Good afternoon, and welcome to Huron Consulting Group's webcast to discuss the financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. At this time, while conference call lines are on listen-only mode, later we will conduct a question-and-answer session for conference call participants, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Before we begin, I'd like to point all of you to the disclosure at the end of the company's news release for information about any forward-looking statements that may be made or discussed on this call. The news release is posted on Huron's website. Please review that information along with the filings with the SEC for a disclosure of factors that may impact subjects discussed in this afternoon's webcast. The company will be discussing one or more non-GAAP financial measures. Please look at the earnings release on Huron's website for all of the disclosures required by the SEC, including reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP numbers. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President of Huron Consulting Group. Mr. Hussey, please go ahead.

Good afternoon and welcome to Huron Consulting Group's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. With me today are John Kelly, the Chief Financial Officer, and Ronnie Dale, the Chief Operating Officer. We finished 2025 with strong fourth quarter results. Revenues before Reimbursable Expenses, or RVR, grew 11 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, driven by record RVR in the health care and commercial segments. We also continued our trajectory of margin expansion, achieving 15.7% adjusted EBITDA margins in a quarter. Full-year RBR grew 12% over 2024, resulting in record RBR and a fifth consecutive year of growth. We're also pleased with our progress, increasing our margins in 2025, which marked our fifth consecutive year of adjusted even to a margin expansion. In addition, we achieved the record adjusted polluted earnings to share in 2025 grew 21% over 2024. The momentum we achieved in 2025 has carried forward into 2026 as we start the year with strong backlog and a pipeline at year record levels, even after strong sales conversions. Our market vested strategy, balanced portfolio of offerings, and strong execution by our highly talented team has delivered strong multi-year financial performance for Iran and its shareholders consistent with the financial goals outlined at our investor day. I'll now share some additional insight into the progress we've made since last year's investor day while providing color into our fourth quarter and full-year 2025 performance along with our expectations for 2026. Please know we've placed supplemental materials on the investor relations page of our website with additional detail around our 2026 outlook as well as information about our AI strategy and the evolving opportunity that AI presents to drive impact for our clients and grow our business. We demonstrated that our growth strategy continues to deliver financial performance that has met or exceeded our publicly shared growth goal since 2022 and we remain committed to the five strategic pillars of that strategy. First pillar of our strategy is to sustain strong growth in our largest industries, healthcare and education, in which we have leading market positions. In the fourth quarter of 2025, healthcare segment RBR grew 10% over the prior year quarter, reflecting strong demand for performance improvement, strategy and innovation, financial advisory, and revenue cycle-managed services offerings, as well as incremental RBR growth from our acquisitions. Excluding the impact of the acquisitions and the disposition of the student or education business, which was conducted on December 31st, 2024, organic growth for the healthcare segment was 8%, on top of 18% growth in Q4 2024 over 2023. On a four-year basis, the healthcare segment achieved record RBR of $838 million, growing 11% over 2024. The increase in RBR in 2025 was driven by continued strong demand for performance improvement, financial advisory, revenue cycle management services, and strategy and innovation offerings. The momentum we've built in 2025 has extended into 2026 as market tailwinds continue for financial health transformation offerings. The increase in bookings in the second half of 2025 exceeded the same period in 2024 by more than 20%. We've also seen strong sales conversions continuing into January, extending the momentum of our recent sales activity. Across the healthcare industry, financial performance among health systems remains uneven as reimbursements remain under increased pressure, operating costs increase, and workforce constraints continue to pressure provider economics. Even organizations that return modest profitability are increasingly focused on scenario planning and balance sheet resilience, recognizing that shifts in payer mix, Medicaid and Medicare funding levels, or further cost increases could quickly erode gains. As a result, health systems are prioritizing initiatives that deliver near-term financial impact while positioning their organizations for longer-term sustainability. The dynamics continue to drive demand for our health care options. Provider clients are seeking partners that can help them move beyond incremental cost actions for integrating solutions to drive growth, improve margin performance and liquidity, support strategic repositioning, and enable care delivery and operational transformation. In parallel, health systems are accelerating the adoption of AI and automation, but working closely for their consulting and managed services clients in this area. For example, to date, we've deployed over 100 AI and automation solutions to help health systems drive speed to value, revenue growth, and cost savings. In addition, we ventured into strategic collaborations with select healthcare focused AI companies to help improve the value that our joint clients derive from deploying the new technologies. We have our deep industry expertise, breadth of offerings, improvement track record at delivering tangible results, position us well to maintain our strong competitive leadership position and serve our clients across our core provider business. As we shared at our investor day last year, we're also focused on growing our addressable market by expanding into adjacent markets and innovating new offerings. In support of our payer strategy, during the fourth quarter, we acquired the consulting services division of Axiom Systems, a leading IT services firm that specializes in core administration systems and digital transformation for payers and payer provider organizations. This acquisition broadens fair-focused digital offerings and enables us to better serve our clients seeking to modernize their claims platforms while leveraging connected data to improve operational performance and member outcomes. Going back to the education segment, the fourth quarter of 2025, education segment RBR was flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, which I will note is a tough comparison in light of the 15% RBR growth in 2004 2024 over the fourth quarter of 2023. Annual RBR in the segment grew 5% compared to 2024. For the full year, the increase in RBR was primarily driven by strong demand for strategy and operations, research, and digital offerings, as well as incremental RBR acquisitions. Despite the more challenging operating environment for our higher education clients in 2025, we saw a 10% plus increase in bookings in the second half 2025 or the second half of 2024. The sales momentum is accelerated into January of 2026. Higher education institutions continue to face significant pressures on revenues and costs. Many university presidents and their boards are having strategic discussions about the sustainability of their business models in light of the dynamic regulatory environment, increasing financial pressures, and declining perception of the value of a four-year degree. We believe the breadth of our client relationships, industry expertise, and broad portfolio of offerings position us as one of the leading trusted advisors to senior leaders as we navigate these pressing issues. Continue to leverage our unified go-to-market approach to serving the top 200 public and private universities and systems so they can find our strong credentials, the breadth of offerings to win and deliver on some of the most complex engagements in the industry. For example, we're working with a leading research university to deliver a meaningful, people-enabled business transformation, the modernization of their core processes and associated technologies including leveraging AI position them for a more resilient future. Another client was selected to explore performance improvement initiatives to drive dear term financial benefit while redesigning system and campus level operating models and operations including implementing new core administrative systems and enabling change management, sufficient institution, longer term sustainability and reinvestment in their mission. The continent and our outlook for sustained growth in both healthcare and education, anchored in our deep plied relationships and our leading competitive positions in end markets that are facing ongoing financial pressure amidst disruption that's been exacerbated by the current regulatory environment. These are large, favorable end markets facing structural challenges that we believe will continue to drive strong demand for our offerings and serve as the foundation of Huron's long-term growth strategy. The second strategic pillar is focused on growing our business in the commercial industries. The fourth quarter of 2025, commercial segment of RBR grew 37% over the prior year quarter, driven by incremental revenue from our acquisitions and strong demand for our financial advisory offerings. Excluding the impact of acquisitions, RBR and QCOR 2025 grew 9% organically over the fourth quarter of 2025. Full-year 2025 commercial segment RVR threw 27% to a record $325 million, resulting in a scaling of a commercial business to approximately 20% of total company RVR. The increase in full-year RVR was primarily driven by incremental RVR remote acquisitions, as well as strong demand for digital offerings, partially offset by declines in their strategy and innovation and financial advisory offerings. In the commercial segment, we saw a 20%-plus increase in bookings in the second half of 2025 over the second half of 2024. Similar to healthcare and education, we've also seen continuing strong sales conversions in January in our commercial business, which, again, highlights our momentum and the strength of our offerings in the market. Commercial industries are navigating heightened complexity, driven by regulatory change, cost pressure, and accelerating adoption of AI-enabled operating models, driving the need for more integrated strategy and operations, financial advisory, digital, and people-focused solutions. Continued organic investment and targeted tuck-in acquisitions have strengthened our industry expertise and broaden our capabilities for the more integrated differentiated offerings for clients which has increased our win rates in this segment year over year while we remain in the early stages of executing our fully integrated commercial strategy we believe our expanding set of offerings providing their increasing ability to deliver the visual ROI for our clients for performance improvement capabilities added by our Wilson Parable acquisition and the ongoing integration of AI, data, and automation capabilities into our offerings will prove to be a meaningful competitive advantage and position us for continued growth. We've demonstrated that commercial industries represent the significant new avenue of growth for Huron. Through our integrated and focused approach to investing in areas in which we have a demonstrated right to win, we believe the commercial segment will continue to help us achieve our growth goals. Now let me turn to our third strategic builder, advancing our integrated digital platform. Digital capability RBR grew four percent in the fourth quarter and 10 percent in the full year of 2025. The increase in RBR in the fourth quarter in the full year is driven by growth in commercial and education industries. Our digital capability which represented 41 percent of total company RVR in 2025, remains a differentiated partner to our clients in a large, growing market. Rapid evolution of advanced technologies, our clients' challenges remain. Identifying opportunities for revenue growth, driving operational efficiencies, and making better, faster decisions to propel their businesses forward in increasingly competitive landscapes. Our deep industry and functional knowledge, coupled with the rest of our technology, data, and analytics, and change management capabilities sits at the heart of our differentiation. As technology continues to rapidly advance, we strive to shape the best solutions for the clients, whether that requires modernizing their data foundation, designing and deploying a strategy that embeds AI in their core platforms, with data AI applications, or custom development. It's important to highlight that AI does not create value on its own. It requires a focus on process re-engineering, and in nearly all cases, a focus on people to effectuate the change needed to sustain the benefits delivered by AI. We believe our ability to bring together our strategy, operations, technology, and people-related offerings will reimagine operating models and redesign core business functions or processes while integrating advanced technologies will continue to position us for long-term growth. The success of our 2024 acquisition of Axia is a terrific example of this. The combination of our manufacturing and supply chain expertise coupled with a broader solution set of technology and people-related capabilities to draw upon, recruit the RBR to be active at least 20% in 2025 compared to 2024. Expanding digital capabilities will continue to be an important driver of growth across our business in future years as our clients continue their focus on driving growth and productivity in their own highly competitive markets. We are innovating new offerings, expanding our technology partner ecosystems to market the technology landscape evolves. For example, our data management analytics and AI business within digital grew RBR over 40% in 2025 or in 2024 and we were recognized by one of our technology partners as an AI agent partner challenge winner for innovative supplier AI agent use cases. Looking ahead, we'll further invest organically and inorganically to strengthen and broaden our portfolio of offerings to continue digital growth trajectory. Our two final strategic pillars reinforce our focus on growing our margins and maintaining a strong balance cash flows, which continue to be a key contributor to our growth algorithm to drive shareholder value. Now let me highlight the foundation of our success, our people. I want to recognize the significant contributions of our highly talented global team. Throughout the year, our team delivered exceptional outcomes for our clients by bringing deep industry, functional, technical expertise and innovation at a time of significant disruption and regulatory change. As importantly, our team advanced our business with discipline, supported one another, and further fostered our strong collaborative culture. This combination of client impact, business performance, and teamwork is what continues to differentiate Huron and has fostered one of the strongest and most attractive cultures among professional services firms, which reinforces our ability to attract and retain top talent. I'm deeply grateful for the dedication to our clients, our company, and to one another. Now let me turn to our expectations and guidance for 2026. As noted earlier, we placed supplemental materials on the next relations page of a website that includes additional detail around the 2026 outlook as well as information about our AI opportunity. Our RVR guidance for the year is $1.78 billion to $1.86 billion. We also expect adjusted heat dump margin in a range of 14.5% to 15% of RVR and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $8.35 to $9.15. In July, we're projecting a 9.5% RVR growth at the bid point in 2026. We had our recent momentum for starting 2026 with the strongest hard backlog coverage of our initial annual RVR guidance in the last five years, reflective of strong sales growth in the second half of 2025 and early 2026. That's most encouraging, our pipeline remains at near-record levels even after the strong sales conversion. In terms of margins, the midpoint for 2026 guidance, we expect an approximate 50 basis point improvement over 2025, building upon the cumulative 400 basis point improvement achieved since 2020. We remain committed to achieving 15-72% adjusted EBITDA margins by 2029, consistent with our long-term financial objectives. We believe we will continue to drive improved profitability in our business, further building on the margin enhancement levers outlined at our investor day, inclusive of AI automation-driven productivity gains over time. We'll also continue to invest in areas of a business with the greatest growth potential. Midpoint of our guidance for adjusted earnings per share is $8.75, a 12% increase over 2025, which would be on top of a 21% increase achieved in 2025 over 2024. The expected increase continues for multi-year, double-digit percentage EPS growth trajectory, which reflects the compounding impact of our revenue growth, margin expansion, and return of capital to shareholders via share repurchase. Our focus has and continues to be on serving blue-chip clients in mission-critical, highly regulated industries for those facing significant disruption. Even our trusted advisor requires a distinct understanding of our clients' industries and business models, deep functional and operational knowledge, and a people-first, client-centric approach to deliver sustainable transformation. In light of the market's increased focus on AI, let me touch upon the evolving opportunities that we see for AI in our business. We believe AI provides us with transformational solutions that strengthen our ability to address the complex issues facing our clients. Possibly failure in the execution of AI for clients in our core industries is high, especially when those processes or use cases sit at the heart of clients businesses, which is patient care, student experience, or the supply chain. We believe AI will strengthen our competitive advantage and expand our wallet share by integrating advanced technologies into our offerings and building accelerators leveraging our distinct domain knowledge and IP. In addition, we'll continue to leverage AI to help drive even faster speed to value and realization of greater financial benefit for consulting digital and managed services clients further strengthening the roi for clients investments also see ai is an opportunity to grow our addressable market we continue to invest in and sell our ai focused services and solutions which range from ai strategy and data modernization to implementation orchestration, and change management. The human element of implementing change is paramount to the success of organizations in AI-naval transformation, especially as they redesign the way work is completed and operating models that must evolve to enable execution. We also expect to expand our technology partner ecosystem to meet our clients where they are, reminding AI within core systems, data AI applications, and custom development to achieve strategic operational and technical objectives while maximizing the return on investment. The newly formed collaboration with Hippocratic AI is a good example of how we are expanding our partner ecosystem, broadening our go-to-market reach, and expanding our portfolio of offerings to serve our clients. Finally, like every organization, we're employing AI, intelligent automation, and advanced analytics to increase productivity across our client-facing and internal teams. We have and will continue to develop and scale use cases across the organization to drive efficiency gains. Let me highlight one additional point. In 2025, 67% of total company RVR was derived from outcomes-based 6D and recurring revenue models. That's an increase from 57% in 2022, which was landed on our investor day. We shared our focus on expanding our margins, including the new pricing initiatives that we put in place at that time. We have a long-standing history of leveraging outcomes-based 6D and recurring revenue pricing models to deliver our work to clients, which we believe positions as well to capitalize on the value that AI can bring for our clients and for Europe. We believe we're well-positioned to take advantage of AI and the transformation it enables, but AI capabilities alone are not enough for success. AI's impact and value are optimized when combined with a deep industry, functional, and technical expertise, broad digital portfolio, demonstrable workforce transformation experience, and proven track record of agility. We continue to act as a client-trusting advisor in an AI-driven world as they evolve their business models and organizations to succeed in this rapidly changing environment. Let me call it by reiterating that we're off to a strong start in 2026 and we're building on the momentum that led to strong financial performance in 2025. We're excited about our prospects for achieving our revenue and profitability goals for the We continue to execute with the market tailings for our business, further strengthen our competitive position, and capitalize in the market and performance enhancing opportunities that AI offers. Let me now turn it over to John for a more detailed discussion about financial results.

Thank you, Mark. Good afternoon, everyone. Before it again, please note that I will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, adjusted EPS, and free cash flow. Our press release 10K and investor relations page on the here-on website have reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, along with the discussion of why management uses these bandgap measures and why management believes they provide useful information to investors regarding our financial condition and operating results. Before discussing our financial results, I'd like to discuss several housekeeping items. First, our fourth quarter 2025 results in the healthcare segment exclude the operating results from the student education business, which was invested on December 31st, 2024. Second, And our commercial segment results do include a full quarter of operating results from our acquisition, Wilson Perimals, which closed in September of 2025. And finally, our healthcare segment results do include a partial quarter of operating results from our acquisition of the Consulting Services Division of Axiom Systems, which closed on November 1st. Now I'll share some of the key financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. Fourth quarter of 2025 produced RBR of $432.3 million, up 11.3% from $388.4 million in the same quarter of 2024, driven by record RBR in the healthcare and commercial segments. For the full year of 2025, RBR was $1.66 billion, up 11.9% from $1.49 billion in 2024, Excluding the impact of acquisition in the student education divestiture, full year 2025 RBR was 7.1% over 2024. Driven by growth across all three operating segments, we achieved record RBR in 2025, which also marked our fifth consecutive year of achieving high single-digit percentage or better RBR growth. That income for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $30.7 million, for $1.72 per deluded share, compared to net income of $34 million for $1.84 per deluded share in the fourth quarter of 2024. As a percentage of total revenues, net income declined to 6.9% in the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to 8.5% in the fourth quarter of 2024. Results for the fourth quarter of 2025 include $2.2 million of acquisition-related contingent consideration charges, net of tax, as our projections for certain acquisitions have outperformed our original expectations. Results for the fourth quarter of 2024 include a $2.4 million gained net of tax recognized upon the divestiture of our student education business. For full year 2025, net income was $105 million, or $5.84 per diluted share. This compares to net income of $116.6 million, or $6.27 per diluted share in 2024. As a percentage of total revenues, net income declined to 6.2% for full year 2025, compared to 7.7% in 2024. That income for 2025 includes $7.7 million of non-cash impairment charges, net of tax, related to the company's convertible debt investment in a third party. That income for full year 2024 includes an $11.1 million litigation settlement gain, net of tax, related to a legal matter in which you're on with the blanket. Our effective income tax rate in the fourth quarter of 2025 is 29.2%, which is less favorable than the statutory rate, inclusive of state income taxes, primarily due to certain non-deductible expense items. On a full-year basis, our effective tax rate for 2025 is 22.2%, which is more favorable than the statutory rate, inclusive of state income taxes, primarily due to a discrete tax benefit or share-based compensation awards that bested during the year. The favorable item was partially offset by certain non-deductible expense items. Adjusted EBITDA was $68 million in Q4 2025 for 15.7% of RBR, compared to $56.8 million in Q4 2024 for 14.6% of RBR. For full year 2025, adjusted EBITDA was $237.5 million, with 14.3% of RBR, compared to $201.2 million, with 13.5% of RBR in 2024. The increase in full-year adjusted EBITDA is primarily attributable to the increase in segment operating income in all three operating segments, excluding the impact of segment depreciation and amortization and segment restructuring charges, partially offset by increased unallocated corporate expenses to support the growth of our business. 2025 was the fifth consecutive year of expanded adjusted EBITDA margin percentage, growing our adjusted EBITDA margins, 400 basis points in 2020. This multi-year margin expansion demonstrates our continued progress towards the goals shared at our 2025 investor day. Adjusted net income was $38.7 billion, $2.17 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to $35.2 million, or $1.90 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2024. For the full year, 2025 adjusted net income was $140.8 million for a record $7.83 per share, compared to $120.4 million for $6.47 per share in 2024, representing a 21% increase in adjusted diluted earnings per share year-over-year. Now, I'll discuss the performance of each of our operating segments. The healthcare segment generated 51% of total company RBR during the fourth quarter of 2025. This segment posted a record RBR of $221.7 million, up $19.4 million, for 9.6% from the fourth quarter of 2024. The increase in RBR in the quarter is driven by strong demand for our performance improvement, strategy and innovation, financial advisory, and revenue cycle managed services offerings, as well as $7.3 million of incremental RVR from our acquisitions of Eclipse Insights, Axia, and the Consulting Services Division of Axiom Systems. Excluding the impact of acquisition and the disposition of the student or education business, organic growth for the healthcare segment was 7.8% against a difficult 2024 comparison. On a full-year basis, healthcare RVR increased to 10.7% to a record of $837.5 million, compared to $756.3 million in 2024, which was on top of a strong growth of 12.2% in 2024 over 2023. RBR in 2025 included $14.5 million from our acquisitions of Eclipse Insights, AXIA, and the Consulting Services Division of AXIEM Systems. These increases were partially offset by a decrease in RBR from the divestiture of our student or education business, which generated $13.7 million of RBR in 2024. Excluding the impact of acquisitions and the student education divestiture, healthcare segment RBR in 2025 was 10.8% compared to 2024. The increase in RBR in 2025 was driven by continued strong demand for our performance improvement, financial advisory, revenue cycle managed services, and strategy and innovation offerings. Operating income margin for health care was 32.4% in Q4 2025, compared to 30.3% in Q4 2024. The increase in operating income margin was largely driven by decreases, performance bonus, salaries, and related expenses for our support personnel and contractor expenses, partially offset by an increase in salaries and related expenses for our revenue-generating professionals as a percentage of RBR. On a full-year basis, operating income margin was 30.5% in 2025 compared to 27.6% in 2024. The increase in operating income margin year-over-year was primarily due to decreases in salaries and related expenses for our support personnel, FADDAT expense, practice administration and meetings expenses, as well as revenue growth that outpaced the increase in salaries and and related expenses for our revenue-generating professionals. The education segment generated 28% of total company RBR during the fourth quarter of 2025. Education segment RBR in the fourth quarter of 2025 was flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. RBR in the fourth quarter of 2025 included $1.5 million from our acquisitions of Advancement Resources, Axia, and Halpin. On a full-year basis, education segment RVR grew 5.5% year-over-year to a record $500.2 million, compared to $474.2 million in 2024. The increase in full-year RVR was primarily driven by strong demand for our strategy and operations, research, and digital offerings, as well as $9.9 million of incremental RVR from our acquisitions of Advancement Resources, PG&A, Axia, and Halpin. The operating income margin for education was 20.7% for Q4 2025, compared to 22.4% for the same quarter in 2024. The decline in segment, the decline in operating income margin in the quarter is primarily driven by increases in salaries and related expenses for revenue-generating professionals, third-party professional fees, restructuring charges, and capitalized software expense amortization related to the development of our next generation research suite software, all as percentages of RVR. These increases were partially offset by a decrease in performance bonus expense. On a full-year basis, operating income margin was relatively flat at 22.6% compared to 22.9% in 2024. The commercial segment generated 21% of total company RBR during the fourth quarter of 2025 and grew 36.6% over the prior year period, hosting RBR of $91.9 million compared to $67.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The increase in RVR in the fourth quarter of 2025 included $18.5 million of incremental revenue from our acquisitions of Axia, Truliant, and Wilson-Paramol, and strong demand for our financial advisory offerings. Excluding the impact of acquisitions, RVR in Q4 2025, 9.1% organically over Q4 2024. On a full-year basis, commercial RVR increased 27.2% to $325.1 million, compared to $255.6 million in 2024. The increase in full-year RVR was primarily driven by $61.6 million of incremental RVR from our acquisitions of Axia, Treliant, and Wilson Kernel, as well as strong demand for our digital offerings, partially offset by declines in our strategy and innovation and financial advisory offerings. Operating income margin for the commercial segment was 20% for Q4 in 2025, compared to 17.8% for the same quarter in 2024. The increase in operating income margin in the quarter, primarily driven by RBR that outpaced increases in performance bonus expense and contractor expenses, partially offset by increases in salaries and related expenses for our revenue-generating professionals and restructuring charges as percentages of RVR. On a full-year basis, commercial segment operating income margins decreased to 17.2% compared to 20% in 2024, reflecting increases in salaries and related expenses for our revenue-generating professionals and contractor expenses as percentages of RVR partially offset by revenue growth that outpaced the increase in performance bonus expense for our revenue-generating professionals. Our 2025 commercial segment operating income margin reflected increased revenue midship to our digital offerings as compared to 2024, as well as certain integration expenses related to our acquisition activity during the year. Corporate expenses not allocated at the segment level and excluding restructuring charges, with $54.4 million in Q4 2025, compared to $47.8 million in Q4 of 2024. Unallocated corporate expenses in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 2024 included a loss of $800,000 and a gain of $200,000, respectively, related to changes in the liability of our deferred compensation plan, which is offset by the change in fair value of the investment assets used to fund that plan reflected in other expense. Excluding the impact of the Deferred Compensation Plan in both periods, unallocated corporate expenses increased $5.6 million, primarily due to increases in salaries and related expenses for our support personnel and software and data hosting expenses. On a full year basis, corporate expenses not allocated at the second level increased to $217.6 million, which included $6.2 million of expense related to the deferred compensation plan compared to $191.2 million in 2024, which included $5.2 million of expense related to the deferred compensation plan. Excluding the impact of the deferred compensation plan in both periods, unallocated corporate expenses increased to $25.4 million, dollars, primarily driven by an increase in salaries and related expenses for our support personnel, software and data hosting expenses, and third-party and professional fees, primarily related to our M&A activity during the year, partially offset by a decrease in legal expenses. Now, let's turn into the balance sheet and cash flows. Cash flow generated from operations for 2025 was $193.4 million. We used $31.1 million to invest in capital expenditures, inclusive of internally developed software costs, resulting in free cash flow of $162.3 million. DSO came in at 73 days in the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to 76 days for both the third quarter of 2025 and the fourth quarter of 2024. The decrease in DSO during the fourth quarter, when compared to both periods, reflects the impact of collections on certain larger health care and education projects in alignment with our contractual payment schedules. Total debt as of December 31st, 2025 is $511 million, consisting entirely of our senior bank debt. When we finished the year with cash of $24.5 million, the net debt of $486.5 million. This was a $100.6 million decrease in net debt compared to Q3, 2025. During 2025, we used $166 million to repurchase approximately 1.2 million shares, representing 6.6% of our outstanding shares as of the beginning of the year. And we used $112 million for strategic plug-in acquisitions. Inclusive of this deployment of capital and consistent with the capital allocation objectives we discussed with our 2025 investor day, our leverage ratio, as defined in our senior bank agreement, was 1.9 times adjusted EBITDA as of December 31st, 2025. In addition, during the first quarter of 2026, on February 20th, we have used $70 million to repurchase approximately 500,000 shares. Also during the first quarter, Huron's Board of Directors authorized an additional $200 million under our current Shared Repurchase Program. Inclusive of this additional authorization, we have $229 million remaining under our Shared Repurchase Program. Let me remind everyone that we have placed supplemental materials on the Investor Relations page of our website with additional detail around our 2026 outlook, as well as information about our AI strategy and the evolving opportunity that AI presents for year-round. Now let me turn to our expectations and guidance for 2026. For the full year of 2026, we anticipate RBR in a range of $1.78 billion to $1.86 billion, reflecting 9.5% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. Adjusted EBITDA in a range of 14.5% to 15% of RVR, reflecting an approximate 50 basis point improvement over 2025 at the midpoint. An adjusted non-GAAP EPS in a range of $8.35 to $9.15, reflecting a 12% increase over 2025 at the midpoint. We expect cash flows from operations to be in a range of $220 to $260 million, Capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $30 to $40 million, inclusive of cost to develop our market-facing products and analytical tools. And free cash flows are expected to be in a range of $180 to $220 million, net of cash taxes and interest, including non-cash stock compensation. Weighted average diluted share count for 2026 is expected to be in a range of 17.2 million to 17.8 million shares. Finally, with respect to taxes, for the full year of 2026, we expect an effective tax rate in the range of 28 to 30%, which comprises a federal tax rate of 21%, a blended state tax rate of 5 to 6%, and incremental tax expense related to certain non-deductible expense items, partially offset by certain deductions in tax credit. Let me add some color to our guidance, starting with RBR. The midpoint of the RBR range reflects nearly 10% growth over 2025. As Mark mentioned, because of the market demand for our offerings across all three operating segments, we have the strongest backlog coverage of our initial annual RBR guidance in the last five years. Our pipeline remains at hit record levels despite the recent strong sales activity. We believe we are well positioned to achieve growth in 2026 consistent with our financial objectives. With regard to our healthcare segment, we expect low double-digit percentage RBR growth for the full year 2026 driven by high single-digit percentage organic RBR growth. We expect operating margins will be in a range of approximately 29 to 33 percent. In the education segment, we we expect mid-single-digit percentage RBR growth for the full year, 2026, nearly all organic, and we expect operating margins will be in a range of approximately 22 to 26%. In the commercial segment, we expect to see RBR growth in the low team percentage range for 2026, driven by high single-digit percentage organic RBR growth. We expect our operating margins in this segment to be in a range of approximately 18 to 22%, which reflects an anticipated modest midship back towards our consulting offerings, as well as lower M&A integration expenses. We expect unallocated corporate SG&A, excluding the impact of the deferred compensation plan, to increase in the mid to upper single-digit percentage range year-over-year. Also, in the first quarter, consistent with prior years, we note the following items as it relates to expenses. the reset of wage basis for FICA and our 401k match for annual merit and promotion wage increases going to affect on January 1st, an increase in stock compensation expense for restricted stock awards that will be granted in March to retirement eligible employees, and an increase in practice administration and meeting expenses driven by several larger team meetings that take place in the quarter. In addition, we expect an effective tax rate during the first quarter of 2026 in the 15 to 20% range. This increase in effective tax rate when compared to the first quarter of 2025 reflects an anticipated lower tax deduction for shares vesting in March of 2026. Based on these factors, we anticipate approximately 15 to 20% of our full year adjusted EBITDA and full full-year adjusted EPS to be generated during the first quarter. As a closing reminder, with respect to 2025 Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted Net Income, and Adjusted EPS, there are several items that you will need to consider when reconciling these non-GAP measures to comparable GAP measures. Reconciliation schedules that we included in our press release will help walk you through these reconciliations. Thanks, everyone. I would now like to open the call with questions.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If you have a question at this time, please press star 11 on your touchtone telephone. If your question hasn't been answered and you wish to move yourself from the queue, you may do so by pressing star 11 again. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon. Appreciate you taking my questions. First one I wanted to ask was on commercial. Strong quarter, total revenue growth, and organic revenue growth. It looks to me like CNMS revenue was especially strong. So I was hoping you could flesh that out a little bit. Was there anything one time in the quarter or lumpy in what at the industry level is particularly strong in that segment?

Yeah, Andrew, no, you're right. It was a good quarter for our commercial team, and as we noted, it was a strong quarter for our distressed financial advisory team, as you suggested. Nothing to have a call out is won't be there during the quarter. There were some low to mid single-digit million success fees during the quarter, but that's reflective of the size of such fees that we could get any given quarter, so I wouldn't necessarily call it out. But I think overall, we saw people mentioned in that part of the business, A lot of strength from our AXIA business, which really speaks to some of the supply chain challenges that our clients are seeing in the digital area, and momentum from a strategy and innovation perspective, too, both in terms of the actual results during the quarter, but then when we look at the sale, bookings, conversions during the quarter, and the backlog heading into next year. So, it was a strong quarter from a commercial perspective.

And then on guidance, I guess I want to ask a question about the conservatism of guidance. It sounds like from looking at the slide deck and your prepared remarks here that it's the strongest hard backlog coverage in the last five years. So does that mean you just have a little bit more wiggle room to either side? Are you expecting, you know, maybe or giving yourself some room in the back half of the year? Just, you know, help me piece that comment together a little bit more, if you could.

Sure, Andrew. I can start there. I wouldn't say that there's really any change in our guidance approach than we have in any given year. I think when we're at this call in February at the beginning of the year, we're always a little bit cautious because we still have a full year to project out. So we don't like to get ahead of ourselves. So I think there was kind of the normal amount of caution from us in terms of the range, just reflecting the fact that we have to execute through the rest of the year. But certainly based on the backlog coverage that you cited, the bookings conversions that we saw during the back half of last year, as well as the start that we've had this year, plus just the overall size of the pipeline, those are all things that give us confidence in being able to achieve that guidance. and to the extent that we're able to execute, as we expect, it's the type of stuff that could have the potential to push us toward the upper end of the guy here and what's on.

Understood. And if I could just squeeze one more in, just on the AI topic, is there any way to kind of quantify the number of projects or the revenue that is currently tied to or incorporates AI in some fashion? And then, you know, relatedly, anything from an economics perspective or a pricing perspective or even like a duration perspective, that you've seen AI projects be different from your traditional work to the extent that more work is tied to AI or implementing AI or helping your clients with AI. Just wondering how that evolves the model, if at all.

Sure, Andrew. Yeah, happy to provide some color there. It's difficult to quantify across the entire business because we are deploying AI really across the business and in different areas. At this point, the large majority of our projects have some element of AI embedded in them. And this is not just speaking of digital projects. This is consulting projects as well as digital projects. As we look at sales conversions, you know, thinking about it comparatively this year versus last year, there's been a notable shift in terms of projects that you have, either how we would characterize a high component or a moderate component of AI-related delivery. And maybe a way to think about that is if you go back towards the first part of last year, maybe that was 25% of projects or something in that neighborhood that was around that size. But this year, that's closer to 50%. If you look within our digital business at our data analysis business and our AI offerings specifically, that's up about 40% at this point year over year, which is one of the drivers of our confidence in digital growth as we head into 2026.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Toby Summer with Truist. Your line is open. Thank you.

I was interested by your comment about having the highest backlog coverage of initial RBR guidance in five years. Could you frame that? I understand it's a high watermark, but I don't know what would be typical or an average and how this recent snapshot would compare to what would be typical.

Thank you, Toby. I can start there from a quantification perspective. So as you're familiar, typically at the beginning of the year, during the first quarter, you've got really high visibility. By the time you get out a quarter into the second quarter, you've got significant visibility, but you still have work to do to close out the year. And then when you get to the back half of the year is typically when you're more in that, you know, call it 40% visibility range of the guidance. I would say this year, it's several percentage points higher than that, really across the and one characteristic of some of the work that we've sold over the back half of last year are larger sorts of projects that span over multiple quarters so it's not only giving us better visibility for the immediate quarters and that's kind of the first half of this year but it also meaningfully improves our visibility as we get towards the back half of the year so that's that's how I I wouldn't quantify it, Toby.

Yeah, the only point I would add to what John said is just the breadth of businesses and the coverage that it applies to is, you know, it's not that we have it equally across the board every single year, but in this particular year, it is actually quite solid across all of these segments. Thank you.

What are the areas in your portfolio where you're anticipating adding headcount the fastest here in 2026?

Well, Toby, I think the first thing I'd comment on is from a healthcare perspective, we actually made a lot of that investment in headcount in the back half of last year, and you'll see that come through in the metrics. So I think we really kind of set the stage for growth in healthcare for next year. the guidance that we talked about with primarily that council we added in the back half of last year which doesn't mean that we won't have some additional ads but i think a lot of that was already accomplished by the end of the year i'd say outside of that area um two areas i'd look at would be our strategy and innovation business we're both in the healthcare segment as well as the commercial segment right now we're seeing a significant amount of pipeline online, as well as recent bookings in both of those areas where we're actively hiring to bring people in to help support our growth there, as well as within our digital capability. And I think that within digital, probably no surprise to hear, but I think employees with skills in advanced technologies and AI continue to be an area that we're investing in and to help both grow our digital business, but also to support the consulting business. And then another one that you'd see in the metrics is our managed services business where we've added significant managed services heads towards the back half of last year. And I think we're going to see that trend continue into 2026 based on some of our recent sales in that area.

And, thanks, when you're talking to hospital customers, particularly those, you know, maybe in the pipeline for PI projects, what are they most focused on over the next 6, 12, 18 months that influences their decision to, you know, go down that path with you or sort of hold off? I think probably the best way to summarize it would be the descriptor of financial health transformation which is a pretty broad encompassing description of a full range of things that we do and we kind of outline them in some of the areas of the script but it ranges from performance improvement across all the various sub-elements performance improvement as well as the balance sheet financial advisory bring you know better liquidity visibility to decisions around those kinds of things it can lead into managed services as well as uh you know the strategy as for growth aspects as well so it's pretty all-encompassing and i think you made a comment pretty clear that you know the the time of incremental change to solve the bigger challenges they have that we're well past those days we're now seeing a lot more transformational type of thinking that it spans across, you know, the full enterprise or the whole institution.

Thank you, Patrick. I'm going to sneak in one housekeeping question.

What do you expect performance fees to look like this year compared to last?

I expect a little bit of an optic there, Toby. And so by way of providing some historical context, if you look over the past two years, 2024, if you look at our healthcare segment revenues, The component of those revenues that was contingent-based was in the mid-20% range, a little bit more to 25%. This past year in 2025, it skewed a little bit lower with a low 20% range. I think our expectation at this point, which is still subject to those types of projects that we sell as the year goes on, is that that's going to probably return to more of the levels that we saw in 2024 and more in that mid-20% range.

Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star 1-1 on your telephone. Our next question comes from Kevin Steinke with Barrington Research Associates. Your line is open.

Thank you very much. I wanted to follow up about your comment of selling larger projects and ask about specifically within health care. I know you noted greater demand for integrated solutions. So when we're talking about larger projects in healthcare, is it just that the performance improvement piece is larger up front, or are you selling more integrated work up front? And, you know, if it's just performance improvement up front, is the demand for integrated solutions then creating kind of a longer tail at clients as you maybe do follow-on projects and, you know, other areas with them?

It's a good question, Kevin. The typical way we start is, you know, we're just presented with a challenge or a business problem that they're looking for our thoughts on how we can solve it. And when we start off, sometimes they start with single areas of solution because that's what the client is bringing into focus. They can lead to other opportunities that are adjacent all the time. that's very typical of what we see is that we expand as we gain relationships and understanding of their business and bring our expertise and suggestions to other areas of focus that can be impactful to them you know occasionally started on a more integrated full-scale basis but it is really a combination of full range of things that we do pretty much we cover out every element of their operation today and so we're that i think is one of the things that just makes us distinct in the market versus the competitors that we have just so many levers in multiple dimensions that we can help them um which didn't affect what leads to larger engagement sizes and and we you know probably extend a little bit over time for longer stays at those clients all right great uh thank Thank you, John, you mentioned just the acquisition contingent consideration adjustment in the quarter.

I believe you mentioned due to outperformance of certain acquisitions. Are there any particular that you would highlight there that have been outperforming expectations?

What we've talked about, this isn't, I won't get into specifics, Toby, of the burnout considerations for those acquisitions, but, you know, certainly we've talked a lot about Axia, which was in the fourth quarter of 2024, which has been one of the business units that, or one of the areas of the business that's been really hot. Eclipse Insights, which we closed in June of 2025, that's been a really strong performer for us. I think as we talked about at the time, the capabilities of that team in the middle revenue cycle area was just a perfect fit with what we do from a performance improvement consulting perspective. We've worked with that previously, so we knew it would be a good cultural fit, So, that one's off to a great start. And then, Wilson Caramel would be one more that I would highlight, and that was in September of last year. But they really bring some great strategy and performance improvement capabilities to our commercial team that together within a site, their capabilities and IT has really been resonating with clients together, along with our digital capabilities that we have in the commercial segment. So I think that if you think about that vertically from strategy to performance improvement to digital, we're seeing a lot of demand for those integrated capabilities right now in the commercial segment.

Okay. Yeah, sounds good. That's helpful.

Appreciate that. And just lastly, you know, given the recent dislocation you've seen in your stock price, I know it's your target to return about 50% of annual free cash flow to shareholders that's being accomplished, you know, through share repurchases. Are there any thoughts to maybe even accelerating the pace of repurchase, you know, based on recent movements in the stock? Or do you just kind of stick to that formula you've laid out?

You know, Kevin, it is dynamic. And so we do look at valuation considerations, quite frankly, both on the share rate purchase and the M&A side. And certainly when you do see the dislocation in the stock price from our expectations, that does make it an attractive entry point for us from our perspective to buy shares. So I think I would expect to see more aggressive buyback shares at this price. and that's consistent with both what we've already done in the first quarter, but then as well as the board authorization that we discussed in my remarks.

Yeah, thank you very much. I'll turn it back over.

Seeing no further questions in the queue, I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Hussey.

Thanks for spending time with us this afternoon, and we look forward to speaking with you again in May when we announce our first quarter results. Good evening.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you, everyone, for participation. You may now disconnect.