Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to introduce our next presenter, Art Zeile, President and Chief Executive Officer of DHI Group. Welcome.
Thank you, Dina. Greatly appreciate that, Dina, thank you for having me. I will be going through my presentation and make sure that we have time for Q&A, of course. Going straight into it, obviously, we start off with our standard Forward-Looking Statements waiver and the normal caveats. Importantly, DHI Group is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol of DHX, and we're headquartered in Denver, Colorado. We have two brands, Dice and ClearanceJobs, which are the leading platforms for employers to find and engage with tech talent in the U.S. I'm gonna obviously come back to that many times. We created these platforms that allow for recruiters and hiring managers specifically to connect with tech candidates. They're two-sided marketplaces.
They have to serve the needs of both the recruiters as well as the candidates, although we get our revenue from the recruiters. It sounds pretty similar to LinkedIn or Indeed. The differentiator for us is that we focus on tech skills, and we've done so for a number of years. In fact, in the case of Dice, we're 35 years old. In the case of ClearanceJobs, we're 24 years old. We have about 9 million tech professionals across both platforms, representing about 70%-80% of the total tech professional population in the U.S. I think it's very important to understand that the company, DHI Group, is a bet fundamentally on the health of the tech sector as well as the health of the defense sector in the U.S.
Just to put the value proposition into clearer focus, the U.S. has become a tech-oriented economy over the course of time. That's one of the primary bets that I took taking this job about 8 years ago, was that we would see an enduring trend for tech occupations in the U.S. We have a very unique pool of talent on the Dice side of the equation, on the Dice platform. We've done studies that show that only 20%-30% of our candidates have a profile on alternative sites like LinkedIn that is up to date. Inclusive in our profile is also contact information, as well as a resume.
ClearanceJobs is in its own kind of universe in the sense that it delivers candidates that have a government clearance, think of that as secret, top secret, or even clearances above that level. LinkedIn does not provide any competitive influence there. There's no field for clearance on the LinkedIn platform, and you're not supposed to use LinkedIn if you are a person that holds a clearance in the U.S. because it's known to be a place that harbors spies. The basic value proposition is that tech workers are very well compensated. If you think about it, last year, an average tech worker was compensated for salary at about $127,000. Average worker in the U.S. across all occupations was $50,000. When you have the need for a tech worker, you really have fundamentally two choices.
You hire a recruiter and pay them 20%-25% of first year's salary, or you go to the Dice platform or ClearanceJobs platform and you pay $7,000 for our entry level for Dice, $15,000 for our entry level subscription for ClearanceJobs, and you engage with these candidates themselves. Obviously, the payback period is very short for even having one successful candidate with the prices at that level. Moving along, I will tell you that one of the big questions is: What is AI doing to the tech workforce today? The answer is complicated, because last year I'd say was a wait and see year for most companies in the United States. This year, we're seeing a distinct surge in the demand for tech workers.
In fact, I would tell you that at the beginning of this year, the number of new tech job postings was about 220,000, and it has climbed to 270,000+ in April, which is a significant increase year-over-year, literally on the order of 34% year-over-year in the month of April. 69% of those jobs have one or more AI skills. This coincides with the graphic that you see here, which is a study that was done by CompTIA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics that illustrates that over the next 10 years, we'll see 15% growth in the tech workforce, and it's associated with these designations that you see on the right-hand side, which makes sense: data scientists, data engineers, cybersecurity professionals.
We're growing because of AI and because it's a more insecure environment. Both of the individual brands have a pretty robust TAM, target addressable market. In the case of ClearanceJobs, we have 1,800 subscribers today. We know that there are over 12,000 contractors in the U.S. that have a facility clearance and can basically have cleared professionals in their facility. For Dice, we have 3,800 subscribers, and we know that tens of thousands fit our ideal customer profile. Just to wrap up on how our business model works, I would say that. The one benefit of our business model is that we have strong visibility into future revenue because 90% plus of our revenue is recurring in nature. Clients pay for the opportunity to access the platform and connect with candidates.
We provide unlimited emails and texts because we like engagement that's taking place between the two communities. Now I'm gonna shift over to financial performance. This is the total DHI Group annual financial performance over the last five years. First, you should understand that DHI bookings represent the value of our contracts that will be recognized as revenue within 12 months of the contract start date. That's declined 1% since 2021, while revenue has risen 2% CAGR over that period of time. It's very important to understand that especially Dice has been suppressed over the last three years because of the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates at the end of 2022.
We've basically gone into a tech hiring recession, as well as a tech staffing recession. We're seeing signs that we're coming out of both, as I illustrated with the data points that I gave you earlier. Similarly, the tech staffing sector finally went positive in terms of revenue growth this first quarter of this year. The quarterly figures follow a similar trend, although I'd say that there's seasonality clearly on a quarterly basis, and that's what's evidenced within this particular chart. During the last three years, during this tech recession, tech hiring recession, we have had three restructurings that have improved margins remarkably. You can see that our adjusted EBITDA margin ended at 27% in the end of first quarter of this year.
One of the aspects of having a recurring revenue business model is that you have a lot of forward visibility and predictability for revenue. Entering any particular year, we have about 50% of our revenue booked. Entering any particular quarter, we have about 85% of the revenue booked for that quarter. I'd say one of the things that we've managed very well over the course of time is cash flow. Our cash flow low point has been about $21 million each of the last three years. To get to free cash flow, you have to essentially take out capitalized development. Because we are very software-oriented, we are required by GAAP to capitalize certain amount of our development, and that's how you get to free cash flow. This is an illustration of that waterfall chart.
The bottom line is that because we have increased EBITDA significantly over the last several years waiting for the turn or the cycle to come back, we have been able to successfully target more than 10% free cash flow margins. I'd say one of the other points that's very important to understand about this story is that despite significant share repurchases over the last five years, we've maintained low leverage with debt at the end of March of $33 million and less than 1x EBITDA. We generally maintain about $2 million of cash on hand because our debt is really a revolver package. One of the commitments we have is to our share buyback program. Since 2020, DHI has repurchased 20 million shares and has reduced shareholder dilution by approximately 4 million shares or 9%.
We currently have a $10 million share buyback program that was announced at the end of January and have already consumed 4% of that. If we think about brand performance specifically, CJ drove $55 million of revenue in 2025 and comprised approximately 1,700 subscription customers. You can see the notable names for ClearanceJobs here. ClearanceJobs bookings has been on a 9% CAGR over the last five years. We did see some headwinds last year associated with DoD, associated with the constant threat of closing government, which we did. Largest closure in history of the country, and then also, continuing resolution, which is freezing the defense budget. That appears to be behind us with a $1 trillion budget that was passed in January of this year.
You can see ClearanceJobs revenue follows bookings, and we have had robust EBITDA margins for a long time for ClearanceJobs. We generally target about 40% EBITDA margins for ClearanceJobs because of the fact that, again, it is in a relatively less competitive space. Thinking about Dice ended the year with $73 million of revenue, 3,800 subscription customers. You can see some of the logos here. Dice is the problem that we're trying to fix because of that tech hiring recession. Again, we're seeing leading indicators point in the right way, but you can see that the bookings path has been declining. We have guided to the fact that we should see bookings declines that are sequentially lower over the course of this year to inflect to bookings growth next year.
We think that that is a reflection of the trend towards hiring technology professionals for AI by commercial companies, but also by, very importantly, staffing companies. You can see the Dice revenue trend roughly follows bookings by about six months. One of the things that we did over the course of the last five- years is really focus on the profitability of Dice, ending this last quarter with 27% EBITDA margins. Dice actually does create EBITDA and free cash flow for us. I'll leave you with a couple of charts because I wanna leave plenty of time for Q&A. One of the important points is that the catalyst for growth should be the fact that on a normalized basis, ClearanceJobs has traditionally grown bookings and revenues in the double-digit range, 15%-20%.
That's the history of ClearanceJobs because again, it is in a less competitive space. It has a high correlation to the defense budget, and the defense budgets are unfortunately, to a certain degree, getting larger and larger each years. I would say that for Dice, the real opportunity, the catalyst for growth is the idea that we do have leading indicators that are pointing towards positive tech job postings for the future. We're kinda getting back to a growth cycle for tech associated with AI. For the very first time in our 35 year history, fourth quarter of last year, we released a digital online subscription service, meaning that you don't have to go through our sales team to buy Dice.
You literally can go with your credit card to the front door, fill out a couple of fields, and immediately get generated a Dice account and subscription. We think that the digital format, the ability to essentially buy online is the future for Dice, and we'll be rolling out additional packages this year. I think it's also important to understand that for CJ had two acquisitions over the last nine- months. One last July of a company called AgileATS. ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System. It's what a recruiter uses to track conversations. We also made an acquisition two months ago of a cleared staffing firm.
We believe that ClearanceJobs has the ability to have multiple engines for growth for the future, and that what we've earned over the course of time is the ability to sell more product into our 1,700 valued customer relationships. Ending with the last page, which is why buy DHX stock. It's poised for growth. There's multiple monetization activities, and we do believe that the free cash flow characteristics of the platform itself allows us to both simultaneously invest, reduce our debt, and to increase our share buyback program. With that, I would love to open it up for questions. Just push this to the end. Got plenty in our investor presentation. Yes, sir.
On the annual subscription costs, I think it says $8,000-$10,000. Is it the opposite where you're cutting those to get bookings in place?
I would tell you that the history of Dice has been one of discounting, and that's the reason why I like the idea of having a computer sell the package rather than a human being. We are moving the direction of solidifying pricing. I do believe that pricing in general has been associated with the demand-supply environment. It's pure economics. If there's more demand, we have the ability to essentially press on pricing. In the 2022 timeframe where we came out of COVID and there was a rush to hire people, we were generally seeing about 7% price increase per year. That was pretty healthy, but it's subsided to, you know, flat in the last three- years. Again, thinking about the tech hiring environment, it's pervasive as anybody's seen in newspapers.
Just about every occupation has been suppressed by increasing interest rates except for healthcare. Thankfully, we're kind of coming out of that right now. Sir, in the back.
Yes. Great presentation.
Thank you.
What environments do you find that Dice is able to gain market share versus in certain environments where they're actually losing market share? Is your team able to actually track, you know, against a benchmark of how they're doing versus the general tech space?
Yes, but only loosely, I'd say. I would say that all of the job platforms have been adversely affected over the last three- years. When I think about Dice specifically, our only real competition is LinkedIn. We can't tell what's happening with LinkedIn at the kind of revenue line item level because they're a division of Microsoft now. We know that they've actually increased in revenue over the last three- years, but because they put almost all of their emphasis on their advertising platform. LinkedIn has become the absolute go-to B2B advertising platform, and the statistics that we are aware of is that 60% of LinkedIn's spend, I'm sorry, revenue, comes from advertising. That's where they are poised for the future.
I was just talking to an investor and saying, the maturity of any technology company is that they become an ad platform. Think about the fact that Facebook became an ad platform because Sheryl Sandberg came on board and added it. Even Amazon has become an ad platform that's worth tens of billions of dollars. LinkedIn has made that progression, and it's more of a social network, but they're the real competitor for us. We don't know if we've really lost market share. We've lost really small customers. The problem with the tech staffing world is that you have the Robert Half's and Adecco's and Kforce's, and they are multi-billion dollar companies.
There's a huge long tail out to 18,000 staffing firms in the United States where, you know, that 18,000th staffing firm is just one person and a laptop, and they departed Robert Half. They took their three customers with them, and now their three customers are challenged, and they go out of business. That's been kind of the story of the last three years. Great question. Yes, sir.
Is there any long-term plans or strategies to add verticals or brands in the healthcare space like that?
You know, that's a great question. I always tell people that the two during enduring occupational growth trends in the United States have been healthcare workers and technology workers. Healthcare workers because as we become more of an, you know, aged society and baby boomers are leaving the workforce and living longer, we need more healthcare. Because we're becoming much more of a technology-oriented economy, we've always had about 3%-4% technology worker growth in the United States over the last 30 years. Just a little bit above GDP. Is there plans to add another vertical? No, I would only add healthcare, but there is a dominant player in the healthcare side of the world, which is Doximity, and they basically do what we do but for doctors.
They're actually being hurt a little bit now because there's an anti-advertising trend that's on for, you know, pharmaceutical advertising. We don't have any intent to add verticals. Yes, sir.
I missed the beginning part of the presentation of why there wouldn't be another company entering the space that ClearanceJobs is in. Can you explain that please?
Yes. With a lot of social networks, longevity really matters. ClearanceJobs started the year after 9/11, and it was started by a founder who said, "This is my way of giving back to the country and to national security." Nobody appeared for many, many years. Again, LinkedIn is global. There's about 800 million members of LinkedIn. It, it has always been under pressure by the government to suppress spying activity, and there has been executive orders that have been issued by multiple administrations that have said, "Don't use LinkedIn if you have a security clearance." If you know anybody that has a security clearance, if they have a profile, it might be a thin profile, but very few people actually do because they abide by the executive order.
We do a whole bunch of things to secure the site, like we block all international traffic. LinkedIn can't do that. I mean, they have a tremendous amount of international traffic. We have all kinds of security filters before anybody can take any activity on the site. Has there been any attempts to become a smaller version of ClearanceJobs? There is one company called ClearedJobs.Net out of Washington, D.C. They're about one-twentieth the size of ClearanceJobs. They mostly focus on career fairs. They're an events company more than a job board. I don't think they have any profiles like we do.
Thank you.
Yes. Great, great question. I think, Dina, that I beat the time limit and sped through my-- Oh, sir?
I missed part of the presentation too, but what about Indeed? Are they not a competitor or no?
No, I would say that Indeed really isn't a competitor. We don't see them in any kind of a competitive setting. We know that a lot of our recruiters might have Indeed as, like, a third account to LinkedIn. I would say, especially in the last several years, they've kind of not made a dent. When, you know, 2022 Federal Reserve increased interest rates and it lowered the demand for hiring across all sectors, Indeed was inordinately hit. Like, their revenue went down 50% year-over-year. That's a pretty big ding. They just went through a leadership change about a year ago. From a tech perspective, we don't really see them competitively. I think that they overlap more with ZipRecruiter. I'll go over here just 'cause we haven't
Not related in a way, my daughter is into marketing, and she's, you know, had some job changes and stuff. In her field, they have a lot of these third-party companies that basically reach out to you and say, "Hey, I've got this opportunity for you," but then they take, you know, a significant amount of the money. It ends up being kind of like a temp job. You know, the company doesn't wanna pay the full cost of, you know, her worker's salary plus this, you know, this spiff from one of the other companies. Is that an issue that you've been able to?
That is not happening in technology today. It's kind of interesting. A lot of people question whether or not AI would be, you know, destroying the need for developers, programmers. We have seen that last year was a year that was soft on demand, but now we're seeing an increasing demand. I think that what's happening with marketing especially is that marketing has several really strong use cases for AI, and that might be the effect that's happening there. I have not heard of that inside of the tech profession. Sir, did you have one?
Yes. Looking at the 10 years of financials, and I do notice that you guys have very high gross margins, but there have been a few different years where operating margins were actually negative. Can you just break down what SG&A looks like, just different buckets of value and why the causes of negative?
I would say that in years past, there's been several years where sales have been magnified. I'd say the S in SG&A has been the place where things have changed. Otherwise, pretty much the rest of SG&A has been pretty static.
The selling expenses.
Yes
Have been unusually high in order to get more customers?
When we saw the market increase in demand, we would add people to the sales team, and then you'd have the combined impact of commissions being higher too because they were beating their plans.
Okay.
I'd say that that would be the way I would describe it. I apologize, you know, that I have limited time. I'll say thank you and answer anybody else's questions. If you have additional questions, you could always reach me through Todd Kehrli.