's certainly a positive as well. Thanks.
Speaker Change: Thank you. At this time, this concludes the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Kramer for closing remarks.
Speaker Change: I just want to thank everybody for dialing in. Thanks everybody, all of our BBSI professionals for a great Q4 and really for a great start of the year. I'm looking forward to 25. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.