Good morning. My name is Kimberly Esterkin, and welcome to ASGN's 2021 Investor and Analyst Day. Before we get started with the discussion, I would like to remind those listening in that certain information in this presentation is forward-looking, within the meaning of Section 21(e) of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 as amended, and involves a high degree of risk and uncertainty. Forward-looking information includes estimates of the company's Future Financial and Operating Performance. Certain data and statements in this presentation, other than those setting forth strictly historical information, are forward-looking and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results from these estimates might differ materially. Forward-looking information includes estimates of Future Financial and Operating Performance.
Our future performance is subject to various risks and uncertainties, which are set forth in our reports filed with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2020, as filed with the SEC on March 1st, 2021. We specifically disclaim any intention or duty to update any forward-looking information contained in this presentation. Notes to the financial and operating information are an integral part of the information presented. All historical financial information presented treats the Oxford business as discontinued operations. The Oxford business was sold on August 17th, 2021. Financial estimates for 2021 pertain only to continuing operations, exclude the Oxford business, and reflect the midpoints of our estimate ranges for the full year. During today's presentation, we will host four Q&A sessions.
Those interested in asking a question can type their question into the Q&A box at the bottom of your webcast screen. Questions will be answered within the allotted timeframe for each session, but please feel free to enter questions at any time during the presentation. Thank you for your support, and we hope you enjoy today's discussion. We look forward to an insightful discussion today. Presentations will be led by Ted Hanson, President and CEO; Rand Blazer, President of APEX Systems; George Wilson, President of ECS; and Ed Pierce, Executive Vice President and CFO. The executive team will also be joined by our brand Chief Operating Officers, including Sean Casey, COO of APEX Systems; Matt Riley, COO of Creative Circle; and John Heneghan, COO of ECS. Today's presentation will be broken into four sections, each followed by a Q&A session.
We also look forward to sharing some short videos on our expertise and our employee base to provide a more in-depth look at our company. We will begin our discussion with a review of our overall strategy and business outlook, including a look back at where ASGN has come since our 2018 Analyst Day. We will then turn the discussion over to each of our business segments, the Commercial and Federal Government segments, to provide more details on growth drivers, positioning, and go-to-market strategies. We will conclude the presentation with our three-year financial outlook and overall long-term growth strategy. With that, let me turn the presentation over to CEO and President Ted Hanson to begin today's discussion.
Thank you, Kimberly. Thank all of you for joining us this morning. As we go through the presentation today, there will be many different messages and data points our team will share. While all of this information is important, we want you to focus on the following themes, key takeaways about who ASGN is today. The ASGN of today is positioned for faster, sustained growth in IT services. We focus on higher margin work and leverage Large Enterprise account portfolio to provide our Commercial and Government customers with cutting-edge IT services and solutions. With a more diversified revenue stream than in years past, we are better insulated than ever before from adverse economic events, as is evident in our continued strong financial performance. As a result, we are able to free Cash Flow that supports our Flexible Capital Deployment.
When we are going to talk about successes today against our 2018 objectives, we are going to lay out the market position for ASGN today and in the future. Third, we are going to update guidance for Q3, Q4, and 2021 and frame our long-term target opportunity. With these themes in mind, let's begin by first discussing how we got to be the ASGN we are today.
Upon becoming ASGN CEO in 2019, I worked with the team to strategically pivot our company strategy to become more narrowly focused on IT services and solutions. This transition is evidenced by the rapid growth of our Commercial consulting business, which has grown from $250 million in 2018 to an estimated $595 million in 2021. During the same time period, we completed six acquisitions in the Federal Government space, which supported our Federal Government segment's growth to $1 billion in revenues, well ahead of the 2021 schedule we initially set forth at our last Analyst Day. With a refocused strategy and strong, more diversified revenue base, we successfully managed through the unknown of COVID-19.
Our large account focus, highly technical and experienced workforce, which is more immune to shocks in the labor market and tightly managed variable expenses, helped us weather the Global Pandemic and emerge as an even stronger company. The pandemic tested us all, but in doing so also helped us continue to refine our overall business strategy. Part of that process included our more recent decision to divest of our Oxford business. By divesting Oxford, we could place an even sharper focus on higher growth IT consulting services and solutions, free up capital and management bandwidth to deploy against high-volume, scalable clients and projects, and ultimately accelerate our strategy to target and support Large Commercial Enterprise Accounts and Federal Government customers. There is no doubt we have come a long way since 2018. Let me share some of our key successes on the next slide.
This slide reinforces the success that we have had, that we have achieved since 2018, including the high growth of our IT services business and the strength of both our Commercial and Federal segments. The growth was not by accident. It was achieved through focused intent and responding proactively and efficiently to our clients' needs. All of our divisions contributed to our success and continue to benefit from rapidly improving client demand as we cycle out of a difficult 2020. Organic growth and acquisitive activity has fueled our above-market performance. We acquired nine IT services and solution companies since 2019 that are generating more than $400 million in annual revenues. I cannot thank our team enough for their incredible efforts over the past several years, and especially during the pandemic. All of their efforts have positioned ASGN to deliver record performance in 2021.
Let's now speak a bit about our acquisition path and how our business has evolved over the past several years to become a leading provider of IT services and solutions to the Commercial and Government end markets. ASGN started out as a life sciences and healthcare staff augmentation provider. We entered the IT staffing market in 2007 and reinforced that position with the subsequent acquisitions of APEX Systems, Creative Circle, and CyberCoders over the next eight-year period. We evaluated our portfolio starting in 2013 with the intention of being a number one or two player in any given market and becoming more IT-centric, and this led us to elect to sell our healthcare assets between 2013 and 2015. We then began narrowing our M&A focus to IT services and solutions with tuck-in acquisitions that support our Commercial and Federal Government customer needs in 2019.
Now, approximately 90% of our revenues are derived from our focused approach on IT services and solutions. We carefully shaped our portfolio, acquired companies in areas of interest for our clients that added new services, capabilities, and contracts, and divested of businesses that no longer fit our growth strategy to become ASGN 2.0. We've gotten this far. Where is our path forward? Who is ASGN 2.0? This slide depicts where we are today. We employ over 3,800 internal employees and approximately 24,000 billable professionals across North America, Europe, and India, and across 146 branch locations. We have 9,000 clients across the Commercial and Government end markets and are approaching our 30-year anniversary as a public company. Now headquartered in Virginia, and as I mentioned earlier today, we are setting new estimates for 2021, which Ed will discuss in more detail.
Our unique capabilities and delivery model continue to differentiate ASGN from our competition. Our Commercial and Federal Government segments provide overlapping services and solutions that we can leverage across our entire platform, the primary difference only being the end market customer. We have millions of Pre-qualified technology candidates in our database that can be deployed at a moment's notice to our Commercial and Federal Government customers, providing everything from Technical Staffing and Systems Deployment to Advanced Offerings in Design, Architecture, and Strategy. Our differentiation is embedded in how we deliver these services and is dependent upon our Flexible Labor Pool, which allows us to deploy the most qualified talent tailored to fit each client's needs. Our talent pool can be deployed in short-duration solution-specific engagements or long-term consultative roles.
Our organization is built on a model where our Sales and Delivery teams partner with either the client or the billable professional to provide the right solution the first time. Our clients know they are getting the right talent at the right price at the right time. All of this is built on Deep Domain Expertise and technical capabilities to create tailored teams to meet the customer's objective. Rand and George will speak further to their individual businesses shortly, but let me provide a high-level overview of each of our segments to get us started. Our Commercial segment, our largest, comprising 73% of revenue, operates in five broad industry verticals: Financial Services, Consumer Industrials, Healthcare, Technology, Media, Telecom, and Business Government services. We have deep, years-and-decade-long customer relationships in the Commercial space, with large Fortune 500 companies who have ample and resilient funding to support their IT advancement efforts.
Growth in this segment is being driven across industries by durable Digital Transformation requirements, Workforce Mobilization, and Modern Enterprise needs. This demand increase, and in particular, the aforementioned areas of focus, will become even more important over the next five years. ASGN possesses both the technical capability and the deep domain expertise to answer these questions for our clients. Our Federal Government segment represents 27% of revenues and, like the Commercial segment, is part of a massive addressable market. I will speak to the total addressable market for each of our segments shortly. A hallmark of our Federal Government segment is our focus on High-end, In-demand IT solutions. We also benefit from its Countercyclicality, which helps provide stability to our business during certain macro conditions like the pandemic, which we saw in 2020.
The work we do for the Department of Defense, Intelligence, Civilian Agencies, and other Government entities is supported by resilient funding for durable mission and technology requirements from Cloud Computing to Cyber and AI, all of which continue to receive support by the Government budget. Importantly, as contracts are guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government, the segment also free Cash Flow. our federal Government team has done a great job attacking these emerging technologies on the Front-E nd, and we want to stay in front as demand for these services and solutions increase. free Cash Flow, let me take a moment to discuss free Cash Flow generation and overall borrowing capacity drive our Capital Allocation decisions between M&A, share repurchase, and debt repayment.
We will continue to deploy capital where we can achieve the highest rate of free Cash Flow was $179 million for the 1st half of 2021, and we are on track to generate roughly $1.5 free Cash Flow between 2021 and 2024. When it comes to our Leverage Ratio over the trailing 12 months ending June 30th, 2021, our senior secured leverage ratio totaled 1.17 times. We are on track to achieve a leverage rate of approximately 1.09 times by year-end, inclusive of the recent acquisitions of IndraSoft, ERPI, and ABAP. We do not anticipate that the three prongs of our Capital Allocation formula, M&A, Share Buyback, and Debt Repayment, will change, though where we focus our spend will evolve in the best interests of all our shareholders at any given time. Now let's turn to our near-term focus on M&A.
Despite very active M&A markets in both the Commercial and Government spaces, we have continued to be an acquirer of choice. Companies choose ASGN over other bidders because they know that they're going to be a foundational part of what we're doing while also having access to an exceptional platform of resources, capabilities, and talent. While we naturally have to be competitive with our bids in the acquisition process, our reputation stands for itself, and we do not always have to be the one with the highest bid. Professionals join ASGN through acquisition and stay for the long term. I myself am an example of that. When it comes to acquisitions, we look for companies in North America and near-shore geographies that are well-positioned within their individual markets, have strong management teams, and similar financial profiles.
This strategy has helped us evolve our business towards higher margin, higher growth, higher value work. Our acquisition strategy since 2019 has been focused on strategic tuck-in acquisitions in the Commercial and Federal end markets. Looking forward, we will pursue not only strategic tuck-ins but also acquisitions at a larger scale. I want to emphasize that it's not just the intrinsic value of the businesses we acquire that add value to ASGN. It's also the expected revenue synergies we achieve by leveraging their capabilities across the breadth of our own account portfolio and pipeline. We have proven this to be true time and time again. We will continue to target acquisitions that add technical capabilities with deep domain expertise and are characterized by higher growth rates and financial margin profiles.
What we acquire, where we invest organically, and how we bid our work is driven by the overarching industry tailwinds, which is the next focus of our presentation. Our unique position and go-to-market strategy positions us well to deliver record financial performance in 2021. If you look at the left-hand side of this slide, you will see a quadrant that compares our go-to-market strategy with that of traditional outsourcing, consulting, and IT staffing firms. Our model benefits from a high level of access to professional talents while delivering consulting services and solutions to a broad range of Commercial and Federal customers. We see ourselves as a hybrid between pure staff augmentation and pure-play consulting due to the way in which we provide human capital on a project-by-project basis. We utilize onshore, near-shore, and offshore delivery solutions to meet our clients' workforce requirements without the burden of the traditional bench model.
From a talent perspective, unlike our competitors, we offer more opportunities for the billable professional and are viewed as a better partner for their career objectives. From a customer perspective, unlike our competitors, we offer a full suite of services from staff augmentation to traditional consulting that's supported by a deep labor pool of highly skilled technical talent. This contingent labor shared resource model provides sophisticated project delivery capabilities that have enabled ASGN to grow at above industry averages. As we look forward to the next three years, our continued growth will likely be driven by five key tailwinds: Constant Technology Change and Specialization, Digital Transformation, the future of work, the imbalance between Supply and Demand for IT professionals, and a changing model in terms of how the CIO executes projects. Let's talk about each of these tailwinds.
The world of technology is constantly changing, and this need to change and evolve industries through technological advancements has only been fast-forwarded by the pandemic. According to the BLS, the IT job market in the U.S. has added an average of about 13,000 positions during each month of 2021 so far, which is up from a typical monthly average of between 5,000 and 8,000 jobs, or roughly doubling the average or more. There is no doubt companies are fast-forwarding change, and as a result, there's an increased demand for new skill sets. The World Economic Forum ranked the Top 20 roles in increasing demand, with Data Analysts, AI, and Machine Learning, Big Data, ranking among the top, followed by Process Automation, Digital Transformation, and Information Security. These are all capabilities ASGN maintains amongst its deep talent pool.
Now let's discuss Digital Transformation further, the 2nd of the five tailwinds I mentioned. Digital Transformation is a term that is regularly being used today, but what does it mean? In very basic terms, Digital Transformation refers to the adoption of Digital Technologies by a company to improve business process and value for customers and innovation. In 2021 alone, over 80% of CIOs reported increased demand for new digital products or services, and ASGN is positioned perfectly to capture those. Customers are asking for more convenience, customization, and control of data, and Digital Transformation is making that possible. ASGN helps to drive a vision that supports innovative, metric-driven products and experiences. Our Digital Transformation Solutions meet real-world challenges, enhancing value and driving efficiency so that our clients can accelerate their own value. Key areas of expertise include AI/ML, Cloud, Cybersecurity, Data and Analytics, DevOps, Digital and IT Modernization.
Key to this Digital Transformation is acceptance of new working models, or in other words, the acceptance of the future of work, which is the 3rd tailwind I would like to discuss. The terminology of the future of work, like that of Digital Transformation, is becoming more commonplace. The future of work is resilient and adaptable. It offers workers improved wages along with flexible schedules, allowing individuals to work when and where they prefer. In light of the Global Pandemic, these hybrid working models have surged as a means by which to ensure the health and safety of employees. According to our own proprietary study on remote work, approximately 65% of our clients are expecting their resources to work remotely in a Hybrid Model. In addition, 90% of contingent workers only want to work remotely.
There's also been a 10x increase, according to a LinkedIn study, of Remote Application activity since January of 2020. These two data points are important because contingent workers are a very critical part of the IT workforce. As we'll discuss in Tailwind 4, there's a major labor shortage, which only grew during the pandemic. ASGN's exceptional ability to source IT talent when and where it is needed the most sets our company apart from the competition. We are experiencing one of the most significant workforce transformations since World War II. In less than a decade, there will be nearly 85 million unfilled roles globally. How big is this shortage in the U.S. alone? In the most recent Department of Labor report from June, job openings in the U.S. reached 10 million, while hires were 6.7 million. In other words, there's a large gap between labor Supply and Demand.
Businesses are trying to rescale their talent and bring in additional talent to fill roles that support the Digital Transformation of companies. McKinsey asked respondents in a recent survey where the greatest talent needs exist, and the top two areas identified as having the largest skill gaps are that of Data Analytics and IT. ASGN is positioned better than any other company to solve for these gaps in talent while preparing the future labor force for tomorrow's digital needs. We have a deep talent pool we have developed over decades that provides us with recruiting capabilities that touch all areas of the IT labor market. With the acceptance of Remote and Hybrid work, we put the right talent with the right project regardless of the location. This can be particularly cost-effective for the client while ensuring the highest capabilities are sourced for the project at hand.
The increased demand for tech services that has put a strain on U.S. workforces has also led organizations to transfer work to near-shore and offshore locations, with many companies choosing to embrace near-shore work in Canada, Mexico, and other Latin American countries. Our Mexican delivery center has doubled in growth since our acquisition of Intersys. Near-shore work is more cost-effective. The average salary for a software engineer based in Latin America is 25%-30% lower than the salary of an engineer based in the United States. It's also closer in proximity than traditional outsource locations, with fewer time zone differences, cultural discrepancies, and a greater level of control in decision-making processes, easing overall communication. Latin American Governments and companies in countries like Mexico are investing extensively in IT education, creating large talent pools with less competitive environments for tech work than in regions such as India.
Our Mexican delivery center is right near a major university, which is producing some of today's top IT talent. We expect our near-shore efforts, which are leveraged across our client base, to continue to increase in size. ASGN also maintains a number of centers of excellence in areas such as Cloud, Cybersecurity, and Agile Solutions, the in-demand skill areas to provide our teams to offer innovative and efficient IT service delivery. It's not just about having the resources and the capability; it's also understanding how companies, and in particular CIOs, are leveraging and investing in this new talent, which brings me to the 5th and final tailwind on slide 26. Secular changes continue to influence how CIOs utilize ASGN to accomplish their project execution. Our delivery model continues to be favored by some secular changes that are influencing their preferences.
The CIO has always had five major paths to execute work: their own Organic Full-time Employees, Project Consulting Firms, IT Staffing, Offshore, and Outsource. ASGN is positioned perfectly between consulting and staffing to be able to deliver the best of both worlds to meet our clients' objectives. Technology is advancing at lightning speed. The world of work has changed forever, and advanced IT talent is in short supply and high demand. These are tailwinds that are and will drive ASGN's long-term growth. I've discussed where we were, where we came from, and the trends that will drive us forward. Before we open it up for our first Q&A session, I'd like to offer a few concluding thoughts. I am confident in saying that ASGN has successfully met and exceeded our prior expectations. Our business is very well positioned for the future.
We will execute by continuing to deepen our focus and expand our service offerings. We will make strategic acquisitions, adding $1 billion in revenues in 2024. We will scale by growing our customer base, adding new solution capabilities, and deepening our penetration with our clients. There is no doubt that we are in the right markets at the right time. Our strategy has allowed us to increase our total addressable market beyond the $34 billion of IT staffing. The IT services space is growing at lightning speed, and the pandemic pushed the fast-forward button. Our total addressable market is over $475 billion for IT services and solutions in the Commercial, Government, and markets. It is this sizable TAM that will enable us to reach our ultimate goal of $6 billion in revenue by 2024.
Ed Pierce, our CFO, will walk us through our three-year plan in the final portion of today's presentation, but let me give you a few highlights before we open it up to Q&A. For full year 2021, we are now estimating $3.9 billion in revenues. By leveraging our market position, scaling value-added services, and expanding our presence in Commercial and Federal Government IT services and solutions, we expect revenues of $4.9 billion in 2024 from organic growth. In addition, we are expecting to acquire businesses that will contribute $1.1 billion in revenues in 2024 for total revenues of $6 billion. Taking that one step further, we expect Commercial and Federal Government consulting revenues to be approximately 55% of our total revenue. That's a lot to process, and by all means, a good time for some Q&A. Kimberly?
As a reminder, those interested in asking a question can type their questions into the Q&A chat feature on your screen. One moment as we queue for questions.
Thank you, Kimberly. First question from the audience: Do you have a target for long-term revenue split in terms of Commercial versus Government? When we got into a more forceful position in the Federal Government with the acquisition of ECS, we did it both for their High-end solution IT capability, which would advance our own ASGN capabilities, and second, to have a bigger part of our revenue mix within this important end market segment. Today, at 70/30, we're totally comfortable with that. It could ebb up and down based on how things develop both in the Commercial market as well as the Government market, as well as the highest return that we see as we evaluate acquisitions.
We are very comfortable with where it is now. As I mentioned earlier in the slide deck, it is a very important part of not only the solution capability but also the stability of our business when the Commercial marketplace goes through certain economic situations. ASGN is not—another question. ASGN is clearly not a Traditional Staffing Firm, but you are continuing to compete for business with the typical staffing players, i.e., Kforce, Robert Half, Power, and others, who are your chief competition in markets and segments. I will start with Rand if you want to take that one.
Yeah, we do compete with the Traditional Staffing Firms. It does vary by account and certainly segments. Probably the chief competition comes from some of the Private Staffing Firms, which are not in the list in the question, but TEKsystems is certainly the number one player in the marketplace. We are number two.
There's a firm called Insight Global, number three. We see a little bit of all of them in different accounts. I wouldn't say much more than that. I mean, we've had pretty good success over the past. I think we focus on the account and serve the account, and if we do that well, it'll take care of itself.
George, you want to talk a little bit about the competitive landscape in your market? Who do you see? In terms of the competition?
Yeah.
Who do you see in the market?
Sure. In the Government space, there's an old saying: your competitors today are your teammates tomorrow. We stay very close to your other major Federal contractors in terms of teaming, as well as in sharing of talents and things like that when we go after large opportunities. Major competitors are the ones that you see often.
We go head-to-head with SEIC, Booz Allen, Leidos, Accenture at times as well.
Another question from the audience: In terms of in-person work versus virtual work, are you seeing different trends within the Federal and Commercial markets? How do you anticipate this will evolve over time? At this point, I think most of the dynamics are similar. If you go back to the middle of 2020, we were virtually all—I shouldn't reuse that word, but we were pretty much all remote. Some of our workforce has come back on-site with our clients to varying degrees. It depends on client and industry. How this evolves will be market-based, and so we're going to pay attention to our clients and what their desires and compliance activities are, and then we'll have to match up with that. I think for the most part, we'll see similar return to work across both markets.
Next question: You talk about your acquisition strategy. What about divestitures? Are you happy with your current portfolio? We're, at this point, pleased with the portfolio, both the mix of service offerings as well as the mix of revenue across industries that provide balance across the portfolio. We're always evaluating it. It's how we got to our strategic decision to sell Oxford. At this point, we're leaning forward on building pipeline, looking at acquisitions, as I mentioned before, that support both our end markets as well as solution capabilities and addressing more of the pipeline that we already have at our fingertips with these existing accounts. Next question: Have you seen any impact to your business as a result of the Delta variant? Have any projects been slowed down? Offices closed again?
I think that mostly because we were in a remote world or a hybrid world in some areas, as we were, business has continued to perform as we expected. I think the Delta variant probably is most likely affecting small business again, and that seems to be on the front lines of this. Large Enterprise accounts in the Commercial segment and the Federal Government segment remain stable. Demand continues to be strong, and that's evidenced by the numbers that we've generated leading up to this and the new guidance that we're going to set here for the third quarter. If there are no further questions, we're going to move on here to the next segment.
The following short video highlights the expertise of ASGN and its brands.
When you need to improve or take advantage of some of the new digital modernizations, you hire experts.
The IT marketplace is growing. It's dynamic. It's changing.
Customers want to be able to focus on more innovation, pushing their customers and their agencies forward into the next cloud environment or the next cyber ops environment.
A lot of our clients are using technology, whether that's AI, automation, RPA, Blockchain, Agile Transformation, and a digital thrust to ultimately bring their products to market quicker.
DevOps is one of the big asks we've had right now. We're doing a lot of software development as well as sustainment work for our customers.
We have built a common Cloud Framework that can help our customers by leveraging the true benefits of cloud.
Our clients have asked us to do more, more in three different areas: Workforce Mobilization. Second is helping them build the Modern Enterprise. And then the third area is what we call Digital Innovation.
We actually can go in.
We can do an assessment to see where people are, identify those gaps, and then start to remediate things, whether it's a people, process, or technology issue.
We couple our Commercial experience with our Federal experience, and I think it's a really good match for our clients.
We have a platform which is just phenomenal. It really enables me to work quickly and efficiently.
Our Cyrus technology quickly filters through millions of candidates and thousands of job openings to match candidates faster than other recruiters.
The Elite Qualification Program is our proprietary skills assessment platform that we utilize for screening out candidates and providing technically screened and qualified candidates to our clients.
In providing solutions to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Big Data, Cybersecurity, and Cloud Technologies, we can provide the total solutions to any customer, any size, anywhere.
ECS has access to such a wide breadth of expertise based on 20 years of solving really unique problems for a really diverse set of customers.
Our people are our biggest strength. Their expertise in all kinds of technologies, they're experienced in all kinds of domains. That's why people keep coming back to ECS for its people.
We hope you enjoyed this short video on our expertise. I will now turn the presentation over to Rand Blazer, President of APEX Systems, to discuss our Commercial segment. Rand?
Great. Thank you, Ted, and good morning. It's time to talk a little bit about the Commercial segment and drill down a little bit into how we see our path going forward. With me are two of our leaders of our Commercial segment, Sean Casey with APEX Systems and Matt Riley with Creative Circle.
Together, we're going to give you a little glimpse of how we see things going forward. Let me start. Ted talked a little bit about strategic decisions that were made at an ASGN level. Some of that roots back in terms of our Commercial segment back to two decades ago when we made some decisions around APEX Systems, which has become the forerunner of what we're trying to do in the Commercial segment. First, we made a decision to focus on IT services exclusively. 2nd, we made a conscious decision to rebuild an account base that was more diversified and stronger for the long term. We felt we needed to hit key accounts and top account, enterprise accounts in the five industry sectors we've chosen to serve.
In addition to that, we want to bolster that, but we knew that would become the flagship for the business, those accounts. The 3rd decision we had to make was to continue to expand our solution set so that we could bring more value to our clients, the value that our clients began to ask from us over the past decade or so. Hence, we've evolved into the consulting business. If you look at this slide, what you'll see is, as Ted pointed out, it's a very large addressable market for IT services in the Commercial sector. In our old staffing world, it was a much smaller market. One, we have increased the addressable market we can address. Two, we've built a stronger portfolio of accounts that we think can sustain us over the future and support organic growth.
Third, we've had a great track record over the past 20 years for sure, and certainly over the past years as we've migrated into this Business Model around these decisions. Here's a little glimpse of where we are today. Revenue mix you can see is strongly in the IT services and solutions, and the creative and digital marketing solution, which is akin to that, is still growing in 13% of our business. The composition by industry you can see here in the middle of the graph. You'll see a very balanced portfolio of accounts within these industries, and we've hand-selected the industries we think we can serve. Of these five industries, it decomposes down to over 30 sectors of accounts, which I'll show you in a few minutes in terms of the breadth of our exposure and penetration into the marketplace.
Finally, in the last slide, you can see the growth of our consulting business now, 21% of our total service mix coupled with our strong staffing business for, I think, the basis of a strong, enduring business in future years. This is the industry overview, which I think we've all talked about over the past as we've evolved this business. You can see the five industry sectors we selected and report on. You can see some of the individual sectors within those five industry verticals that help compose and show the focus that we have. You see some of the trends we're seeing today in terms of IT technology that supports that client base.
You'll see a common thread in those trends in that the digitization of their businesses and building the modern enterprise has become paramount to our clients from top to bottom, and it affects all industries, certainly. The effect in the industry can be different based on the base of technology that's needed, and hence we've learned and evolved into industry specialization, which is a cornerstone of our go-to-market approach. We believe that the solution in different industries is different because the technology base can be different, and the business process and the customer base are different. This is an important part, as I said, IT services-centric, industry specialization, and expanding set of solutions to support and bring more value to our clients. When we look forward, the question is always, where do we think we're going to grow? Where will we see growth?
I know in Ted's presentation, we talked a lot about both organic growth and our acquisition ability over the next three, four years. The Commercial segment has typically been an Organic Growth-first business, and we have propelled great numbers over that last decade or so that we've been at this marketplace. When we, the leaders, think forward, we look at it in three different ways. First, there are still more accounts we need to penetrate. There are still more accounts we need to add to our portfolio and strength. We're very proud of the 300 of the 500 Fortune 500, which are our accounts, but we'd like to expand that into the Fortune 1000 now, where we can have deeper penetration as well. We've also recognized certain sectors of the economy are beginning to evolve.
Certainly, regional banks have really come on in the last couple of years, and we were there to capture it. We thought this was a segment that we needed to focus on and invest in, and it would propel additional growth. Wealth Management, another great sector of growth. The whole infrastructure area, with the new administration's infrastructure bill in focus, there's no question that this is a market that will see growth, and we want to be part of that. The state and local side, just the whole area of what I call community health and community well-being is a responsibility of state and local authorities, and we can be and need to be a part of that as well as they begin to digitize to support our communities.
E-commerce, healthcare, mid-market tech, manufacturing, particularly mid-market manufacturing, all very strong sectors that we see further penetration and opportunity for us as we grow over the next three to four years. Obviously, the far right-hand bullet by solution, these are the areas we focus on. We started our consultative business more in Workforce Mobilization, but Digital Transformation and modern enterprise have become staples, as Ted pointed out in his previous presentation. By services, you can see we've very much focused and put our investment into building consulting services, which we expect to grow to about $1.5 billion in revenue by 2024. That is not to take away from strong organic growth, nor the relationship between our existing business platform and account base and how that can propel our consulting work.
While we have a strong account base, particularly, let's say, in the Fortune 500, only about 1/3 of that account base has embraced us for consulting at this point. That gives us a lot of room to grow. Expanding that into the Fortune 1000, into the mid-market, also gives us a lot of room to grow. By service, by industry, or by solution, we have a number of irons in the fire to help propel our growth, both organically and through acquisition in the coming years. I talk about the solution mix, and I talked about where we started as a natural solution to provide our clients in the Workforce Mobilization. I'm not just talking about staffing. I'm talking about building teams and building centers of excellence and support centers where we take the responsibility for that work away from the client or other vendors.
We needed to add the Digital Innovation Solutions and the Modern Enterprise Solutions. You can see just one year, we've had a five-point jump in the revenue in our Digital Innovation type of work. All of these areas have grown over that past year, but obviously, Digital Innovation is outpacing the growth of Workforce Mobilization and modern enterprise. Our recent acquisition of Avaap Infor Business Unit, I think, gives us a stronger play in the modern enterprise. I'll talk about that in a minute, but we see this still as another area of growth. I think it's an important point, and I know Sean will echo this a little bit when he talks a little bit about APEX Systems, but we are very focused on client value. We have to be able to deliver value to our clients.
We believe the way to do that is not just having the right skills and the right mix of talent, but also have solutions and methodologies that work in these areas of Digital Transformation and modern enterprise and Workforce Mobilization. It has to be industry specialized because every industry operates a bit differently. We use the contingent workforce model to support and build our teams. That's because we can bring the right skill at the right time with the right industry expertise that serve our clients' needs. We're not relying on a bench to support that. We're going out and using our database and staffing strength to provide and build teams that bring that value to our client. It's an important part of who we are and our go-to-market model.
As Ted showed on his one slide, it shows how we fit in between that traditional consulting role and the traditional staffing role. It's what I call the Hybrid Model, where we bring the best of both two worlds. To make it very clear, our client's number one question today is not just solution capability, but how do I find the workforce to deliver that value to my organization? We can help on both ends of that. I do want to talk for a minute about the small acquisitions we've made over the past few years to give you a sense of how we make what Ted describes as our tuck-ins work for us. In each of these three cases, we brought small businesses in that brought specific technical muscle to our business.
That technical muscle then explodes when we take it into our account base and into our pipeline and create bookings opportunities with these added solution capabilities. We've done this with Intersys, LeapFrog, and now Avaap. And Avaap brings what I call that modern enterprise, that enterprise resource planning application model into our business, not just in the Infor capability, but in other packages like ServiceNow, like Salesforce, and like Workday, where we can extend our strength into our clients and bring real capability. And we've done this in a way that's accretive to our business, both in growth rates, gross margin, and EBITDA margins. We're very pleased with the work we've done, and it's integrated totally in our business, and we've seen the pull-through that our account base has provided us with these acquisitions. So why do we win? We win for lots of reasons.
I wouldn't emphasize any one of these things over anything else, but it goes back to decisions we made, I think, 20 years ago. We're IT-centric. We have decided to build and strengthen our account relationships with certain selective accounts, a portfolio of accounts that are who's who in their industries. We've continued to expand our solution capability and provided expert work in order to bring value to our clients. All of these things work together, and I'm very proud of what we've accomplished over this past decade. Everyone is always looking for a business case. I thought this business case was a great example to illustrate the work that we do and the progress we get with our client base. We had a new client in 2019 in the energy industry.
They came to us, and they saw the need to get the best of both worlds: somebody to be a partner to their business that could bring the resources to bear, but also the methodologies and solutions and real value to their organization. That work has generated, over since 2019, 40 engagements across 11 of our APEX offerings in most of the areas: modern enterprise, Digital Innovation, and Workforce Mobilization. You can see here relating that wheel of solutions to the hierarchy of things we do. It may have started with Agile and DevOps, but it has worked its way up into the architecture and design work around key systems and applications for our client. This is an example of the model that we want to work, and it is enabled by our capabilities.
It's enabled by our ability to pull workforce together, but it's enabled also by the client's confidence and steadfast support for our organization. With that, I'd like to turn over to Sean Casey, leader of our APEX Systems unit, and talk a little bit about APEX Systems.
Thank you, Rand. One of the reasons APEX continues to have so much success is our relentless pursuit of executing our three main pillars. These pillars of success are focused on our account relationships. Because we are entrenched in a diverse group of accounts, it gives us the opportunity to do more than just staffing. As our clients' needs have evolved, we've been able to expand our services within our accounts. This has only strengthened our relationships. We attack the market from an industry, geographic, and service angle. It allows us to provide what our client needs as we work as one team to deliver these services. We will continue to grow as we concentrate on our account relationships with current and future accounts. Now I'll turn it over to Matt Riley.
Thanks, Sean. Hello. I know you've been following us for years, but I'm really excited to share my perspective with you today. Creative Circle remains the number one player in the creative design and digital marketing space in the U.S. Our established position over the past 20 years has placed us at the forefront of the conversation around digital connections with customers. On the left side, you can see what we do and what our clients need from us. In the most simple of terms, we digitize brands, and we create digital connections and engagement for our clients. From social media to building websites, content development studios, we've been able to really bridge the old way of marketing to the new way of marketing. Leaders are now looking to leverage their strong design and Digital Innovation work inside of their go-to-market strategies.
Our Digital Roadmap brings our client conversations to deeper levels of understanding their goals and their challenges. It allows for our growing consulting services offering to be yet another solution to support their needs. We continue to grow our Large Enterprise relationships inside of our national accounts program and have added leverage partnering with APEX. Looking ahead to 2024, we feel very optimistic about our marketplace. It's rife with opportunity for Creative Circle as the predominant player in the digital design and marketing space. I'll now hand it back to Ted Hanson.
As a reminder, those interested in asking a question can type their questions into the Q&A chat feature on your screen. One moment as we queue for questions.
First question for our audience. Rand, does expansion in IT consulting require ASGN to sell at a different level of customer organization? And if so, do you view that as a positive or negative?
First of all, I guess I would respond and say a lot depends on the client organization and how they're organized. There are technical leaders in these organizations of our client, the CIO and his Technical Managers, and there are certainly functional leaders that own the business processes. Both are people we have to reach out to and connect with. In many of our client organizations, those two communities are already in join to bring Digital Transformation into their business. For the most part, it's already set in motion, and it's easy for us to reach out to both. If not, then we have to reach out to both and make sure that we can win the war, if you will, or win the battle in showing what we can do to bring value to them on both sides of that, the process and the technology.
Rand, as a part of that, do you believe that the growth in IT consulting in the Commercial marketplace is going to cause us to assume a bench or more of a bench risk similar to some of the larger consulting players?
I think, Ted, look, we will have some increase in our bench for sure. We use our bench to provide the technical muscle and leadership and engagement control around our work. We certainly rely on our Hybrid Model, Deployment Model, to build the arms and legs of our teams that support the client. People that have direct experience with the technology we are dealing with in the industries we are operating in. The answer is, yes, some, but not at all like a Traditional Consulting Business. Most of you know I managed a Traditional Consulting Business, and if I had known this 25 years ago, I would have done it this way. I think I have learned a lot in these past decade or so, and so have the clients and the CIOs.
They respect and understand the need that we have to have enough bench to provide muscle and solution methodology, but we don't have to have every person. In terms of risk to us, in terms of work execution, we've seen very little to no hiccups in this process. In terms of maintaining a bench and in terms of managing that resource usage, Ted, it's less risk to us, obviously, with this Hybrid Model.
Rand, another question from the audience. You outlined several factors of interest like Wealth Management, regional banks, mid-market, manufacturing. What are some of the ways you cultivate and ensure industry expertise? How important of a differentiator is this?
I think it's a big differentiator. A lot of consulting businesses talk about industry specialization. Many rarely ever achieve it. We have set up teams—this goes back really 10, 20 years ago—set up teams by industry. We are learning those industries by initially through our Staffing Routes, but we've expanded that. Our workforce has grown within these industries. They've been dedicated, and they have developed expertise in the industries and the technologies that support that. We're building around that, that base or that core of our business. When we move into new areas, like for example, infrastructure, a lot of the infrastructure companies are good Old-fashioned Consumer Industrial businesses and/or other businesses, and we can tap into that. When we need to, we build bench around it to help bolster our capabilities.
It is a working process, but I think the fact that we have made this move a long time ago, we have built these core teams, and I think it is working.
Rand, could you give us an example of expanding into the Fortune 500 in the consulting services and the interplay of staffing and consulting, how they work together versus being competitive?
First of all, I guess I would go back and say that when we're talking to our clients, we're talking about what their business needs are and what value they need from us or what value we can provide to them. We don't walk in saying, "We're here for staffing or we're here for consulting." We're here because we have some insight on your business. We've been a part of your partner base now for literally a decade. We understand what you're trying to accomplish. We can be a part, a fabric, a piece within the fabric of making this happen. When we talk about the business need, and then that decomposes into the kind of work that we would propose to them. We don't walk in trying to be staffing or consulting.
We're walking in as a partner to their business and somebody who's been intimate with it and has performed in whatever roles they've asked us, and now it's expanding. The reason I bring up the point about we've only penetrated a third of our Fortune 500 base in consulting, I think it's just work in process and time. We can't do everything all at once, but we certainly are—I think the word we tend to use is chip away. We're continuing to work on it and build that confidence with the client.
We also got a question from the audience of an example or profile of a larger strategic acquisition we could make on the Commercial side. I would go back and remind the audience that for decades, APEX Systems has been an organic growth story as we've built the business out. That beginning in 2019 and then through 2020, we made three what I'll call small strategic tuck-ins, both to get technical muscle and advanced capabilities, but also to provide proof points around strategy, which I think at this point we've developed. We're certainly capable now with our cash on hand on the Balance Sheet, Free Cash free Cash Flow that we're generating each quarter, together with the ability to take on more leverage if needed to do more acquisitions at scale in the Commercial marketplace.
What will matter the most is do they have the right real digital solution capabilities and methodologies? Do they add to our domain expertise in the key industries that we serve? Do we see that they're going to bring to us capability to fulfill the revenue synergy opportunity within our existing account portfolio? That is opportunistic, but certainly something that we're open-minded to. Another question from the audience: with increased in-market demand across the industry on top of wage inflation being played through in the market, could we provide some color in terms of potential pricing discussion with your inclines? Rand?
I'm sorry. I was focused on another question, but with increased end-market demand across the industry, top wage rates being paid at the market, could you provide more color in terms of potential pricing discussions? I think we've had pretty good success over the past years with bill rate expansion. Most of our clients are very well aware of the tightness of the labor market, and they know based on where they're looking for talent, and by that I mean by location, what the going pay rates are. I think it's a matter of it's a more fluid situation with our client base where we're very honest. We have open information about wage rate trends across the market.
We're able to, I think, make sure they see that we are trying to make sure they can stay ahead of the curve in terms of building talent and workforce for their work or us building talent to deliver that work to them. I don't think it's a—it's not a negotiation. It's more of a reality of looking at the marketplace and responding to it.
Great. Maybe one last question here to Matt Riley. Matt, the audience has asked on Creative Circle, how would you describe the demand in your marketplace?
The demand has been fantastic. Certainly, we're optimistic about the future, and we've laid out as part and parcel of the 2024 plan, our view, content creation, digitization, UX/UI, all the skill sets that we hear and see about every day. They're not stopping, and we are positioned perfectly to deliver on those.
Great. Maybe something, just a finer point of clarification on one of our previous questions. Rand, I think part of the question was, do we compete between our staffing and consulting business in accounts or in the marketplace?
Yeah. Ted, I think this is an important question, and I think our response is also critically important. We're not, as Sean Casey said, we're one team. We're not fielding a staffing business and a consulting business, and they can compete. We have all of our team aligned around our Account Management and National Account Leaders who represent all of our solutions, whether they're workforce, modern enterprise, or Digital Transformation solutions. We spend a lot of time educating our own workforce around these solutions and our capabilities. When we go to market, we go to market as one, and we're discussing with the client the business need and opportunity. That's very different than a lot of other firms that have created two different business units where this competition or this Tug-of-war may exist.
We found it's best, and it's in best service to our clients to be one team, all focused on the client, where we can deliver value, and representing all of our solution set.
Okay. With that, let's continue on to the next segment. Before our next Q&A, we will turn to our second business segment. I'll turn the presentation over to George Wilson, President of ECS. George?
Thanks, Ted. Hello. I'm George Wilson, the President of ECS. ECS has a long history of delivering excellent financial results within the Federal marketplace, a large, highly regulated market. Today, I will talk about our approach to delivering High-end solutions tailored to the needs of our customers through our technical talent, centers of excellence, partnerships, and deep customer knowledge. Our revenue mix reflects our focus on solutions in the rapidly growing field of Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Cyber, Cloud, and Enterprise Operations. Our prime-to-sub mix reflects our ability to maintain the contracts, capabilities, and customer relationships that allowed us to lead as the prime contractor on most of our contracts. Our customer base reflects our preference for working with mission-focused customers such as defense and the Intel agencies. Our Federal civilian customer base includes the Department of Homeland Security, Justice, and Health Agencies, all highly mission-focused.
These logos represent key ongoing partnerships with some of our more recognizable technology leaders. Our approach to technology partnerships is often a key differentiator for our customers. Although we partner, we maintain our independence and always advocate for the customer and mission first when evaluating risk and reward of technologies. Our customers appreciate this independence and our mission-focused first approach. In addition to working with large technology providers, we are also skilled at working with technology firms that have never worked with the Federal Government. Many of these technologies are particularly important in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Cyber. Navigating a balance between the regulations of Federal bureaucracies and the customer's need to rapidly deploy advanced technologies requires a set of skills that ECS has carefully developed. These franchise programs are a testament to the success of our business approach.
Several of these programs reflect years of work across multiple contracts supporting the same mission. Some reflect even three or four recompetes with expansion of scope and value at each recompete. Sometimes these long-term relationships allow the customer to migrate to fixed-price results-based contracts, creating barriers to our competitors and better margins to our shareholders. Our acquisitions strengthen our technical capabilities, open new customer markets, and sometimes both. DHA and Blackstone Federal placed ECS directly as a part of critical missions working with senior leaders within the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Skyris opened our first beachhead at the National Geospatial Agency, applying Advanced Analytics Tools. ISM was primarily a technology and talent acquisition, securing an elite ServiceNow practice applicable to both our Federal market customers and Commercial clients.
IndraSoft and ERPI continued our focus on deepening our technical muscle in digital modernization and advanced analytics while opening new markets within the Air Force and Veterans Affairs. With all acquisitions, we move quickly toward full integration to ensure that we apply every ounce of the new capabilities across our existing customers and apply our proven account strategy and business development approach to capture larger deals within our new markets. We are in the fast-moving market streams, working with technologies that are critical to supporting the Federal Government. We are also seeing that our technologies, capabilities, and solutions are equally applicable to Commercial clients. ECS has successfully executed our expansion to $1 billion one year ahead of schedule. We added needed scale and gained some entry into some very key markets. We have also deepened our customer relationships and subject matter expertise.
We are now executing our plan to further deepen our technical muscle through carefully selected partnerships and continued investments in our centers of excellence. Now, I would like to introduce you to John Heneghan, our Chief Operating Officer. I have known and worked closely with John for over 20 years. In addition to day-to-day delivery of our contracts, John also leads our account strategy and business development team. John will provide some detail and additional color on the ECS delivery model.
John?
Thank you, George. All of the strategic elements George just discussed come together in ECS's innovative delivery model. Central to our model is our centers of excellence. These are IT domain-specific teams of experts who drive innovation, build solutions, promote thought leadership, develop technical talent, and speed delivery coordination across the company in order to bring the right talent and the right solutions from across all of ECS to meet both emerging and emergency customer requirements. This agility is a competitive advantage. The COEs provide best practices and repeatable frameworks. They lead training, certification, and employee engagement programs across our workforce to ensure our teams bring the latest and greatest to our clients. This function is key not only to retaining top talent, but to recruiting top talent.
People want to work with other talented individuals, and they want to work for a company that invests in their professional development, making ECS an employer of choice. Business development is led by the Account Management teams closest to our customers and is supported by teams of specialists in opportunity capture, solution architecture, and proposal development. This group, working closely with the COEs, ultimately builds those customer-tailored solutions that increasingly leverage two or more of the ECS solution offerings to create integrated, high-value solutions that meet our customers' largest, most complex, and most critical challenges. This delivery model sets us apart as customers value the strength and the agility of our solutions and services. We look forward to the Q&A session. Thank you.
As a reminder, those interested in asking a question can type their questions into the Q&A chat feature on your screen. One moment as we queue for questions.
George, I know our audience is curious about what you're seeing in your market in terms of bid and proposal activity. Can you give a recent on-the-ground update on how you see that developing here, maybe how you've seen it over the last quarter or two, and how you see it going forward?
Sure, Ted. Thank you. The 1st half of this year has been very, very light. I think it's a combination of the COVID, which made it more difficult for the Government to organize and collaborate across the organizations, as well as the shift in there or change in the administration. What we're seeing in the back half of the year is a pickup in terms of the pipeline of opportunities. We've got about $30 billion in pipeline opportunities. These are specific identified opportunities that we are targeting. A lot of those, a large percentage of those, are for new work. We expect to see in the 2nd half of the year, as well as moving into the 1st couple of quarters of next year, a healthy pickup in terms of our bids and hopefully, as a result of that, continued awards.
Great. Thanks, George.
Sure.
John, could you help the audience understand a little bit the nuance of the Federal Government market as it pertains to new work awarded? What are typical lengths of contracts, and how does that play out over a period of time?
Sure. The Federal market, the average contract length is about three to five years. It is really countercyclical in nature and very stable. We have a great line of sight to our backlog, and that is really what a strength is of the Federal market. As George said, we have got a great pipeline. We know where things are going to lay out from a contract perspective.
Another question for the audience. How big will Government be as we get to $6 billion by 2024 if everyone will allow? I'm going to hold off on that until we get to Ed Pierce's section. Maybe another question, George. We identify in our presentation six core service areas. What other capabilities are you looking to add, or is it more about building on the footprint of the capabilities we already own?
It's both. We expect to continue to deepen our technical muscle, particularly in the Data Analytics, AI/ML. We continue to move into the higher-end solutions, design architecture strategy. As you do that, and as you work with the higher levels of the organizations, you work with them in terms of deploying the technologies, as I mentioned earlier. Particularly in AI/ML, we are working very closely with small firms, startup firms, firms that have never worked with the Federal Government. We work closely with them and with our customers to allow them to participate in the solution while not jeopardizing their intellectual property and their data. Those are the kind of things that we do with some of our customers, particularly in the Defense and Intelligence area.
Another question from the audience. Is there, and topical for what's going on in today's world, is there anything John proposed in the Federal infrastructure bill that might be a tailwind to ECS?
The infrastructure bill really will take a while to play out as procurements come through. A large amount of the infrastructure bill from the Federal Government side is to direct work to the state and local side. We see limited pickup or effect of the Infrastructure bill on the Federal business.
George, we've had a great track record of acquisitive growth here over the years that you've now been a part of ASGN and even before. Can you talk a little bit about how you view integration risks that you may be watching for, and how do you think about synergies?
Thanks, Ted. Yes. We take a full integration approach at ECS. We do the acquisitions, but we quickly, as we've mentioned in our presentations, bring them into the whole fold of ECS. Oftentimes, within or less than one year, they all become ECS employees. We have all their systems integrated with our systems. Most importantly, we bring them into the centers of excellence that John talked about in his presentation, as well as we bring them into our strategic Account Management process and our business development process. These are two things that are very important to us in terms of continuing to build our strength of our centers of excellence, as well as applying our strategic approach to winning larger deals.
Oftentimes, as you say, these acquisitions are tuck-in, smaller acquisitions, and they haven't approached their customers with the length of, with the depth of technical muscle we have, as well as with a very orderly approach to move from what they have been doing with their customers up into a strategic approach with the customers because we bring all the talent that these customers need to go ahead and move their organization forward.
We're always looking for revenue synergies. It's always a big part of this, in addition to what capabilities and customer sets those acquisitions bring in. I'll remind the audience that while we don't program with the marketplace around cost synergies, we're always looking to take advantage of those as they're available. Let's see. George, could new vaccine mandate for Federal contractors further complicate hiring or risk losing key personnel?
I don't really think so in terms of the ECS culture. As I mentioned in my presentation, we're in a highly regulated market. It's not new for us to basically follow what the Government tells us to go do. That's what we do every day. I would expect that when the information comes down and they require us to follow certain rules within the regulated market that we're in, we will do that, and our employees will as well.
Great. Another topical question in today's news cycle. Does the drawdown in Afghanistan, John, affect our business at all within ECS?
The answer there is no. The drawdown in Afghanistan, we support that, but more indirectly, our core of our business is not out there in the field supporting those missions.
Another question about addressable market from the audience. Is the critical defense and security work we target, how much of it is that $140 billion market? As we grow, are we going to be forced to move into less critical types of projects? George, I believe the $140 billion defines the service areas that we mentioned in our pitch and what we play to, correct? Plenty big enough market, wouldn't you say, to accomplish all our objectives?
Yeah, I'd take 1%. So yeah, it's a very big market. What I'd like to emphasize is that the approach that we have is to focus on the High-end solutions: Design, Strategy, and Architecture, and solutions that apply some of the advanced technologies. Again, those are the areas that we find are more critical to the mission associated with our customers and the types of work that our employees want to do with the advanced technologies, as well as mission focus.
Great. With that, we'll stop here and move on to a video and show you some of our bright, capable, and very professional teammates here at ASGN.
Before turning the presentation over to the final section, we will now share with you a short video about our incredible employees.
I love coming into work every day, as corny as that might sound.
The bigger part of my job is working with people. I'm a people person.
My favorite part about being a recruiter is changing people's lives, getting them opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't find on their own.
Calling a candidate and offering them a job with one of our clients never gets old.
To get someone the job is probably the best feeling that you get, especially when they say they're very thankful.
The fact that I get to do that for people, it's really rewarding.
Because then you realize that what you do really does matter.
I love that everyone is so accommodating and willing to help, especially for new employees.
You really, really do have a Management Staff that supports you.
I think we have great leaders in this company.
We foster a culture of acceptance, inclusivity, and positivity in a number of ways. I think the number one way is that we give people a voice.
We wanted to provide opportunities for people to be seen, to be heard, to be acknowledged, and to be respected.
It's so important to have an inclusive and open work environment.
CyberCoders has played a big role with helping me to grow into my authentic self.
A most valuable asset is our people. When we make them feel comfortable as a whole, there is so much more in terms of benefits that we are going to see and reap than the dollars and cents of what they produce.
Systems has taught me that work can be a place where you enjoy yourself and have fun.
The team that we work with is awesome.
It's loud. It's exciting.
It's a work-hard, play-hard environment, which keeps us up.
It's an extremely competitive environment, but it's not cutthroat competitive.
The team that you're surrounded by makes you want to work harder.
What drives me to go above and beyond is not letting my manager down and not letting my clients down.
Everyone's so supportive.
We cheer each other on. The environment's fantastic.
It's fun.
It's fun here.
I honestly have fun.
I think making lifelong friends, though.
Like Freya, for instance.
We're lifelong friends now.
There's so much opportunity for you to change the trajectory of your life. That's why I'm still at APEX Systems, and I will continue to work at APEX. Ten years later, it's still exciting.
What a great video. It shows how proud we are to be a company where people stay for the long term. We're also proud of our financial performance. To discuss our revised Q3 estimates, full year 2021 expectations, and three-year plan, I'll turn the discussion over to Ed Pierce, our CFO. Ed?
Thanks, Ted. Hello, everyone. In this section, I'll be reviewing our latest guidance estimates for Q3 2021, which have been raised from our previously announced estimates. Our guidance for the 4th quarter and full year 2021. Our full guidance estimates for those periods have been posted to our investor relations section of our website. Next, I'll free Cash Flow capabilities and generation since 2019, along with the uses of our capital resources. Lastly, I'll review our high-level growth and margin targets for the next three years based on our growth projections for our existing business and the illustrative effects of our future acquisitions on our projected results. The left side of the table shows our revised estimates for the third quarter of 2021, which are up $15 million in revenues and up $7.5 million in adjusted EBITDA from our previous estimates.
The improvement in our Q3 revenue estimates was mainly the result of higher-than-expected growth in our Commercial business, coupled with the contribution from the recently acquired ERPI business. Most of the improvement in adjusted EBITDA related to our Commercial business. On the right side of the table are our guidance estimates for Q4 2021. At the midpoint of our estimates, year-over-year growth is 11.1%. Revenues for the quarter include an estimated $42.2 million in revenues from the acquired businesses, or 4.7 percentage points of the Q4 growth rate. The year-over-year growth rate is on a difficult prior-year comp as a result of the high sequential growth in both operating segments in Q4 last year on fewer billable days.
Despite the difficult prior-year comps, we expect the Commercial business will report mid-teens growth year-over-year, and our Federal business will be flat relative to Q4 last year due to the high level of pass-through revenues on two cost-reimbursable contracts in Q4 of 2020. Total revenues for Q4 are lower than Q3, mainly because there are three fewer billable days in Q4. Revenues per billable day for Q4, on the other hand, are expected to be up sequentially. Margins and earnings growth in the second half of the year are in line with revenue growth, the shift in business mix to higher-margin Commercial services revenues, and improved economies of scale. We're also providing estimates for the full year 2021. Revenue growth for the full year at the midpoint of our guidance estimates is 13%.
This includes a contribution of approximately $118 million from acquired businesses that had not lapped during the period. The contribution from acquisitions is approximately 3.4 points of the estimated 13% growth rate. Margin expansion and earnings growth reflect a higher mix of high-margin Commercial services and improved economies of scale. Relative to the full year 2019, revenues are up double digits, and the adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be up slightly despite the lower mix of high-margin, creative marketing, and placement services revenues. Now turning to our sources and uses of capital resources since the beginning of 2019. As those of you who are familiar with the company know, Cash Flows from operating activities are our principal source of liquidity and underpin our growth initiatives to increase the economic value of the enterprise.
Over the last 10 quarters, we have generated $750 free Cash Flow, which we use to fund our acquisition program, repurchase common stock, and add to our cash on hand. Our earnings, adjusted free Cash Flow benefit from our highly variable expense structure. Our high conversion of adjusted free Cash Flow reflects the modest level of capital expenditures of less than 1% of revenues, the low interest expense on outstanding borrowings, and a low cash income tax rate of approximately 19%. Most of our capital resources have been used to acquire businesses, which is an integral part of our growth strategy. Since the beginning of 2019, we have acquired nine businesses for a total consideration of approximately $1.5 billion. These acquired businesses expand our IT solutions capabilities and have higher growth rates and margins than our operating platforms into which they are integrated.
The expected returns of these businesses are above the company's weighted average cost of capital. Similar to our last Investor Day in May 2018, we are setting targets for the next three years for our existing base of business and for the effects of potential acquisitions to be made over the three-year period. The key operating assumptions assume continuation of current operating and economic trends in each of our three revenue streams. It assumes the three-year CAGR for assignment and Federal Government revenues will be mid-single digits and in the mid-teens for our Commercial consulting business. We expect gross margin by revenue stream will be static over the period, with expansion on a consolidated basis occurring as a result of a higher mix of Commercial consulting revenues. We also expect gradual expansion in our adjusted EBITDA margin through a combination of gross margin improvement and improved operating leverage.
Over the three-year period, free Cash Flow generation will be above $1 billion. Regarding the effects of future acquisitions, our projections assume the company will use the cash it has on hand at year-end, which includes the net of tax proceeds from the sale of our auction business, which totaled about $415 million. It also will free Cash Flow to be generated through 2024 to acquire IT consulting businesses in the Commercial and Federal Government sectors. Capital deployed for acquisitions in our projections range from $1.25 billion-$2.1 billion. These acquisitions are assumed to be made at the midpoint of the period of July 1st, 2023. The allocation of capital between Commercial and Federal Government is similar to the current business mix, and the acquisition multiples, growth rates, and margin profiles are assumed to be similar to recent acquisitions.
Acquisitions are assumed to have higher growth rates and margins than our existing operating platforms and are expected to be immediately accretive to margins and adjusted net income. As with the recent tuck-in acquisitions, we expect the financial returns on investment to exceed the company's weighted average cost of capital. The actual amount of capital deployed on acquisitions will depend on the availability of targets that meet our strategic objectives. For illustrative purposes, our projections assume our capital resources will be deployed on acquisitions. However, it's a practical matter. Our capital resources will be allocated to both acquisitions and stock repurchases with an overweighting on acquisitions, which we believe carries a higher return on investment. At a minimum, we expect the number of outstanding shares will be static to down from current levels.
As you'll note from our estimates, we expect high single-digit consolidated revenue growth coupled with gross and adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. With acquisitions, we're projecting mid-teens growth in revenues and additional gross and adjusted EBITDA margin expansion from the base. The higher growth and margin expansion dynamics of our consulting revenues will continue to drive higher consolidated growth and margins beyond 2024. I'll now turn the call back over to Ted. Ted.
Thank you, Ed. As you can see from today's presentation, we covered a lot of themes, messages, and data points at the consolidated and segment level. The ASGN of today is positioned for faster, sustained growth in IT services. We're focusing on higher margin work and leveraging our large account base to provide our Commercial and Government customers with cutting-edge IT services and solutions.
With a more diversified revenue stream than in years past, we're better insulated than ever before from adverse economic events, as is evidenced in our continued strong financial performance, example being the 2021 economic crisis. As a result, we're able to free Cash Flow that supports the Flexible Capital Deployment model. In closing, we thank you for joining us today as we shared with you who we were, who we are, and where we're going. The future is bright for ASGN, and we're glad you have joined us for the journey. Thank you for your time today, and now I'll open the presentation back up for questions.
As a reminder, those interested in asking a question can type their questions into the Q&A chat feature on your screen. One moment as we queue for questions.
Ed, a question I got earlier in the proceedings today, and I'll come to it now, is how big will ECS be as a part of the $6 billion in the 2024 plan?
Without acquisitions, we're assuming that the CAGR for the next three years for ECS will be mid-single digits. Okay? With acquisitions, it will range between 11.7%-15.7%. In terms of the mix of business, that would approximate with acquisitions about 27% of the business or 27% of the $6 billion, which I think puts it at about $1.6 billion.
Great. Another question from the audience. We've been beating expectations quite regularly each quarter. Are we being conservative? In our long-term guidance, do you feel the guidance you provide on a quarterly basis is conservative?
I'll remind the Audience, Investors, and Analysts that we always give you the best look that we can, either before a quarter or as we think about setting long-term targets. I think the fact that we've beat our numbers is just evident that we've been seeing continued acceleration of the business, right, Ed?
Yes.
Through the quarter at a higher velocity slightly than maybe what we expected at the beginning. Our long-term targets are our best look today. We certainly could outperform those. We're not projecting a slower growth in our business. We're very comfortable with where the growth rates are today and that we can continue here in the near term to see that.
I think in the interest of setting long-term targets, we've kind of correlated how's our business performing, how we think it'll perform, what are the industry data points in terms of growth rates, and put all that together to develop these three-year targets. That's a little bit about how we think about growth rates. Ed, there was also a question about inputs that go into the model as we think about how can we perform both in terms of revenue growth, but even maybe take it a step beyond that down to EBITDA. How specific is the model as we think about what EBITDA performance will be in the outer years?
The model's actually pretty specific, and it's developed by the individual divisions, and we roll it up, and then we make adjustments to it. It's very specific and very detailed.
I think the targets that we have put out are very realistic and aligned with what our current thinking is and what the current operating trends are in the business.
We've got another question from the audience. You have a great long-term track record. What do you view as the biggest challenge to achieving the 2024 growth targets? Maybe I'll speak for just a second, and I'll let Rand and George chip in. If you think about our prior five-year plan that we had out there beginning in 2018, coming into 2020, clearly was trending above that, and that was because of Best-in-class organic growth rates. We had made some acquisitions, and we may likely have gotten there on an acquisition basis if we played that all the way through the full five years.
I think organic growth rate, obviously, that's kind of always our 1st instinct. We're a Best-in-class grower, and that will lead here. I think finding the right acquisitions is always a challenge. However, we've been able to meet the bar on that. We're always developing a pipeline. We're always trying to match up what we see within our business and the opportunity with the capabilities we're going to need in the future to serve that. Rand, anything on the Commercial side that you would call out as a challenge?
I don't think so, Ted. I mean, I think we're assuming a stable macro environment. We've all discussed, Ted, over the past that we perceive, and I think Gartner and others will continue to measure this, that IT spending will increase as a percent of revenues in corporate America.
I think we can, with that, take advantage of that and certainly win market share. I mean, I'm pretty bullish. I think somebody asked the question earlier, Ted, about with the high valuations for acquisitions, will that impede us in some of the acquisition pursuits? The answer is I think we have a pretty good discipline process, and maybe it'd be a little tougher with some of these valuations. I think we have a target for what we're trying to accomplish, and we've been very successful both on the Federal side with George and on our side, Commercial side, in attracting the businesses that we wanted to attract. I think these are things you have to watch. George, anything you would add in the gov market?
In the Government market, probably the biggest thing that we're facing is the integration of the acquisitions we just did. You have to kind of, they aren't layered in, in an easy sense. You bring them in as a whole. Putting those processes in place across the entire organization, building the same culture with the new capabilities that you have and the new talent you have, those are not unfamiliar to us. We know we've done it many times in the past, but every time we do it, we take it very seriously in terms of how we approach it. Doing those successfully then will lead to, as Ted mentioned earlier, our ability to then win larger deals in the new customer markets that we are in, just like we have in the recent past.
Again, delivered above market organic growth, we'll do that again moving forward. Great. Another question from the audience. Our 2024 SG&A as a percent of revenues has seemed to be flat from 2021 levels. Are there office or travel-related costs coming back in from 2022 - 2024 that would impede us from realizing the operating leverage with the targeted revenue growth, Ed?
No, I think the way to look at it is that 2021, as we've mentioned before, is a transitional year. I mean, there's still expenses that have been curtailed as a result of COVID that are going to be coming back into the business. If you look at it over the long term over the next three years, we're assuming that whatever uptick we have in expenses will be offset by the improved operating leverage.
Over comparing 2021 to, say, 2024, it's going to be flat to down in terms of the expense margin.
Yeah. I think just to reinforce that, I mean, we're expecting further productivity in our business, always. That's just a hallmark of our business over a period of time. You've seen it in our progression of EBITDA margins over the last 5+ years, and we're continuing to be focused on that going forward. Part of that is productivity in our field operations serving our clients. Part of that is leveraging our corporate overhead costs through growth and ratably improving EBITDA margins as we go. That's, again, not something new for us. That's a part of our model. Another question from the audience.
Is there any risk that demand for Digital Transformation has been pulled forward by the pandemic, which could lead to a period of softer demand at some point in the future? Rand, we certainly see a pickup in activities supporting our clients to be more remote, more mobile, but Digital Transformation is really here to stay.
Yeah, I think so. It's an interesting question, and one could conceptually say, "Well, I can see that," but I think it goes back to what we've said. There's a lot to be done, first of all. Second, there are different sectors of the economy that are further behind or further ahead. You may see some sectors where they are moving forward, and the pandemic accelerated that. There are many sectors, as I presented in the presentation, that they're still way behind.
There is lots of work to be done, and that is just in the Digital Transformation area. The modern enterprise still has its kick as well. I think it is just something you have to watch, and you have to keep working with. I do not know any client that does not have a laundry list of technical initiatives, IT initiatives that they need to execute. No company, I say this Tongue-in-cheek, ever gets them all done in even one, two, or three years. It is an ongoing process. I do not fret that particular issue.
John, in the Government market, some similar dynamics, right? The threat of security and the need for IT modernization remain high.
Yeah. I mean, Digital Transformation is continuous at this point in the Federal Government. As you mentioned, the threats and risks are high and changing all the time.
Securing the systems is always going to be at the forefront. We're collecting more, whether it's our Commercial customers or our Government customers. Our clients are collecting more data and using that data to make better business decisions or Government decisions on how they support their end customers, citizens. Data Analytics and AI are going to continue to be a huge part of it. The speed of technology advancement is still high, and Digital Transformation is here to stay. That's why we're invested in the solution areas that we are and in the solution sets.
Great. Another question from the audience around valuations of target companies assumed within the three-year model. Do you feel the three-year assumption of valuation levels holding stable is a conservative assumption, or how did you approach that within your three-year model, Ed?
Yeah, I don't know how to characterize it in terms of whether it's conservative or aggressive. What I will say is, as it relates to the multiples that we used, it's reflective of what we've seen in the marketplace over recent periods. Bear in mind, since 2019, we've acquired nine businesses, three in Commercial and three in Federal space. We have pretty good sense in terms of what the current marketplace is. In addition to that, we've looked at a number of transactions, as you can imagine. We have pretty good sense in terms of what the current market is. In terms of where it's going, it's hard to say.
Ed, when we do spend, in terms of valuation multiples, more on a particular acquisition, there's an underlying economic benefit added to the company, right?
Yes.
When we model, I mean, we consider a number of things. Obviously, the accretive aspects of transaction as it relates to not only revenue growth but also margins. Generally speaking, the acquisitions that we made have to clear certain sort of revenue growth hurdles and margins. In addition to that, we take a hard look at future Cash Flows discounted in whether it will clear a hurdle. The hurdle for us is going to be above what our consolidated weighted average cost of capital is. We consider all those things in determining what we're willing to pay on a particular transaction.
Rand, in the Commercial marketplace, I mean, our growth rates today in consulting services are both about organic activities, but really the revenue synergy created by the acquisitions that they've made and what they've brought to the table and how much we can do together.
Yeah, I think no question about it. As you said, we don't use the synergies as a reason for buying, but we know that they're there, and we plan on it, and we've had great success so far in the Commercial market. I think I mentioned on my slide, seeing a big boost in pipeline and bookings with the added muscle that we brought in, so.
Yeah.
I think something here that gives us greater confidence as we do make acquisitions is we understand, because of our place with these large clients and the transparency for which we understand what they're trying to get done, exactly what could add immediate revenue, if you will, because we have a clear view of pipeline.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a criterion selection, Ted. You're correct. We know what the pipeline is for that particular solution or capability, and that's part of the decision process.
Ed, does an increase in consulting impact DSOs?
I would say if it does have an impact, it's going to be minimal. I mean, we did not assume in our projections that DSOs would change significantly from where they are today.
Another question from the audience on the Commercial consulting side.
As we win assignments, who do we see most often as players, as competitors? Who are we winning against in terms of factors around winning? What are the biggest points of differentiation?
Yeah, we get asked this question frequently. I think there's a long list of competitors. First of all, some of the work we can win in advance of competition because of our intimacy with a client and a good discussion about where we can bring value. Where we are competing, we're seeing different kinds of competitors at different times. All of the Traditional Consulting Businesses are certainly part of that. Some of the niche or smaller consulting businesses as well. I don't think we haven't jumped them, if you will. We do compete head-on with them. Does the value or the cost come into play?
The value clearly comes in, and there's a cost consideration as you look at value, for sure. We have a cost advantage because of our Hybrid Deployment Model and our use of our near-shore capability. I know some of our competitors have also offshore and some near-shore capability. It really comes down to can you deliver and get the outcomes that the client is looking for, and do they have confidence you will achieve those? I think that's why we win. We have a track record with most of these accounts. We've had steep relationships. We're able to pinpoint exactly what it is they're looking for and how we need to respond. That's done us very well.
Ed, another question that we get is, based on the range that you set out, what could get us to the high end of the range and beyond?
There is really not much of a difference between the low and high in terms of the base case. It is all about acquisitions and what impact that is going to have. I think a lot of that is just going to be execution. I mean, clearly, we have the capital resources to make the acquisitions to get to the high end of the range. It is looking at an expenditure of, say, $2.1 billion, which, again, whether we get there or not depends largely upon how we execute.
I think to add on to that, we will definitely remain disciplined. I mean, I think we showed in this last five-year plan that coming in, based on where we were coming into 2020, we are disciplined. We are opportunistic. We know what we think will work both today and on a Revenue Synergy basis for the future.
With our organic growth rates, we can afford to be disciplined in that. I think that's how we got ahead of pace, if you will, coming into 2020. I'm sure that'll be an important part of the component of the plan going forward.
I think also, Ted, if you were to go back and historically look at three-year blocks, right, or periods, you can see that getting to $2.1 billion shouldn't be too much of a challenge, right? There's plenty of attractive acquisition targets in the marketplace. This past three-year period, or since 2019, our expenditure on acquisitions has been lower than what it typically would be. We also went through 2020 where our focus was mainly on cash preservation because of COVID. We've got a different sort of outlook as we go forward.
Ed, also typically we get questions, and we've gotten one today about the margin profile for incoming acquisitions and how we view that as it relates to our existing base business.
Yeah. I mean, you got to break it into the two pieces. I mean, generally speaking, the acquisitions that we're looking at are higher margin than obviously our operating platforms. If you look specifically at consulting, the margins are higher and pretty much in line with our existing consulting business. I think we've spoken in the past that our margins on consulting, Commercial consulting, are maybe two to three points higher than our base business or more. That's kind of what you would expect to see, right? That's going to drive a progression or improvement over the long term in our consolidated gross margin.
We have seen proof points of that here along the way. I mean, I think the great thing about the portfolio of acquisitions that we have done here over the last two years have provided proof points in the marketplace around adding capabilities and promoting higher growth and also contributing to higher margin profiles through higher value work. That is something we are going to continue to pursue. Okay. With that, no further questions. We appreciate you taking the time today, allowing us to share our exciting story here at ASGN. We thank you for your questions and the time to answer them. I also want to remind everyone a recording of this, along with the presentation, will be available on our website later today. We wish you all well and have a nice day.