Korn Ferry achieves 5% revenue growth in Q1 FY26, fueled by integrated solutions and strong client demand amid economic uncertainty.

OPERATOR - (00:01:45)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Korn Ferry first quarter fiscal year 2026 conference call. @ this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Following their prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. We have also made available in the Investor Relations section of our website@kornferry.com a copy of the financial presentation that we will be reviewing with you today. Before I turn the call over to your host, Mr. Gary Burnason, let me first read a cautionary statement to investors. Certain statements made in the call today, such as those relating to future performance plans and goals, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although the company believes the expectations reflected in such forward looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements. Actual results in future periods may differ materially from those currently expected or desired because of a number of risks and uncertainties which are beyond the Company's control. Additional information concerning such risks and uncertainties can be found in the release relating to this presentation and in the periodic and other reports filed by the company with the SEC, including the company's annual report for fiscal year 2025 and in the Company's soon to be filed quarterly report for the quarter ended July 31, 2025. Also, some of the comments today may reference non GAAP financial measures such as constant currency amounts, EBITDA and adjusted ebitda. Additional information concerning these measures, including reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, is contained in the financial presentation and earnings release relating to this call, both of which are posted in the Investor Relations section of the company's website@kornferry.com. with that, I'll turn the call over to Mr. Burnison. Please. Go ahead, Mr. Burnison.

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:03:49)

Okay, thank you, Regina. And thanks to everybody for for joining us. I'm really, really pleased with our performance in the quarter. The team's going to get into the results in a little bit. But when I look at the results, even over the past few quarters, with all the choppiness, the uncertainty around tariffs, the labor and economic environment, it's clear that our strategy is working. In fact, when you consider our diversification strategy, and the current and future demographic trends alone, the opportunity is immense. And I think that's evidenced this quarter by the growth in all of our solutions. And today we're driving performance with a far more sophisticated holistic approach. That delivers our expertise and robust IP through integrated solutions in every region of the world. In the quarter we won a number of notable engagements. I'll highlight a couple a top pharma company with over 20,000 employees where we're building a globally aligned leadership team, helping them foster a culture of innovation and streamline talent development across regions it's part of a multi year engagement or an FTSE 100 retailer where we're now the exclusive assessment provider across all levels of the organization using our consulting led assessments and our digital at scale solutions with the ambition to deliver our capabilities from the shop floor to the boardroom. And finally a top provider of HR management software where we're going to deliver a subscription based digital solution, a global leadership offering that includes content, instructor led materials, micro learning and more and that complements a consulting engagement that includes leadership assessments and coaching. And these are just three examples of how we're integrating multiple solutions to create enduring client partnerships. We also continue to make measured capital investments that extend our offerings and solutions and expand our impact with clients. And a case in point is Talent Suite which offers seamless integration of proprietary IP and data and talent applications into one digital SaaS platform which enables our clients to make better hiring decisions, structure their organizations, assess, develop and reward their talent. In other words, Talent Suite enables clients to unlock human and organizational potential at scale. Our evolution towards large scale multi solution cloud client engagements is real as we change the fundamental composition and scale of our business. And when I just look at the tail of the tape today we have loyal, repeatable clients of scale marquee and diamond accounts generating almost 40% of our revenue. A 10 year revenue CAGR of 10% driven by an expanding set of diversified solutions. We have strong top line synergies with 25% of revenue generated from cross solution referrals. Clearly this diversification is driving resilience and durability in our business and contributing to sustained shareholder value. And that's evidenced through our balanced capital allocation Strategy which includes 6 dividend increases in the last 5 years and a demonstrated track record of M and A and share repurchases. I'm optimistic, truly optimistic about the trajectory of this firm and more importantly the impact we're making. We have a strong foundation with incredible brand permission that is fostering deep client relationships. We have relevant, diverse, scaled and increasingly more integrated solutions that are even more closely aligned with the talent needs of our clients and through our disciplined approach I'm confident we are poised and well positioned for the future. With that Regina, I'll now turn it over to Bob. Bob, it's all yours.

Bob - (00:08:56)

Great. Thanks Gary, and good morning. Good afternoon. Depending on where you're at, the global business environment over the last quarter remained extremely uncertain with many lingering economic challenges keeping investment spending cautious. Unresolved tariff issues added to ongoing geopolitical tensions, readings on inflation caused uncertainties as to whether interest rates would remain higher for longer. And despite the impact of these uncertainties on business sentiment, our clients continue to see the impact and value of our services and solutions. Our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 26 remain strong, providing further proof that our integrated business strategy which is really diversified across industries, geographies and solutions is working. In fact, the current economic environment has created opportunity for Korn Ferry to really strengthen our client relationships and continue becoming a trusted global partner of choice, helping our clients solve complex talent and organizational performance challenges. And today we're helping our clients resolve these challenges with both our skilled workforce and our proprietary data and IP which is really a product of decades of behavioral science research. Additionally, we focus our efforts to sell larger, more integrated solutions via our 'We are Korn Ferry' go-to-market strategy. We're paving the way for stronger, more durable long term growth. I'm also pleased to share that we remain on track for the market launch of our new Talent Suite platform that Gary referenced this November. Talent Suite will enable our consultants and clients to more easily derive and prioritize insights across our multiple talent products using client data, our own proprietary data and select third party data to help them make better, more insightful talent decisions. Now, in addition to the detailed results found in our posted earnings presentation, I just want to go over a couple of company wide solution specific highlights for the first quarter. As Gary mentioned, the Marquee and Diamond accounts remain strong at almost 40% of our consolidated fee revenue and that program delivered a little better than 7% fee revenue growth when you look at it year over year. Our cross solution referrals also remain strong at 25% of our consolidated fee revenue. Executive search fee revenue also remains strong, growing 8% in the quarter and that's our fifth consecutive quarter of year over year growth in that solution area. Professional search and interim fee revenue was up 10% year over year with growth in both professional services per employment plus 5% and interim was up 14%. Our digital subscription and license new business grew 10% year over year in the first quarter and with 39% of total digital new business and that's going to continue to add stability predictability to our overall revenue base. And last, our average bill rates in consulting and Interim, both grew year over year, consulting by 9% and interim by 4%. Now turning to company overall results, our Consolidated fee revenue grew 5% year over year to $709 million, which is a second consecutive quarter of positive growth. Earnings and profitability also continued to grow. Adjusted EBITDA grew 9 million or 8% year over year to $120 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin grew 50 basis points year over year to 17% and our adjusted diluted earnings per share grew $0.13 or 11% year over year to $1.31. Total company new business excluding RPO grew 5% year over year, led by strength in EMEA and APAC. Our RPO delivered $99 million of new business in the quarter, 46% of that came from new logos, 54% from renewals, and the renewals included one large financial institution at $32 million. Estimated remaining fees under existing contracts also remained strong in the first quarter. Now, as a reminder, this operating metric that we introduced last quarter is the quarter ending estimated fees under existing contracts to be recognized in future periods. At the end of the first quarter, this amounted to 1.67 billion, which was up 9% year over year. Of this amount, we expect approximately 58% or 972 million will be recognized as fees within the next year and 42% or 702 million to be recognized thereafter. Now turning to our regional results, fee revenue in The Americas was down 2% year over year, with growth in Executive Search and RPO being offset by slightly lower demand in consulting, digital and professional search and interim EMEA. Fee revenue was strong, growing 19% year over year, and we saw growth in all Solutions. APAC fee revenue was also strong, growing 12% year over year also with growth in all Solutions. And finally, our capital allocation in the first quarter remained balanced as we returned $36 million to shareholders through combined share repurchases and dividends, and we invested $22 million in capital expenditures focused on Talent Suite, our new technology platform, as well as productivity tools and other product enhancements. Now turning to our outlook for the second quarter of fiscal 26, assuming no further changes in worldwide geopolitical conditions, economic conditions, financial markets and foreign exchange rates. We expect fee revenue in the second quarter of fiscal 26 to range from 690 million to $710 million, our adjusted EBITDA margin to range from approximately 17 to 17.5%, and our consolidated adjusted diluted earnings per share to range from $1.23 to $1.33 finally, we expect our GAAP diluted earnings per share (EPS) in the second quarter to range from $1.10 to $1.16. Now I'd like to note that our GAAP diluted earnings per share (EPS) includes approximately $10 million or $0.14 per share of accelerated depreciation. And that's related to our current product technology platform, which will be sunsetted as the Talent Suite is commercially launched at the beginning of the third quarter in November. We remain committed to controlling what we can control, leaning into identified growth opportunities and driving operational excellence. We will continue to promote a culture of innovation and remain focused on delivering outstanding client service. Korn Ferry is a global consulting firm that powers client performance. We're focused on improving our go to market efforts, engaging with our clients. As one firm we are Korn Ferry. We are well positioned for the next step in our growth and I'm more confident and excited than I've ever been about what this company can become. With that we would be glad to answer any questions you may have.

OPERATOR - (00:16:43)

We will now begin the question and answer session. In order to ask a question, press Star then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press Star one a second time. Our first question will come from the line of Trevor Romeo with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Trevor Romeo - Analyst - (00:17:00)

Hi, thanks so much for taking the questions. Just maybe had a couple on your digital business to start. You know the Talent Suite rollout coming up in November, as you are getting ready for that commercial launch, I guess what are some of the key milestones you'll be tracking there and how should we be thinking about maybe the timeline for the benefits there to start flowing through the financials?

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:17:23)

Well, I think the benefits will take some time. I think it'll be towards the end of calendar 26 realistically when we start to see the true benefits of it. Some of the milestones that we are working on include the partnerships that we have and further accelerating the go-to-market strategy around those partnerships. That's very important, particularly with the three or four large HCM players. That's certainly one thing we're working on. The second is enabling our colleagues and training our colleagues. We have a robust schedule in front of us to train all of our 1800 frontline consultants on awareness and provocation and selling of the Talent Suite. That's going to be happening over the next six months starting in October. And we also have a targeted strategy with milestones there around our marquee and diamond accounts. So it's really kind of a balanced approach here, a multi prong Approach outside with partners with our marquee and diamond accounts, top down, bottom up with many of our clients. Then there's an internal mobility strategy as well.

Trevor Romeo - Analyst - (00:19:08)

Thanks, Gary. Maybe just one quick follow up on digital, the subscription and license piece of the segment going above, I think 40% of segment revenue. Now, could you maybe just remind us what is your kind of long term aspirational target for how big those subscriptions could grow as a percentage of that segment?

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:19:26)

Well, we'd like to see it be north of say 60%, but that's certainly not in the next several months. But I just think there's this opportunity to impact a lot of people's lives and the destination of organizations through our ip. And we just have to figure out the best way to drive scale. And I think the best way to drive scale in that business is through our partnerships that we have. And that's something that we're going to pursue very aggressively.

Bob - (00:20:06)

Trevor, this is Bob, one thing I would add to that. As you think about Talent Suite, obviously selling subscriptions and licenses is important for us, but it is also think about it as an enabler of the delivery of our other services and solutions. So whether it's talent acquisition, it's consulting, other areas in your organization are going to really benefit from having all of the assets, IP data, content, what we call foundational assets at the center of the organization. And they're going to be able to much easier gain, much easier access utilization of those. And then we have a reporting analytics layer and then when you layer on AI and gen AI in terms of being able to access slice and dice data much faster, easier, quicker, you have to think about it more broadly than just selling subscriptions and licenses.

Trevor Romeo - Analyst - (00:21:04)

Great, thank you. And then maybe one more if you don't mind. Maybe for you, Bob, just on the guidance, I think typically Q2 is a little bit of a stronger seasonal revenue quarter for you. So I guess the guidance might indicate a slight dip at the midpoint sequentially for revenue. Can we just maybe reconcile that? Should we read that as a little bit of conservatism or any reasons across the businesses that would make you think you wouldn't see a little bit of an uptick?

Bob - (00:21:32)

I would say, Trevor, just given the, you know, the uncertainties in the backdrop out there were probably a little bit on the conservative side.

Trevor Romeo - Analyst - (00:21:42)

Okay, understood. Well, thanks very much. I really appreciate it.

OPERATOR - (00:21:48)

Our next question will come from the line of Toby Sommer with Truist. Please go ahead.

Toby Sommer - Analyst - (00:21:54)

Thank you. Wanted to ask what you're hearing from clients. You mentioned in your, that uncertainty out in the economy prompted some conservatism in guidance. We see the BLS revision lower here this morning for job creation over the last year. Maybe rates starting to come down here at the Fed sometime soon. What are customers telling you? Well, it depends where you are in the world. Look, everybody's got to play on the pitch. Everybody's dealing with the same economic and labor environment. You know, I spent, you know, the last several months with clients and colleagues in Europe in many different countries, and I think broadly speaking, there's a great deal of optimism in the Americas. I think people are dealing with the lack of pricing power and the fact that, you know, costs have escalated 50% over the last five and a half to six years. And you know, look, the, I'm not surprised at all by the downward revision in those BLS numbers. I mean, that's not shocking. There's been a labor recession for two years and so companies are, they're not doing massive downsizing, but they're letting natural attrition take its course and they're not replacing those hires. And then the other big theme, not only in Europe, but in America and Asia is, you know, what does AI do long term in terms of how does an organization get work done and with how many people? We've seen a really good rebound in Asia. You see it in the numbers. Both Europe and Asia really performed well. It was fairly broad based in both regions. Life sciences clients are, you know, that's a tougher, tougher deal. As well as healthcare, we've seen a lot of great activity in industrial, which is 30% of the company. Private equity has been a source of significant strength because they have thousands of companies that are past their sell by date and because of that, they're actually having to go in and think about how you really operate the company beyond just cutting costs and increasing ebitda. So those would be the major themes that I've heard from clients directly. Just sort of a specific question on consulting, if I could, with respect to your merger and divestiture kind of services in playbook, what are you seeing there? Because we've seen sort of a uptick in at least announced deals and many of them seem to be sort of. Corporate breakups.

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:25:22)

And wondering if you're participating in that from a consulting perspective. There are actually a couple that we are participating in. I can't talk about it, but there are a couple. But I think the bigger, the bigger activity has actually been on the private equity side. And I think that's a Direct result of firms hanging onto portfolio companies longer and the work that has to be done beyond three, four, five years. Appreciate that. Last question for me is if we do see an appreciable uptick in demand across the businesses and get a little bit faster revenue growth for the firm.

Toby Sommer - Analyst - (00:26:08)

Do you have. Some excess capacity now sort of in the businesses to be able to meet that, or might you need to step on the gas with hiring and have sort of flat to downish margins for a quarter or two while you ramp things up? No, we're continually managing that talent. And I do think that there is is capacity. And I think the big question, you know, what do you have to believe for this economic environment that we've seen now for a couple of years to actually turn, there's got to be some significant rate cuts. The Fed has been slow. It was never transitory. Several years ago, anybody with any common sense could have said that. And you know, that's what you have to see to get this thing going.

Bob - (00:27:10)

Toby, it's Bob. The other thing I would add to that too is we've got ourselves more formally organized around AI Genai and we're driving that into the organization. So from a capacity perspective, I would expect that to help us get through any groundswell that comes out of a more rapid rebound.

Toby Sommer - Analyst - (00:27:31)

Rebound. Thank you very much.

OPERATOR - (00:27:36)

Our next question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Samy - (00:27:42)

Hi, this is Samy on for George. Could you talk about how consulting new business performed in the quarter? What is your outlook for consulting for the remainder of the year? Any and the key drivers behind your expectations?

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:27:57)

Well, I think it's going to depend regionally too. I'm not looking, you know, I just don't think the economic environment particularly is going to change dramatically unless we see the Fed take action. And you know, I think it's been a very, very difficult consulting market for eight quarters now. And you know, when you look at the overall firm results quarter on quarter on quarter in what I would characterize as a labor recession, it is incredibly, incredibly impressive. And so I would assume that in Europe and Asia we're going to see continued momentum with our consulting solutions. And in the Americas, I think it's going to be a bit more challenging given the backdrop of what we're dealing with. And then the other, you know, the other move that we're making now, and this is not new, but you know, many, many years ago we said, look, we've got to get into bigger, larger scale, as in, as Bob said, you know, more Integrated solutions, you know, delivering impact to our clients. And so we purposely made an effort towards bigger, more transformational assignments. And it shows in the numbers. This isn't just rhetoric. When you look at the average, look at rate per hour as an example, that has gone from. It's gone up 50% from $300 an hour just a few years ago to now almost $500 an hour, $470 an hour. When you look at the backlog, the backlog is actually increasing. In consulting, 42% of that backlog is engagements over a million dollars. And when you look at the new wins, those are also a good part of them. Not the majority, but a good part are over a million dollars. So what's happening is we're moving the entire organization towards more integrated solutions. The numbers reflect that, and with that then becomes a slower consumption by clients of the backlog. And so, you know, when we look at new business, it was your specific question in consulting in the quarter. You know, it was decent. I mean, it was definitely, you know, on the plus side. But I, you know, I tend to look at the firm as a whole and you know, what we're doing there. And I just think you look quarter on quarter in an environment that's been very different, difficult. And looking at the company's profitability, it's impressive.

Samy - (00:31:11)

Got it. And on digital, the number of consultants was down significantly this quarter. Could you talk about what drove the decision to reduce digital health count, especially given you have the launch of Talent Suite coming up and is the headcount now fully aligned with the current demand or could we see further right sizing?

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:31:30)

Well, we are always managing the workforce, and so we've done it over the last two to three years. If you look at professional search and interim, for example, you'll find there that we've made significant changes in that workforce and reposition that workforce. And we've done the same thing in digital. So, you know, for us, it's again, it's around the firm and it's not around these segments. It's around enabling the entire firm to be able to deliver the platform. And that platform is at its very, very foundation. How do you unlock human and organizational performance? How do you design an organization? How do you assess what type of leaders do you need? How do you develop them, how do you pay them? That's what it's about. So it's not strictly around the 236 digital sellers that we have. It's around the entire firm and the 1800 frontline consultants that we have. And their ability to deliver the entire firm. That's helpful.

Samy - (00:32:57)

Thank you for taking my questions.

OPERATOR - (00:33:00)

Our next question comes from the line of Josh Chan with ubs. Please go ahead.

Josh Chan - Analyst - (00:33:05)

Hi Gary and Bob, thanks for taking my questions. If I look at the. Hi. If I look at the geography, the North American part of the business, you know, most parts of the business is down somewhat, which jives with the macro. But exact search is still up in North America. So what's going on in exact search that's, you know, allowing that part of your business to really seemingly outperform the environment?

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:33:31)

Yeah, it's, you know, it's a combination of factors. It's the phenomenon where I've talked about this for a good 6/4, 7/4, it's peak 65. So there's the demographic shifts and trends that I referred to in my opening comments. So you've got that playing out. You've got the fact that many of the executives in the C suite were probably in the C suite during COVID And so you had a period of going from light to darkness to light and all the things in between around that time. Then the subsequent pent up demand and great resignation. And so you've got people that are making the decision for themselves around work life balance. Then you have boards looking at the C suite and saying is the leadership team that I need over the next five years, what are their skills that will be needed versus the past five years? So it's really those combination of factors that I believe are driving the executive search business.

Josh Chan - Analyst - (00:35:04)

Great, thanks for the color there, Gary. And I think you guys also mentioned that, you know, in a choppy environment that could provide some opportunity for you to strengthen your position. I'm sure you love a stronger environment environment, but curious how you can still win business in a, in a weaker environment and what kind of opportunities those might be.

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:35:24)

Yeah, this is the best environment. I mean, it's where I'm most motivated. You know, this is, this is where good companies, you know, become great companies. It's only in these type of environments because people don't change unless there's a reason to change. And I think the environment gives us that, that reason to change. So I look at it and it's not a question of just dealing with ambiguity, but it's embracing ambiguity. And I love the environment and it does present opportunities for us and it presents an opportunity even internally around how we think about ourselves. And do we think about ourselves as business segments or do you think about yourself as Korn Ferry? And the truth is that we don't have five businesses. We have one business, which is Korn Ferry. We have five solutions, but we have one business. And so the ability to change mindset in an environment like this, you have to take advantage of it. And that's what, you know, that's what we're doing and that's what we plan to do over the next several months, is to continue to change mindset, particularly around how we go to market.

Bob - (00:37:02)

One of the things that I talked about quite a bit with investors is when the world is somewhat chaotic, it's actually, as Gary mentioned, a good thing for us. Think about when Covid hit, everybody went home, work got done differently, different work had to get done and organizations turn to us to help figure that out. Right now there's a lot of uncertainty out there. AI gen AI's out there. How do I change? You know, how does that impact my workforce? Does it change my job profiles? Do people have the right skills? Do I need different people? So when there's chaos out in the world and organizations are trying to figure their way through it, they turn to us to help them do that. And so for Gary indicated, it's actually a good thing for us.

Josh Chan - Analyst - (00:37:49)

That's an interesting perspective. Yeah. Thanks both for your color and design.

OPERATOR - (00:37:56)

Our next question will come from the line of Mark Marcone with Baird. Please go ahead.

Mark Marcone - Analyst - (00:38:02)

Hey, good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. Discussion. You talked a lot about, you know, some of the bigger deals you've been signing. You specifically noted one with a big HCM company. I'm wondering if you can elaborate in terms of what you're going to do for them.

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:38:26)

I'm not going to get into. It's really a, a transformational program centered around leadership development. And you know, so it's a, it's a big learning engagement where that particular client is not only licensing our IP around developing and transforming a workforce, but it also includes consulting with assessments and coaching. So it's really around kind of transforming a workforce and transforming not just skill set but mindset. And it's using both our IP and consulting.

Mark Marcone - Analyst - (00:39:35)

That's really interesting. How big of a program could something like that be?

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:39:41)

You know, these are typically multi year and several million dollars. I'm not saying that this particular one is that, but that's generally what these look like. And part of it then is it gets consumed by the clients. Not the digital piece, but the consulting wraparound on these leadership development programs. They have to consume it, they have to pull it down off the shelf. And that's why you know, I can think of one that is huge. You know, it was an eight digit sale to a massive, massive organization. And we are now, we just completed year three and we've touched about 40% of that organization. And so, you know, the consumption of all of those services, not the IP obviously, but the consumption of the services is really dependent on the client's speed, not on us. And that's one reason why you see the backlog, for example, in consulting increasing is because of that phenomenon, moving to multi year, multimillion dollar engagements.

Mark Marcone - Analyst - (00:41:17)

That's great, Barry. You know, we have been in a labor recession. You guys have held up the best of arguably the major players that are out there that most investors look at. You've been getting more and more into professional search and interim. You've made a number of acquisitions there. I'm wondering, you know, as the environment remains relatively uncertain, you know, what's your posture there? What have you learned from the acquisitions that you've made in terms of, you know, what are the types of acquisitions, the best spaces where you guys actually fit and how many more opportunities are there in terms of bolstering the areas where you really do fit?

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:42:10)

I think the pro search, let me bifurcate that. The pro Search market, as you said, is enormous today. Most of that business that we have, most of that solution is in the. US. What we've learned is the contingent part of that market opportunity does not. Work for us for the most part. So the learning there is. We love the market, we want to go into it, but we also want to be eyes wide open. We don't want to be in contingent recruiting. It doesn't fit well with the brand and the marquee and diamond account strategy. And there is a still a big opportunity outside the US where we're under penetrated there. And we have to be very cognizant both in pro surg and interim as to what technology is going to do to a company's labor force over the next five or ten years. So we have to be very, very targeted there and very smart. On the interim side, what we've learned is that it is number one, why did we get into it? We got into it because we see a Megatrend that's playing out that we continue to think is going to play out even with AI with fractional workers. And so we think that Megatrend is something that we should invest into. What we've learned there is that it is very synergistic with our brand and similar to Pro Search, the opportunity is quite significant outside of the United States. And in fact, when you look at both pro search and interim, you would find that 70% or so of our solution today is in the United States and there's an enormous market opportunity. I think you would see us on the acquisition side more oriented towards interim than pro search. Because on the pro search side there are a number of transactions we could do today, but those transactions would come with a large pro search contingent piece which we don't think is commensurate with our brand.

Bob - (00:45:29)

Maybe a little bit more color. A couple things that for me that have been learning. Kerry mentioned the synergistic and the ability to sell across the organization within the interim business itself. Since we started down that path, We've created over 1200 incremental opportunities by referring work across the system that never would have existed in those organizations had they stayed independent. And the other thing is I talk to people in the field that I find very interesting is a lot of our clients are asking us, you know, you do my perm hiring now, why wouldn't you help us with the, with the interim or temporary labor force as well? So I think there's, you know, the market's huge, as Gary indicated, and there's great demand amongst our client base and it is extremely synergistic as you bring it into this organization.

Mark Marcone - Analyst - (00:46:27)

That's terrific. Thanks, Bob. And then can I just ask about AI? The twofold question. One is, you know, clearly there's been a labor recession for anybody who's been following the labor market for some time. And the question revolves around, like, even if, you know, we do see some, you know, the Fed acting a little bit more actively. Gary, what do you think about this? The chance of uncertainty around AI kind of freezing, you know, certain employers and in some cases, you know, we are actually seeing some, you know, situations where labor demand is being reduced by AI. So just wondering what you're seeing on the client front. And then secondly, you're injecting AI to your processes. I'm wondering if you can be a little bit more specific in terms of, you know, specific areas that you're injecting AI. How much are you spending there and do you expect it to be an efficiency driver and what's that impact going. To be in terms of your own headcount?

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:47:40)

I'll let. Bob. Bob, you can address the second part. I guess I would. None of us have a crystal ball. I would say when you look at the Take the America, there's no question that lower birth rates over the last 30 years are going to result in significantly less people coming into the labor force over the next many years. And so therefore, if a country wants to grow productivity like America has done at 2% a year, how does that supply and demand imbalance get corrected? Well, it gets corrected through technology. So I think there will be, whether in whatever format is eugenic AI, whatever, whatever it is, I think there will be a massive sucking sound and it'll be this huge pull that technology will have to bridge that, you know, less people into the American workforce. So I think that's, that's undeniable. That's mathematics, that's data. And in this environment that companies have been dealing with now for a couple years, the reality, you know, people can talk about inflation at 2%, at 2.5 or 3%, that is like such, you know, belly glazing. The fact is costs are up 40 to 50% and that's a direct result of COVID So in this environment, companies are having to look at ways to deliver impact to their customers more efficiently. And that has played out in the labor force over the last eight quarters by letting, for the most part, letting attrition take its course and not being so hell bent on replacing those people that leave. There's no doubt that when you look at what you can do today with AI, that any CEO would be absolutely looking at their organization saying, what does this mean for my workforce strategy? And it invariably has to mean that I'm probably going to have less employees. I don't see how one would come to a different conclusion than that. And so for us, we are broadly, there's inside out and outside in. Inside out. We're doing the things that you would expect around our own workforce and how. We. Mobilize that workforce with AI. Then there's the outside in with our delivery of services and not only the consulting engagements such as we have today around going into an organization and saying are they AI ready? Which we have many, many of those engagements. We're actually using again our IP to assess and benchmark a company's quote, AI readiness, but we're also using it relative to our assessment and coaching engagement. So, Bob, maybe you could take the second part of Mark's question.

Bob - (00:51:56)

Sure. So Mark, we actually are making investments into this area that are fairly substantial and we haven't gone out and hired a bunch of people. What we've done is we've taken approximately 40 individuals who had been within each of our solution areas working on various aspects of AI Genais, and we've organized them under a central Leader fellow named Brian Ackerman. And Brian is driving the AI gen AI usage in the firm. So we've taken those roughly 40 people, centralized them. We now have rolled out licenses. Depending on your skill level or what your job role is and so on, the licenses may have some might be more have more efficacy than than others. And we're going through right now and figuring out the impact that the AI gen AI is going to have on our work. I guess where we are today. If you think about AI and gen AI it's to me it's our mantra is human plus AI so it's really looking at those as efficiency tools. I think where it potentially gets more interesting is with the use of agents ultimately as they will be integrated into workflows, work process. And so the impact of that is obviously something that we're going to, you know, we'll figure out. But that's down the road. I would say that as I look at our workforce, you know, Gary mentioned a couple times on the call our backlog. Right. So to me it's not just about how do I look at AI and gen AI as a way to get our head count down, but it's also a way is how do I take out some of the menial tasks that folks are doing today. And I could take that freed up capacity and use that to deliver the backlog that we have. So in my mind it's sort of a combination of yeah. Will it have impact on our overall headcount? Absolutely. But it's also going to give us the ability to free up capacity to provide and deliver services to our clients on a more rapid basis.

Mark Marcone - Analyst - (00:54:08)

Thank you very much. That was terrific.

OPERATOR - (00:54:13)

And it appears that there are no further questions. Mr. Bernison.

Gary Burnison - CEO - (00:54:17)

Okay, Regina, thank you for hosting us and we certainly appreciate you listening to our story and we look forward to talking to you here over the next few days and over the next quarter. Thanks a lot.

OPERATOR - (00:54:36)

Ladies and gentlemen, this conference call will be available for replay for one week, starting running through the day September 16, 2025, ending at midnight. You may access the replay service by dialing 800-770-2030 and entering the access code 592-7661 followed by the pound key. Additionally, the replay will be available for playback at the company's website, www.kornferry.com in the investor relations section. This concludes our call today. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.