Exponent, Inc. Second Quarter, 2026 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one, on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joni Constantelos, Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us on Exponent's second quarter, 2026 Financial Results Conference Please note that this call will be simultaneously webcast on the Investor Relations section of the company's corporate website at www.investors.exponent.com. This conference call is the property of Exponent, and any taping or other reproduction is expressly prohibited without prior written consent. Joining me on the call today are Dr. Catherine Corrigan, Chief Executive Officer, John Pye, President, Rich Schlenker, Executive Vice President, and Eric Anderson, Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I would like to remind you that the following discussion contains forward-looking statements including, but not limited to, Exponent's market opportunities and future financial results that involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here. Additional information that could cause actual results to differ from forward-looking statements can be found in Exponent's periodic SEC filings, including those factors discussed under the caption, Risk Factor, in Exponent's most recent Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements and risks in this conference call are based on current expectations as of today, and Exponent assumes no obligation to update or revise them, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise. And now I will turn the call over to Dr. Catherine Corrigan, Chief Executive Officer. Catherine?

Thank you, Joni, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I will start off by reviewing our second quarter 2026 business performance. John will share his perspective on innovation and market trends. Eric will then provide a more detailed review of our financial results and outlook, and we will then open the call for questions. Exponent delivered another strong quarter with double-digit growth in revenues and earnings, reflecting the continued demand for our specialized expertise across industries. Our proactive work experienced strong growth in the quarter, led by demand for user research studies as clients accelerate the development of AI-enabled products across an increasingly diverse array of hardware form factors and applications, with engagements continuing to expand in scope, scale, and complexity. Proactive activity was also supported by increased risk management and infrastructure-related engagements in the utility sector. Reactive work grew with strong demand for our dispute-related expertise from the consumer products, chemicals, and transportation industries. Turning to these engagements in more detail, our proactive user research work continues to grow more diverse and complex, both across our client base and across the breadth of products and technologies that we support. This quarter also benefited from a large study that drove higher than expected revenue and utilization. These engagements increasingly call for a combination of human factors, biomechanics, engineering, and data science expertise to elucidate how people interact with AI-enabled technologies in situations where standard research approaches are woefully inadequate. While user research is often thought of as recruiting participants and gathering feedback, our work is far more sophisticated. We identify and articulate the right underlying scientific question, design a bespoke methodology capable of answering it, collect high-quality data in the real-world environment, and interpret the results within a broader technical, regulatory, and business context. The differentiated value lies not in data collection alone, but in the scientific judgment and multidisciplinary expertise required to design the study, execute the unique methodology, and generate reliable, actionable conclusions. As companies compete aggressively to integrate AI into an expanding array of smart devices, including glasses, immersive technologies, health and wellness wearables, and more, The technical safety and usability challenges increase significantly, and exponents' differentiated position grows. We also saw increased demand for risk management and infrastructure-related engagements in the utility sector, as clients evaluate the resilience and reliability of critical systems amid rising power demand, more extreme weather events, and the growing complexity of the electric grid. Turning to our reactive engagements, we saw strong demand for dispute and failure analysis-related work across a range of industries, including consumer products, chemicals, and transportation. We helped consumer products clients evaluate product safety and recalls, investigate incidents, and address disputes as manufacturers face challenges surrounding performance, reliability, and quality across an increasingly complex set of technologies. In the chemical sector, we saw growing activity evaluating chemicals of concern, ranging from legacy substances to emerging compounds. And in transportation, we saw greater failure analysis work related to advanced driver assistance systems as clients addressed performance, safety, and reliability challenges. As the pace of innovation accelerates and the consequences of failure rise, clients increasingly rely on Exponent's multidisciplinary ecosystem and longstanding reputation in failure analysis to address complex, novel challenges. A recent engagement involving a satellite performance issue illustrates this demand. The client required deep engineering expertise to investigate performance and risk in a highly technical and uncertain environment. This level of mastery across disciplines, whether applied to space systems, AI, energy storage, power infrastructure, cybersecurity, or other domains, uniquely positions Exponent to help clients navigate both today's challenges and the inevitable disruptions that will accompany future technological advances. We remain confident in the durability and long-term growth potential of our reactive work, as organizations will continue to rely on independent, science-based expertise when critical systems fail or perform unexpectedly. Our results during the quarter reflect several powerful long-term trends shaping demand for Exponent services, including rapid technological innovation, increasing complexity, growing energy demand, investment in resilient power and digital infrastructure, and rising expectations for safety, reliability, and performance. Clients turn to Exponent when they face high-consequence challenges involving new technologies, complex systems, and the interaction between people and products. Our multidisciplinary teams provide independent science-based insights that help clients innovate with confidence, reduce risk, and make better decisions. Nowhere is this more relevant today than in the accelerating importance of artificial intelligence in products, which continues to be a significant force shaping demand across our business. I'd like to turn it over to our president, John Pai, to share his perspective on this shift and where he sees innovation heading across our markets. John?

Thank you, Catherine. Across industries, we're seeing an accelerating shift. Artificial intelligence is expanding beyond the digital world and into physical products and systems that operate in the real world, whether that's a vehicle, a wearable device, a piece of infrastructure, or a robotic system. As that shift unfolds, the standards these systems are held to is also changing. The question is no longer simply whether a product functions as designed in a controlled setting, but whether it can be trusted to perform safely and reliably in the unpredictable conditions of everyday life, including the edge cases and complex interactions that fall outside of prior experience. This is where the human side of the equation becomes just as important as the technology itself. As AI becomes embedded in the devices and systems people rely on throughout their daily lives, things like walking, driving, working, or simply going about routine tasks at home, it inevitably competes for people's attention alongside everything else happening in their environment. There's a fine line between technology that supports human performance and technology that, if not designed thoughtfully, can be graded. Getting that balance right requires specialized expertise across multiple disciplines. Exponent has been at the forefront of this kind of human-machine interaction work for decades. It's not new for us, and it's an area where our differentiated expertise is increasingly important as more of our clients grapple with these same questions across a widening range of products and applications. We're also seeing this same dynamic extend into new areas that are still in relatively early stages, things like autonomous vehicles, robots in the wild, and the infrastructure that supports them, such as data centers and battery storage systems. These are areas where complexity is only increasing and where our multidisciplinary approach spanning engineering, data sciences, human factors, and the physical sciences position us well to support our clients as they navigate what comes next. I'll now turn the call over to Eric to provide more detail on our second quarter results, as well as discuss our outlook for the third quarter and the full year of 2026. Eric.

Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me start by saying all comparisons will be on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. For the second quarter of 2026, total revenues increased 21% to $171.6 million, and revenues before reimbursements, or net revenues, as I will refer to them from here on, increased 12% to $148.9 million. Total revenues grew faster than net revenues due to a higher level of reimbursable expenses that are included in total revenues. These reimbursable expenses were due to an increase in user research studies. Because reimbursable expenses can fluctuate quarter to quarter based on the mix and nature of client engagements, we believe net revenue is a more meaningful measure of our underlying performance. As Catherine mentioned, our results this quarter benefited from a large user research study that represented approximately 4% of net revenues, which was higher than the 2% of net revenues that we expected from this project. Net income for the second quarter increased 11% to $29.4 million as compared to $26.6 million during the same period in 2025. Diluted earnings per share increased 15% to $0.60 per diluted share, as compared to $0.52 per diluted share in the same period last year. Over the last 12 months, we utilized $211 million for repurchases of our common stock, which resulted in a 5% decrease in our average diluted shares outstanding to 49 million shares during the second quarter of 2026, as compared to $51.5 million during the same period in 2025. These repurchases also reduced our interest income. Exponent's consolidated tax rate was 27.9% in the second quarter of 2026, unchanged from the same period in 2025. The tax impact associated with share-based awards was immaterial in both the second quarter of 2026 and 2025. EBITDA for the quarter increased 16% to $42.7 million, producing a margin of 28.7% of net revenues as compared to 37 million or 27.8% of net revenues in the second quarter of 2025. Billable hours in the second quarter of 2026 were approximately 390,000, an increase of 8% year over year. Average technical full-time employees in the second quarter were 1,012, up 6% as compared to the same period in 2025. This increase was due to our recruiting and retention efforts. Utilization in the second quarter was 74%, up from 72% in the same period of 2025. The realized rate increase during the second quarter of 2026 was approximately 4%. In the second quarter, compensation expense, after adjusting for gains and losses in deferred compensation, increased 10%. Included in total compensation expense is a deferred compensation gain of $11.8 million as compared to a gain of $17.0 million in the same period of 2025. As a reminder, gains and losses in deferred compensation are offset in miscellaneous income and have no impact on the bottom line. Stock-based compensation expense in the quarter was $6.7 million as compared to $5.2 million during the same period in 2025. Other operating expenses in the second quarter were up 7% to $12.9 million due to investments in our corporate infrastructure. Included in other operating expenses is depreciation and amortization expense of $2.7 million. G&A expenses increased 20% to $7.4 million for the second quarter. The increase in G&A expenses was primarily due to increases in travel and meals associated with business development, recruiting and people development activities, and an increase in relocation costs. Interest income decreased to $716,000 for the second quarter, driven by a decrease in cash. Regarding capital allocation, during the quarter, capital expenditures were $1.8 million. We distributed $14.8 million to shareholders through dividend payments while repurchasing $67.4 million of our common stock at an average price of $59.88. Over the past 12 months, we returned a combined $272 million to shareholders, which included $211 million in share repurchases and $61 million in dividend payments. Additionally, our board approved a $50 million increase in our current stock repurchase program, which reflects our conviction in Exponent's long-term growth trajectory. Turning to our segments, Exponent's engineering and other scientific segment represented 85% of net revenues in the second quarter. Net revenues in this segment increased 13%, driven by strong user research study activity in consumer electronics, risk management and infrastructure-related work in the utility sector, and reactive engagements across the consumer products, chemicals, and transportation industries. Exponent's environmental health segment represented 15% of net revenues in the second quarter. Net revenues in this segment increased 9%, driven by engagements evaluating the impact of chemicals on human health and the environment. Turning to our outlook. Looking to the second half of the year, we expect to generate quarterly net revenue growth on top of the double-digit growth we delivered in the third and fourth quarters of 2025 when adjusted for the extra week in Q4 of fiscal 2024. For the third quarter, as compared to one year prior, we expect net revenues to be up 8% to 10% and EBITDA to be 28.0% to 28.5% of net revenues. For 2026, we are raising our full-year guidance. We now expect net revenues to grow 9% to 10%, and EBITDA to be 27.8% to 28.1% of net revenues. We expect our average technical full-time equivalent employees to increase approximately 4% to 5% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2026, and 4.5% to 5% for the full year. We expect utilization in the third quarter to be 74% to 75%, as compared to 74% in the same quarter last year. We continue to expect the full-year utilization to be 72.5% to 73% as compared to 72.5% in 2025. We expect the year-over-year realized rate increase to be 3% to 4% in the third quarter of 2026 and 3.5% to 4% for the full year of 2026. For the third quarter, we expect stock-based compensation to be $6.5 to $6.7 million. For the full year, 2026, we expect stock-based compensation to be $27.9 to $28.4 million. We continue to believe that our stock-based compensation program is a key element to how we effectively attract, motivate, and retain our top talent. For the third quarter, we expect other operating expenses to be $13.0 to $13.5 million. For the full year, we expect other operating expenses to be $52.2 to $52.7 million. For the third quarter, we expect G&A expenses to be $8.2 million to $8.7 million. For the full year, we expect G&A expenses to be $29.5 to $30 million. We expect interest income to be $500,000 to $700,000 per quarter for the remainder of 2026. In addition, we anticipate miscellaneous income to be approximately $300,000 per quarter for the remainder of 2026. For the remainder of 2026, we do not anticipate any additional tax benefit associated with share-based awards. For the third quarter of 2026, we expect our tax rate to be approximately 28% as compared to 27.4% in the same quarter one year ago. For the full year of 2026, the tax rate is expected to be 28.5% as compared to 28.0% in 2025. Capital expenditures for the full year 2026 are expected to be $12 to $14 million. We're pleased with our strong second quarter execution and confident in the underlying market dynamics that continues to support growth across our business. I will now turn the call back to Catherine for closing remarks.

Thank you, Eric. Exponent continues to benefit from powerful long-term trends that are increasing both the pace of innovation and the complexity of challenges facing our clients. As emerging technologies move from concept to real-world deployment, the need for independent, science-based expertise becomes increasingly important. Whether helping clients innovate with confidence, understand how people interact with new technologies, strengthen critical infrastructure, or investigate failures, Exponent is uniquely positioned at the intersection of technology, people, and high-consequence decision-making. Supported by our exceptional talent, long-standing reputation, and differentiated capabilities, we remain confident in our strategy and our ability to create long-term value for our shareholders. Operator, we are now ready for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Andrew, your line is open. You may now ask your question. I'm sorry.

Can you hear me? okay sorry about that appreciate you taking my question um i wanted to start just in terms of the ai impact you've spent this this quarter and last quarter kind of talking about all the different demand drivers that are potentially uh impacted positively by ai i'm curious to what extent we should think about that being a proactive driver at the moment versus reactive or are you already seeing it kind of bubble up in litigation as well?

Yeah, thanks, Andrew. It's absolutely going to be in both the reactive and proactive domains. You know, one of the places in reactive where we are probably seeing it the most is around advanced driver assistance technologies. All kinds of questions that are arising in automotive product liability litigation around the performance of those systems. And it's really growing in terms of the kinds of sort of allegations and design pieces that we're looking at. You know, it's not just the sensors. It's not just the performance of the automated braking system, but it's now even going into the performance of the driver distraction and driver monitoring systems. So that human-machine interface is becoming very important. You know, another area around reactive with an AI driver is going to be the data center work, the sort of digital infrastructure side of the AI equation. We're seeing failure analysis types of investigations in so many domains that apply to those data centers. It could be the cooling systems and their performance or, you know, contaminants in cooling systems. It's the power inverter performance. it's the battery energy storage system that either you know is it meeting code or was there a fire is it performing so reactive for sure and then of course that proactive side you know particularly strong in the quarter around the user research domain and these are products and systems that are having AI embedded into them so it's both the sort of physical product aspect of the human interface and also that performance of the algorithm um that is at least in part dictated by the by the human factors piece so it is a it is a diverse set of things that we're doing that

really covers both the reactive and proactive domains for my follow-up um you said in your release and in your prepared remarks you talked about the scope and scale and complexity of your work increasing. It's my impression that that tends to benefit Exponent as one of the only, if not the only, kind of science and engineering firm that has that capability and the breadth of capability. And so I'm wondering, one, competitively, if that's becoming more and more of an advantage for you. And relatedly, is that a potential opportunity on the pricing front as your differentiation and scale and multidisciplinary expertise becomes kind of more evident relative to your peers.

Yeah, yeah, thanks, Andrew. And, you know, particularly when we talk about that scope, scale, and complexity in the user research domain, that's a place where we are really seeing that competitive mode kind of broadening is what I would describe. And look, there will always be a commodity layer of things that are around data collection and surveys and things like that. But as these products become more complex, as the human-machine interface becomes more challenging and sort of never seen before, what we offer is really, it's not just like it's an increment over what the rest of the so-called competitors are offering. it truly is an offering and into unto itself when you think about what we are able to do that is designing the bespoke experiment defining what that research question ought to be and getting all the way through to the regulatory and legal and and business implications of that you know we are hiring very aggressively in this area you know our human factors expertise biomechanics data science and the engineering side. So we differentiate in that way. And I absolutely am with you that the offering is becoming more and more distinct. So it's important that we be delivering that value to the client and that we reflect to the value that we are delivering in our pricing. I think as the aggressiveness of the competition that we see in the industry landscape is helping in that sense because you know there is a speed of innovation that our clients are trying to achieve and that helps us really really articulate our value proposition as well so you know all in all I think this will be a be a very healthy area for us to grow thanks again you're welcome the next question comes from Tomo Sano with J.P.

Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone.

Hi, Tomo.

Hi, Tomo.

Thank you for taking my questions. In your prepared remarks, you highlighted strong AI enabled demand. So looking back on the first half, could you help us quantify what drill deserves like more engagements versus the larger engagements?

And I don't want you to get more color on like that is that meaning like a more utilization too uh if you could uh talk about that in a first and a half as well as some expectation in second and a half please thank you yeah tomo the the user experience studies were were a driver of growth in the second quarter uh we talked a little bit about the the large study so we had expected that to be two percent of our net revenues that study uh you know expanded in scope during the quarter and ended up representing about 4% of our net revenues. It's a study that continues. It moderated near the end of the quarter. So we expect to continue the next part of that study at a level of about 2% of net revenues through the remainder of the year. So that's an area that, you know, it's one piece of this sort of user study area. It's expanded not only in size, but, you know, The number of clients that we do the studies for, the number of projects has expanded, and the number and types and complexity of devices has changed. So we're doing it now for more clients over more studies, over a broader array of devices that our clients are looking to bring to the market.

Thank you. And then on the follow-up utilization assumptions, so if demand is surging, yet utilization assumption, look, a conservative enough, what is the primary reason, any seasonality factors, hit counts, ramps, mix onboarding, and just conservatisms? And if you could give us more color, appreciate it.

Yeah, definitely. And a little bit to your last question on the utilization. Those studies did drive our higher utilization, so the 74% utilization in the second quarter did benefit from those studies and that large study in particular. As far as the seasonality, the second quarter and third quarter are very similar as far as available working days, you know, vacation and holidays. So the 74% to 75% that we're expecting in the third quarter is, you know, tick up from the 74% that we experienced in the second quarter. And then as you get into the fourth quarter, that one is significantly impacted by available working days with the holidays and vacations and all that. So our standard utilization is lower in the fourth quarter every year.

That's cool. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Tomo.

The next question comes from Toby Sommer with Truist. Please go ahead.

I wanted to ask you, which industries and verticals have the greatest share of proactive work now, and do you expect the industries with the most proactive work to change over the next 12, 24 months?

Yeah, Toby, I can chime in here, and Eric can add for it. So on our proactive side, consumer electronics is going to be one of the larger contributions, as is the chemicals industry. In consumer electronics, as you know, we've got the user research side of what we do. We also have the hardware related work that we do for that industry. On the chemical side, it's really the proactive regulatory work for the industrial chemical manufacturers, the agricultural, chemical manufacturers, biocides, pesticides, and so forth. These are both areas where we saw good growth in the quarter. The third vertical I would highlight is going to be the utilities space. This is where our risk modeling work comes in on the proactive side. So those are the three, I would say, dominant industries there. And look, we've seen strong market drivers in all three of those areas over time, and in my view, those will continue to be the areas that will drive, you know, more of the proactive growth. You know, there are regulatory issues in the transportation industry that we do more of today than we did a number of years ago. You know, as the automated vehicle population increases, the regulators are becoming much more active and so forth. so there is growth opportunity there. Medical devices is the other place where regulatory is a piece of what we do. And again, you've got that complexity of products. You've got the safety critical nature of those products. You've got the embedding of AI into those products that makes the regulatory environment even more complex. So, you know, drivers across regulation, drivers of cross-risk in asset-heavy industries, and the driver around AI and innovation. John, you may want to add a little bit to that.

Yeah, so I started the company in 99, and there were traditional practices that maybe were heavily exposed on the reactive side, where an incident had to occur before you called us, human factors, biomechanics, things like that. But over the years, that has changed. And as those issues become more important in the development of your product and we're engaged earlier in the life cycle during those development stages, there could easily be regulatory issues. There might be issues around sort of the technology integration itself. You see practices like that, which historically were almost completely reactive, really be a blend. And I think that is marching really through our organization as all of the disciplines that we offer become increasingly important to delivering that last nine of reliability or performance or whatever you're after as you're getting that next step out of your device or your product that you're working on or system. So I don't think it's a static answer here. I think there is a trend to having both a reactive and a proactive component in really everything that we do. But Catherine is entirely correct that the current, you know, snapshots, I think the three verticals she mentioned are probably the strongest ones opposed to the program.

I think that what we have seen in history is where there is a drive for the consequence of safety or requirement for reliability increases, there's a higher demand for us to do that work up front because the consequences on the back end are so severe. And clearly, that is what's driven work in the consumer electronics area where there was a real drive, not only for performance and reliability as those devices were in the wild, but you had an innovation drive going on over the last several decades around energy storage technologies in those devices, which we all saw when SAM clients had been to those issues over time. So as we look and think about the complexity of the device that we're looking for people to wear on their bodies on a continuous continuously interact with these AI applications we're talking about putting batteries on people's heads and other parts of their bodies having them sleep with them and do it these things will evolve as we bring robotics into homes in interfacing with people throughout their daily lives we we not only have the risk of you know injuries from mechanical devices but also from the energy that's driving those devices in the field so I think that we there will be an expo this world sometimes we have to wait for people to pay the price on the failures and and then get commitment to go to the gym as I say instead of the cardiologist but I think these things are coming for us in a number of industries.

Thank you. I wanted to see if I could get your perspective on reshoring to the United States as well as the evolution of data centers, which, you know, that's a theme that's been around now for several years, but the scope and scale of what is being discussed and planned right now represents a material change, I think. And how do those trends interact with the company and impact your business, maybe create opportunities?

Yeah, I would expand the reshoring comment to just be supply chain changes in general. When you are on the data center side, buying up every connector that there is, and you've got to go to your second choice and your third choice, It might be related to reshoring or it might be just diversifying what that supply chain looks like. That drives opportunities for us to do the technology due diligence, you know, as you're maybe trying to do things on an accelerated timescale. You know, the failure rates usually in those kind of circumstances go up, which is then a driver for us to come in and try to explain what the science and engineering is behind that. There are regulatory demands. I have lots of exposure on the government side, and as you see things like drones having to be manufactured in the U.S. and things like that, that puts pressure on, well, where are you getting the motors for those drones from and looking at what that does to sort of the local industry base. And there's opportunities in that as our clients come to us and say, you know, help us manage that change, help us understand the impact of, you know, bringing some new supplier onto, you know, onto our platform. So, on-shoring, yes, supply chain variability in general, probably even larger. When you're talking about data centers, I think it's sort of the same scenario, maybe, but with gasoline poured all over it to really accelerate what's going on there. You know, the capital influx that are driving, you know, the infrastructure spend, you know, from the building and where you're getting the concrete from all the way to the plating on the connector. All of those issues as you're continuing to invest really touch on a huge diversity of what Exponent has to offer across really all of our disciplines. So as you look at the increased capital spend there and you look at the claims of getting that third nine reliability out of your data center, that's an engineering challenge to accomplish. So it's not good enough just to take the manufacturer of what's on the nameplate. The vendors are having to dig deeper and make sure they really understand the performance of that component, you know, as an individual piece. But then in that complex system that all has to be working together to deliver the kind of reliabilities that we're looking for out of these kind of investments. So both of those drivers for us for growth and really long-term drivers as the supply chains start moving around the world.

Thanks. If I could ask one last question for me. The supply of PhDs in the U.S. looks like it's going to be going down. um recent data says that i guess the uh first year year over year change admits for phds are down 15 with some prominent universities being down even bigger um how do you think of a winnowing of young new talent in the economy would uh impact exponentially yeah thanks toby um First of all, I'll kind of contextualize a little bit around that in terms of what level

we're hiring at, because we are really taking the cream of the crop of that class of PhDs, We are getting them from Stanford and MIT and Berkeley and Caltech and Michigan and all of those places. We also, it's important to recognize, I think the PhDs in the U.S. are probably about half from the US and half international students coming from from around the globe you know we have typically oriented our recruiting toward those who are you know authorized to to work in the United States we do hire some others as well but there are risks associated with that and so you know that's the I an important element of our strategy to understand and so look we as we look back at the recruiting data over the last year or two which is really when this sort of pressure on scientific research funding has has come to a head we have continued to be able to attract that top layer of talent I mean this is about having the value proposition for that top layer of PhDs in the sense that you know compared with an academic route you are working on things with sort of actionable decisions being made in real time I know for me personally that was hugely attractive about exponent it's this ability to get away from the lab bench and work on a real problem that's going to have impact you know in that real time. And the ability to work on a lot of different things. You know, you've spent so much time, five, six, seven years, looking down a deep, deep tunnel of your specialty that's very narrow. And now you get to take that ability to solve an unstructured problem and put it across all kinds of different industries, products, and issues. So that is pretty cool for a graduating PhD. And we just have to continue to expand our moat. We need to continue to have professional development as a key element of our culture where we are going to take that talent and we are going to build it and mold it from day one into an impactful consultant that is making a real difference in the world. So that's the way I think about it.

Yeah, I think the data on it is Approximately 5% of our hires in a year or less need any sponsorship. So it gives you a sense of where, you know, as we are looking at the PhD classes of the future begin to change, change, it probably aligns more with how Exponent is recruited historically.

I think Kathryn mentioned something really, just one last follow-up on that one. I think Kathryn mentioned something that was really important that differentiates in my mind something that Exponent is really good at, and that is the continued growth through your career while here. And so while you may enter at that PhD, that's just where the journey begins for us. And so our model is really based on that continual increase in stature and growth as you become that expert, you know, and are really recognized at the top of your discipline for whatever the challenge might be. So while the supply may change, we've got the engine behind it to make the most out of it as those candidates come to us.

Thank you for the contribution, helpful contact.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one to join the question queue. The next question comes from Josh Chan with UBS. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my questions. I think, Catherine, you mentioned the increased diversification of the user research practice. I guess I was wondering if you can give us a color on how diverse that is, like the applicability of this to, you know, a number of situations. Just could you frame for us how it's diversifying, whether it's customer-based or applicability or however you want to think about that?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's really diversifying across multiple dimensions. So we are doing these types of studies for more clients and actually across more industries. You know, we're doing it in consumer electronics. We are also, you know, more early days, but doing it around the life sciences arena. When you think about the expanding array of health-related wearables, that is something that is one of the dimensions of this diversification it's lifestyle devices but it is also this transition into more sophisticated FDA regulated medical devices you know the algorithms that are looking to measure blood pressure that are looking to measure blood oxygenation some of these other more sophisticated measurements, if a life sciences company is wanting to use that in a clinical trial that is going to the FDA, it's a much higher standard of sort of benchmarking and understanding the ground truth and the human interface side of that. So this is a place where Exponent thrives, right? We understand the regulatory environment, we understand the electronics, we understand the human factors. So there's the consumer, there's the health-related work, but just the different technologies. I think this is something that Eric mentioned. There are all kinds of ways that AI is being incorporated and is being delivered via these products. Things with screens, things without screens, things that are interfaced through voice only, things that are interfacing through 3D, you know, video types of environment and other types of sophisticated sensors. So there are as many, you know, technologies and areas of study as there are ideas for these kinds of devices. And so that's really what's behind this. You know, there are more clients across more industries with more ideas about how to deliver AI and use that to either measure or provide information and do all the different things that AI is being asked to do.

Thanks. Thanks for that color.

That's really helpful.

And then maybe just one quick question on the repurchase. I guess, could you talk about your willingness to continue to buy back stock? you know, at least on an annual level above any free cash flow? Just like how should we think about the willingness to buy stock at, I guess, at what pace?

Hi, Josh. This is Eric. I'll take that one. You know, our philosophy hasn't really changed on this. You know, we've always committed to buy back enough stock to offset dilution from share-based awards. and then we've used excess cash in addition to that to you know do repurchases on at times when the stock's pulled back so you know we've done that for many years cash has built up we've utilized it when the stock's pulled back we've done a fair bit of that recently you know over the last 12 months that 211 million and our cash is down to you know a lower level but it's down to a level we're comfortable with as far as running the business we've you know communicated to investors that this sort of 50 to 70 million dollar range is a range where we're happy to work within um you know to pursue small strategic opportunities and to have sufficient operating capital so we um you know we're confident in the long-term growth trajectory of the business you know we expect to generate free cash flow of over 100 million in the back half of the year and that's really why we um why our board authorized that additional 50 million in share repurchases So we're going to continue to, you know, be more active when the stock pulls back. But, you know, it'll be at a lower rate than it was at the first half of the year or even the back half of last year.

Great. That makes sense. Thank you for the call and the time.

Thanks, Josh. This concludes our question and answer session and concludes the conference call today. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.