Good morning. Thank you all for joining us. I'm Maggie Nolan. I'm the research analyst here at William Blair, who covers IT services, including ASGN, which is co-covered by my colleague, Trevor Romeo. I'm required to inform you that for a complete list of research disclosures or potential conflicts of interest, please visit our website at williamblair.com. ASGN is a leading provider of IT services and solutions across commercial and government sectors, and we're excited to have Ted Hanson, CEO, Marie Perry, CFO, and Jeff Schmalbach, Chief Consulting Officer. Thank you all for joining us. We're going to discuss some of the key trends for the company, a little overview of the company, and we'll have some time for a little moderated Q&A. Then immediately after the presentation, we invite you to join us in the breakout room for more Q&A.
That's going to be in Room Jenney B. With that, I will turn it over to the team. Thank you.
Great. Well, I'd like to thank Maggie and Trevor for hosting, and their team. And great to be here with my colleagues today to talk to you about ASGN. ASGN at a glance. About $4.5 billion in revenues. As you can see, $500 million in EBITDA. Our business has three components to it, if you will. And if you probably the best way to think about us is IT services for enterprise accounts across five commercial industry segments and the federal government. So, inside the federal government, we're serving Department of Defense, Intel, Fed Civilian agencies. And I'll show you here on another slide how we address the commercial market. Our legacy, which I'll speak about in a little bit more detail, is, has been growing up as an IT staffing firm.
But we've really been on a pivot here to be more consultative with these large enterprise accounts. And while we're part of the way on the journey here, you can see 60% of our revenues are now of a more consultative nature. We've still got a long ways to go. Company was founded in the early 1990s as a healthcare, scientific, and other types of diversified staffing. I came into this business in 2012 with the acquisition of Apex. Apex is the number three largest player in IT staffing across the U.S. It allowed us at that time to think differently about who we wanted to be in the future.
So we divested things that were not IT, and we've been organically growing our IT capabilities, as well as making strategic, M&A acquisitions that bring consultative capabilities, that are critical to our clients' needs. And, you know, 2018, we entered into the federal government sector, a really important industry sector. It balances out our portfolio and gave us a suite of high-end IT solutions in, cybersecurity, AI, machine learning, cloud, and other IT modernization. Today, as I mentioned, we're on a push around, expanding our, the consultative part of our business. Our clients naturally have pulled us into these opportunities. If you can imagine, for years and decades here, we've been providing, IT, skills across the spectrum to Fortune 500 and 1000 accounts.
Our clients, who we had built up with a lot of trust with, said: "Hey, you've been doing such a great job with this over the years. Could you bring these skills in? Could you wrap around project management and be able to handle a deliverable and help me get to certain outcomes? If you do, that's very productive for me, the client, and I'm willing to give you higher rates and margins around that." And so not only is this expanding in a much larger total addressable market, it's also comes with a higher value proposition for the client and better economics for us. IT staffing historically has been kind of a mid-single-digit growth rate industry here in the U.S., about $35 billion.
The part of the commercial IT consulting services market that we believe we can serve is in excess of $300 billion. So addressable market, 10 times the size, value proposition, higher, economics, higher. It just gives us a lot of running room, if you will, for the future. The federal government industry segment is a very important industry segment for IT. It's in excess of about $180 billion. It has many of the same and a few different growth drivers to it. Again, makes it a very attractive six-industry segment for us. You know, here's some of the data on the diverse end markets we serve. I think we believe in several things. We believe in IT services for sure. We believe in being more consultative.
We believe in large enterprise accounts, and also that there's industry diversification, so that as things are up and down in the economy over time, these industry segments and large account portfolio balance you out. We work with about 70% of the Fortune 1000, you know, in excess of 300 of the Fortune 500. We serve the most attractive large agencies in the federal government, defense, intel, and key fed civilian agencies, and all that gives our account portfolio a great balance. I mean, we have a lot of great things about our firm, which I could tick through, but the number one gold nugget of this firm is the account portfolio and the diversification across the industries. You know, we win because we've, we not only understand talent, but we understand solutions, and we have an industry go-to-market approach.
So we bring those solutions to bear for our clients with industry expertise. Decades of client relationships with these large Fortune 500 and 1000 accounts. They're the largest and biggest spenders of IT. All of our growth today will come from this account portfolio. We don't need another client in it in order to get where we wanna go. However, we're always adding an account here or there, so kind of the culture and the dynamic of the business. But these large enterprise accounts are such big spenders in IT, and they're stable spenders of IT. And although they won't chase technology for the sake of chasing it, once they dig in on solution areas, they spend and continue to spend.
We have an expansive geographic reach across the U.S., also serving certain industries in Canada. Probably one thing I'd like to highlight about our geographic reach is our Mexico delivery center. In an acquisition in 2019 of Intersys, which Jeff was the CEO of, and that's how he got into our business. We acquired a nucleus of a nearshore capability in Guadalajara, Mexico, a little over 100 resources. Today, we've organically 5 years later expanded that by 10 times, and it's an important part of the delivery mechanism to our clients. We certainly own great capabilities to provide-
Mm-hmm.
U.S. onshore talent, but with this nearshore capability, we've really seen our clients, you know, very interested in it, big uptake, always over your lives, and we have a lot further to go. I mean, this pyramid highlights a little bit the, if you will, the spend in the IT marketplace. We grew up on the bottom in technical staffing. As I mentioned, these clients have been pulling us up. There are many areas now where we can sit with clients and talk about strategy, architecture, and design, just like the big traditional consulting firms. We spend most of our time right in the middle of that pyramid.
Once a client has a strategic roadmap defined, that may serve them over the next 3-5 years in terms of where they would like to go with their technology systems, we are a preferred provider of how they execute the different steps to get there. So there'll be, I'll call it stepping stones along the way, which is project work to meet, you know, all of the individual steps to get to the ultimate outcome our client is getting to. And they look at us as a very productive way to do that. And the reason is, our model is different. We don't carry a bench like the big traditional staffing firms would.
We have a small layer of subject matter and industry expertise within our business who lead our project and consulting efforts, and we utilize mostly our IT staffing capability to fulfill the team members that need to be on that project. It makes us very nimble and agile. When they're working for us, they're on our payroll, and we're billing the client for the work that we're doing. When they're not, they're not on our rolls, and so we're not carrying the bench and the cost associated with that. We're really not fighting utilization as some of the big traditional consulting firms might do. Lots of advantages to that, as I mentioned, including a more productive price point for our clients.
So if you think about a typical project, IT consulting project that we might be doing with our customers, 80%-85% of that team is coming off our IT staffing capabilities, and the other, you know, 15% or less are subject matter expertise within our industries, solutions, or resources from our nearshore capability in Guadalajara, Mexico. Okay, well, we'll have plenty of time for Q&A on that. I will turn it over to our CFO, Marie Perry.
Thank you. Good morning. So I am gonna start out with the variable cost structure. The cornerstone of our business model, there's two components: the variable cost structure and then the solid free cash flow. And so it shows up in a couple parts, and so I'll walk through this slide. But on the gross margin perspective, Ted mentioned the contingent workforce. Our delivery model is based on a contingent workforce, and that allows us to match our cost of services with our revenues. So from a gross margin perspective, the variability that you see is around business mix. And at this moment in time, we're seeing some unfavorable in business mix, as some of our more discretionary areas of our business are slowing, and then we're having a different mix between our commercial segment and our government segment.
From the SG&A line, basically, our SG&A, 80% of our SG&A costs are compensation related, and they are highly, highly variable. Our team members are paid a marginal base with an incentive, and then bonus that's triggered off of some kind of a profitability measure. And so when revenues slow, you actually see that correlation between a lower SG&A, along with the lower profitability and lower revenue of the business. So there's a nice kind of calibrates, whatever the right word is, you know, from a model perspective... And it also allows us to utilize attrition. So, because of the marginal base, we're able to leverage attrition appropriately.
From an EBITDA margin perspective, Ted mentioned our move to consulting for IT consulting, and more specifically, commercial consulting revenues. And so as we expand that aspect of the business, it is a higher margin, higher value business, and we will actually see- we can expect to see higher margins in our adjusted EBITDA as we increase our IT consulting, and specifically our commercial consulting business. And finally, just wanted to highlight the solid free cash flow. Again, a cornerstone of our business model. So we target approximately 60%-65% conversion for our conversion to EBITDA for our key free cash flow. And you've seen kind of in the slide that Ted showed, that the trailing twelve months was around $400 million of free cash flow on a trailing twelve months, or slightly over $400 million.
So we continue to have the opportunity for strong free cash flow. Our CapEx is relatively minimal, so we continue to utilize that. In our capital allocation structure. We have a tried and true high track record for a disciplined capital allocation structure. From acquisition and M&A, it is our top priority and our best use of our capital. But right now, with higher cost of capital, a wider spread from bid-ask, uncertainty around some of the projections, we continue to look at various targets, but in lieu of M&A, we're utilizing our strong free cash flow for share repurchase. We are targeting a quarter's worth of our free cash flow for share repurchase.
And just recently, our board authorized $750 million, replacing a $500 million share authorization program, and it's really equates to about two years of free cash flow. And last but not least, on the debt side, it says debt repayment, but honestly, we have about $1 billion of debt on our books. We are modestly leveraged. Our, our leverage ratio is 1.7 times. We have a natural hedge. About half of our debt are as in bonds, and the other half is in a Term Loan B variable. Our blended rate in our debt is about 6%. The last point on this slide is that, you know, when we look at an acquisition, we have amazing dry powder. So in addition to be modestly levered, we have a revolver that's $500 million, that is untouched.
At times of a pretty significant acquisition, we've levered up to 3.8x. But then with the cash flow from the acquisition, we've been able to lever down pretty quickly. This slide really highlights our Q1 results that we shared in April. We were at the top end or met the midterm of our guidance for Q1 results. Revenue came in at $1,049 million, gross margin at 28.2%. We did see compression, and it was related to the business mix that I mentioned earlier. Our federal government segment was higher. That carries a lower gross margin than our commercial segment.
And then as it relates to the adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.3%, the one thing that we always want to remind folks is that, in Q1, we have a payroll tax reset. And so that has a, a bit of a burden on Q1. And so from Q4 to Q1, it's about 100 basis points, and then we see some relief from Q1 to Q2. And so that was our financial results for the quarter.
All right. Very good.
Thank you. Thank you all. Really great overview. I think I'd like to start kind of where, Ted, you started some of the commentary. You're over 60% consulting now. You have your Chief Consulting Officer here with us. Can you talk a little bit about reflecting on the success of mixing further into that consulting business, how it's resonated with your clients, how you're evaluating your own success and the work that you still have to do? As you said, there's a lot ahead.
Yeah, I mean, for years here, there's been a secular change going on in the, in our client, the CIO or CTO shop, if you will, in these large enterprise accounts, about how they think about getting things done that are on their roadmap. Traditionally, they've had big fixed workforce inside of their organization. They've outsourced a lot to project consulting firms. They've had the IT staffing firms like us available for technical resources if they wanted to manage those things internally, and then they could send things offshore and BPO. Some of those five things haven't changed. Those players are still there. How our client thinks about getting things done has evolved. They want less fixed workforce in their organization.
Number one, the rate of change in technology is so fast that if they try to own all the technical resources, they never have enough of the right skill set at the right time. And as technologies go up and down, they're chasing them in terms of trying to build a full-time workforce and then attrit that workforce as either technology change or their business may ebb down. So they've turned away from that, if you will, and said: Look, I want less fixed internal technical workforce, and I wanna rely more on the outside. And what I want are smart, functional people who understand my business and what the business need is, and then I'm gonna deal with the technical aspects differently.
The big project consulting firms are still a big part of the client's world and how they get things done. All the traditional names you would imagine. However, they come at a big price, and they're big and bulky and sometimes difficult to deal with, and the clients are looking for something that's a little bit more of a nimble alternative, and that's become us. We can immediately put together, you know, very capable and robust teams. We can have them ready within a week. We can spin up quickly on these projects, and when we put a team together based on our model, it's very bespoke to the typical need, the technology need of the client, and brings the industry expertise, whether it's in banking or healthcare or what have you.
All of that comes with a more productive price point, most oftentimes, and so that's an advantage to the client. So I would say overall, secular changes, which have been afoot for a while, which have supported our move into this space, and there's a benefit for the client, obviously, in the outcome of that, and there's an obvious benefit for us.
It makes a lot of sense, but I'm curious about when you're selling it into, you know, existing clients that haven't participated in that way with you before. Are there barriers there? Do you have to, you know, change your go-to-market function, change the relationship with the client, find your way onto preferred vendor lists? What's that process really like?
You wanna talk about that, Jeff?
Yeah, I mean, absolutely is the first answer and the easy answer is yes, there's a lot of challenges there. But, you know, a part of the answer is this has been a journey, and this isn't year one or two of the journey. We're in year 11, 12 of that journey. And so, early years, that was harder than it is today. Like anything, if you're changing a perception, you have to have evidence of why that should change. And so it started with evidence of our early quals, then it went to moments in time where we filled gaps in our solution capability with acquisitions. And so those give kind of a striking moment for a customer to change their mindset and say: Oh, that's a clear piece of evidence that your business is evolving.
I'd say at this point, we've overcome that hurdle with a vast majority of kind of the top clients that we've got these long histories with. But we still have a lot of runway within our own client portfolio. We still have two-thirds of the clients we work with on a staffing basis that we've yet to do solution work with. So, that challenge isn't fully won, but I think that's also what we see as exciting opportunity for us. We've gotten over $1 billion in the commercial space, and we haven't—we're only at one-third of the client base without going out and finding new customers, so.
You know, the existing client base, a lot of that opportunity remains. How are you thinking about new client additions? And Marie, how are you thinking about that opportunity as it manifests long term in the financials?
So, I mean, if you, I think Jeff kind of capstoned that correctly. We have approximately 700 of the Fortune 1000 in our client list. A third of those. Only a third of those we're serving with consulting, so we have two-thirds of that. We have other clients that we're trying to add to the portfolio, the rest of the Fortune 500 and 1000, if you will. So that's always a thing. That's always part of the journey. I think one of the things I'd just like to reinforce, we have an industry-focused go-to-market strategy, right? So we come to our client with a suite of services, but really embedded in the fact that we have industry expertise in these various industries that we showed earlier and account ownership with industry expertise.
So the job of the sales team, if you will, is to pull our full suite of services in, and Jeff's an important part of that. As our business grows in commercial consulting, this is the strategy, both organic investment and M&A, it's gonna have an impact on the economic profile of the business.
That's right. Yeah, so I mean, back in 2021, we gave a long-term target, and that long-term target was 12%-12.5% adjusted EBITDA. That was never intended to be a cap, and that three-year target ends at the end of this year. We will obviously look to give a new three-year target or five-year target at some point. But to Ted's point, the increase in the commercial consulting, the higher margin, higher value business, will allow that margin to continue to grow.
So we've kind of established the opportunity, good things ahead for the long term, but the demand environment across the services space has been uneven, to say the least, in the last year plus. So maybe can you think about some of your end markets, you know, the commercial verticals in the government sector that you serve, and talk about where you're seeing strength, where you're seeing weakness, and how we might expect, you know, the back half of the year to develop.
Right. So, if you think about our six industry segments, you know, the commercial market obviously is by and large going through some malaise. I don't know what. I won't use the word recession in IT spending, but, but certainly, a little bit of a cloudy, outlook over top of it right now, but I think that's just for a moment. Look, if you, if you believe ourselves and what our clients say, if you believe what Gartner says, there's good high single digit to double digit growth over the long term in all these key strategic initiative areas around technology for our clients. That hasn't gone away.
You know, there's a moment here where they position themselves more cautiously, for sure, because I don't think they have the business confidence to really release fully into their budgets, to accomplish the things that they need to on their strategic roadmap. But look, this is the reason for a balanced industry portfolio. I mean, if you think about the individual industries, first, our federal government industry, which is about 30% of the revenues, is not as sexy as when it comes to growth and margin, but it's got great stability aspects to it, and so we're seeing mid-single-digit growth there. The budget appropriation for the budget is behind us now.
That came at the end of the first quarter, and clients are, you know, our government clients are putting opportunities out on the street and making decisions of who to award them to, and so that's a positive, if you will, in the account portfolio. On the commercial side, there are some pieces of the industry portfolio that are doing well. Healthcare providers, for sure, has been good and growing through the last, let's say, 18 months that we've been going through what we've been going through in the commercial end market. Other industry segments and sub-segments, as you could imagine, like energy and utilities, have been strong, other pieces of consumer industrials.
But a few of our larger, most important commercial industry segments like tech, like financial services, haven't yet returned to what I'll call the normal spending patterns that they typically do inside of IT, so we're watching those two industries very closely. There's little sequential, incremental positives in some of that that give you some confidence that down the road there may be something. But I wouldn't say, you know, when you look across the whole industry portfolio, that there's any inflection point yet to a different place. I think clients are still worried about the macro, still worried about how their business may perform. They're having good earnings, but it's really on the back of less expense and not runaway revenue growth.
And so I think in the short term here, they're gonna remain very cautious in terms of not only how they invest in IT, but everything else.
So no inflection point yet, but as you said, Ted, and as you outlined, Marie, in your presentation, you're very well diversified. You can pull from strength in different areas. So that, that's from a, you know, end market perspective, but there's also, you know, the underlying technology waves that are really exciting, and everybody's talking about what AI means to this industry that you operate in. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, how your AI journey has been progressing? You know, what, what are your clients doing to prepare to take on generative AI and how you're responding to that?
Obviously, lots of conversation, arm waving, attention being paid to AI.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a few things. One is to what Ted said, there's a lot of conjecture around AI. There's a lot of thinking and good work being done, but not revenue-based work being done. So a lot of workshop strategy thinking, engagement with our customers and our top-level thinkers that Ted talked about in our, what we call our practice, that full-time group that thinks industry and solutions cross, across. I think the other piece that we are making really strong headway, and we're about year 4 or 5 on, is continuing that depth in the key technologies that build up to AI. So AI is not a thing; it's a co-compilation of many technologies coming together: cloud, big data, machine learning.
A lot of underpinnings have to come together in order for AI to be truly a successful in a customer. And so we've been working for years in those areas, delivering projects for our customers, delivering point solutions for our customers, and then continuing internally to build our depth. And we feel like we're really proud and, and strong where we are today. And there's still some key areas that we need to keep working on, both for today and for where things go with AI. We see AI as very much an opportunity. We're very excited about where that's gonna take us. We're also a very fluid organization with the way we've modernized our workforce, where we can pivot as we learn more, and we need to adapt and move into something much faster than our competition can.
Maggie, probably just to capstone that, worth noting that for four years running, we've been named the number one federal contractor for AI machine learning in the federal government industry. And we've had some key contracts there for many, many years. So I think it's just evidence that we have a foot forward here.
Right.
You know, things have to work through here on this subject overall, which we can talk about later, but, we're well-positioned.
Very good. Well, we will continue the conversation in room Jenney B, so please join us there. Ted and Marie and Jeff, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.