Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Resources Connection, Inc. Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. Operator instructions were provided. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to remind everyone that management will be commenting on results for the fourth quarter ended May 29, 2021. They will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures. An explanation and reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures is included in the press release issued today. Today's press release can be viewed in the Investor Relations section of RGP's website and was also filed today with the SEC. Also during this call, management may make forward-looking statements regarding plans, initiatives and strategies, and the anticipated financial performance of the company. Such statements are predictions and actual events or results may differ materially. Please see the Risk Factors section in RGP's report on Form 10-K for the year ended May 30, 2020 for a discussion of risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the company's business results of operations and financial condition to differ materially from what is expressed or implied by forward-looking statements made during this call. Such discussion will also be included in the Risk Factors section in RGP's report on Form 10-K for the year ended May 29, 2021, which will be filed on or around July 23, 2021. I'll now turn the call over to RGP's CEO, Kate Duchene.

Thank you, operator and welcome to our quarter four fiscal 2021 earnings call. Thanks for joining us today. I'll cover three topics during my remarks starting with a quick review of fourth quarter performance. I'll then outline our enterprise objectives for fiscal 2022 to position the company against market opportunity and improve shareholder value. And lastly, I'll comment on positive macro trends that we're watching as the economic recovery unfolds. As we discussed last quarter, we expected Q4 to strengthen and it did. Q4 revenue came in at $172.3 million reflecting a sequential improvement of 10%. This improvement returned RGP to year-over-year growth and exceeded the high end of revenue guidance. In analyzing our results, please keep the following important timing comparison in mind. RGP's fiscal year is June to May. We will not see the full impact of COVID-related recovery in our results until we report performance in Q1 of the current fiscal year. In other words, we did not experience the negative impact of COVID until well into Q4 last year. And that quarter also had an extra week of revenue, which covered some of the impact. Thus RGP's double-digit revenue bounce back will really be seen when we report on results for the current quarter. One further highlight from the financial results before I move on, we're especially pleased with the improved adjusted EBITDA performance at $20.7 million or a 12% margin in the quarter. That's up 600 basis points sequentially and 160 basis points year-over-year. We've worked hard to improve the profitability of the business and we'll continue to do so. We exceeded gross margin guidance and SG&A performance was better than guided. Today given what we're currently tracking in pipeline and committed revenue, we believe Q1 fiscal 2022 will be another strong quarter especially given the easier comparisons. While COVID numbers seem to be creeping back up in parts of the world, we are better positioned today to execute remotely and virtually than we were 18 months ago. Clients trust us and know we have the quality, tools and process to deliver in a disrupted environment. Now I'll outline our enterprise objectives for fiscal 2022. These are the main priority items for the management team to accomplish and they align everyone in our organization for the year. There are five enterprise objectives and I'll briefly comment on each. First, we've launched a project to elevate the technology infrastructure of RGP globally. This means we're upgrading our core ERP system and our core talent acquisition and management system. This technology initiative will accelerate our efficiency goals and data-led decision-making capabilities. We're eager to accelerate optimized process flow and automation. As the second enterprise objective, we'll be focused on further commercializing our digital strategies. The two areas of activity are driving more digital transformation revenue through RGP channels both for Veracity and Digital Asia and the launch of HUGO, RGP's digital engagement platform. In fiscal 2021, we grew the Veracity digital consulting business by 36% Q4 2021 over Q4 2020 despite dealing with a global pandemic. Today we have improved process and structure to drive that opportunity forward even more in fiscal 2022. HUGO represents an accretive source of revenue given it's both a new digital engagement channel as well as the service category we haven't capitalized on yet. As a reminder HUGO empowers clients and gig workers to engage digitally for project work with a focus on early to mid-career level finance and accounting professionals. Powerfully combining digital with RGP's employment model and tradition of exceptional service, HUGO will continue to put humans first. We're completing soft launch development and we'll introduce the platform in New York City in the fall. The exact timing will be communicated during Q2 to ensure that the New York marketplace is healthy and is open sufficiently for a successful introduction. Third, we'll grow top line revenue leveraging these key strategies among others. For starters, we're broadening the strategic client program, moving 22 additional accounts into the program for fiscal 2022 with dedicated client service personnel. We're also adding capability to the health care practice in the areas of revenue integrity, clinical trial support and supply chain optimization. In addition, we're adding personnel to our fast growing Countsy business. Countsy is a finance and HR-as-a-service offering for start-up and divested entities that choose strategically to outsource these functions. Finance-as-a-service is a growing opportunity and we have a bespoke approach built on the NetSuite Oracle platform, proprietary IP and exceptional fractional CFO talent. As a fourth enterprise objective we'll continue to improve our adjusted EBITDA performance to deliver even more shareholder value through disciplined management of head count, business expense and real estate cost. In fiscal 2021, we reduced our cost structure by $26 million or 12% and we'll continue to eliminate expense in an increasingly digital, virtual world. We're also focused on improving both utilization and pricing of salaried consultants in our APS group and other high-value segments like Veracity. For example, Veracity increased bill rates by 6% year-over-year. The competition for talent is heating up and we'll continue to adjust our pricing to keep pace and reflect value delivered. Fifth, we'll strengthen the RGP brand. Our brand is built on the power of human and the world is moving in this direction. This year we'll focus even more on our human-first brand to improve consultant experience. This means creating more digital connection, providing opportunities for upskilling and professional community and delivering care and well-being to our consultants. We can deliver what talent wants today, which is radical flexibility, work with a purpose and a connection to an employer who cares about them personally and professionally. We're a business model built for the new realities of work. The encouraging signs in the macro client environment also indicate that the time is now for RGP. This month for example Chief Executive Magazine issued its July polling. CEO confidence in current business conditions has rebounded to a three year high. CEOs are forecasting increases in transformation projects and CapEx for the year ahead and anticipate talent needs growing double digits. Simply put big deals are back and at the same time companies are engaged in workforce strategies built for flexibility, speed and resiliency. Ceridian, a human capital software firm, reported just yesterday in its Future of Work study that 62% of the 2000 senior global executives polled during the spring believe that gig workers will substantially replace full-time employees within the next five years. Agile talent needs are rising, whether it's categorized as staffing or project-based work and business leaders plan to leverage gig workers to increase the size of their teams. All of these factors are converging to make work more modular and time-boxed. RGP is built to deliver on modular work whether it's on-site, remote or outsourced. We partner with clients every day to fill skills gaps and we do so with speed and flexibility. We find the right skills and deploy those skills for the right period. To close my remarks, I'm pleased to invite you to learn more about the macro trends impacting our business and progress against the fiscal 2022 objectives during our upcoming Investor Day to be held at NASDAQ on October 13 in New York City. We've not hosted a live Investor Day in many, many years and we're excited to share more during that event. It is an inflection point for RGP. The world has turned in our direction. I'll now turn the call over to Tim for an update on operational trends initiatives and opportunities.

Thank you, Kate, and good afternoon, everyone. During the quarter, we saw good progress in our revenue and operating metrics as the economy recovers. The combination of client and prospect nurturing, coupled with the release of pent-up demand resulted in increased momentum in revenue and pipeline growth. Lead generation and opportunity identification have reached pre-pandemic levels as new and existing buyers look to launch initiatives quickly in a competitive labor market. Enhanced outreach throughout the year is paying dividends as closed engagements in our core business in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America reached fiscal 2019 levels and pipeline continues to be strong. In sum, the strengthening of the economic environment combined with operational effectiveness has led to improved results. As Kate touched on our fourth quarter results exceeded the high end of our revenue guidance. We continue to see the positive dynamic of clients resuming engagements that have been paused, initiating projects that were delayed and generally looking at their project portfolio through a broader and longer-term lens as commercial confidence rises. This has led to increased demand for both professional staffing and project consulting, which we believe will continue as a permanent workforce shift around the use of variable workforce solutions for project co-delivery. This change predated the pandemic, but was clearly accelerated in the last 18 months as clients and talent increasingly embraced flexibility initially out of necessity but now by design. While there are lingering effects of the pandemic and we're not yet completely out of the woods, they do not dominate how we operate. We continue to deliver successfully using a blend of on-prem and off-site resources, a trend that plays to our strengths and we'll continue with increased prevalence as companies have learned to care more about resourcing based on fit for purpose versus proximity. This sets the table for better matching of supply-demand, which leads to elevated operational efficiency for RGP. While there have been some increased calls for on-prem resourcing, most companies are utilizing a hybrid workforce themselves and are comfortable engaging with us in the same manner. As an example, this quarter we began in earnest the complex financial transformation and compliance projects with a financial services client that will require a large and distributed cadre of project consulting support for a number of months. Geography is important for some aspects of the project but in other cases mostly virtual delivery will suffice. Another illustration is an engagement our healthcare practice won to stand up a project management office for an R&D transformation initiative for a top life sciences company, leading program and change management and supporting organizational redesign. The multiyear project consists of nearly a dozen work streams spanning multiple functional areas. Our delivery team for this project is delivering both on-site and remotely working with our clients in the way that is most effective for successfully delivering project outcomes. These engagements punctuate the fact that project delivery has to be more flexible and unconstrained in an environment that requires it. These are demand trends that will continue and play to our core strengths of rapid deployment, pristine delivery and strong project and change management. Reported economic trends show significant constriction in the labor market; and while we continually monitor for potential operational impacts, we haven't noted any material effects to date. With our broad geographic network, we were able to utilize borderless talent deployment to our advantage and as a differentiator. We work seamlessly as one RGP and in working this way consultants have been deployed more quickly on engagement with longer duration. In fact, given the tight labor market and the increased demand for co-delivery on strategic initiatives, we have also seen clients leaning into the concept of captive labor pools to ensure they have the ability to complete key projects, while accepting and in many cases asking for distributed support. We have had several discussions with key clients in this arena and this is a burgeoning trend and opportunity. Working in a more flexible fashion and maintaining control over key career decisions is the hallmark of employment choice in the new economy. This agility combined with membership in our professional community is an RGP core tenet, which allows us to produce an average consultant tenure of nearly three years. We believe that in the near term as more professionals assess their career objectives and opt for more flexible work, the powerful combination of A-list clients, career control, flexible delivery and professional community will make us an employer of choice. While we feel the trends are broadly favorable to our model, we will continue to focus on operational discipline, prioritization and resource allocation, and pricing governance. Now, let me turn to our fourth quarter operations. During the quarter we saw continued growth in the pipeline and average daily revenue grew by approximately 6% from the first weeks of the quarter to the last. In fact, average daily revenue rates ended the quarter at the highest they have been since early FY 2020 and pipeline of booked revenue have reached pre-pandemic levels. The majority of markets demonstrated sequential progress, while several markets including Tri-State, Los Angeles, Chicago, U.K., Cleveland, Portland, Japan, Hawaii and Mexico demonstrated growth both sequentially and over prior year quarter. Finally Veracity and Countsy both grew sequentially and over prior year quarter tenaciously ending the year as they began it with strong growth. While we remain focused on revenue expansion, we target profitable growth through operational leverage. Throughout this year and in the quarter, we continue to make strides in controlling fixed costs and improving efficiency. We will remain balanced with respect to expense going forward, knowing the importance of in-person interactions, but heeding lessons learned during the last 18 months. To that end, we will continue to sell, deliver and operate in a more borderless fashion, look for opportunities to reduce real estate footprint and utilize technology to extend and strengthen our community. Before handing over to Jen, I want to provide some additional insight on early first quarter trends. The early weeks of Q1 have shown a strong continuation of positive trends in both revenue and growing pipeline. We will be watching for vacation trends this summer coming out of the pandemic, but to-date there is no unusual pattern of note. I will now turn the call over to Jenn for a more detailed review of our fourth quarter results.

Thank you, Tim, and good afternoon, everyone. During our fourth quarter, demand in the business propelled revenue acceleration, resulting in meaningful growth both from the sequential quarter and the fourth quarter a year ago. Gross margin rebounded from the third quarter, as we continue to focus on the bill/pay spread. Our restructuring efforts coupled with the virtual operating model continue to yield favorable SG&A results. Executing on all three fronts enabled us to deliver a notable 12% adjusted EBITDA margin, a 160 basis point expansion from the same period last year. Now, let me provide more color on our operating results starting with revenue. With quarterly revenue of $172.3 million, we well exceeded the high end of our revenue guidance of $167 million. After adjusting for business day and currency impact, our Q4 revenue represents a 4.7% improvement sequentially and 1.2% growth year-over-year. As Kate stated, given the timing of our fiscal period and the latent impact of COVID in the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year we did not yet see the full impact of top line recovery from COVID. Revenue growth in the fourth quarter was driven by the combination of pent-up client demand as well as new demand in areas such as digital transformation, as clients accelerate their digital agenda. In addition macro trends accelerated by the pandemic, including increased use of contingent talent and the shift towards a more agile workforce model also drove healthy momentum in professional staffing revenue. Professional staffing revenue has achieved an increasing sequential growth rate of 4.4%, 5.5% and 14.4% over the last three quarters and we expect this trend to continue. In North America, revenue improved sequentially by 3.8% on a same-day constant currency basis, and 0.8% year-over-year. Growth in the fourth quarter was across the majority of our solutions, core markets and industry verticals. Most notably, Veracity grew 15% sequentially and 36% year-over-year, on a same-day basis, furthering our progress in growing our mix of technology and digital solutions. As employee experience and digital technologies continue to increase in importance, we see strong opportunity for digital to drive collaboration, automation and self-service. We also experienced strong growth in the financial services industry and our strategic client accounts, with 10% and 3% sequential revenue improvement, respectively. In Europe, our strategy to adopt an integrated global go-to-market approach to focus on serving our Tier one multinational clients in the region has proven to be successful. On a same-day, constant currency basis, Europe revenue improved by 11.1% sequentially and 4% year-over-year. Both, U.K. and our taskforce business contributed significantly. More importantly, not only did we expand our top line. The restructuring initiative took significant fixed costs out of the business and positioned us for profitable growth in the future. Asia Pacific experienced sporadic COVID outbreaks in certain geographic pockets throughout the quarter. However, revenue was back to pre-COVID level, by the end of the fourth quarter. And on a same-day, constant-currency basis, Asia Pac's revenue improved 4.5% sequentially and 1% from a year ago. Our fourth quarter gross margin was 39.6% compared to 40.4% a year ago. Pay/bill ratio is up 85 basis points year-over-year, due to some lingering impact of pricing concessions provided earlier in the fiscal year. Compared to the third quarter we improved our pay/bill ratio by 58 basis points, primarily as a result of better pricing governance. To alleviate any pressure the tightening labor market may impose on our gross margin, we're taking a disciplined approach to price our engagements to market appropriately. We also see opportunities in achieving higher bill rates across certain solution sets such as digital transformation services. As an example average bill rate in Q4 for Veracity was $153, up from $150 in Q3 and $144 a year ago. Run rate SG&A expenses for the quarter were $47.8 million after excluding non-cash stock compensation, contingent consideration expense and restructuring charges, representing 27.8% of revenue, a meaningful improvement of $5.9 million or 230 basis points, compared to the same period a year ago. Turning to other components of our financial statements, we had an income tax benefit of $7.8 million for the fourth quarter, representing an effective tax benefit rate of 50.6%, compared to $2.9 million of income tax expense or an effective tax rate of 42% in the prior year quarter. As part of our tax planning strategy we made changes to the capitalization of certain fixed assets, which resulted in an NOL carryback permitted under the CARES Act, contributing to the income tax benefit for the quarter and for the full fiscal year. Adjusted diluted EPS for Q4 which excludes the net of tax impact of restructuring charges, stock compensation and contingent consideration rose significantly to $0.80 per share, compared to $0.33 per share in Q4 of fiscal 2020. The current quarter's adjusted EPS includes a favorable impact of $0.39 per share related to the NOL carrybacks. Our balance sheet remains strong and we continue to generate positive cash flow from operations, paying down $45 million of outstanding debt under our credit facility in the course of the fiscal year. As we head into fiscal 2022, assuming the macro environment remains stable, we're regularly evaluating our long-term capital allocation strategy taking a balanced approach between investing in the business and returning value to our shareholders. I'll close with our first quarter outlook, and an update on client statistics. We're optimistic about the sustained improvements in sales and pipeline metrics, including win percentage, close engagement and average deal size as well as the continued recovery of the average bill rate. We expect revenue in Q1 to be in the range of $173 million to $177 million, an estimated 20% increase compared to Q1 of fiscal 2021. Gross margin is expected to be in the range of 38% to 38.5%, reflecting seasonal impact of summer vacation. We expect run-rate SG&A to be in the range of $50 million to $53 million. Finally, RGP's client continuity was outstanding this quarter. And we believe our retention statistics demonstrate the value add we bring to clients every day. During Q4, we served 49 of our top 50 clients from fiscal 2020 and 45 of the top 50 from 2019. This strong retention has remained consistent year-over-year, despite the global pandemic. With that now we are happy to take questions.

Thank you. Our first question comes from Josh Vogel with Sidoti. You may proceed with your question.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Hope you are all well. Certainly, nice to see the business recovering at a fast clip here. A couple of questions. Looking at the bill/pay spread improvement year-over-year maybe this is for you Jen. I know you brushed on it in your prepared remarks. But can you just give some more broad strokes on what you think the pricing environment will look like in fiscal 2022? I know you said that there's higher bill rates on the digital transformation work. And I may have asked this before. But is there any difference in how a consultant is paid whether they're fully remote or in a hybrid position?

Hi, Josh. There is no difference between a remote consultant and an off-site consultant in the way they're paid. From a bill/pay spread standpoint, the bill/pay spread is still down compared to year-over-year if you compare Q4-to-Q4 but we did see sequential improvement from Q3. The bill rate environment shows some opportunities in the digital transformation services area as well as our healthcare industry vertical. On the pay rate side, we are expecting some constriction on the supply side of things but so far we haven't really noted any pervasive pay rate increases in the business. Going forward in fiscal 2022 we're monitoring that very closely. While we want to pay competitive rates to our consultants so that we can attract and retain the right talent, it's really on the bill rate side that we need to get ahead of the trend so that we don't get squeezed in terms of our margin.

All right. Great. Thank you for those insights. You mentioned about a nice traction and rebound in the staffing side of the business. So I was curious if you could break down results between project consulting versus professional staffing. Is it still kind of like a 60-40 split? And then what's implied in that 20% growth guidance in Q1 between the two?

Sure. Historically project consulting versus professional staffing is roughly about a 60-30 split and the remaining 10% is our managed services business, Countsy and executive search. This year the mix between the two has shifted a little bit because professional staffing revenue did continue to grow throughout the year. That mix is shifting by about 2%, so professional staffing is up to about 33% now and consulting is down slightly. Going into fiscal 2022, while we expect professional staffing revenue to continue to increase, we're also working hard on growing our project consulting side too. I think the whole pie is going to grow in revenue; it just depends on which side of the business outpaces the other. So I do expect the mix to stay relatively consistent because we expect both sides of the business to grow.

All right. Great. And maybe one for Tim. Is it possible to quantify how much the pipeline grew over the past six months? And what percent of that do you think will get converted to revenue over the next 12 months?

Hey, Josh. I don't want to get too specific, but I would tell you that we had pretty significant growth in pipeline from the beginning of the fiscal to where we are now, such that we're pretty close to where we were in pre-pandemic levels. In terms of conversion, our conversion rate has stayed very consistent and actually increased a little bit in the latter half of this year as demand came back online. From the latter part of Q2 to where we ended up in Q4, pipeline was up over 20% and conversion rates stayed about the same.

All right. That's helpful. Thank you. And just one more and I'll jump back in the queue. Obviously, it's very buzzy these days anything related to digital transformation; and clearly you're seeing traction there. I'm curious what exactly are the nature of the engagements you're winning or buying for, or another way to put it what are clients' primary digital agendas today? And then knowing that this is a broad category are there any specific apps in the portfolio with regard to your capabilities in digital transformation specifically where you're seeing outside demand in the marketplace. Thank you.

Josh, it's Kate. When you look at our digital transformation business it's largely with our Veracity subsidiary. The work they're doing, and the work we're starting to pull from our RGP client base, is to accelerate the ability to collaborate and automate processes and workflows. Especially growing, and this is also tied to a gap, is the work we're doing with ServiceNow and Akumina. Those are two technology providers with growing opportunity. If Veracity needs more ServiceNow-certified personnel in order to keep growing, we look for them. Technical talent is the hardest to find right now, and we're also looking at some offshore strategies to help that team build more quickly. That's also the power of our footprint and network at RGP that we can go to places like Mexico City or India and look for qualified talented resources that they need.

All right. Great, well I appreciate all the insights. And thank you for taking my questions. Look forward to Jenn soon.

Thanks, Josh.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan. You may proceed with your question.

Hi, Kate. Once you fully recover from the pandemic and get back to the revenue base what do you think the medium-term organic revenue growth profile will be? And what do you think the margin associated with that organic revenue growth profile will be?

We're looking, Andrew, at a growth range between 8% and 14% over the next two to four years and that's what we're focused on. I think the gross margin we're still very focused on 40%, but the mix is going to come differently than it has in the past, as we strengthen pricing for our APS services, which are more of our management consulting services. HUGO we're expecting because it's in the adjacent market with earlier-career professionals will have a lower margin profile. So you'll see our mix shift a bit.

Right. And I'm sure you realize to grow 8% to 14% that would be much faster than the big four accounting firms will likely be growing. So my question to you is, don't you think the big four firms will start to notice again if you're able to grow at that growth rate? Or is it really not as competitively close with the big four firms as you're suggesting?

We are not apples to apples and that's an important distinction. If you believe like I do that talent wants something different in their careers moving forward, it won't be to align with the professional partnership model. It will be to align with employers and consulting firms like ours, which are offering career paths that are more flexible, more agile and more directed. I think that's going to be the winning workforce strategy in the future. In my prepared remarks I highlighted a study and in talking to the clients that we have every day they really are finally starting to shift their workforce strategies in ways that are not aligned with the partnership track of the past. Some of our recent wins in the financial services industry are because that industry is recognizing their overreliance on the big four and COVID has given them both the courage and cover to make different decisions. My remarks are optimistic but tied to research and trending information we see in the macro environment.

Well okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Marcon with Baird. You may proceed with your question.

Hi Kate, Tim and Jen. Really nice to hear the improvement that's occurring and it sounds like it's really broad-based. The first question is for Tim perhaps. You went through a list of the offices that seem like they're improving. It sounds like it's really broad-based. How would you assess the leadership across the office footprint? What percentage of the offices do you feel are optimized from that perspective?

Hi Mark, thanks for the question. It is broad-based. We do have a lot of markets so of course we're not going to have every market at full speed at the same time. But both from a performance standpoint and from forward-looking metrics in our pipeline and close business the picture is positive. I feel like our leadership structure is as broad and as deep as it's been in a while. We have some pockets where we're doing more turnaround versus markets where we're at an optimal level, but those are a smaller unit than they've been in the past.

That's great to hear. And then Kate, the 8% to 14% growth that you talked about what do you think price is going to be within that as opposed to volume? Because it would seem like bill rates should be continuing to pace up as well as pay rates.

I don't have a specific breakdown. I think of it more as increasing our share in the consulting marketplace than strictly pricing. We are launching HUGO which will introduce some new revenue streams with a lower margin profile, so there will be a trade-off in how we're growing the overall business and growing shareholder value.

I would add that we definitely have additional cushion or a ceiling in terms of our bill rate without a doubt.

Can you elaborate with what you meant by HUGO in terms of how that would end up impacting the pricing?

We should expect a slightly lower margin in that business than our more experienced project-based or management consulting resources. If you think about it we're launching in an adjacent space where some staffing companies are more dominant, and we'll be competing against those margin profiles which have generally been lower than RGP. The product we're developing is a service delivery pathway that's new and more efficient, so it can operate with strong profitability at lower margins. For example a payroll manager role in that marketplace is not going to carry a 40% margin. It's lower. But we're building the experience to be delightful for clients and creating lower cost of sales so we can deliver bottom line profitability within our financial metrics.

That really does. Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing from a pipeline perspective and even during the most recent quarter in terms of the amount of work that's coming from financial transactions whether it's divestitures, companies going public or related activity where things are perking up?

From a bookings perspective this was one of the strongest quarters we've had in recent memory. Our pipeline has tracked since the end of the last quarter to a very consistent level so still very strong looking out over a two-quarter vantage point. Regarding transactions, we are getting a lot of deal-related work. Some larger engagements are more transformative in nature versus transactional, but both sides are tracking up. There are a number of mergers and acquisitions where we're in the mix helping with integration and front-end diligence. Larger engagements in our pipeline are often companies that started transformations and slowed them down and now need to speed them up again; that piece of the pipeline is accelerating quickly.

That's great to hear. In terms of Europe despite the restructuring, it sounds like things are going well over there. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing across the various countries? And to what extent have you seen any impact from Delta on your London operations?

Not much impact from the Delta variant yet. Our UK practice has been very strong, likely the strongest in Europe. Germany has been strong all year with taskforce business and German operations under the same leadership; they had year-over-year growth. We shrank footprint in some countries, so we don't have a physical presence in Italy and France, and our Netherlands practice is down a little year-over-year but is focused on key clients. Overall, from an operational leverage standpoint we're doing well top line, with the UK leading the charge.

Keep in mind we are still delivering mostly virtually and remotely, which helps keep our population healthier and reduces risk. We can do that given the caliber of people we employ and deploy to our clients.

That's great to hear. Can you talk a little about the increasing attractiveness of hybrid work and virtual work and what you're seeing in terms of candidate profiles and how easy or difficult it is to fill positions that are coming open for you?

What I see in the marketplace is a great reassessment. Professional-level talent is seeking a different kind of exchange with an employer. It's not about climbing one corporate ladder; it's creating a portfolio of experiences with some of the most beloved brands. We have longstanding client relationships with innovative companies doing interesting things, and we can offer consultants access to those projects as part of their career development. I believe that's the way of the future and younger professionals tell us that's what they want. We must continue to improve how we deliver services to both clients and consultants to attract the best talent.

From a macro perspective it makes our platform more attractive. Tactically, it opens different pathways for our consulting population to work with clients. Nothing is all or nothing anymore, which can mean working across time zones — consultants working in Florida for clients in Washington State, for example — which pre-pandemic likely wouldn't have happened. People can work on site part of the week and remotely part of the week, which expands the filters for talent and the catalog of talent clients are willing to engage. We're already seeing that.

Great. What are you seeing in terms of fill rates? There's a lot of competition for top talent.

Our fill rates are still very consistent. One anomalous outcome from the pandemic was that we had more supply than demand. As demand increases, we still have a very healthy supply. There's a lot of competition for talent, which is good. Our fill rates have not degraded, and with hybrid options we're hopeful to remain well ahead of any degradation issues even as demand climbs.

Great. Jenn, is there anything we should factor in regarding the forward outlook on SG&A in terms of travel and entertainment rebuilding or other costs that had been temporarily ceased?

Going into fiscal 2022, our SG&A is expected to go up for a few reasons. As our revenue grows, the variable component of SG&A will naturally increase. Travel and business expenses will rise a bit compared to the pandemic low, but we do not expect them to return to pre-COVID levels; we plan to hold business expenses at about 50% of pre-COVID levels and maintain a hybrid virtual working model. We've made significant strides reducing fixed costs and we always look at SG&A both in dollars and as a percentage of revenue. We expect a meaningful improvement in SG&A as a percentage of revenue compared to last year.

Great. Thank you very much.

I am not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Kate Duchene for any further remarks.

I just want to thank you all again for attending our Q4 and year-end call. We look forward to talking with you again at the end of our first quarter of fiscal 2022. Thanks everyone and stay healthy.

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