Earnings Call Transcript - TNET Q3 2024

Operator, Operator

Good morning and welcome to the TriNet Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alex Bauer, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

Alex Bauer, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good morning. My name is Alex Bauer and I'm TriNet's Head of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us and welcome to TriNet's 2024 third quarter conference call. I'm joined today by our President and CEO, Mike Simonds, and our CFO, Kelly Tuminelli. Before we begin, I would like to address our use of forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. Please note that today's discussion will include our 2024 Fourth Quarter and full-year financial outlook and other statements that are not historical in nature, are predictive in nature, or refer to future events or conditions, such as our expectations, estimates, predictions, strategies, beliefs, or other statements that might be considered forward-looking. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and are inherently subject to risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and that may cause actual results to differ materially from statements being made today or in the future. Except as may be required by law, we do not undertake to update any of these statements in light of new information, future events, or otherwise. We encourage you to review our most recent public filings at the SEC, including our 10-K and 10-Q filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances that may affect our future results or the market price of our stock. In addition, our discussion today will include non-GAAP financial measures, including our forward-looking guidance for adjusted net income per diluted share. For reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to our GAAP financial results, please see our earnings release, 10-Q filings, or 10-K filing, which are available on our website or through the SEC website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Good morning. Thank you, Alex, and my thanks to all of you for joining us on today's call. While there are a number of very positive things happening across our business, increases in healthcare costs adversely impacted our overall financial performance this quarter, and so I'd like to start my comments there. As context, throughout 2024, the market has experienced a significant and broad-based increase in healthcare costs. In looking at our own experience, similar to what many in the market are reporting, the overall number of claims is largely consistent with our expectations. However, the average cost per claimant driven by severity and overall inflation is higher than what we assumed in our pricing. Over the last several months, we've taken a number of actions to both improve our results in the short term and importantly, enhance our capabilities moving forward. First, earlier this year, we broke out the Insurance Services Group into a singularly focused team reporting to me and brought in Tim Nimmer to head it out. Tim's background includes Chief Actuary and Head of Pricing and Underwriting roles at two of the largest global firms in healthcare. Already, Tim has strengthened our insurance services team with the addition of new actuarial talent. Second, we consolidated our data and analytics from around TriNet into a single team to ensure our performance data is strong and consistent throughout the customer lifecycle, and that our new business and renewal pricing processes are disciplined and supported by data that is high quality and visible. Third, with strong talent, improved data, and a more disciplined process in place, we thoughtfully increased our healthcare pricing over the past several months, assuming a continued elevated trend in 2025. Utilizing our new rate level, we released our October 1st renewals for the largest cohort of our customers, approximately 39% of our annualized healthcare fees. With strong execution across our insurance services, customer relationship, and service delivery teams, I'm pleased to say that the renewal went very well. We achieved the targeted double-digit increases with strong retention of our customers. In fact, we are now forecasting record customer retention for full year 2024. We are currently engaged in our January 1st renewals, which represent another 29% of our healthcare fees. Again, pricing here will reflect current elevated healthcare costs with no relief assumed in 2025 to trend. Given the fact, we will have repriced more than two-thirds of our healthcare fee base by the start of next year. And assuming 2025 healthcare costs continue to grow at the current elevated rate, we expect our 2025 insurance cost ratio to stabilize at or near our current full-year 2024 outlook. Looking out to the mid and long term, I believe our accelerated investment in risk management, talent, tools, and processes will reduce the volatility of our insurance cost ratio while maximizing profitable growth. We believe the earnings power of our business, with a stable annual insurance cost ratio in our long term range of 87% to 90% is considerable. And this management team is committed to achieving it, even if it means trading off customer and WSE growth in the short term. Turning now to a discussion of results outside of our ICR, we should start with the broader environment for SMBs in the verticals we target. Slower economic growth, higher interest rates, and a generally cautious outlook resulted in a third quarter of no net hiring amongst our customer base. While the headline jobs reports have been generally positive from the BLS over the last year, our experience has differed materially. Growth in several sectors, including government, construction, and healthcare are fueling aggregate headlines while our core verticals of technology, life sciences, financial services, and other professional services have been muted. It's worth noting that the long-term average CIE in our targeted verticals is 8% to 12% versus flat here in 3Q. Given that CIE growth comes with very low acquisition and incremental service cost, the impact of historically low CIE is meaningful to both top and bottom line. Again, like with a stable ICR in our targeted range, even a partial reversion over time to our historical CIE represents significant earnings upside in future periods and is another reason we believe our business is such a good one. However, given we find ourselves in this low growth environment, we are exercising particular discipline with respect to our expenditures. Expenses declined 1% in the quarter as we focused on process and technology improvements. I'm quite encouraged by the momentum we're building on these fronts, making investments that drive efficiency while improving the customer experience. And frankly, we have much more potential to improve, creating value for customers, colleagues, and shareholders. Recognizing this potential will require making clear and disciplined choices, and our team continues to work through these methodically. And while there is more we will share with fourth quarter results, a few things are clear. First, our core PEO business operates in a very attractive market, uniquely blending services and strong technology to deliver exceptional value to SMBs. You can expect us to sharpen our focus on our core business, playing only where we believe we can win a leading share of our customers. Second, the current healthcare environment is a short-term headwind, but we firmly believe that the growing cost and complexity of employee benefits only strengthens demand for what we do. Look for us to bet on benefits, investing to extend our risk management offering and customer experience. I firmly believe we can deliver greater predictability in ICR while creating separation from PEO competitors who see insurance as simply a pass-through. Benefits is our targeted SMB customers' number one concern, and we will address it in a differentiated way. Finally, we have the opportunity to accelerate our investment in technology and talent to improve our platform and service delivery while growing overall expenses at a considerably slower rate than revenue. Like I said, there's considerable work still to do, but I am excited by the engagement of our broader leadership team and look forward to updating you on the outcome of our work on our 4Q earnings call. In summary, we are taking the challenge of healthcare cost trend head-on, both through our pricing and risk management actions. We're managing our expenses aggressively in the current low-growth environment within our customer base. And importantly, we have our eyes on the future and the steps we will take to create a more focused, more differentiated, more efficient company capable of sustainable, profitable growth. With that, I'll pass the call to Kelly for her financial review. Kelly?

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

Thank you, Mike. Our third quarter results reflect a continuation of many of the trends we've experienced in 2024. We've accelerated actions across our business in response to this challenging environment. In doing so, we're leveraging the strength of our business model. We adjusted pricing over the last several months and delivered sales roughly in line with our prior year, which were up 40% over the levels achieved in Q3, 2022. We passed through this revised pricing to the largest cohort of our customer base on October 1st. And even so, we're now forecasting record retention. Unfortunately, we saw no meaningful contribution from customer hiring, and yet we delivered revenue in line with the lower end of our guidance range. We are operating in one of the most challenging health cost environments in years as provider costs, claims, severity, and pharmaceutical costs all accelerated versus recent trends and our historical experience, which outpaced our 2023 and early 2024 pricing. As a result of these trends, our insurance cost ratio for the third quarter was towards the higher end of our ICR range and our full-year forecast was also adjusted to reflect continuing higher costs. Given our pricing actions, our initial view on 2025 reflects a stabilizing insurance cost ratio similar to our current full year expectation for 2024. We exercised prudent expense management and saw our expenses decline year-over-year. We are actively managing our resources across the business, balancing cost savings with reinvestment in key areas. We retain the flexibility to reinvest our business and return capital to shareholders. To sum up the quarter, we took expedient action to address elevated health cost trends and are successfully passing through appropriate rate increases and are still on track for record retention for the year. Now let's turn to our third quarter financial performance in more detail. In this quarter, total revenues grew 1%. We finished the third quarter with approximately 356,000 worksite employees, up 6% year-over-year and approximately 334,000 co-employed WSEs down 1% year-over-year. In the quarter, client retention was strong and outperformed our forecast as our investments in customer service continue to pay off. Retention is now on pace to exceed our best historical annual retention rate. I'm particularly pleased with this given higher benefit renewals being passed through to help offset the higher claims experience. Consistent with last quarter, sales were again flat compared to the prior year. This was a positive outcome and reflected a significant increase over 2022 levels. Finally, CIE or customer hiring was just barely positive in the quarter. The modest positive CIE experienced in July and August was almost completely offset by workforce reductions in September with each of our verticals declining during the month of September. Now let's drill down a little. Our professional service revenue was flat to our prior year. Last year, we benefited from a one-time item related to a payment acceleration and cessation of a broker relationship on our HRS platform. Without that item, our growth would have been 2%. Insurance revenue grew 2% year-over-year. Consistent with our first half trends, healthcare participation rates within our co-employed WSE base were slightly lower and were partially offset by annual inflationary rate increases. Insurance costs grew 9% year-over-year. Insurance cost growth again reflected higher healthcare and pharmacy costs. Taken all together, this brought our insurance cost ratio to 90% in line with the bottom half of third quarter guidance range. Now let's turn to operating expenses, an area we've been very focused on and quite a bright spot for our company. We continued managing the business in a prudent and disciplined fashion, resulting in a 1% year-over-year decline in operating expenses. We are proactively reducing our back office costs while making targeted investments in growth and automation. We believe robust expense management and prioritization will be critical to free up resources to reinvest in our business while delivering strong margins and attractive cash flows. Interest income on operating cash and investments offset our third quarter interest expense. In the quarter, our average cash balances were lower year-over-year, in part due to our cumulative stock repurchase as well as dividend payments. Taking this all together, we reported $0.89 in GAAP earnings per diluted share and $1.17 of adjusted net income per diluted share, both within but below the midpoint of our guidance ranges. Regarding cash and capital, we had another solid quarter of cash generation to support our business and capital allocation. In the quarter, we delivered $109 million of adjusted EBITDA. We also generated $213 million of corporate operating cash flows year-to-date through the end of the quarter. By the end of next week, we will have returned $191 million to investors so far this year. In the third quarter, we repurchased 200,000 shares for a year-to-date total of approximately 1.5 million shares. And by the end of October, we expect to have paid $37 million in dividends. Our capital return priorities remain unchanged. As we generate cash throughout the year, we will continue to deliver value to our shareholders by investing in our business for growth and using our cash flows to fund dividends and share repurchases in line with our financial policy. Now let's turn to our fourth quarter and full year outlook. For the fourth quarter, we expect total revenues to be down 1% to up 2% and professional service revenues to be down 8% to down 5%. Our underlying assumptions in support of our revenue guidance include our expectation for modest decline in new sales, continued strong customer retention and a limited contribution from CIE. Turning to our insurance cost ratio or ICR, for the fourth quarter, we are forecasting an ICR of 96.5% to 93.5%. Our fourth quarter ICR performance is our seasonally highest quarter each year. Historically, we see a sequential Q3 to Q4 step up in ICR of anywhere from two to five points. One key driver behind this step up is the annual reset of our pooling limit deductibles, which occurred on October 1st. Effective October 1st, our pooling coverage resets for claims that had previously hit the $500,000 per member cap for our enrolled population. In the fourth quarter, we are back on risk for any of those claims that are continuing. This results in a forecasted GAAP net income per diluted share in the range of negative $0.19 to positive $0.31 and an adjusted net income per diluted share in the range of $0.06 to $0.57. Turning to our full year guidance, given our third quarter actual performance and our forecasted fourth quarter performance, we're lowering and tightening our full year guidance. For revenues, given our current projected volumes, our range reflects growth of 1% to 2% for total revenues and flat to up 1% for professional service revenues. Given our fourth quarter forecast for insurance cost performance, we are tightening and raising our insurance cost ratio forecast to 90.3% to 89.6%. With respect to our earnings guidance, we are bracketing our full year guidance around the previous bottom end of our range, reflecting the impact from our revised insurance cost ratio forecast offset by the expense efficiencies we have been focusing on. We now expect GAAP net income per diluted share in the range of $3.70 to $4.20 and adjusted net income per diluted share in the range of $4.95 to $5.45. So in summary, we are operating in a difficult health cost environment and are reacting quickly. By leveraging our team and improved processes, we are pricing new business and our renewals to appropriately reflect the current and expected health cost environment. As a result of the actions we're taking and have already taken, our initial view on our 2025 ICR is similar to 2024. Importantly, even as we pass through pricing reflective of the current environment, our customers are choosing to stay with us in record numbers. We remain prudent managers of our shareholder capital, keeping expense growth low while investing in our business and returning capital to shareholders. With that, let's open up the call for questions. Operator?

Operator, Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question comes from Andrew Berkowitz with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Andrew Berkowitz, Analyst

Hey, good morning, everyone. I wanted to ask a question. Mike, you made a comment in the call about your commitment to achieving the 87% to 90% long-term ICR range, and you’re committed to that, even if you have to trade off some WSE growth. I just wanted to start by asking, can you speak to how material you see that being or how much of the book potentially would have to be cleaned up to achieve that?

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Yes, thanks, Andrew. I really appreciate the question. Our first and best data point that we have is the October 1st renewals. If you take a step back, we've made a pretty significant set of changes and investments in our risk management capability, carving out the insurance services group and bringing in Tim Nimmer. He's got a great background, particularly around healthcare. He's already made some additions on the actuarial side. I'd say we've got a material sort of improvement in our risk management and our ability to understand what we're seeing in the data and then to look forward. Our view is that the elevated trend we're seeing today isn't going to abate in '25. We built those double-digit increases in the October 1st renewals. As Kelly went through, we're encouraged with the retention of that cohort. Our CRM team and service delivery teams are doing a very good job. We've got our eye on January 1st, expecting slightly higher renewals coming then. I think it is one of the really good parts of the business model that, while benefits are important and healthcare is important inside of benefits, what we do for customers is much broader. That service proposition lends itself to a much stickier situation. I think that's what positions us well. Our early read here is that it's actually quite good, particularly for our existing customer base. They've experienced TriNet, which puts us in good stead. On the new business front, we've made the same adjustments on our prospective pricing. We like the pipeline; the demand for the product is strong. I think we are seeing a bit of pressure on conversion rates, which is a little bit to do with the environment. Our SMB prospects are cautious on hiring and hesitant to make major changes to their HR and benefit setups. So that's probably the more sensitive area is resales growth, but I feel confident about the existing base.

Andrew Berkowitz, Analyst

Okay. That's super helpful. Appreciate those comments. I just had one quick follow-up. I know you guys are seeing significant sales growth from last year. So the 40% on top of 2022 levels seems really strong. I'm curious as you look into next year, I know you talked about making investments in distribution last quarter. I was curious if you could give any more color on those investments in multi-channel distribution?

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Sure. Yes, thanks. Like I mentioned, the pipeline for January 1st, same day, year-over-year, shows nice growth, double digits, 20% plus in terms of volume. That's really encouraging to us. We've grown the count of total intended reps by about 14% year-over-year, which is also encouraging. One of our big focus areas, we've brought in a new Chief Revenue Officer, Shea Treadway. He has deep experience in building strong sales culture as well as multi-channel distribution and employee benefits brokers. He's been with us for a couple of months, and he and the team are working hard on strategies to drive productivity through this larger sales force. A big part of that will be driving retention and ultimately higher sales levels on those more experienced, capable reps. The second piece of that is the brokerage channel, which has been a good addition to our sales here in 2024. As we look out into the SMB market—of SMBs that offer healthcare, which is a little bit north of 70% of those under 100 employees—about 90% of them get benefits through employee benefits brokers. Building a sustainable approach to that channel is something we're excited about.

Andrew Berkowitz, Analyst

Thank you very much. Appreciate the color.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Kyle Peterson with Needham. Please go ahead.

Kyle Peterson, Analyst

Great. Good morning, guys, and thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to start off on the 4Q guide for professional services revenue. I guess it's calling for a pretty decent size step down both year-on-year and sequentially. So if you guys could provide more color on how much of that is maybe due to some of these workforce reductions and other drags or just any more color on some of those headwinds in the services segment would be very helpful?

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

Yes, Kyle, it's Kelly. Good morning. I'll be happy to take that one. The first and foremost point that you need to remember is last year we had a little bit more of a one-time event. We had about $8 million or so of revenue recognition that we got in the fourth quarter that just is not recurring this year. Secondly, we are assuming slower hiring. In our WSE pipeline, we're just assuming that we're not really going to get an uptick in hiring in 2024, which will look a lot like 2023 from that perspective. So it's really just those two things from a sequential perspective; it’s down a couple of points and about flat with last year.

Kyle Peterson, Analyst

Okay, that is helpful. And then, just on timing with your insurance repricing, I think you guys said that you have more than two-thirds of the book repriced now. Could you just remind us what timeframe we should think about for the roughly last third? Is that over the next one to two quarters? How should we think about when the rest of the book is expected to get repriced based on renewal cycles?

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

Yes. So just to clarify part of your intro there, by January 1 we'll have a little over two-thirds of the book priced. Some of the other renewals of smaller cohorts occur in Q1, so the fourth quarter for one renewal and July is smaller while April is a bit larger.

Kyle Peterson, Analyst

Okay, sounds good. So I guess you guys didn't reprice, so July would still need repricing even though it's smaller and didn’t occur this past year?

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

Right. So if you think back to earlier this year, we did make some modest changes to our July pricing as we were evaluating data coming in from January and February. However, we will have to price it to an appropriate level just given the trends we're seeing from a severity perspective.

Kyle Peterson, Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Thanks, Kyle.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Kevin McVeigh with UBS. Please go ahead.

Kevin McVeigh, Analyst

Thank you so much and good morning. Any sense, I mean, it seems particularly that the kind of CIE seems somewhat abrupt, just given the fact that where we are on the site, just given the percentages. Is that right or is there anything, I mean, I know certain verticals have been kind of weak, but they've been weak for, I think, a while. Just any thoughts, Mike, as to what kind of—was it the cost that really drove it? Just, you know, any commentary on that?

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Yes. I appreciate the question and good morning, Kevin. In general, we really do like the verticals that we target. If you take a broad, 10, 12, 15-year perspective, these verticals have proven an average growth rate of 8% to 12%. The question you're raising is a good one about what's happening in the year. We have seen a sizable impact on the business and a flat CIE comes with very low acquisition costs and low incremental servicing costs. The impact of a flat CIE, like we're experiencing today versus a historical norm of 8% to 12%, significantly impacts both top and bottom lines. The U.S. economy is robust in terms of employment, but when you go down a level, you're seeing things like manufacturing, government, and healthcare where costs are coming from somewhere. Our targeted verticals are just not seeing that growth. What we've observed even in the quarter is a little bit of net hiring in the first couple of months of the quarter, then noticing a decline from workforce reductions in September. We believe it’s prudent to have a conservative assumption on CIE in the short term. However, the potential for growth is still there, especially if we return to historical norms.

Kevin McVeigh, Analyst

Got it. So there wasn't any client loss or anything like that, right? I mean, this was just purely employee-driven?

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Exactly. At the client level, going back as far as we could pull the data, this is going to be a record retention year for us, which speaks to our team's effort. But yes, within the client base, we are seeing that, while our layoffs are not too far off from what we’d seen a couple of years ago, the new hires are simply not coming in at the pace we would like. I think many of our high growth verticals are shifting their focus towards margin expansion over growth, leading to caution on new hires.

Kevin McVeigh, Analyst

That's helpful. Thank you.

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Thanks, Kevin.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Andrew Nicholas, Analyst

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to circle back to the commentary regarding balancing WSE growth and ICR and pair that with the preliminary 2025 outlook on ICR. Given renewals seem to have gone quite well in terms of getting your targeted price increases, retention is good. Why is it then that you wouldn't see an uptick in the ICR sooner? Is it a function of the fact that a third of the book will not have been repriced to start the year? Or maybe you weren't as aggressive with price increases late to keep retention high? I'm just trying to understand the dynamics.

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Sure. I'll start and then Kelly can add. You touched on a crucial point. It's an industry-wide phenomenon we're experiencing. Most players have one shot a year, particularly in the SMB market, to make adjustments. Our approach allows us to manage it cohort by cohort, quarterly, which is attractive. You rightly ask, why wouldn't you snap all the way to your long-term ICR target for full year 2025? The reality is that on January 1, we need the entire customer base priced at the levels we anticipate claims will trend. It will take time to work through that other third of the book throughout the year. Additionally, there are factors in the ICR related to our workers' comp linings, particularly one-time reserve adjustments that won't recur next year. There are a few variables involved, but we can use data from the fourth quarter and the first quarter to inform future pricing. Kelly, anything to add?

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

I think you've covered most of it. Good job on the reminder regarding workers' comp.

Andrew Nicholas, Analyst

That's very helpful. Thank you. Regarding the conservatism of your outlook for the fourth quarter, what are your assumptions or what needs to change from year-to-date levels on the claims front to be outside that range?

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

Yes, Andrew, I'll start and then Mike may have thoughts. As we look at the fourth quarter, that’s our best estimate. Our fourth quarter has pooling resets, and one reason for this year’s experience, severity increased. The number of high-cost claims is up year-over-year. With that pooling reset, there's additional pressure in the fourth quarter due to seasonality. Everything is contingent on market conditions, so navigating this environment is pivotal.

Andrew Nicholas, Analyst

Thank you, Kelly.

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Thank you, Andrew.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Jared Levine with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Jared Levine, Analyst

Thank you. Yes, just wanted to double-click on the sales headcount growth. Previously, you were targeting about 20% growth for this fall selling season. Can you discuss why you did not meet that 20% growth target?

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Yes, thanks Jared. We talked about that 20%. There's no magic to being in the 13% range; however, I’m very pleased with the quality of the folks we've brought on board. The productivity lever is increasingly important. The pipeline is robust, and we're covering the market effectively. More tenured sales reps will take advantage of that pipeline and drive better conversion rates. This will be our primary focus going forward.

Jared Levine, Analyst

Got it. Regarding PEO bookings, you mentioned some impact in pipeline conversion. What do you attribute that primarily to? Is it macro uncertainty or the elevated health cost pricing?

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

The demand for our services is high. As I stated, we see double-digit year-over-year growth in our pipeline for January 1. While the short-term pain can serve as a long-term tailwind for our model, we have important work to do to reprice the book. The costs and complexities facing small businesses in offering competitive benefits are increasing, driving demand for our services. The cautionary decision-making has lengthened the sales cycle for us. Additionally, we have made substantial changes in our risk management processes, which will lead to us pricing based on risk. Whether our competitors adjust as quickly or with the same level of expertise remains uncertain. It is prudent to expect some pressure on conversion rates.

Jared Levine, Analyst

Lastly, regarding the 1Q discussions around health enrollment, do you feel like it's setting up similarly to 4Q with healthy retention? Or are you seeing any differences?

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Nothing is emerging differently at this point. We closely inspect major health carriers and observe they face similar dynamics. Since this is a widespread market phenomena, we feel confident that the prices we're seeing are not outsized compared to the market.

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

The pricing we implement is tailored to each individual customer’s risk. The dispersion of price increases varies based on a customer's risk. We provide detailed claims information to them to help manage their claims costs, which is one of the significant costs of their business outside of salary.

Jared Levine, Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Thanks, Jared.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from David Grossman with Stifel. Please go ahead.

David Grossman, Analyst

Thank you. I'm wondering if you could help us understand what the competitive dynamic looks like in an environment like this, particularly how an at-risk PEO can perform relative to PEOs who don't take risk. Would this environment typically put you at a disadvantage or advantage? Or does it not really impact you given that a couple of your larger competitors primarily pass through healthcare?

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Good morning, David. Thanks for the question. At this point, I don't see a huge difference in where we are. Overall, we like the flexibility that being on risk allows us. As Kelly noted, there's a comprehensive process we employ at renewal, which ensures we assess risk effectively. I'm excited about TriNet's potential for the future. We have made investments in insurance services and risk management that are leading to substantial improvements. Over the coming quarters, we'll continue to improve our risk understanding and become more consultative with our clients. Ultimately, I think this positions us well just as more competitive advantage in sustainable, profitable growth.

David Grossman, Analyst

Right. Kelly, I thought you said that you released your pricing 90 days in advance. Does this imply that the pricing for the October 1st renewals would have gone out prior to the uptick in utilization? Just confirming the timing here and the potential impact.

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

Yes, we had to evaluate rates as we assessed data leading up to the releases. We advised moderate double-digit price increases based on the risk for individual clients. We believe this was adequate due to the prevailing trends.

David Grossman, Analyst

And so does that imply that you would have a similar increase on the January 1st cohort?

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

Correct, our expectation is similar. The realized level may differ depending on plan adjustments, but it's in the same area.

David Grossman, Analyst

And I'm sorry, I missed some of your commentary about the fourth quarter professional services revenue. I thought you mentioned limited CIE contributions. Is there anything else impacting year-over-year growth?

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

Yes, David, last year we also had a one-timer, $8 million in revenue recognition from specific fees that are not recurring this year.

David Grossman, Analyst

Okay. I'm sorry, I thought that was in the third quarter. Got it. Lastly, I know workers' comp is a diminishing tailwind across the industry. Can you give us a rough sense of how much of a margin headwind workers' comp will be in 2025?

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

We've tried to call out unusual items as they arise. We'll review our disclosures to gather the necessary information publicly.

David Grossman, Analyst

Okay, guys. Good luck. Thanks very much.

Kelly Tuminelli, CFO

Great. Thank you, David.

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Thanks, David.

Operator, Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mike Simonds for any closing remarks.

Mike Simonds, President and CEO

Thank you, everyone. I just want to quickly say to our shareholders that the best days for TriNet are ahead of us. You've heard it from our prepared remarks and Q&A. Effective risk management is genuinely important to me. We are making and will continue to make the investments in this capability. Even as we're tackling the challenges of healthcare head-on, we are taking necessary steps towards creating a more focused, differentiated, and efficient TriNet. I am excited, and I believe we are fully capable of sustainable and profitable growth. I appreciate the questions and everyone who took the time to join us on the call today. I look forward to engaging with many of you, alongside Kelly, in the coming weeks and months. With that, we can conclude today's call.

Operator, Operator

Yes, sir. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.