Okay, so welcome to the Sidoti Virtual Microcap Conference, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Anja Soderström, a Senior Equity Analyst here at Sidoti. As I mentioned, next up we have DHI Group. It's traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker DHX. With me today, I have Greg Schippers. He's the CFO. This is going to be conducted as a presentation by Greg, followed by Q&A. If you would like to participate, you can do so in the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen, and we will address your questions after the presentation. With that, I'll hand it over to you, Greg. Welcome.
Thank you, Anja. Good afternoon. I'm Greg Schippers, CFO here at DHI Group. I'll be going through our investor presentation, and then I'll be available for Q&A afterwards. DHI Group is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DHX, and we are headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Our ClearanceJobs and Dice brands are the leading platforms for employers to find and engage with top tech talent. DHI is a holding company for two tech-oriented recruiting platforms named ClearanceJobs and Dice. We create platforms that allow our clients, who are recruiters and hiring managers, to connect with tech candidates. These are two-sided marketplaces that, by definition, serve both clients and candidates in order to succeed.
You may think that this sounds pretty commonplace, with the likes of Indeed and ZipRecruiter constantly advertising on TV, but we have two key differentiators that make us a necessary tool for recruiters and hiring managers looking specifically for technology professionals. First, we have built special search algorithms to find candidates based on their tech skills. Secondly, we have spent literally decades attracting the highest quality talent to our platforms. We have 8 million tech professionals profiled on our two brands, representing two-thirds of the total skilled technologists in the U.S. That is the true benefit of being around for 34 years. We make money by charging our clients for subscription contracts that allow them to access our platforms. Over 90% of our revenue is recurring as a result. Here's a summary overview of our 2024 annual financial performance and five-year CAGR trends.
I'll be providing quarterly performance later in the presentation. DHI drove up $142 million in revenue and $141 million in bookings last year. The five-year CAGR for each are 6% for both measures. Our adjusted EBITDA was $35 million, delivering a 25% adjusted EBITDA margin. We delivered $21 million in operating cash flow and spent $14 million on CapEx. Almost all of our CapEx is capitalized labor used in software development. We reinstituted our share buyback program in January, which had been suspended since the middle of 2023 to focus on debt reduction. As a result, we ended 2024 with net debt of $28 million, equating to less than one times leverage. The $2 million of share repurchases indicated here was for net settlement of employee grant vesting.
The U.S. has become a tech-oriented economy and has grown the tech workforce by approximately 3% each year over the past 25 years. We have a very unique pool of candidates that cannot be found on other career sites. Based on our research, roughly 20%- 30% of our candidates can be found on alternative career sites like CareerBuilder, Monster, ZipRecruiter, Indeed, and LinkedIn with up-to-date profiles. When they are found on these other platforms, the majority of profiles are out of date and do not include a resume or contact information. ClearanceJobs is the dominant leader in its market for delivering access to technology professionals with a government clearance. LinkedIn doesn't offer a solution to find cleared candidates. A LinkedIn profile has no field for government clearance, and government workers and military contractors are restricted from using the site because it is known to be the target of foreign spies.
Tech professionals are well compensated. The average salary for a tech worker in the U.S. was $111,000 last year, whereas the average worker in the United States made around $50,000. As a company, you have basically two choices when hiring tech workers: use a recruiter or do it yourself. If you use a recruiter, you will generally be charged between 20%- 25% of first year's salary. The alternative is to pay Dice or ClearanceJobs roughly $8,000- $10,000 for an entry-level year-long subscription and find and engage with the tech talent yourself. Even one hire easily pays for itself compared to paying an external recruiting agency. We target companies that plan for at least five hires over the next year, driving an even more compelling return on investment.
Our value to the tech industry was validated by Forbes magazine in July 2024 when it announced Dice as the number one career site for tech and IT jobs. The elevated interest rate environment has clearly suppressed hiring demand. That was the Federal Reserve's intended result. As the famous quote goes, every company is a software business now because of our reliance on technology and automation in general to drive our business models. For that reason, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and CompTIA Association forecast that over the next 10 years, the tech workforce will grow by at least 18%, a growth rate that is twice as fast as the overall employment growth rate.
If you see all the small point font on the right side of the slide, you will find that the growth is coming from the interest in skills that you would logically suspect: the need for ever more data scientists and engineers to implement and manage AI, and more cybersecurity engineers to protect us from ever-increasing threats. A focus on skills is an important reason why our two platforms are very unique. LinkedIn and other career sites create a user profile based on titles and their concept of skills or soft skills like public speaking. Our special sauce comes from the way we profile and search for candidates. We have spent over a decade perfecting a taxonomy that categorizes over 100,000 different tech skills that candidates identify with their profile. We received a U.S. patent for skills taxonomy several years ago, and it's the heart of our value proposition.
We win in the market for tech talent because we are a specialist in technology skills and not a generalist recruiting platform. Here are two case studies of the great relationships we have with our clients on both platforms. Leidos has been a client of ClearanceJobs for over 10 years and has continuously increased its spend with us. Likewise, Montefiore Healthcare System , operating in New York City, has also been a client of Dice for over 10 years and has more than doubled their spend with us over that time. Montefiore's case study also illustrates an important point about Dice. Most investors think that we focus on software and tech clients. We do, but in many cases, our value proposition is actually stronger for companies in other sectors because they are less visible to the tech community. We have a large TAM for each of our platforms.
In the case of ClearanceJobs, we have approximately 1,900 subscription customers today. The government has publicly stated that there are over 10,000 contractors that hold a facility clearance and allowing them to conduct business with cleared personnel. We also know that there are over 100 government agencies that we can directly contract with as well. For Dice, we have approximately 4,400 subscription clients and know tens of thousands more fit our ideal customer profile. There are also thousands of additional staffing and recruiting firms that we can target as well. Before I transition to our financial performance, I will give you this quick summary of how we make money and have strong visibility into future revenue. First and foremost, clients pay for the opportunity to access each platform. There is no charge for a candidate to register, create a profile, and start using the platform.
As I indicated earlier, because we are a subscription-based service with a one-year minimum contract, over 90% of revenue is recurring. Over 90% of our contracts include an auto-renewal clause with an automatic price escalator. We cap the number of profile views for each subscription contract based on the number of recruiters in that company that intend to use it and the number of tech professionals a company intends to hire in the next year. Robert Half has a much larger profile view number than a 100% tech firm. We allow unlimited emails and texts on our platform, which is another key competitive differentiator. We encourage the recruiter and the candidate to engage in conversations. That's how they both win, and a reason for them to come back to our platforms again.
DHI bookings, which represent the value of our contracts that will be recognized as revenue within 12 months of the contract start date, have risen at a 6% CAGR since 2020, and revenue has also risen at a 6% CAGR over the same period. With over 90% of our bookings and revenue recurring, DHI has a very predictable revenue model, with approximately 50% of each year's revenue already under contract at the start of each year. DHI adjusted EBITDA margin has expanded since 2019 to 25% in 2024. Because of the more difficult market conditions in 2023 and in 2024, we reduced costs through restructurings in the second quarter of 2023, the third quarter of 2024, and in January and June of this year. Together, these restructurings have reduced our operating costs by approximately $35 million.
The restructure earlier this year also separated our Dice and ClearanceJobs organizations, which is designed to better deliver results for our shareholders, maximize profitability, and provide stronger long-term strategic options. We are targeting a 26% adjusted EBITDA margin for 2025. As previously mentioned, challenging market conditions in the HR tech space have persisted in 2025, with bookings and revenue declining on a year-over-year basis. We win in the market for tech talent because we are. We have, however, managed our cost structure to grow our adjusted EBITDA margin to 25% in 2024 and are projecting 26% for 2025. Our subscription-based business creates predictable revenue, with revenue generally being recognized rapidly over the annual contract term as services are delivered to our customers.
This slide depicts how our committed contracts at the start of 2024, shown as backlog, become revenue over the year, and then how our customers up for renewal during the year drive revenue as the year progresses. The remainder of our revenue comes from our new business efforts and transactional business, which primarily includes short-term job postings, career events, and our talent sourcing products. DHI produces strong operating cash flows, with the low points for operating cash flows over the past five years approximating $20 million, and the strong markets in 2021 and 2022 driving operating cash flows to $29 million and $36 million, respectively. DHI's capitalized development costs, which are the part of fixed asset purchases in our cash flow statement, primarily represent the costs of our internal labor to build the products and features on the ClearanceJobs and Dice sites.
With lower internal headcount resulting from the restructurings, capitalized development costs are expected to be $7 million- $8 million in 2025, as compared to $12 million in 2024. DHI's free cash flow, which is operating cash flows, less capital expenditures, is driven by adjusted EBITDA levels and capitalized development costs. Over time, we are targeting free cash flow at 10% of revenue. We suspended our share repurchase program in the middle of 2023 to focus on paying down debt. Our debt at the end of 2024 was $32 million, resulting in leverage at 0.91x our adjusted EBITDA levels. We generally maintain approximately $2 million of cash on hand and utilize our $100 million revolver to manage liquidity. Since 2019, DHI has repurchased nearly 19 million shares and has reduced shareholder dilution by approximately 3 million shares, or 6%.
Earlier this year, we announced a new buyback program, which allows us to repurchase up to $5 million of common stock through February 2026. Our ClearanceJobs brand operates in the GovTech space and is a dual-sided marketplace with 2024 revenue of $54 million, comprised of 1,900 clients. The overall market has over 10,000 cleared employers and over 100 government agencies. These logos represent a sampling of our CJ customer base. CJ's quarterly bookings have seasonality, with the first quarter being the largest of the year. CJ bookings have a five-year CAGR of 15%, and most recently, Q2 bookings were flat year over year as macro-economic factors and uncertainty surrounding the defense budget impeded CJ bookings in the second quarter. Even with these headwinds, CJ's renewal rate for the fourth quarter was 87%, and its retention rate was 103%.
CJ revenue has a five-year CAGR of 16%, with the second quarter of 2025 being up 1% year -over -year. CJ is very profitable, with adjusted EBITDA margin above 40% and low spend on capitalized development. Dice is also a dual-sided marketplace that drove $88 million of revenue in 2024, and it's comprised of 4,400 subscription clients in a market with roughly 100,000 client opportunities between the commercial and strategic recruiting center accounts. This slide shows a handful of notable Dice customer logos. Our market opportunity in commercial is comprised of companies across various industries, such as General Motors, Midas Healthcare , the CIA , and Capital One, who aren't traditionally tech companies but certainly hire many tech professionals every year and leverage our platform for their tech hiring needs. Dice's quarterly bookings also have seasonality, with the first quarter being the largest of the year.
Dice bookings have a five-year CAGR of 2%, and most recently, Q2 bookings decreased 16% year -over -year as the HR tech hiring environment has remained challenged. Dice's renewal rate for the second quarter was 75% while its retention rate was 102%, demonstrating the continued need of Dice's services by its core customers. Dice revenue has a five-year CAGR of 2%, with the most recent quarter being down 18% year -over -year. Dice's adjusted EBITDA margin has been approximately 20%, with the most recent quarter at 23%. Dice's capitalized development costs have steadily decreased since Q2 of last year. McKinsey and other economists predict tech hiring to grow in double digits over the next 10 years, and DHI is at the intersection of fueling the tech economy.
Our pool of millions of candidate profiles, coupled with our platform-enabled proprietary matching algorithms, allow for efficient and effective identification of talent and hiring. Agile ATS is an applicant tracking system built specifically for recruiting and hiring cleared professionals in the GovTech space. We continue to look for M&A opportunities adjacent to CJ. In summary, DHI is well prepared to capture growth in tech hiring in the coming years. With that, I'm happy to take questions.
Thank you so much. That was a good overview. For the audience, if you would like to participate in the Q&A, you can submit your question at the bottom of your screen. First, I'm just curious, how does AI play into your business? Is that an opportunity or a threat, do you think?
Good question. AI is definitely an opportunity. We have nearly 70% of all the technologists' resumes and candidates in our profile, and technologists are quickly essentially taking on new skills to compete in the AI environment. We're poised to take advantage of that. I will say that there has been some pausing on certain companies out there as AI is being implemented because they're not exactly sure how many developers and engineers they're going to need. That has been a headwind for Dice. Long term, we expect AI to be just another tool in the technologist toolkit and that we will be able to take advantage of that.
Okay, thank you. You recently released your second quarter results, and you scaled back on the revenue guidance, but you expanded the adjusted EBITDA target. Can you just speak to that? It seems like the street is expecting revenues to continue to decline in 2026. When do you expect to return to growth?
Yeah, that's another good question, and we get it a lot. We would not anticipate returning to growth until probably the middle of next year. There are certainly some strong tailwinds for ClearanceJobs. ClearanceJobs actually is growing, but with the $1.1 trillion defense budget and the acquisition of Agile ATS, which expands its offerings, we certainly expect ClearanceJobs to be able to get to double-digit growth very soon. Dice is more challenged for the reasons we just talked about, but we do expect that the technology market will return in hiring and that by the middle of next year, Dice has a good opportunity to return to growth.
Okay, thank you. Another question here from the audience is, can you discuss the level of candidates available and if that has changed much since the beginning of the year?
Sure. Now, I would say it's pretty steady. We have 6 million- 8 million candidates on our sites, and they continue to be out there, especially on the ClearanceJobs site. They interact frequently. I think it's been pretty, pretty steady. Clearly, some of the younger candidates, people directly out of college, are having a little tougher time finding jobs because of the AI nuance that we have just talked about. Candidates continue to be quite active.
Okay, what is the client retention on each platform? Can you discuss recent trends in new client ads? What is pricing on contracts like these days?
Yeah, so on Dice, our average contract size, an annual subscription for Dice is around $16,000 a year. As far as the renewal rate, we disclose our renewal rate on revenue. The Dice renewal rate has been challenged. We spoke in our conference call a week ago about a couple of large customers, in particular for Dice, one that went out of business and one that is a large consulting firm that had a lot of contracts with the federal government. A lot of those contracts were pulled by the DoD, and they did not renew with Dice. That amounted to about $1.1 million of annual contract value. That was definitely a headwind for Dice. ClearanceJobs customers had some impact from DoD, which is a common question we get.
Particularly in the first half of this year, DoD had a much larger impact, but we expect that to wane and to be not a big factor going forward with this new defense budget.
Thank you. Can you share historical pricing trends? It seems that there is room for greater pricing relative to alternatives.
Yeah, I'll speak about each brand. ClearanceJobs doesn't really have a viable competitor in the marketplace. I mentioned in the briefing here that, you know, a person with a U.S. security clearance can't put that on LinkedIn. They're not able to advertise themselves for jobs on LinkedIn as a result. There is pricing opportunity for sure within ClearanceJobs. You can see that if you look at our average revenue per customer on ClearanceJobs, you can see that trickling up over time. On Dice, the pricing opportunity on Dice is a little more challenging because it moves more with the macro-economic factors of the business.
That said, we are looking at ways to basically have a unit-level pricing for Dice and ClearanceJobs for that matter, which would essentially charge more for a resume view, let's say, for a job that is much more hard to find an appropriate candidate for versus, you know, a standard Java coder or something. That sort of pricing opportunity will allow us to increase our revenue.
Okay, another question there. Have you begun to see any hiring activity which has been driven by AI adoption or potential implementation?
Yeah, over 35%, pushing 40% of the jobs on Dice today require AI skills, and that's a jump from 10% at the beginning of last year. We're definitely seeing it, and we are definitely the place to find AI talent. As I mentioned, the candidates are retooling to get those skill sets as quickly as they possibly can, and employers are looking for that, especially those with enhanced skill sets and understanding of processes. More seasoned candidates in many cases come in and actually implement AI and understand how a marketing process should work and also have the AI skills to implement something. That's really driving demand for people with more experience than just those directly out of school.
Thank you. Are there any client verticals or industries which are leading the way in activity levels?
Yeah, definitely the consulting firms are, you know, seeing upticks now driven by AI. Also, you know, just from uncertainty that had at least prevailed around government budgets and other things like that that created uncertainty in the overall marketplace. Rather than hiring some of these folks and trying to train them yourself, a lot of companies are going to third parties and consulting firms to get that talent and try to understand how best to implement AI within their businesses.
Okay, thank you. Can you discuss the Agile ATS acquisition, such as how that achieved and evaluation levels?
Yeah, yeah, so Agile ATS, so an applicant tracking system, essentially, you know, is the, it's like a CRM for the HR team and the recruiting process. This fits really perfectly into ClearanceJobs and expands ClearanceJobs' footprint within the total hiring process, right? Instead of just being in kind of the middle section of the continuum where we are sourcing talent and then putting the talent in front of the hiring managers, now all at once you're a tool from posting the job and understanding the requirements all the way through to the interview process and the onboarding process, and tracking all that is in the middle. This particular ATS is specifically designed for the hiring of security-cleared individuals, and it has certain fields for it and so forth.
It's made so if you have an audit of your process from the federal government, that you know, you have all the information you need. From a value equation standpoint, you know, it was a $2 million acquisition, which we disclosed $1.5 million up front and then $500,000 on an earnout. There was not a lot of revenue. This was essentially a recognized need by one of the founders. They built a product for their internal use and then, you know, moved on from that into some other endeavors. You know, we acquired the business and now we can sell it over our customer base and others using our, you know, more advanced sales team and so forth.
Okay, I'm going to squeeze one last question in there. How does the acquisition pipeline look, and can you share your appetite as well as debt comfort levels?
Okay, I'm assuming the acquisition pipeline is M&A related. We are actively continuing to look for tuck-in acquisitions for ClearanceJobs specifically. I can't really comment on anything to come there, but we are looking at opportunities to expand ClearanceJobs and its footprint in the recruiting, specifically in the cleared professional space.
Okay, thank you. I want to thank you so much for joining us today and everyone in the audience who participated. If you have any further questions or any follow-ups, I'm sure the management team can make themselves available. They have a pretty full one-on-one schedule, but if you reach out to us, we'll put you in touch with them and make sure you get in front of them. With that, I'll hand it over to you, Greg, for some closing remarks.
All right, thank you. Thank you, everyone, for attending, and look forward to talking with all of you individually. Please reach out if you'd like to do that. Thanks again.
Thank you. Thank you.