Good morning everybody. We're going to go ahead and get started. My name is Mark Marcon. I follow human capital technology and solutions for Baird. Our next presenting company is Kelly Services. And Kelly Services is the OG when it comes to the staffing industry. Literally the very first staffing company founded by old man Kelly right after World War II. and what's interesting is that the last 12 months has seen quite a bit of change at Kelly and so I'm really interested to hear about that with us today from Kelly we've got Chris Layden the president and CEO Chris joined Kelly services as CEO in September of 2025 the thing that I really like about your background is the fact that you know you came from manpower which has you know, a slightly different culture. And you started at the ground floor and worked your way to very senior roles over there. So you really know the business from the ground up. We also have Troy Anderson, the CFO, and we've got Scott Thomas, the head of IR up front here. Chris, I'm going to turn it over to you. And hopefully we have some time for some questions. Yes,
We will. Well, thank you, Mark. And I love that. The original OG, which we are. And on behalf of Kelly and our company, thank you for interest. We're excited to be here. As Mark mentioned, in September, I joined Kelly as the sixth CEO, the first from the outside. And we don't take that lightly. There are a lot of things that attracted me to Kelly that we'll talk about today, but maybe unmatched was our shareholder value creation opportunity, and I'm really excited to talk you through that today and give you an update on our progress. Now, before we begin, I'm going to just flash this safe harbor language and make sure that everyone here has a time to review it as we cover what we're about to talk about here in these non-GAAP measures so Kelly the OG William Russell Kelly we're in our 80th year we invented the industry and have been really reinventing it ever ever since what started as a local staffing agency providing flexible talent post World War two has really emerged as a very differentiated specialized business with operations all over the world in not only flexible temporary staffing but recruitment process sourcing managed service business process outsourcing and a whole bunch of other specialized areas in the in the STEM related space we have the privilege of getting to work and place almost 400,000 people every year and in work with thousands and thousands of employers and it's you know maybe one of the reasons why that differentiation The specialization we have was recognized just last week, again, by Forbes as one of the leading, both professional recruiting and temporary staffing companies in North America, which we're really proud about. Also, unmatched, and the reason we're here, is the value creation opportunity for all of our stakeholders. Mark mentioned this. Our brand is synonymous with the industry. we founded in 1946. It remains a competitive advantage for us. We certainly win on the back of that brand, but we've been doing a lot, not just over the last 79 years, but certainly over the last nine months, as I joined, as Mark indicated, really starting first with our growth orientation, our go-to-market. We'll talk a little bit about our growth office. We're also transforming our operations. Mark indicated I've got a background having land operations across many many specialties from the ground up and we are we're looking everywhere to improve our execution and we'll talk a little bit about the way that's playing out in our even a margin improvement and what we're going to see here the second half of the year. We've also continued to take a balanced approach towards capital allocation with a focus towards longer term shareholder value creation and we have a really strong balance sheet which i'm sure we'll talk a little bit about we have a refresh board a refresh management team and and to that end i'd love to talk a little bit about some of the work we've been doing first at the board level january 30th we announced that our board was reconstituted. We also entered the controlling shareholder agreement between the Terrence E. Adderley Trust K and Hunt Equity Opportunities. That brought seven new board members to Kelly that have really incredible experience and expertise that have added to our board. Our board has expanded now to 11 and I continue to serve on the board and we're really excited about what that means for our value creation opportunity and the hunt equity opportunity leadership team and our new board have has strongly endorsed this this leadership team and our strategy which they reaffirmed just two weeks ago in a recent 13D filing. We've also been making some quick work on our leadership team. And so you saw in the first quarter we made two announcements. First, with the addition of Pat McCall is our chief growth officer. Pat brings 30 years of sales and operations experience, helping drive and really accelerate profitable growth for some of the largest staffing solutions and software companies in the world. This was a newly created role, a role that we foreshadowed in the first quarter, our first earnings call, because we needed to get back to being client-centric. And we really had a growth orientation around how we were streamlining not only our go-to-market, but also how we're servicing large customers. And Pat brings as good of a track record as anyone in this industry doing that. across multiple stops including two of the largest public companies uh in our in our space uh the following month we welcomed joel legge joel's our new leader running our set segment that's about a quarter of our business as joel as uh troy will walk through here shortly he's another proven industry leader uh three decades of experience uh in in i.t in in life sciences and engineering but also on the solutions and on on the services side he brings an extensive background leading complex transformations, integrations. He's done a lot of M&A, and we're really excited about what his leadership will bring to our overall Kelly leadership team as we move forward. And then finally, just last quarter, we also announced that I'm evaluating the leadership of our ETM segment. That is a really important segment to last quarter, our strategy, and I'll talk about that in a second. And I'm really taking time to assess what we need long term to deliver differentiation in the market. And in the interim, we have three leaders in those segments, our BPO, professional industrial segment, our MSP and RPO segment that I have a lot of confidence in and look forward to continuing to work with them to grow the business. So now let's look at the portfolio. And as you see here, the portfolio is underpinned by three specialized businesses, and they also constitute our reporting segments. They've got different breadth of experience across all three, but as you'll see first in the ETM segment, this is our largest segment. It has our legacy professional and industrial business, the light industrial business that we serve in North America where we're a leader. That's industrial, that's some contact center, some office and clerical as well. It also includes our recruitment process outsourcing, our managed service provider business that was just recognized by HRO today as the leading total talent management, the number one total talent management solution in the world. And that really is because of the combination of both our staffing, managed service and recruitment process outsourcing capability on a global basis. Our U.S. staffing business ranks number four right now, our marketing and creative segment number 11, and then our industrial business is 11th, probably a little larger when you include the significant BPO business we do, where we're really a leader in that segment. The second segment is our science, engineering, technology, and telecom business. This is an area where we've invested a lot over the last few years, both in terms of scale and specialization. This is a business that is predominantly focused in North America and has differentiation on both the managed service, the functional service provider space in the life science world, and where we do statement of work and broader outcome-based solutions. Our life sciences business is ranked number two in North America. Engineering is number four. And on the heels a few years ago of our motion recruitment partners acquisition, our IT business is 11th in the U.S., North America. And if our telecom business, if telecom was likely rated, it would be amongst the largest in North America as well. That's a business that I'm sure we'll talk more about that's been growing sequentially in the work we do with large carriers and with growth in the in the data center space and then the final segment our education business we're number one on the market this is the business we've been leading for for many years and really underpinned by the 9,000 US school districts we get to work with 30,000 substitute teachers a day are supporting classrooms and kids leveraging our technology and our managed service solution in an end-to-end outsourced based arrangement. We've also done some inorganic growth there with the acquisition of a therapy business that's growing alongside the work we do in the K-12 space. And then we have a small executive search business in that business as well that is focused in the higher ed, public higher ed space. Really a ton of differentiation here, we have about 50% of the market share in education in a market where only 30% of U.S. schools are outsourcing their substitute teacher management. So a lot of white space for us to continue to grow that segment where we have scale and real differentiation. So with that, I'm going to now turn it over to Troy to talk a little bit more about our financial profile and the revenue mix. Troy? Thank you.
Thanks, Chris, and thanks again to everybody for joining us here today. If you're interested in Kelly, I joined Kelly about a year ahead of Chris, newer to the industry, but certainly a depth of experience and have been learning about the business and in the industry overall, working backwards a little bit from where Chris just walked us through. So he just really, as we think about the right side of this slide, was really speaking to where we are today. But there's been a significant amount of work done under the prior leadership team, really starting in about 2020, to reshape the portfolio and really drive toward a higher focus on higher growth and margin specialty areas, which Chris just outlined a number of those for you. But if you look back in 2020, we were operating in five segments, about $4.5 billion in revenue, moving to the three segments that Chris just walked through and about $4.3 billion in 2025. But notably, that gray slice in the chart there on the left, about a billion of that revenue in 2020 was an international segment, largely EMEA-based segment of staffing that was a very low-margin business. We sold that at the beginning of 2024 for about $100 million. and along with other divestitures of non-core assets where we raised roughly $500 million in proceeds, reinvested that into the business, acquiring about seven businesses over that span, the telecom business Chris just talked about a bit, the therapy business that he also referenced, along with some other specialty areas, and most notably our largest acquisition, which was in the middle of 2024, Motion Recruitment Partners, IT staffing and consulting business, about a $450 million acquisition, brought about a half a billion dollars in IT services revenue and really built our scale, taking us from about the 30th largest provider to the 11th largest provider in that space. And so you can see the significant shift that occurred there, along with the growth in education, Again, Chris referenced that when he talked through the segments. You can see education has grown dramatically over that time to now almost a quarter of our portfolio from under 10 percent, 6 percent of the portfolio back in 2020. And the vast majority of that growth was organic growth. Another growth area that we've really focused on is some of these outcome, what we call outcome-based solutions, which is more a BPO type of offering. a lot of the telecom business, a lot of the life sciences business, our outcome-based solutions, and then our light industrial space, where we have outsourced-based solutions, we'll run elements of our clients' businesses, be it manufacturing lines or semiconductor elements of the semiconductor manufacturing process, et cetera. So a significant shift, as you can see, but it also translated into profitability. So, again, you know, driving toward higher growth, we've almost replaced all that revenue that we divested via acquisition and via the organic growth, but we shifted the margin profile by almost 200 basis points over that same time horizon from 18.3% to just over 20%. And so, on a slightly smaller revenue amount, we generated more gross profit, and that translates down into also a higher EBITDA profile, the last point on the page really is, and I'll touch more on it on the next slide, is that we also, while we were embarking upon the portfolio remix, we also had a significant focus on our SG&A profile, and that helped EBITDA as well. So, transitioning to EBITDA, you can see, historically, Kelly was running at about a 1.5% to 2% EBITDA range, many, many years, years on end, and there was a significant focus with that portfolio remixing to also drive that EBITDA profile. And you can see there was steady improvement made over the last five years, culminating in more than doubling that historical margin to 3.3% in 2025. The step change, you can see that SG&A reduction really started at the end of 22 and into 23 and then culminated in the first part of 24. So there was a significant uptick there. Along with, we drove organic growth. So in a declining market backdrop, Kelly was an outlier in terms of driving organic growth in in 2024. We have had a little bit of a step back here last year in 2025 and here in the first part of of 26 notably with some the macro backdrop last year was a bit challenging and and we have a few large customer discrete items that we managed through through the last half of last year and in the first part of this year that will anniversary as we get into the back half of the year and we set expectations that as we progress through the back half of the year we'll get return to organic growth and margin expansion. From a capital allocation perspective, again, returning to shareholders is a focus. Deploying the capital I referenced earlier, so deploying over $1.2 billion in capital over the last five years, and a significant portion of that, of course, going toward the portfolio remixing toward acquisitions, but also $70 million of share repurchases. We still have an outstanding authorization of $30 million that expires later this year. We have a dividend that has been fairly consistent for the last few years at $0.30 a share on an annual basis. We've with that motion recruitment partners or MRP acquisition in the middle of 24, we did take out debt about 240 million in debt and but we paid back almost 140 million of that last year. So debt pay down has been a focus as well. So we're opportunistic with with capital deployment. Our immediate focus, frankly, from an organic perspective is more the integration of all those acquisitions. But we continue to look at both return to shareholders and investing in in the business as we deploy capital going forward. So Chris, I'll turn it over to you again to wrap it up.
Thanks, Troy. Well, as Troy mentioned, we're laser-focused right now in executing these priorities. They're simple, but in the interim, they're starting to deliver results as we focused on the operating model modernization and the EBITDA margin expansion, really continuing the EBITDA margin expansion journey that we've been on. The first is driving reoccurring growth, reoccurring revenue growth, and beating the market. The formation of the growth office is really just the starting point as we think about the impact this will have on our One Kelly enterprise strategy and the way we're going to go take more market share more broadly. We also really believe there continues to be a lot of white space in the education space and with our outcome-based offerings in SET and ETM that will continue to drive growth into the future. Continuing to align resources with demand has been a focus since I arrived and making sure that we're looking at how we re-engineer our cost base. Central to that is the modernization of our tech stack, and we've been very actively talking about that and continue to be on track, along with all the work we're doing, bringing AI into all 6,000 Kelly employees directly into their core workflows. And then finally, culture. We're an 80-year-old company reinventing the industry every day, but our culture will be core to our growth, focused on accountability, client centricity, and stronger visibility in the market. And really, against that backdrop, I really believe these are the right priorities to continue to have Kelly pioneer. But as you've heard today, this is a different Kelly than you've probably heard in the past, which we're proud about. We're making significant strides on this strategic journey, and we really think we're well-positioned for growth into the future. So with that, Mark, excited to join you and have some questions.
Do you still have the clicker? I'm wondering if you could flip back to the segments and specifically the one with the margins on there. So, you know, when we take a look at the margins, you've talked about, like, the opportunity to really add some value. I look at some of those margins, and relative to where they could be, it seems like they're relatively low. Obviously, things don't change in 12 months and sometimes not even 24 months. But aspirationally, where do you think, for example, ETM could go to? And if I'm reading that correctly, it sounds like you've got some decent businesses in there in terms of RPO, MSP, that should be relatively high margin. I take a look at industrial, that should be higher than a 1.4% margin. So where do you think that should go, and what are the steps to get there? And it sounds like you're evaluating the management team within that group. So, I mean, that's a pretty darn clear signal that something's going to happen.
Exactly right. Well, first, I think it's an important backdrop just to say, you know, we came out really in November sort of talking about different execution, these growth priorities and looking at our cost base. And through the first quarter, we've delivered on those commitments. And so both on the revenue side, which ETM helped drive, and also on the EBITDA margin. Now, we had a long way to go, but hitting our commitments is a starting point for us. And hitting the top end of the range in revenue and beating the range in EBITDA was a starting point. So within ETM specifically, this should be a 3% to 4% EBITDA margin business. The RPO business is counter-cyclical a bit in terms of where we're at. There isn't as much permanent hiring, but we want to see more utilization of the large contracts we have. We're selling aggressively in the market. We have a lot of very large customers. And as permanent hiring improves in the U.S. labor market and globally, because this is a global solution that we're delivering, that will yield higher even of margin growth. The largest really segment in ETM, though, is our BPO and P&I business. And, you know, I've run that business, you know, previously, a competitive, you know, business to Kelly. And that can be a 4% EBIT of business. Some of that is the things we've talked about in terms of what we're selling and how we're going to market. and some of it's also how we deliver, where we deliver, the servicing level that we have across these large customers. And as Troy indicated, we are really fortunate that the growth of our BPO business, which is about a $500 million business, if you think about that kind of light industrial space, we've got a billion dollars in traditional staffing in P&I and another $500 million in BPO. And that BPO business is at a higher margin. It also has some very large volume customers. And the team's done a nice job. We just need to go sell more in the market. And then, you know, finally, you know, we've got this MSP business. And the MSP business is a leader. I mean, we are an industry leader in this space. We're recognized as having the number one solution. Where you're going to see growth there is across our staffing segments where we want to capture more of the spend in the roughly $20 billion of MSP business that we have. You know, we announced in the first quarter a very large financial services win, likely one of the largest MSP wins that you'll see in 2026. We came back and just announced a very, very large oil and gas customer. These are billions of dollars of contingent labor spend. Kelly in SET, in P&I, in BPO, even in RPO, could be doing staffing across those large enterprises. And you're going to see us really prioritize the work we do, capturing more wallet share in our large MSP customers.
What percentage of the MSP business that you currently have is currently fulfilled by Kelly?
I don't know that we've talked about that publicly. And so I would say that aspirationally, where we see some of the other leaders in this space, we believe that could be as high as 20% or 30% capture rate. I came out of health care more recently before I joined Kelly. Those in-source capture rates can be as high as 67% or 80%. And so, again, depending on the segment we're in, you'll see that that represents a lot of white space for us overall.
And how do you think about the margins? And we only have three minutes and 40 seconds. So where do you think the margins could go just for SET and for education?
You know, the set business, you know, the GP percent actually is pretty healthy as you look across the industry, given the mix of where we are today. GP is pretty healthy. We'd like to convert more like a third of that to EBITDA. And so that's really where we're focused right now. We've got a leader who's driven at a number of stops that he's been at, including two very large public company competitors. And then that education business, you know, 90% of it is in that K-12 space, and it's a very competitive publicly bid process. Where you're going to see EBITDA margin and GP margin expansion there is going to be through the expansion of our therapy business. It represents about 8% of our revenue today as that gets to 10%, 12%, 15%. You know, that's a business that we can do 26% to 28% GP, where your traditional K-12 staffing is more in the 11%, 12% range. And so as that mix evolves, and, you know, hopefully we'll also, you know, continue to see the additional hiring and executive search space. But it's going to be therapy that will drive that margin, even a margin expansion in education.
Great. So do you feel like you have the pieces? I know you're evaluating the leadership, but in terms of the actual pieces of the business, do you think you have enough there in order to get to your aspirational targets over a multi-year period?
Yeah, absolutely. The portfolio and the differentiation of the portfolio is not our limitation to get to the first horizon of the EBITDA margin goal. But beyond that, we're going to continue to look at all of the capability that we need to serve large customers. And I suspect you'll continue to see us look at ways that we can enhance the portfolio across all three segments.
And then can you talk a little bit about the perspective of the new board members? Because, I mean, this is a massive change for Kelly. You've got new top leadership, new CFO, new CEO. You're bringing in, you've already brought in a couple of key leaders to supplement you guys. You've got a brand new board, new owners. How are you thinking? What are their priorities? And also, like, when you talk to them from a financial perspective, like, you're currently trading, you know, at 4.7 times EBITDA. And your EBITDA margin is depressed. most of us in the investment community would say buy back your stock that's should your you could you could buy yourself back at a really cheap price relative to where your your margin should go to so why would you why would you why would you why would that not be the the top priority yeah
well let me just talk a little bit about the board um you know we um we have seven new board members and it couldn't come at a better timing you know i'm new we've got a new leadership team excited about the new board we're focused on value creation for all shareholders and one of the big differences i would say that i think the hunts recognized two weeks ago in their 13d is their value creation track record uh over the 70 plus years that they they've been doing this is aligned to all of our shareholders, and we have a much more sophisticated controlling shareholder. You know, our former controlling shareholder, you know, the beneficiaries of that were a trust and a foundation from our founder, Terry Ederle. So, you know, for a variety of reasons, for seven or eight years, that made it a little complicated not having a sophisticated controlling shareholder. Now we do. They're willing to engage with us and help us grow the business and shareholder value creation is aligned.
Great. Unfortunately, we're out of time. Please join me in thanking Chris and Troy for a terrific discussion.
Thank you, Art.