Good evening. My name is Cindy, and I'll be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Insperity Quarter 4 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. At this time, I would like to introduce today's speakers. Joining us are Paul Sarvadi, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; and Douglas Sharp, Senior Vice President of Finance, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Douglas Sharp. Mr. Sharp, please go ahead.

Thank you. We appreciate you joining us. Let me begin by outlining our plan for this evening's call. First, Paul will recap the 2020 year and discuss the major initiatives of our 2021 plan, and I will discuss the details of our fourth quarter and full year 2020 financial results and provide our financial guidance for the first quarter and full year 2021. We will then end the call with a question-and-answer session. Now before we begin, I would like to remind you that Mr. Sarvadi or I may make forward-looking statements during today's call, which are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. In addition, some of our discussion may include non-GAAP financial measures. For a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures, please see the company's public filings, including the Form 8-K filed today, which are available on our website. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Paul.

Thank you, Doug, and thank you all for joining our call. My comments today will address three areas of interest for Insperity stockholders. First, I will discuss our strong Q4 and full year 2020 results, highlighting our success throughout the pandemic. Second, I will address our year-end transition into 2021 and the trends driving our game plan for this year. I'll finish my remarks with comments about the longer term and our efforts to begin a new five-year run of unit and earnings growth for Insperity. Our financial results for 2020 were quite impressive, with less than a 1% decline in worksite employees and a year-over-year increase of 15% in adjusted EBITDA, especially in light of the significant challenges faced throughout the year. Ultimately, the financial impact of shutdown-related layoffs in our client base was more than offset by lower direct costs due to behavioral changes in response to the pandemic. These results continue to demonstrate the resiliency of our small business client base, the value of our HR services, and the strength of our business model in client selection and risk management. The highlight for the year was the way our Insperity employees immediately responded to challenges and delivered vital support to clients, worksite employees, and their families. The dedicated service and personal touch from our people, caring for clients, dramatically reinforced our tagline, 'HR that makes a difference.' Another highlight was our success transitioning to remote selling and increasing our capabilities throughout the year. For both the full year and the fourth quarter, we achieved 81% of our pre-COVID budget in booked sales. We believe this is excellent considering how the budget increases each quarter throughout the year, especially in Q4 where we typically budget over 35% of our annual book to sales. Another exceptional point in looking back at 2020 is the pricing strength that continued throughout the year. This is particularly important in keeping up with long-term trends and direct costs going forward. It's also important to point out we were able to continue our technology development roadmaps for future improvements, while also completing many projects made necessary by legislative and regulatory changes. Overall, I'm very pleased with our accomplishments in 2020 and the agility we displayed as an organization. These efforts position the company for a successful year-end transition going into 2021 and a solid plan for the new year. Our year-end transition refers to the seasonal churn in our client base between the large number of new accounts added from the fall selling campaign and client attrition in January and February from the concentration of renewals that occur at this time of year. This is especially important since the transition sets the starting point in paid worksite employees for the new year in our recurring revenue business model. The bottom line to this year-end transition is we had an excellent year in paid worksite employees from fall campaign bookings and retention of all accounts in all segments, with one notable exception that I'll discuss in a minute. The paid worksite employees added in January from previously booked new accounts was down only 6% from 2020, which is excellent considering last year was pre-COVID. When you add an account scheduled for first payroll in February, we expect to be down only 2% in worksite employees from new accounts for the full year-end transition period compared to last year. Our year-end retention was equally impressive under these conditions, as paid worksite employees subtracted from terminating accounts was even with last year among our smallest accounts and improved by double digits in our core, emerging growth, and mid-market segments. This validates the value we delivered last year and bodes very well for our growth going forward. The one exception in this year-end transition is the unexpected loss of our largest account we've ever had in our Enterprise segment that paid 6,800 worksite employees in December. We expected this account to renew for 2021. However, we were notified in mid-November that they were taking the HR function back in-house. This account was a U.S. subsidiary of a large international firm that started with us with only 60 employees six years ago. We served this company very well and delivered the platform that supported their exceptional growth from an average of 240 employees in 2015 to 4,800 in 2020. This account is actually a great success story for Insperity, which we expect to use in future marketing efforts. We also learned a tremendous amount we can leverage in the future regarding serving fast-growing enterprise customers. Also, it's important to note the gross profit contribution per worksite employee in our pricing model goes down as the account size goes up. So even though this account represented about 2% of our worksite employees in 2020, it represented only 1% of our gross profit contribution. This account grew into a one of a kind for us as our remaining enterprise accounts represent less than 3% of our worksite employee base, with no account exceeding 2,000 employees today. Our growth plan for 2021 includes a lower starting point in paid worksite employees for Q1, followed by growth acceleration over the balance of the year, driven by the current trends in sales retention and growth in our client base. We expect to build on the sales momentum from the fall campaign in our recent virtual sales convention. We are beginning this year with some very positive underlying trends in our sales effort as we extend best practices and remote selling across the business performance advisor team. First, even though the number of proposals for our flagship Workforce Optimization solution in the fourth quarter was down 13% from the same period in the prior year, the number of accounts sold was up 2% due to a 17% improvement in our closing rate. Secondly, as we enter the new year, we reset our BPAs into performance tiers that they achieved through their production in the prior year. We build the overall budget for the new year off these individual production levels to set expectations for the year ahead. Over the past year, we had significant movements up through the tiers, demonstrating the success of our long-term plan of growing and training the BPA sales team. This has been occurring to some degree in recent years. However, the impact is expected to be larger this year, as fewer of these BPAs with improving performance are flowing into management roles. As a result, we expect the sales efficiency gain this year just from the higher percentage of BPAs that are in the higher tiers. This maturity of our sales organization allows for sales growth and momentum without hiring as many new BPAs. We also are continuing to hold most of our meetings with prospects remotely through Zoom meetings. We expect as the pandemic moderates, our sales opportunities will increase and mixing in face-to-face meetings may have a positive effect on sales efficiency. Relative to our outlook for our two other growth drivers, we expect to continue to drive high levels of client retention over the balance of the year. However, the full year number will be weighed down by the large account that recently terminated. We expect growth in the client base to be on par with the underlying trends we experienced in the last half of last year in the new hires and regular terminations. This analysis excludes COVID-related furloughs and those employees that later returned to work. This level of growth in the client base implied for 2021 would be an improvement from last year, however, still the lowest we've experienced in recent prior years. Our plan for profitability for this year factors in some pressure at the gross profit line from normalization of healthcare claims; an uptick in unemployment costs; and following our normal practice in estimating workers' compensation expense, where we start the year with a conservative estimate, and hopefully, we'll earn some upside from our efforts in safety and claims settlement over the course of the year. We are comfortable that our strong pricing over the last 18 months has effectively met our targets for matching price and cost in these programs. We expect to earn an appropriate fee within our historical range for managing these programs. Our priorities for our operating plan for 2021 are focused on initiatives needed to regain our growth momentum post COVID. Our goal is to lay the groundwork over the balance of this year for consistent, predictable double-digit unit and earnings growth, like we experienced from 2015 to 2019. We expect to continue to invest in growing the BPA team. However, mostly in the last half of the year as we benefit from the tier movement in the first half. We are continuing to refine our marketing efforts to targeted prospects to drive lead generation of accounts more likely to be a good fit for Insperity. We made good progress on this front, increasing our digital spend in the fourth quarter and increasing the percentage of booked accounts coming from our marketing programs to 55%. We expect to continue to invest in technology development to support our client base and implement Salesforce to improve our already best-in-class sales and service results. Salesforce is a significant and important investment for the company, which we believe will provide an enhanced platform to support our continuous improvement and service excellence standards. Ultimately, we expect to capture more data and information more easily, providing the opportunity to leverage and optimize the use of our data to the benefit of our clients. Applying the Salesforce analytics and AI against our data on a consolidated platform will give us the best view we've ever had across all products, prospects, and customers. One final observation important to note is the step-up in interactions with our clients, initially caused by the pandemic. Our total inquiries per week from our clients more than doubled last April and have not receded to previous levels. I believe this new level of ongoing interaction and support of our clients is one of the primary reasons for the double-digit improvement in retention we are experiencing across most of our client segments. Our clients are relying more heavily on our services and experiencing HR that makes a difference from our unique premium service model. In addition, we are beginning this year with 8% more clients than we had a year ago, while our average account size is down by about 1.5 worksite employees, largely due to the pandemic. In our view, it's evident demand for our service is substantial, and the small business community is positioned for a rebound. In summary, I believe we're in an excellent position for 2021 to set the stage for growth acceleration this year and for sustained growth in the long term. This reminds me of 2014 when we were putting the finishing touches on our refined sales motion with our BPAs and improving our mid-market sales and service models to improve retention. Those refinements led to a strong five-year run beginning in 2015, nearly doubling the size of the company, tripling the adjusted EBITDA, and increasing the valuation of the company fivefold. I'm certainly not promising a repeat of those impressive results or guiding to those growth levels. However, I do believe we are in a position to take our learnings and improvements from this challenging past year and set up another impressive run of unit and earnings growth for Insperity. At this point, I'd like to pass the call back to Doug.

Thanks, Paul. Now let's discuss the details behind our fourth quarter results. We reported Q4 adjusted EPS of $0.49 and adjusted EBITDA of $38 million. These results reflect outperformance in the level of paid worksite employees compared to our expectations in the continued uncertain and challenging business environment. Upside in our direct cost programs brought about by the structure and the ongoing management of these programs and some dynamics related to the pandemic and continued management of our operating costs. As for our growth, we continued the sequential increase in paid worksite employees since the low point in May of 2020 when the impact of the pandemic caused many of our clients to furlough or permanently lay off their employees. Our recovery in the level of paid worksite employees since this period was driven by the return to work of many of these employees and effective selling and client retention. Q4 average paid worksite employees increased 3% sequentially over the Q3 period, coming off the 2% sequential increase in Q3 over Q2. During Q4, all three growth drivers exceeded our expectations. Gross profit increased by 3.5% over Q4 of 2019, despite 1.8% fewer paid worksite employees due to improved pricing and the higher-than-expected contributions from our benefit and workers' compensation programs. During Q4, total benefit costs returned closer to pre-pandemic levels as lower healthcare utilization was largely offset by COVID-19 testing and treatment costs. However, previously deferred care costs did not materialize at the forecasted level. Our workers' compensation program continued to perform well due to ongoing management of safety practices and claims, and to a lesser degree, a favorable net impact from the reduction of workers' compensation claims associated with the work-from-home status of many of our clients' employees. Now turning to operating expenses. We continue to manage costs commensurate with the current operating environment while also investing in our long-term growth plan. Operating expenses, excluding stock-based compensation and depreciation and amortization, increased just 5% over Q4 of 2019. Fourth quarter operating expenses included costs associated with a 9% increase in the average number of trained business performance advisors and the opening of six new sales offices throughout 2020. We held other corporate employee headcount flat over the past year due in large part to the effort and the effectiveness of our staff in the face of increased HR service demands from within our client base. Cost savings continue to be realized in other areas of the business, both through effective management and because of pandemic-related cancellations or shutdowns. These areas include G&A costs such as travel and training and costs associated with certain sales and marketing events. The Q4 year-over-year increase in total operating expenses of 19% was impacted by increased stock-based compensation costs. This increase was driven primarily by our outperformance in the level of paid worksite employees and earnings in the face of the significant challenges brought about by the pandemic. Now turning to our full year 2020 operating results, adjusted EBITDA increased 15% over 2019 to $289 million, and adjusted EPS increased 12% to $4.64. The average number of paid worksite employees for the full year 2020 declined by less than 1% in a very challenging environment. Worksite employees paid from new sales declined by only 1.5% from 2019, largely on the success of our remote selling. Client retention averaged 82% due to the resiliency of our clients and our quick and effective response to assist our clients with our premium level of HR services. These same factors contributed to our clients' ability to return a significant amount of their initially furloughed staff to a full-time status and clients in certain industries adding to their employee base over the course of the year. Gross profit increased 10% over 2019 as improved pricing and the favorable impact of our benefit and workers' compensation programs more than offset the slight decline in paid worksite employees and the comprehensive service fee credits provided to our clients during Q2. Lower healthcare utilization brought about by the pandemic resulted in 2020 benefit costs per covered employee being relatively flat compared to 2019. This compares to our original pre-pandemic 2020 budget, which anticipated a cost increase of approximately 3%. Now as you may recall, we were targeting benefit pricing increases slightly above the 2020 budgeted cost trend to address increased costs associated with 2019's elevated large claim activity. We ended 2020 slightly exceeding these pricing targets. Now operating expenses, excluding stock-based compensation and depreciation and amortization, increased by just 5.5% in 2020 over 2019 as growth, product, and technology investments were partially offset by cost savings in the other areas that I mentioned a few minutes ago. Total operating expenses increased 12% over 2019 and included the increase in stock-based compensation tied to our outperformance. Our execution, combined with the dynamics of the pandemic, produced strong cash flow over the course of 2020. We ended the year with a solid balance sheet while continuing to invest in the business and providing strong returns to our shareholders. We invested $98 million in capital expenditures during the year to support our recent and future growth, and returned $161 million to shareholders through our dividend and share repurchase programs. We repurchased a total of 1.4 million shares during 2020 at a cost of $99 million; increased our dividend rate by 33% in February; and paid out a total of $62 million in dividends. We ended the year with $212 million of adjusted cash and $130 million available under our $500 million credit facility. Now let me provide our 2021 guidance, which incorporates wider than usual growth in earnings ranges, given the ongoing uncertainty in the macro environment. As for our growth metric, we are forecasting a 2% to 6% increase in the average number of paid worksite employees for the full year 2021. We expect to begin this year with a 1.5% to 2.5% decline in Q1 when compared to the pre-pandemic 2020 period. The sequential decline from Q4 of 2020 includes the loss of the large account, which Paul just mentioned. Now subsequent to Q1, our growth is expected to be driven by the recent growth and tenure in the number of trained business performance advisors, continuing solid core client retention, and modest net hiring in our client base brought about by a gradual improvement in the business environment. Our range of forecasted growth is largely dictated by the timing and degree of such an improvement, and its impact on the three drivers of our growth. As for our gross profit area, you may recall that our key metric is gross profit per worksite employee per month, which takes into account our co-employment service fee pricing; the pricing and cost management of our direct cost programs, including benefits, workers' compensation, and payroll taxes; along with contributions from our traditional employment and other products. It may be helpful to begin our discussion with the review of recent history to gain some perspective on how we are currently viewing 2021. This metric averaged $261 in 2017; $272 in 2018; $259 in 2019; and $287 in 2020. Now let's take a few minutes to break down some of the details as we look at our expectations for 2021. Our co-employment service fee pricing is impacted by new and renewal pricing and any changes in client mix. This pricing remains strong throughout 2020 and throughout the recent sales and renewal period. And we have combined our pricing targets over the range of 2021 and a favorable client mix impact from the loss of the larger lower-priced account, we expect our overall service fee pricing to improve over 2020. Also, you may recall that comprehensive service fee credits were provided to our clients in Q2 of 2020, which is lower than the prior year's overall service fee. We expect a more normal overall benefit cost trend in 2021 when taking into account the expected increase in healthcare utilization over the course of the year and our best estimate of COVID vaccination and treatment costs. When you consider the flat cost trend in 2020, this would equate to an expected 2021 cost increase of 6% to 7%. This includes an outsized Q2 year-over-year increase, given the extraordinarily low claims in Q2 of 2020. Now if you take a step back to 2019, this equates to annualized cost trends of approximately 3% from 2019 through 2021. Since we have taken a steady approach to pricing over the last two years, we believe we have effectively matched our pricing with this two-year cost trend. However, there is still a considerable amount of uncertainty around benefit utilization and COVID case count treatment and vaccines. This uncertainty contributes to a wide normal range in our earnings guidance. As for our workers' compensation cost area, we have experienced improving cost trends over recent years from ongoing management of client selection, safety, and claims. Similar to prior years, we intend to budget 2021 conservatively and allow for these factors to possibly drive additional cost benefit throughout the year. As for the payroll tax area, we're projecting an increase in state unemployment tax rates as a result of the pandemic’s impact on unemployment. Many states have issued rules to exclude COVID-related unemployment claims from the employers’ 2021 season rate. However, as we sit here today, the majority of these states have not yet finalized their rates. Accordingly, in an effort to estimate our 2021 rates, we have communicated with certain larger states to verify their intentions and perform detailed analysis and modeling. We have incorporated these estimated rates in our outlook, and we expect this area to have a $1 reduction in gross profit per worksite employee per month for the full year 2021 and a $5 reduction in Q1 2021 due to the seasonality of our unemployment taxes. So as for the bottom line, when you combine each of these factors, we are budgeting gross profit per worksite employee at a level closer to 2018 than even to the high point of 2020 or the low point of 2019. Now as I mentioned earlier, in addition to the upside in the gross profit area in 2020, we also managed operating costs significantly below our 2020 budget. Our overall 2021 operating plan balances maintaining certain costs at 2020 levels with investing in targeted initiatives important to our long-term growth. With the growth in the number of BPAs throughout 2020 and their increased tenure, we intend to manage the growth in the number of hired BPAs to about 4% in 2021. We intend to manage other corporate headcount to a 2% increase. We are budgeting for a return in 2021 of a portion of marketing and business promotion costs which were not incurred in 2020 due to the pandemic shutdown. We have also increased our lead generation budget. As for our G&A costs, we experienced significant savings during 2020, particularly in the area of travel and training. We plan to continue to manage these costs at this lower level and will assess the opportunity and need for any increased activity as pandemic conditions improve. Now as Paul just mentioned, an important initiative this year is the purchase and implementation of Salesforce. Our 2021 budget includes the product and estimated implementation costs associated with this effort. During the implementation phase, we will experience some duplication in cost while still using our current sales and service software. However, after implementation, any incremental costs over and above our current software solutions are expected to be minimal. As for 2021, we are budgeting for approximately $6 million in incremental costs related to the Salesforce initiative. So in considering all these factors, we are budgeting for a 4% increase in cash operating costs in 2021 over 2020. As for our non-cash items, we have budgeted for a decrease in stock-based compensation when compared to 2020 due to the performance-based feature of our stock awards and the setting of new targets for the 2021 year. We have budgeted for a $10 million increase in depreciation and amortization over 2020, associated with software development costs related to the recent improvements in our payroll and HCM system, which were previously capitalized and the recent expansion of our corporate facility. So in conclusion, we are forecasting improved worksite employee growth of 2% to 6%, combined with lower gross profit per worksite employee and a slight increase in cash operating costs per worksite employee. Given the continued uncertainty in the macro business environment, we believe it's prudent to forecast a wider than typical range of $225 million to $275 million in adjusted EBITDA. As for adjusted EPS, we are forecasting full year 2021 in a range of $3.27 to $4.20. This assumes an estimated tax rate of 26.5%, generally consistent with our 2020 rate and the increase in depreciation and amortization that I just discussed. We are forecasting Q1 adjusted EBITDA in a range of $84 million to $103 million and adjusted EPS from $1.37 to $1.72. As for our quarterly earnings pattern, keep in mind that our Q1 earnings results are typically higher than subsequent quarters. In particular, we typically earn a higher level of payroll tax surplus prior to worksite employees reaching their taxable wage limits, and benefit costs are lower in Q1 and step up over the remainder of the year as deductibles are met. Now at this time, I'd like to open up the call for questions.

Your first question from Josh Vogel.

The first question I have is around the Salesforce implementation. Can you just give us a sense of when you think the implementation will be complete and then you can eliminate the duplicate costs?

Yes, sure, Josh. We expect the Salesforce implementation to go over this year and next year. And we're starting in the sales and marketing areas and then moving over into the service and balance of the company next year. So the kind of bubble of expense will be in this year and next. And after that, you're kind of in our normal run rate.

All right, great. And you had some comments around utilizing client data and analytic insights. And I'm curious, is that something that you can package and price? Or is it included in the client relationship?

Sorry, you cut out a little bit in the question. You want to say that one more time?

Yes, I'm sorry about that. So the client data and analytic insights that you gain through Salesforce, I'm curious is that the ancillary product that you can provide into your clients? Or is that something that they're just going to automatically get?

No. Actually, we're going to be the biggest. The customer is going to benefit from how we're able to access all the data and information on their behalf. So it really isn't productized so much for the customer. It just becomes ingrained in how we serve them and also how we target new customers, bringing them in and guiding them through the entire client lifecycle. We expect it to provide a much more cohesive experience for the customer, requiring less effort from our service providers to achieve the high service standards we set for our clients. Therefore, we anticipate it will have a tremendous benefit internally and will enhance the service experience for our clients.

And the next question from Mark Marcon.

Can you provide more details about how you are pricing the healthcare plans for your clients this year? It seems like you anticipate the costs will increase by 6% to 7%. How does the pricing look? Additionally, if there is increased usage of deferred electives, how should we approach the variance there? You have a broad range in your guidance, so I am curious if you could outline the parameters for both the high and low ends of your expectations.

Yes, absolutely. It's important to consider the benefit programs over a longer term, especially given the last couple of years, 2019 and 2020. As we move into 2021, we are emerging from a flat trend year, which we believe was artificially flat due to the pandemic and related shutdowns. The underlying trends have remained steady, and that has been factored into our costs. As you know, this translates to increases of about 3% to 3.5% in both 2020 and 2021, resulting in a 6% to 7% increase from last year's flat level compared to 2019. On the pricing side, over the past 18 months, we've been adjusting our pricing to ensure it aligns well with costs and covers the cost escalations. We effectively implemented this approach last year, and for this year, we anticipate pricing to be around a 4% increase, though customers may make choices that could influence how they manage their costs. We believe we are in a strong position in terms of matching price and cost. The broader range of our guidance is influenced by many dynamics, as it's difficult to predict when COVID-related costs will reemerge or if there may be additional vaccination costs, along with potential shutdowns that could limit utilization. This year has many variables. However, we are confident in our accounting for price trends and the overall situation.

Great. I'm wondering if you could discuss any sort of cap on a per claim basis. Additionally, how are you considering the possibility of existing clients bringing back employees that they haven't yet reinstated due to lower layoffs?

Yes. From our perspective, we have mostly moved past the return to work from furloughs. Employees have either returned to work or transitioned to what I would consider a layoff. There might be a small residual impact, but regarding the anticipated growth in our client base that we've incorporated into our plans for this year, we've analyzed the regular hiring and layoffs that occurred during the latter half of last year and the beginning of this year to inform our projections. We believe this is a prudent approach. If the business environment improves, there could be additional benefits. Regarding the cap, as you may recall, we established a $1 million stop-loss or pooling limit with our carrier last year and have maintained that for this year. Throughout this year, we plan to review our numbers and evaluate the feasibility of maintaining that limit or possibly adjusting to lower thresholds. We are satisfied with how last year's arrangements functioned and will continue to assess whether there is more risk to transfer or if our current position is suitable.

Your next question from Jeff Martin.

I wanted to touch on growth acceleration throughout the balance of the year. If things go to plan, what kind of growth rate are we looking at exiting the year in terms of worksite employee base?

Yes, as we move into the later part of the year, we expect to reach high single digits around 7% or 8%. If we can successfully navigate a smooth year-end transition, maintaining stability as we cross over, we position ourselves well for a quick ramp up to double-digit growth. This approach reminds me of the 2014 period when we transitioned from flat growth to 3% in the third quarter, 6% in the fourth, and then hit 9% in the first quarter of the following year, ultimately achieving double-digit growth and enjoying an extended period at that level. That's my focus, as we have all the right components in place. There may be some adjustments needed, like getting Salesforce established, continuing BPA training, and balancing remote selling with in-person visits while optimizing that process. We also notice a recent improvement in how our customers value our services, leading to double-digit retention improvements during the year-end transition across our core, emerging growth, and mid-market segments. This reminds me of the time when once we saw a significant uptick in retention that fueled a prolonged period of high growth rates. Therefore, I see that growth acceleration on the horizon for the remainder of the year, and I believe we are positioned well to achieve it.

Okay. That's encouraging. One thing we haven't heard much of in a while is the ancillary service products that are either a lead generation source or an enhancement to the offering. How is that tracking? Could you give us maybe some qualitative and quantitative sense of how that part of the business is running right now?

Sure. We were making significant progress, particularly with our workforce acceleration offering, which is part of our Employment Solutions division. When COVID hit, we focused on our core business. However, once remote selling became effective, we began to see improvements. We experienced a strong recovery in the fourth quarter for sales of our workforce acceleration offering, and we're back on track in that area. I didn't mention it much this time, but I will likely include it in our next discussion.

And the last question from Tobey Sommer.

Could you discuss your sales pipeline efficiency metrics and how they're kind of evolving from through the pandemic until now? And what you may be toggling differently in 2021 based on what you've learned and kind of what you expect in the next few quarters?

Thank you for the question, Tobey. It's an interesting time because during the pandemic, I was uncertain about how our complex service offering would fare, especially since we target small and medium-sized business owners. Achieving over 80% of our pre-COVID budget during that time was impressive and I’m proud of our team for adapting so well. However, we did notice a significant decrease in leads and inquiries from potential clients. For example, in the fourth quarter, we saw a 13% decline in top-of-the-funnel metrics. The silver lining was that the leads we did receive seemed more serious, leading to improved closing rates, which increased significantly over the year, culminating in a 17% improvement in our closure rate for the proposals we made. We've been refining our targeting to attract more serious customers who are ready to take action, and we've made some progress there. I believe there is still more work to be done, and I think Salesforce will help us enhance this further. As the economy improves and the pandemic subsides, I anticipate an increase in top-of-the-funnel activity, allowing us to bring in more prospects that fit our target profile.

And from a client segmentation and offering perspective, sort of PEO, non-PEO services, what is growing more quickly and/or more slowly and how would you explain those differentials? Sort of what are the drivers?

Yes, we are currently experiencing a period of growth acceleration and are well-prepared for co-employment. We are concentrating on our traditional services bundle that attracts customers. We have optimized our approach by analyzing year-end information and discussing it with our BPA team at our virtual convention. I believe we are in a strong position to develop a robust pipeline that we've been working on. We are also seeing success in other offerings, such as our 401(k) service, which has had a great year with both new and existing accounts. Additionally, during the pandemic, we included our recruiting services as part of the package to assist customers during challenging times, which helped us acquire new accounts and showcase our support for them. We are continuing to offer this service for now but will eventually revert to charging for it again. Our various offerings have been adapted at different times to support clients and broaden our base of traditional solutions.

Last one, just could you catch us up on what client activity and success was like in the second PPP round compared to the first?

Yes. We continued to have less visibility in this round compared to the first, but I believe that is because people were familiar with the process and knew how to proceed. All our reporting and materials were prepared and ready. It's important to note that our client base doesn't heavily include industries most impacted, like travel and restaurants. Therefore, we had significantly fewer clients participating in the second round, but those who did were able to act swiftly and effectively, which has been beneficial for many customers.

There are no other questions at this time. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Sarvadi.

Thank you very much. And once again, thank everybody for participating on our call today, and we look forward to interacting with you through conference calls, Zoom meetings, and maybe eventually even face-to-face. So thank you again for participating.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you, everyone, for participating. You may now disconnect.