Conference Transcript - BGSF 2026-06-11

Sandy Martin, Analyst — Moderator, Three-Part Advisors

Hi, everyone. I'm Sandy Martin with Three-Part Advisors. Welcome to the Ideas Conference. Next up, we've got BG Staffing, traded on the NYC, ticker BGSF. And this is a really neat transformational story, kind of a combination of staffing, people, and technology. So I'm excited for the team to share it with you. Today, we've got Keith Schrader, co-CEO and CFO, and kelly brown co-ceo and president of bgsf staffing i'll hand it over to the team

Kelly Brown, CEO

thank you sandy hi everybody all right well as sandy said bg staffing has been through a bit of a journey and over the last 20 years we've really built up what we now have as a national provider of staffing services to the property management space so that is primarily in the multifamily space. We do also service the commercial real estate space. So when you think about all of the operators of communities across the country, that is our target candidate base and our target client base. So we will dive in here, of course. Standard Safe Harbor slide there for you. I'll go ahead and advance in, and we're going to get into just a company snapshot. So whenever you think about our presence nationwide, that includes servicing over 9,000 customers over the course of the year. And when you think about a customer, you think about a property. That could be an apartment community. That could be an office building. But that is whenever we think about a customer, that is the site that we place our people at. The management companies oftentimes work for an ownership group. So it could be a third-party management company, or it could be an owner group that also manages their own portfolios, all of which are our customers. So as you can see, 60 markets across the U.S., when we talk about a market, we talk about a geographic location where we have a candidate base that we've built by recruiting a candidate pool of the maintenance personnel, the office personnel, again, anything that it would take to operate a residential or a commercial community. 25 you see 93 million in revenue 2.2 million in EBITDA I do want to give a bit of a disclaimer that that was EBITDA for both continuing and discontinued operations we divested our professional services division in the fall of 25 and so we are now a standalone property management staffing focused company we've received some pretty significant recognition in building over the last 20 years this presence across the country, there are a couple of accolades that we want to mention. In 2023, the National Apartment Association, folks refer to it as NAA, that is the largest organization that provides education and networking across the U.S. for apartment management companies as well as the employees of those companies. So we were recognized as the supplier company of the year, being a supplier to property management firms. That was pretty significant recognition. from NAA. This year we also have two individuals that are finalists. We'll actually find out just next week if they're winners or not of these respective areas. DEI champion of the year as well as supplier salesperson of the year. So these are pretty significant accolades in the world of property management that NAA recognizes on an annual basis. Also from more of a staffing lens staffing industry analyst or SIA has recognized us as one of the best places for working parents in 2025. So that is an accolade that we wanted to mention as well that's more from the staffing area of the business. Giving you a little bit of history, as I mentioned, we did go through a divestiture last fall. So back in 2007 is when we were acquired, and that's when our geographic expansion really ramped up. So from 2027 through going all the way up to 2023, the property management division was primarily growing through organic growth. Like I said, geographic expansion across the country. The other division, the professional services division, was growing at the same time primarily through acquisition. So BGSF was really forming up those two divisions from 2007 all the way through 2023. And then 2023, we launched a technology transformation that I'm going to talk more about in a moment. That technology transformation is what really led us into then in 2025 the divestiture of the professional services division and what that did was a couple of things the divestiture allowed us to be singular singular focused in the property management staffing space it also allowed us to pay off debt so we are now in a great cash cash position to continue on with our growth and as a result of the divestiture and that positioning in 2025 we underwent a rebrand rather than being branded purely as bgsf we are now branded as bg staffing. It's indicative of what we do in the market, it creates clarity to our customers, and that also empowers us online to have stronger SEO. Staffing is such a strongly searched term that branding to BG staffing also enabled us to leverage our technology in a stronger way to attract candidates and customers online. So I'm going to talk more about our future roadmap, but I wanted to give you that story of what the last, you know, 20 years have looked like and what's led us here today. When you're thinking about BG staffing at a glance, I want to talk about scale. You know, again, whenever I mentioned the technology roadmap that we executed back in 2022 into 2023, it involved building that foundation. When you talk about a staffing company, paying people and delivering candidates is everything. That's what differentiates a strong staffing company from a weak one. And so we built technology that empowers us to pay people accurately and on time and to attract and place candidates quickly that's what the tech roadmap was all about and so when you think about that addressable market that 800 million dollar plus addressable market that we have it was very important to make sure that we were set from a technology foundation to be able to grow and our plan is to continue on through organic growth in several different ways that we'll discuss in a minute and then also on the slide I just wanted to clarify what we place this is a common question that we get what does a property management staffing company do and it is it's everything that you think about on site to run a property these are maintenance techs property managers groundskeepers leasing consultants in this in this huge industry that's across the country everywhere you look there's an apartment community already built or being built and all of them need a staff so it's proven to be a very stable and high margin vertical to operate in when you think about growth growth has come through like i said organically by geographic expansion but now we're thinking about okay in addition to placing people in addition to providing people to the properties once they're on the properties what do those people need to do in a lot of ways they need to leverage technology so through a market study one adjacent one adjacency that we identified that we've launched this year is through what we're calling our prop tech initiative so when you think about the technology that these candidates are leveraging when they're on site that technology in a lot of ways needs support so we have a prop tech base of consultants that go out and also help our communities leverage the technology that they've invested in, in a stronger way. So again, we love organic growth, and that's one way that this year we are going to continue on that organic growth path. And then also I'm going to talk in a minute about where AI fits into that, because it does fit in a couple different ways, both in how we operate and as well in how we're watching our customers operating. So definitely positioned for growth in several different ways that we've outlined here. And, you know, when you think about that national presence, that's really important to our customers because that's what really makes them choose us. You know, there are competitors in the market that I'll talk about in a minute, but being able to deliver quickly is what our customers rely on. They call us when they need somebody sometime same day or next day. If a community has, you know, a high level of move-ins, move-outs. They may need a few extra make-ready, hands-on deck to get those apartments ready. You have a bad storm, the property's in rough shape, they'll call us and say, hey, just send us help. We have to need property cleanup. We want to get back to being curb-ready so that when folks drive into the property, it looks good. All of these different things take speed. So what we've done internally is we have built our technology to leverage AI to source candidates talk to candidates through the website and when candidates are engaging or poking through the website looking for a job ai picks up on that brings them in brings them in for a sourcing discussion to figure out where the best fit could be we're also leveraging technology from a customer engagement vantage point when customers are showing buyer signals on the website we have an ai sales person her name is chase that engages with that customer right away to gather that customer's needs and then get them more quickly to the person that can fill that job for them. So AI absolutely has a place both in how we operate as a staffing company as well as how our customers are operating. A common question that we get is, is AI a threat? Is AI a threat to your business? Is it going to change how you operate moving forward? And what we're seeing in the property management space is it's not changing the demand. It's changing what's expected of the folks that are operating at the property. So what we've seen so far are things like centralization of certain services, whether it's rent payments or handling renewals. And what that means is that the folks that are on site are more handling customer engagement because just like us, every property has competitors down the street. So it's very important to have that good experience to keep retention at the properties. So AI is not necessarily replacing roles. It is changing what those roles are expected to deliver on the properties. When you think about our competitive landscape, it's diverse. There are competitors that are very small, operating in just one city, and there are competitors that, like us, have grown across the country. What this diagram breaks down is it shows you, based on a market study that we did last fall, the amount of revenue that some of these smaller competitors are taking on a local level versus when you look at us, that's across the country, the amount of revenue that we're generating, we're finding that more and more of our customers are wanting someone that can service everywhere that they operate. So if you have a customer that operates in, you know, properties in 17 different cities, they want one provider that can service their properties in all of those cities versus relying on smaller guys that might just operate in one or two of their cities. So while there is a pretty strong competitive landscape, Fortunately, the last 20 years of work that we did spreading our geographic presence is now paying off because we're hearing customers say, hey, I don't want to use 17 different staffing providers everywhere that I operate. I just want to call one. I just need to simplify. So that's been positive for us, and it's made all of that work, expanding geographically, really pay off. So when you think about our value proposition, the main one I'm going to talk about here and how important speed is. I want to talk about client partnerships because what we're seeing in the property management landscape is these owner groups are relying more and more on third-party management companies. And quite frankly, the top 10 management companies, if you just consider size by the amount of units they manage, the big guys are getting bigger, and they want one staffing provider that can service them everywhere that they are. So what we've done is we've aggressively gone and pursued strategic partnerships with those top 10 management companies, we already have documented agreements with over half of them, that provide them with specific terms that encourage them to use us for all of their staffing needs. So making it easier for them to just call BG. We've structured our, what we call our strategic accounts team internally that have a dedicated focus on those customers. So these client partnerships have really proven to successfully achieve growth during a couple of years that have, frankly, been a little tough on the industry. We've seen our owners fight stubborn interest rates. We've seen our owners face heightened insurance costs. So during a time when our owners are facing those increased costs, we can at least alleviate that pain point of having a lot of vendor to manage and giving them one-stop staffing source. And that's been very well-received. So that's been a huge value proposition for us is that dedicated focus on those customer partnerships and making it easy to choose BG for their staffing needs. These are some logos. You can see some of the logos that we work with. We're proud to say we do work with over 60%, almost 70% of the top 100 property management companies across the country. And so on top of that, the strategic customer agreements that I just mentioned, we already have them with over half of the top ten. And we're proud of that because it has taken a dedicated focus on nurturing those and on securing those. Like I said, some of these companies were using, I'm not exaggerating, 20 different staffing providers across the country. So to get them to narrow that down to one, two, maybe three has been quite an achievement. So it's great to see these companies choosing us and great to see, like I said, both that technology play as well as that geographic expansion really pay off by securing agreements with these logos. This gets a little bit more into the roles that we place. So just to create clarity, leasing, maintenance, resident operations, we do place them all. And that's what's great about the PropTech expansion that I'll talk more about in a moment is it services all of these same roles, whether it's maintenance or leasing. Technology is a huge part to play. When you think about maintenance, they have inventory management that they're responsible for. They have service request documentation that they're responsible for. Technology lifts all of that up. And on the leasing side, when it comes to renewal management, revenue management, setting rental rates, everything that's involved in managing a property involves technology. And so that's why with the PropTech growth this year, we're excited to be able to plug in in that way as well. And so you can see kind of a breakdown here of all of the different roles and to what percentage those roles tend to be placed, and then also the size of the company's small, mid-size, or enterprise that are part of the market. And as you can see, it's kind of pretty even. So that's good for us because you have a diversity in the size of the customers, you have diversity in the roles that you place, and so all of that creates an opportunity for us whether you are a management company that has a portfolio of 10 properties or a management company that manages thousands of units across the country we are the right fit we can place whether you have one to two placements a month or hundreds we're prepared to service that need and so that's why with the geographic diversity we've created the local level relationships are just as important as those national ones and we've created a company structure that can foster both So what's next? I've already talked about PropTech and I think hopefully I've created a good understanding of what that means. Specifically within PropTech, Yardi is the name of a company that is a software that is the largest software used across the property management landscape and we are a part of their independent consultant network. So Yardi is a management, as a software company, goes in, installs their software, sets it up for the property management company, configures it then there tends to leave a training gap or even just a specific configuration gap for the properties that's where our consultants come in that's where our prop tech team comes in whether it's ongoing training maintenance of the systems yardy has an approved consultant network that provides that so we work directly with yardy to deliver on that and yardy refers business to us whenever they have a customer that has certain needs if yardy does not have the internal resources to fulfill that need they call bg so that is how we're going to expand on that prop tech area there are also other adjacencies for future growth that we plan to pursue student housing being one of them when you think about a student housing apartment community they're all over the place that is a very specific niche because you have a hundred move outs at a time when students leave and that takes a very specific turn effort so there are companies that do currently do it We also believe that with the right recruiting strategy, we could grow into the student housing area of the business. Senior living is growing very quickly, so putting a focus on what senior living communities need, the type of staffing that they need, that's a huge opportunity that we believe we could grow into in the coming years. And then also concierge. The type of buildings, the type of apartment buildings that are being built, even just in the last 5, 10 years, it's become much more experience-focused. A lot of times these are mid- to high-rise types of buildings, and they all tend to have a concierge on site. So we're seeing a higher and higher demand for concierge as a service, and a lot of times that is a contract. They say, hey, we have this concierge spot, we want to contract with you, just keep that spot filled, and off you go. So we do believe concierge is another adjacency that we will explore for growth in the next couple of years. So as you can see, our core business being staffing has multiple ways that we can expand out and get even more sticky with these customers that we do currently service. So quite an opportunity there. Just a little bit about our leadership team. We have a very diverse leadership team, and I love that. We're not all from property management. We're not all from staffing. We kind of have a diverse group that comes with a lot of different backgrounds, and that creates diversity in thought and diversity in planning and how we're going to grow. Our strategic meetings are always very candid in the best way, and I love that. So I just wanted to show a slide that shows a little bit about our leadership team, 60 plus years of combined industry experience, and a few logos from where some of our folks came from among the leadership team. So with that, I am going to turn it over to Keith, because I think I have talked quite enough to get into a little bit about our financials. No problem.

Speaker 7

Thank you so much.

Keith Schrader, CEO

Good morning, everyone. uh up to the next slide so as we alluded to earlier um we have taken a number of actions during 2025 um to basically improve our overall balance sheet and um so we we sold the professional division in september 25 for about 100 million and so with that we were able to pay off all of our debt and we now have even after paying off the debt and you know a few other things which I'll get into we are holding cash of around 19 million bucks which is just under two bucks a share we with the excess cash that we still have on hand we will make decisions on the use of that in the future but it will be definitely in the interest of the long term interest of our shareholders but since we have the cash if we need to invest in additional technology and investments you know growth initiatives etc we have the cash on hand to make that happen some of the actions we have already taken to return cash to shareholders we paid a two dollar per share a special dividend in October of last year so that was about 22 million dollars and we declared a stock buyback plan of up to five million dollars in November of last year today we spent about two and a half million of that and purchased about five hundred and sixty five thousand shares which is about five percent of our outstanding shares so that was good growth next slide is the quarterly financials for Q126 and versus 25 again this is the continuing operations only does not continue any disc ops as you can see top line we were flat year or over year but went to say what we said on the last earnings call it we do expect to see growth for the full year of 26 over 25 in the mid to single-digit growth range so we are seeing some some change one thing I want to point out this slide is our gross profit margin it's that first kind of blue bar there we we have done a good job over the years and there's a slide a little bit later that shows a longer term trend that is a very important margin for us we look at that very closely and that's pricing we say very disciplined to price we don't chase things that we don't need to uh to chase so that's that's very good for us uh the last thing i want to point out on the slide we didn't did have any eva loss in the quarter of about 500 million that was not expected q1 is a very low sales quarter for us and so that was not unexpected I also want to point out that despite the year over a year flat line on the top we reduced our EBITDA loss in half from 25 to 26 so that was important milestone for us so a lot of cost cutting went on in there so this one I want to kind of point out what the the positive effects of the sale of the professional group came so this chart looks a little backwards maybe but this has the activity for the year ends of 23 24 25 and then the quarter end of 26 the bright or they're not brightly but the blue bar is our cash and short-term investments at the end of each of those periods the orange is our was our outstanding debt and and then the green is the working capital the main thing you want to point out on here is that you know we've greatly improved the strength of our balance sheet as you can see we didn't have any cash on hand in the 23 and 24 but with the sale of professional and after paying off all debt after paying all deal related fees which there always are a lot and returning 22 million dollars to shareholders two dollars special or two and a half million cash paid out in stock buybacks we still ended up with about 19 million in in cash so that is a good outcome for us another thing I want to point out the orange column that is our outstanding debt as it says that debt was really all driven by acquisitions for the professional group so that has one we have paid all that off but that need we don't see going forward so that is another positive for the strength of our balance sheet and then last but not least this is a five period look back it shows the performance for 23 through 25 full year again this is continued operations only and then a TTM for 26 as you can see obviously top-line growth declines in 23 and 24 that was consistent with the staffing industry overall we were not you know immune from that I guess I should say but the important thing is that for the most part we've held our gross profit margin yes we did dip it down dip down a bit from 23 into 24 but since then we've held that pretty flat and that's an important that's important margin for us important thing that we look at every day and make sure that our pricing is staying very solid there's no need to chase price out in this market other thing I want to point out that green line that's our COH percent COH is our contribution overhead and we define that as our gross profit less the selling expenses so despite the big declines overall we took large cost reductions in selling and in general administrative expenses at the end of 24 and into 25 and continuing into 26 so we've been able to hold that percent relatively flat the last two periods there and that is an area we will continue to look at we are a much smaller organization than what we were we understand that those fixed costs if you will need to be highly scrutinized and we have but there's always more room so we're always looking at that with that that is the last slide in our presentation, so I guess I'll open up to any questions for us. We still have ten minutes to go.

Speaker 6

So, I'm trying to understand, so the people who are brought to this community, are they your employees or are they the employees of the community?

Kelly Brown, CEO

Yeah, I think everybody heard that question. The question was, the employees that we send to the communities, are they our employees or employees of the community, and they start as our employees. They're W-2 employees that we hire after we have sorted them and recruited them. So the customer can hire them if they would like after a certain amount of hours that we have billed. So we will bill at a certain bill rate, and out of that we pay the candidate. And after they've worked so many hours, the customer can hire them, or if they want to hire them earlier, they just pay a conversion fee to hire that candidate, but they start as our employee.

Speaker 6

And so, I know it's much larger, but would you consider your business to be similar to first service residential?

Kelly Brown, CEO

First service residential, I don't know that I'm familiar.

Keith Schrader, CEO

I'm not familiar with them.

Speaker 6

Well, they're one of the largest staffers, at least in this area.

Keith Schrader, CEO

And property management?

Speaker 6

For personnel like that.

Kelly Brown, CEO

Oh, property management. Okay, yeah. They are a property management company. So, yes, first service would be a customer of ours. They are a management company that owners rely on to maintain and manage their communities. So, that would be an example of a customer that could hire us to bring candidates to their communities. Just to be clear, the management companies themselves, they might hire on their own. What they rely on us for if they're having a hard time filling a certain position or if they just have a lot of need that their internal team can't hire for on their own, they would augment with us. So that would be an example of a customer. That could be a potential customer of ours.

Speaker 6

The other question I had is, this may be only unique to this area, but a number of the personnel in residential buildings are unionized. Do you have unionized staff, and how do you deal with, you know, we've had stripes in the past and all that stuff.

Kelly Brown, CEO

Yeah, the union presence can, it can be a little tricky to navigate. We face that in Chicago a lot as well. And so our primary customer base and our primary candidate base are outside of the union, to be frank, because there is a lot of demand that actually is outside of that. Yeah, it can be tricky to navigate the union landscape, depending on the market, certainly. And, you know, outside of New York and Chicago, we really don't face a lot of union presence in a lot of the areas that we operate in. So we really try to focus on where does our business model fit, you know, best, and if it's outside of that, you know, that's fine. But, yeah, I understand where you're coming from on the union challenges. Question.

Speaker 6

So you said your strategic partnerships with top 10 topic management companies, just wondering what percentage of revenue that kind of stuff?

Kelly Brown, CEO

Yeah, I mean, as of Q1, it was just under 30%, in the upper 20%. And that's going to grow, you know, as we secure more partnerships.

Keith Schrader, CEO

Question?

Speaker 7

What's the range of employment wages that you pay? And I'm looking actually for the full-inclusive expenses.

Kelly Brown, CEO

Yeah. It varies widely, clearly, since we operate in so many cities across the country and with minimum wages constantly fluctuating. So if I had to give an overall range of what we pay, not what we bill, But what we pay, I would say it probably widely ranges between $14 an hour, depending on minimum wage. It could go well up into the upper $40 an hour, you know, close to $50 an hour for some of the specialized engineers and maintenance that we place. And then our average markup on that usually is around 80%, just depending on the specific position. It's such a pretty good markup. 80, 80, yeah. About 80% markup.

Keith Schrader, CEO

There's a 36% markup.

Speaker 6

If there is a client that wants to hire a super, you pay them, whatever, $40, you charge them $72, probably. For that $32 difference, how do you negotiate, well, no, I just want to keep it, because you said a certain amount of time,

Kelly Brown, CEO

Whenever we place a candidate, our required, we call it contract to hire. The required hours is 320 hours of work, and then they can hire them without a fee. If they want to hire them after, say, they've worked 200 hours, we would just take those remaining hours times the assigned bill rate, and they can pay that as a conversion fee or sort of a placement fee, you could look at it. But 320 hours is the amount of hours that we, as DG, require them to work under our bill rate before they can hire a candidate without a fee.

Speaker 6

If they're not hired, you continue to pay them out of your own budget?

Kelly Brown, CEO

Well, only if they work. They only get paid if they work.

Keith Schrader, CEO

We don't have benched employees. We don't have, like, a whole big bench of people that, oh, we have a job for you today, or we don't. It's, we have a job for you, you get paid. We don't have a job for you, you don't get paid.

Kelly Brown, CEO

But to your point, if they don't get the job permanently, we'll just redeploy them at other placements that we have available. But we only pay them if they submit hours that are then approved by a customer. So our timekeeping system, they approve their hours through the app, and then the customer has to approve those hours as well.

Keith Schrader, CEO

Yes.

Speaker 7

In the past or currently, have you ever taken any meaningful financial hits because of liability for an employer to stay in the state or does something locally?

Keith Schrader, CEO

No, nothing that I'm aware of any size. Yeah, they're small things.

Kelly Brown, CEO

Very small, but no, nothing substantial, fortunately.

Keith Schrader, CEO

We didn't burn down a building or anything like that, no.

Speaker 7

Do you not have outside insurance?

Keith Schrader, CEO

We have outside insurance for most things. We are self-insured for workers comp and for health. Bill?

Speaker 5

On the change to BG Staffing, have you seen tangible benefits yet that you can relate?

Kelly Brown, CEO

I think the easiest way to measure that benefit would be in what we call our web leads. So if a customer submits a lead through the website, if I'm ABC Management Company and I need a groundskeeper, or I go to bgstaffing.com, and I submit that through the website. That then goes to our team to fulfill that need, and those have tangibly gone up through Q1. So we do have data around that that we can follow up with, but that would be, in my opinion, kind of the best measure of success is the increased revenue that we've experienced as a result of the heightened amount of web leaps that go through the website. Yeah, all leads to revenue. Great question.

Keith Schrader, CEO

Any other questions?

Kelly Brown, CEO

It's a really great question. Just to make sure everybody heard. The question is, what's our differentiator? Why us? What's different about BG? Combination of things. One, you're spot on. Relationships. Relationships very much matter in the property management space. That's why we're so heavily embedded throughout the country. I mentioned NAA, the National Apartment Association, but there are affiliates across the country. So St. Louis, where I'm from, has their own apartment association and Chicago as well. So we have people that foster relationships locally. locally, and that is a differentiator. But the second one is the Tech Fit Speed. If they're calling DG, we know they're calling competitors as well. Who is going to deliver the fastest? Candidate and customer experience is everything. That is the thing that's going to differentiate you because if you can hire the candidate quickly, candidates want to be hired fast and they want to get on a job fast. Our relationships attract those candidates because I can say if a candidate's interviewing with Graystar, one of the logos we flashed on the screen, well, I can probably get that candidate on a Graystar property tomorrow. So you can go through the interview process if you want, but by working with me, that candidate has an advantage because I can put them on a Graystar placement tomorrow because I already have that relationship. But we are so focused on leveraging our technology to make our candidate experience and our customer experience the best, the fastest, the easiest. That's the big differentiator.

Keith Schrader, CEO

And the quality, I believe, that's akin to this as well.

Kelly Brown, CEO

Right now, we have focused first on launching the PropTech adjacency. That's the one we're launching right now in 2026. So between student housing and concierge, those are both adjacencies that we will focus more on once we really see revenue ramping up with PropTech. We don't want to spread ourselves too thin trying to confuse the marketplace by launching too many things at one time. So we really want to make sure our customers understand our PropTech initiative and how that works with the people that we place first. Then we'll focus on the others later. Probably I'm guessing 2027, we'll kind of just use an annual cadence. 2026, all in on PropTech. 2027, we'll choose either student housing, senior or concierge to focus on next. And you know, we have been successful in organic growth. It doesn't mean we wouldn't consider an acquisition. It would have to be the exact right fit and make sense financially because there are specialized firms that already work in those adjacencies. So we have to just evaluate, is it going to continue to be an organic play or could an acquisition possibly make sense? It could be either one.

Keith Schrader, CEO

So we are now over time. I apologize. We'll be around all day. Great question. So if you find us around, please stop and get a hold of us any time for any additional questions you might think of as time rolls forward.