Hello everyone, and welcome to the BGSF, Inc. First Quarter Fiscal 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. We will begin shortly. If you would like to register a question ready for the Q&A, please press Star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Thank you for your patience. Good morning everyone, and welcome to the BGSF, Inc. first quarter fiscal 2022 financial results conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Now I will turn the call over to Sandy Martin, Investor Relations, to provide instructions and read the safe harbor statement. Sandy, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the BGSF first quarter fiscal 2022 earnings conference call. With me today are Beth Garvey, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Hollenbach, Chief Financial Officer. After the speakers' opening remarks, there will be a Q&A session. As noted, today's call is being webcast live. A replay will be available later today and archived for 90 days on the company's investor relations page. I now want to take a moment to remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions made by BGSF under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The company's actual results may differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements because of various risks and uncertainties, including those listed in the company's filings and reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
All risks and uncertainties are beyond the ability of the company to control, and the company cannot predict the risks and uncertainties that could cause its actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of today, April 28, 2022, and the company assumes no obligation to update these statements publicly, even if new information becomes available in the future. During the call, management will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which management believes can be useful in evaluating the company's operating activities and business trends related to the financial condition and results of operations. These non-GAAP measures are intended to supplement GAAP financial information and should not be considered as a substitute for financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP.
Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are provided in today's earnings release posted on the company's website. I'll now turn the call over to President and CEO, Beth Garvey. Beth?
Thank you, Sandy, and thank you to everyone for joining us on today's call. I'll begin today's call with a few comments regarding the recent sale of our light industrial segment, announced March 1, 2022, and review operational highlights for our first quarter results. I will turn the call over to Dan to provide more detail about our Q1 results and the company's financial position. Finally, I will come back to discuss our 2022 strategic initiatives, including an update of the company's enterprise-wide CRM, HR, payroll, and workforce management software platform upgrade. On March 21, we closed on the sale of our light industrial segment for $32.3 million, which equates to a valuation of 7.5x buyer-adjusted EBITDA.
As I mentioned last quarter, this divestiture fully aligns with management's long-term strategic goals of expanding our higher-margin businesses and growing into new revenue streams within our professional and real estate segments. The completion of this transaction allows our teams to concentrate on professional IT consulting, build on momentum we have with our project-based opportunities in managed services, and make progress on further development of our real estate segment. Despite continued macroeconomic pressures in 2022, we are confident of our ability to grow market share and expand these businesses in a significant way over the next several years. Turning to the quarter's results, we experienced growing momentum that improved sequentially throughout the quarter. The first quarter revenues exceeded our expectations in both segments, expanding by 37.8% over a year ago.
The important realignments that we made in both segments during the pandemic are continuing to produce the desired results. Also, we are very impressed with Momentum Solutionz's business, and although this was a small acquisition, the growth trajectory is excellent. We are optimistic and confident about the future opportunities in the real estate segment, and we will continue to carefully monitor labor shortages as well as inflation. With a total addressable market for the U.S. staffing projected to grow to over $163 billion in 2022, we believe the company is well-positioned to continue to gain market share and meet or exceed our full year goals in both the professional and real estate segments. In professional, our business pipeline is active, and we are securing deals in the IT consulting and managed services for this segment.
We expect this continued benefit from cross-selling and an intentional broadening of our geographic reach. Given the strong performance in fourth quarter from pent-up demand showing up with budget spending at the end of the year, we are pleased with the continued strength in 2022. Turning to the real estate segment, our teams continue to execute well on our strategic partner programs, as well as moving forward on new market expansion. Recruiting and direct hire placements were areas of strength that we believe will continue to experience tailwinds in the current year. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Dan to discuss the company's financial results in more detail. Dan?
Thank you, Beth, and good morning, everyone. Before I walk through first quarter results, I will add the best commentary on the sale of our light industrial segment. Late in the first quarter, we completed the previously announced sale for approximately $30.3 million cash, plus an additional $2 million due at the one-year anniversary in March 2023 and any working capital adjustment. The net proceeds were used to pay down debt, allowing us to invest in the business for growth. As a result, our financial results are from continuing operations and except where noted, exclude operating results for the light industrial segment for all periods presented. For additional details on the sale transaction, please refer to our Form 8-K filed on March 24th. Moving to our financial highlights from continuing operations.
As Beth mentioned, first quarter revenues were strong, growing 37.8% to $68.5 million compared to the year-ago quarter. The real estate segment expanded 39%, and professional segment increased 37%. Momentum from last year carried into the first quarter with positive impacts from better efficiencies in submittals and improved pricing both quarter-over-quarter and sequentially. The professional segment was positively impacted by strength in finance and accounting and IT consulting, ERP, and cloud migration projects, as well as a continued ramp up of the 2021 acquisition of Momentum Solutionz. Gross profit grew by 44.5% compared to the prior-year quarter to $23.4 million, driven by revenue expansion, increased spread in real estate, and a 46% increase in placement fees.
As a percent of revenue, gross profit increased 160 basis points to 34.2% compared to 32.6% in the year ago period. Operating leverage and selling general and administrative cost improved by 200 basis points to 28.8% of revenue compared to 30.8% last year. SG&A dollars increased $4.4 million or 28.8%, which compared favorably to total revenue growth. Professional segment cross-selling continues to be strong and represented 24% of revenues and gross profit in 2022. This is up from 5.4% of revenues and 6% of gross profit in 2021. Sequentially, strong momentum carried into 2022 for professional with Q1 revenues up 5.8% from Q4 2021.
Real estate, following an exceptionally strong Q4, was down 5.4%, better than the 2019 decline of 8.7% and the 2021 decline of 14.3%. First quarter net income from continuing operations was $2.4 million or $0.22 per diluted share, compared to a net loss from continuing operations of $212,000 or a net loss of $0.02 per diluted share in the same quarter a year ago. Overall net income was $15.5 million or $1.48 per diluted share and included a $12.2 million net of tax gain on the sale and $922,000 in net income from discontinued operations, compared with $712,000 or $0.07 per diluted share in 2021.
Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations was $3.9 million or 5.7% of revenues compared to $1.3 million or 2.6% of revenues in 2021. Our Q1 effective tax rate was 25.3% in 2022 compared to 16.8% last year. As we discussed during our year-end call, 2022 represents the third year of the company's IT investment roadmap, overhauling all of our IT infrastructure and wrapping up with an enterprise-wide CRM, HR, payroll, and workforce management software platform. We expect significant productivity improvements and competitive advantages in our business from this platform upgrade, and assuming a modest 5% efficiency in order fulfillment, the projected payback period for the roadmap is approximately three years. Future IT spend will represent incremental enhancements to improve systems, providing a more robust platform to grow and scale our business.
Moving to our financial position. The company's balance sheet is strong, and we continue to maintain a prudent and conservative liquidity position. DSO improved by 4 days from year-end, and our working capital ratio increased to 2.02 from 1.95 at year-end. After we pay down debt, our levered ratio of funded debt to trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations was 0.8x as of March balance sheet date. Finally, the board of directors approved our thirtieth consecutive quarterly dividend payment of $0.15 per share in support of our strategic initiatives. Our balance sheet position and deleverage efforts are expected to continue to provide ample flexibility to fund our operations while investing for future growth, as well as a return to our shareholders. I will now turn the call back over to Beth.
Thanks, Dan. Although the staffing industry can be a leading indicator of a U.S.-based recession, we also know that short-term inflation tends to be a net positive for our industry due to labor inflation that translates to higher pricing in certain cases. We will continue to remain cautious on our outlook, and our teams will stay resilient as we look for changing trends in the labor market. Our goal is to gain market share through high-value customer service and flexibility during these periods. Last quarter, we discussed our IT infrastructure investments, which included our plan to launch the company enterprise-level CRM, payroll, HR, and workforce management platforms in late March. In mid-March, we were within a week of finalizing our work, but decided to delay the system go live to ensure that all mission-critical elements were fully tested and operational.
As you may know, system implementations that involve payroll must be cut in at the beginning of a quarter. Therefore, our new projected go live will be the beginning of Q3. In doing this, we use the extra time to include several phase two enhancements, so the system implementation in late June is expected to include a much more robust version of the system modules. Regarding future M&A activity, we continue to work an active amount of deal flow, and we plan to carefully evaluate how a potential acquisition fits into our strategic growth initiatives to augment the company's organic growth plans. As we have discussed in the past, we do not need to chase deals, and we will continue to be patient and opportunistic in our evaluations.
Our capital allocation strategy has not changed, and we will watch for valuations that meet our criteria in 2022 and into 2023. With that said, we would like to open the call up for questions. Operator?
Thank you very much, Beth. If anyone would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two, and when preparing to ask your question, please ensure you are unmuted locally. Kindly, please only ask one question and one follow-up, after which you may rejoin the queue. Our first question is from Brian Kinstlinger from Alliance Global Partners. Brian, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Quickly on the last comments, Beth. Your balance sheet's much stronger, but also the environment, there's a lot of pros and cons right now. Maybe how are you thinking about M&A? Is it a high priority or low? And then you talked about valuation. Are valuations right now in line with what the company's goals are when they look to pay for acquisitions?
Hi, Brian. How are you? I would say that our M&A strategy is really. It's not a high priority right now. We are very comfortable with where we are right now, and with, as you pointed out, the uncertainty of certain things and that are going on in the world. We are not looking really big at the M&A sector. If something comes along that is just a rock star of a deal, then we would consider it. As far as valuations go, we are seeing that they are. You know, I'll let Dan kind of handle that because we are seeing that they are going up, valuations are.
Brian, when we were looking at deals in the latter part of last year, we had noticed that the turn was up a half to one turn from pre-COVID numbers. In that range that we typically sort of look at, that sort of 5 million-10 million EBITDA company.
Great. I guess my follow-up.
C ame out, but they were north of 10x, so.
Well, that was going to be my next question, you know, as I follow a lot of IT services firms. Digital transformation seems to be driving excess demand. There's obviously also a shortage of employees, so that's increasing pricing as well. I guess I'm wondering what percentage of your professional is IT staffing? And is that the primary growth opportunity for your company in 2022 on the professional services side?
Yeah. It's probably about 95% IT. Yeah, that's where our growth is. Our F&A group does a wonderful job, sort of provides, you know, an opportunity to cross-sell within our existing client base.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from Howard Halpern from Taglich Brothers. Howard, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Congratulations, guys, on the great quarter.
Thank you, Howard.
The momentum that you talked about seeing, you know, within the quarter, has that continued so far in the first month of the new quarter?
We are not seeing a slowdown, Howard. Things are holding steady, which we are very happy to see.
Are you seeing or have you begun to seek the opportunities? I think last time you talked about expansion into the Canadian market. Have you seen any opportunities there?
We are still on target to go into Canada in July.
In July. Okay. Just one last question. Are you back to where you were in the number of real estate offices open? Again, if you could reiterate what the plan is to open new offices?
Sure. We are back to our pre-COVID numbers, and we have targeted six new markets for this year.
Okay, thanks.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Our next question is from Jeff Martin from Roth Capital Partners. Jeff, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, Beth and Dan. I apologize. I hopped on the call partly through your prepared remarks, so this question may be a little bit redundant. I was just curious if you could characterize the strength in professional during the quarter. What were the specific drivers? Is I&D, you know, coming back? And how has the sales pipeline and conversion versus ramp of projects been progressing?
We just have a very strong professional machine right now in the IT world. I&D is definitely coming back. We're seeing them have some momentum in the first quarter and going into the second quarter. There's just a lot of deal flow right now. The sales team got a very strong pipeline, and they are closing deals left and right, and that's exactly where we want them to be. I think a lot of that has to do with our strategic initiatives that we did last year with aligning all of the sales teams within the verticals. They're just really in a very well-oiled machine right now. They're doing very well.
Great. Beth, congratulations on your industry award, by the way.
Thank you.
Was just curious if you could give you know some perspective on the real estate market. You know, how far back to kind of normal levels, if there's things within real estate that are different now versus pre-COVID that are beneficial to the model? Thanks.
They're back to their pre-COVID numbers, and they're actually tracking higher, which is great. There's a few new revenue streams that we've been able to tap into, and those things are, you know, starting to develop nicely. The team is really managing their pricing, which is helping to drive the increased margins. You know, everybody is just really rock solid right now.
Great to see.
Thank you. As a reminder, if anyone would like to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. We have a follow-up from Brian. Brian, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks, Beth. You know, the last 4 or 5 quarters we've talked about it, and maybe I missed it. Talk about your ability to fill open positions, how that's improving or getting harder compared to maybe a quarter or 2 ago, and you know, how are you incentivizing people that come aboard?
Well, there's no doubt it's a tough market right now. The team does a really good job on making sure that they understand when an assignment is going to end, so they can go ahead and get them lined up for a new one. It's easier for us to continue to redeploy the people that we have in the queue than it is for us to go out and try to find new talent. We're all the time trying to pay attention to keeping people that are, you know, BGers, to begin with, to stay a BGer.
We do a lot of things to try to help those relationships, build those strong relationships with the consultants and move them through the pipeline, so they always know, no matter what, that we're gonna get them back there. Redeployment is everything, and we work really hard on that. Then the teams do a really good job at reaching out through associations to try to get new talent in the door as well.
I guess just one last follow-up. Is hiring an inhibitor to growth right now? What I mean by that is if you could hire, you know, if hiring wasn't an issue or a challenge, would there be a higher growth rate right now? If so, by how many points is it hurting you, do you think?
Well, there are several open orders right now, and if we could go in and close that gap, then I think we would obviously make more money. I think I was on the call yesterday with our division president for the real estate group when we were talking about open orders, and they've got a whole campaign that they're working on right now. We're hoping to see that open order number go down, and we just work really diligently to try to make that happen.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. As a final reminder, if anyone would like to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. We have no further questions. I'll hand back over to Beth for any closing remarks.
Thank you for joining our call today, and we appreciate your continued support. We look forward to updating you on our second quarter results in August. Have a great day.
Thank you everyone for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines and have a lovely day.