Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the BGSF Fiscal 2023 first quarter financial results conference call. After the speakers remark, there will be a questions and answer sessions. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your questions, please press star two. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded now. I will turn the conference call over to Sandy Martin, Three Part Advisors. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the BGSF 2023 first quarter earnings conference call. With me on the call today are Beth Garvey, Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and John Barnett, Chief Financial Officer. After our prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. As noted, today's call is being webcast live. A replay will be available later today and also archived on the company's investor relations page. 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. 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 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Management statements are made as of today, 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 can be useful in evaluating the company's operations related to the financial condition and results. These non-GAAP measures are intended to supplement GAAP financial information and should not be considered a substitute. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures are provided in today's earnings press release. I'll now turn the call over to Beth Garvey. Beth?
Thank you, Sandy, and thank you for joining us today for our first quarter earnings discussion. In late April, we announced our acquisition of Arroyo Consulting. I'm excited about the strategic and high-value addition to our offerings. We believe that Arroyo strengthens our go-to-market cross-sell efforts by providing current and future clients with cost-effective alternatives through nearshore and offshore IT resources. Extending BGSF's delivery platform to include Latin America and India adds strategic capabilities and expands our IT talent recruitment reach as well. Our teams are working well together, and we believe that adding these deeper specializations and global reach were a strategic imperative, and we are encouraged by our clients' responses to the addition. Turning to our quarter results. First quarter results were in line with our expectations for both professional and real estate.
As you can see in our release, the professional segment benefited from incremental revenues related to our acquisition of Horn Solutions, and we are excited about the cross-selling and expanded wallet share opportunities it will provide. We are cycling against tougher sales comparisons this year as our team is highly focused on pricing, spreads, and overall cost structure as market dynamics evolve. Since the fourth quarter of last year, we have seen longer decision time frames in the selling cycle, which impacts our professional side. However, we continue to see solid demand for ERP and cloud migration services, and importantly, we have consulting and managed service specialties in top enterprise-wide technologies. Today, we reported revenue of $75.3 million, up 9.9%, and we also expanded gross margins to 35.6%.
Delivering margin expansion was at the core of our professional growth strategy as we journey from a staffing company to a high-value consulting and managed services business, delivering expertise to our clients while also maintaining our solid margin profile in our real estate sector. I will turn the call over to John. After he covers our financial results for the quarter, I will come back and discuss our 2023 business outlook and provide comments on our strategic initiatives for this year. John?
Thank you, Beth. Good morning, everyone. As Beth mentioned, we completed and announced the acquisition of Arroyo Consulting on April 24th. The purchase price was $8 million and provides for earn-out payments up to an aggregate of $8.5 million based on agreed-upon performance targets. We funded $6.8 million of the acquisition price at closing, with a total of $1.2 million held back related to working capital adjustments and partial security for any outstanding seller obligations. We will be thrilled if we pay the all-in purchase price of $16.5 million. Turning to our first quarter results, total revenues were $75.3 million.
The real estate segment was up 9.6% compared to the prior year quarter, and the professional segment increased 10.1%, which included incremental revenue from the Horn Solutions acquisition that closed in December of last year. Excluding Horn Solutions, the professional segment was down 5.9% compared to the prior year quarter. As we signaled last quarter, professional revenues experienced headwinds due to fourth quarter project ends and lengthening timelines related to budgets and new project starts. That said, project starts in the professional segment began to rebound in late first quarter. We believe that companies in general will prioritize capital spending on ERP implementation and cloud migration work, which aligns with our specialization. As Beth mentioned, total revenues for the first quarter met our expectations, especially given the tougher comparisons in 2022.
As a reminder, starting in the first quarter of 2022, sales were up 38% over the prior year and continued with strong increases of 29%, 22%, and 14% respectively in quarters two, 3, and 4. First quarter gross profit margins expanded by 140 basis points to 35.6% compared to the prior year quarter. From a segment perspective, professional grew 130 basis points to 32.9%, and real estate was up 150 basis points to 39.9%. The margin increase in the professional segment was entirely driven by the addition of Horn Solutions, which has a higher gross profit margin profile than the existing professional business. SG&A expenses for the first quarter were $23.2 million, up $3.5 million.
Of the $3.5 million, selling expenses were $2.7 million of the increase, of which Horn Solutions selling expenses were $2.2 million. As previously mentioned, Horn Solutions has a higher gross profit margin than the existing professional business. Horn Solutions also has a higher selling expense as a percentage of revenue. Transaction costs were approximately $300,000 in the quarter, and the remaining increase represents investments in people and technology. As we messaged last quarter, operating results for the first quarter included a non-cash charge related to the rebranding and subsequent intangible asset impairment of trade names that we used in the business. During the first quarter, we wrote off trade name intangibles of $22.5 million, which negatively impacted net income by $16.9 million or $1.58 per share.
Our non-GAAP adjusted measures for EBITDA and earnings per share exclude the impact of acquisition amortization, the trade name impairment charge, and acquisition transaction costs. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $4.3 million compared to $3.9 million in the prior year quarter. Adjusted earnings per diluted share was $0.16 compared to $0.23 in the prior year quarter. The difference in adjusted earnings per share is largely driven by higher interest expense in the current quarter related to Horn Solutions acquisition financing and higher interest rates. At the end of the first quarter, accounts receivable totaled $62.5 million, with days sales outstanding remaining consistent with the end of last year.
Our working capital ratio strengthened from 2.7 at year-end to 2.9. Our leverage ratio of funded debt to trailing 12 months pro forma adjusted EBITDA was 2.6 times. We returned capital to shareholders in the first quarter via a cash dividend and announced our 34th consecutive cash dividend late last week. With that, I will turn the call back to Beth.
Thank you, John. Last quarter, we talked about our four strategic initiatives for 2023, which included M&A growth, the rebranding project, as well as process improvements and shared services, which I will address more fully on future calls. I am pleased to report that the branding of all our trade names to BGSF is well underway. We believe that one brand voice may enhance our brand power, but even more importantly, we believe that it cuts out confusion in the marketplace. Going to market as BGSF, a single brand platform, should be an enabler as we continue to expand our offerings on a global stage. The cost to transition to a single brand is minimal.
We continue to move forward with our technology efforts, moving from our go live with a minimal viable product focused on payroll and billing into operational enhancements to benefit the sales and recruiting sides of our business. Commenting our recent acquisition activity, we are pleased and excited about our recent transactions with Horn Solutions and Arroyo Consulting. Both were cultivated over time and fit well strategically with our acquisition criteria, meaning the cultural and capabilities were right as well as the right financial profile. We will continue to proactively search for deals that are accretive, add to our client base, talent resource footprint, and or expand our expertise. The pipeline continues to be active and M&A remains an important component of our long-term growth strategy. Based on our outlook for 2023, we expect to continue to see normalization of our revenue seasonality.
First quarter is typically a low point for a revenue standpoint for a normal year. We are starting to see consulting projects ramp in the second quarter. Real estate is expected to grow this year. We anticipate some macro headwinds on the professional side, but expect our high-value consulting business practices and managed services to be resilient and grow in 2023. As John mentioned, we are up against difficult comparisons in the second quarter, with revenues up 29% last year versus 2021. We remain realistic around the growth rates and will carefully manage expenses to align with our business growth. That said, we can open the call up for questions. Operator?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on telephone keypad now. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. We have our first question comes from Howard Halpern from Taglich Brothers. Howard, your line is now open.
Congratulations. A nice start to the year, guys.
Thanks, Howard.
Oh, yep. The recent acquisition of Arroyo, could you talk a little bit more about, I guess, their gross margin profile and, if there tends to be any seasonality in their business?
Their gross margin profiles is pretty in line with where we are in the rest of the business, as far as, you know, what we expect from them, there's not really seasonality. These are really project-driven, type assignments that are pretty consistent. We haven't seen any seasonality in their .
Okay. With that acquisition and the Horn acquisition, you talked a little bit about cross-selling. What type of activity has just started, and what type of goals do you have over the next 12-18 months to, I guess, educate your own client base on what you could do for them?
I think from the Horn Solutions perspective, you know, they have a lot of accounting finance managed services offerings, which we didn't have before. Those are things that actually fit very well into our profiles as we go in and implement an ERP system on the IT side and then move it over into the accounting reporting side. That's a very good fit for us from a cross-sell, sell perspective. In, in regards to Arroyo, you know, we've had customers for several years, and really more so recently ask us for nearshore or offshore capabilities so that they can get cost effectiveness out of it. This has been highly... What's the right word?
Popular with what our when we've gone to market just in the baby 2 weeks we've had it now. There is a lot of energy.
Okay
around the fact they want this business out there. Our customers are already very pleased that we made that acquisition.
Okay. Within the real estate segment, you know, the growth that you're seeing, is it from expanding within your existing customer base or new customers? What kind of breakout, I guess, would that be between that is propelling growth in that segment?
Our customer base pretty much remains consistent. There's, you know, so there's a lot of buying and selling, so we are seeing some things where one of our customers got bought by another customer, and so there's movement in those areas. They're still relatively the same customers that we have. The growth is really around, you know, the markets that we opened, you know, starting to get some traction. As well as, you know, we've talked about in the past that there's markets around the U.S. that are starting to, you know, really start to rebound the way they want, that they were pre-COVID. There's other markets that are a little bit slower to react. You can't lay a blanket statement across real estate that the whole segment is coming back.
It just depends on where the markets are and what they're doing.
Okay. Just one final one for me. With the Arroyo acquisition, will there be a little bit of a bump up in G&A costs, transaction-related costs from Arroyo in Q2?
There will be some costs in Q2.
Okay. Okay. Okay. congratulations and keep up the good work, guys.
Thanks, Howard.
Thank you, Howard. We have our next question comes from Jeff Martin from Roth MKM. Jeff, your line is now open.
Thanks. Good morning, Beth and John.
Morning.
Morning.
Beth, the Arroyo transaction appears highly strategic. Wanna get a sense of the potential to scale that business. I would imagine if you've got strong demand from your clients, and they've been asking for it for years, you're probably gonna have a lot of demand there. How do you see the growth potential for Arroyo and, you know, how easy is it to scale that business?
Well, I just returned from Colombia to visit with the partners down in Latin America and they have got a model that allows them to be able to train people up pretty quickly. We are being very strategic on how we go roll that out so that, you know, our customers are calling, wanting the business, but we have to make sure that we successfully grow the business at a pace that is successful for everybody. They do have people in the wings ready to go, and our customers, our professional team right now is in the process of getting ready to do a introduction and sales blitz across our current customer base in the next couple weeks to talk and introduce Arroyo to the client base we have right now.
Again, it's gonna be a balancing act, but the initial out of the gate comments that we've had from customers has been extremely positive.
Okay, great. You mentioned, you know, you're seeing good demand in ERP consulting and managed services. What percentage of the business, given, you know, you've layered in Horn recently, what percentage of the business does that represent of the professional segment?
We don't have that tracked. We don't have it broke out that way, Jeff, at the, at the moment. I know that there's some efforts in trying to be able to start to push those things out as we get more involved in our system. Right now, we don't track it by itself or what the offerings are.
Okay. You touched on it a little bit in your prepared remarks in terms of finance and accounting side of professional, you know, projects coming back on, starting up. In terms of just pure finance and accounting, what's your outlook in terms of year-over-year growth or comparisons as we progress throughout the year for that part of professional?
I believe they'll stay in line with what our industry is saying. John and I were just talking this morning about whether or not our industry has reset what the growth expectations are. I haven't had a chance to go in and look what they are, but we do expect them to stay in line. There will be some growth in them, but I don't know if it'll be at the pace we originally thought it was gonna be at the beginning of the year.
Okay, great. You know, based on comments over the last couple of calls on the real estate side of the business, the commercial has been, you know, a bit more choppy and, you know, isn't necessarily ripe for growth currently. Maybe just give us an update with where the commercial side of your real estate segment is tracking.
I think they're still where they have been. I mean, they're again, it's pockets, you know, pockets of success, but it just depends on the market. I know that they have slated to try to open two new markets this year on the commercial side of real estate. We're seeing, you know, consistency with what we've had talked about in the last couple quarters.
That's it for me. Thank you.
Thanks, Jeff.
Thank you, Jeff. We have no further questions on the line. I will now pass back to the management team for closing remarks.
Thank you all for your time today. We appreciate all your continued support. We look forward to updating you on our second quarter results in a few months. Have a great day.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.