Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kforce Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer I would now like to turn the call over to David Dunkel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. I'd like to remind you that this call may contain certain statements that are forward looking. These statements are based upon current assumptions and expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results May vary materially from the factors listed in Kforce's public filings and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We cannot undertake any duty to update any forward looking statements.
You can find additional information Within the Investor Relations portion of our website. The significant strength in our financial results leading into, during and now After the pandemic continues to affirm our strategic decision to focus our business on domestic technology, staffing and solutions. Prior to the Great Recession, 50% of our business was providing technology solutions to commercial clients. Our executive and leadership teams Investing in growing our technology business organically. Staffing industry analysts noted that the domestic technology staffing market The largest staffing market segment in 2020 with spend of nearly $31,000,000,000 which represents growth of nearly 100% since the Great Recession.
The technology solutions market is estimated at greater than 100,000,000,000 which represents new growth opportunities for our managed teams and solutions efforts. As we look to the future, this market is expected to With our revenues concentrated approximately 85% in technology, coupled with a complementary finance and accounting footprint, We are ideally positioned. There is no other market we would want to be focused in other than the domestic technology market as it has in our view the greatest Our full year technology revenues in 2020 were essentially flat from 2019 levels Despite an unprecedented macro environment, revenues began to grow shortly after businesses began to shut down and have continued to build tremendous momentum over the course of the first half of twenty twenty one in early stages of the third quarter. This is evident not only in our completely organic 21% year over year technology revenue growth in the 2nd quarter, This is significant growth of a relatively strong comp in the Q2 of 2020, where we declined only 3%. Our technology business has now grown approximately 17% since the Q2 of 2019 pre pandemic.
The secular demand drivers coupled with improving corporate prospects across virtually every industry resulted in overall revenues The 2nd quarter exceeding the high end of our expectations. Our sequential and year over year growth rates of 9% 21% respectively represent the highest organic growth rates we have on record. We Continue to make progress in our objective of migrating our FA business towards higher end skill sets for decision support and analytics. We believe this strategic shift will provide an important complement to the technology services we provide our clients. During the lowest points in the COVID-nineteen crisis, we found several opportunities to assist our clients in providing resources to help key areas of relief efforts associated with the pandemic.
The revenue streams from these projects provided us an important bridge To navigate through the pandemic, not only did they allow us to retain the existing infrastructure in our business, but they provided an opportunity to increase Investments that we believe will further enable sustained above market growth in the future. As the economy is now recovering, we have not these opportunities further. Therefore, COVID-nineteen related revenues will significantly diminish in Q3, as Dave Kelly will elaborate. We will be left with the high quality revenue stream we anticipated Prior to the pandemic, growing at a rate of over 2x SIA market estimates. We also continue to make great progress in positioning our firm to have a more flexible hybrid work environment through our Kforce reimagined initiative.
The sale of our corporate headquarters facility in the 2nd quarter, which generated nearly $24,000,000 net proceeds is aligned to this initiative. We are actively seeking a location for our future corporate headquarters in the Tampa Bay area, which will be a more modern, open technology enabled office, Very similar to how we will be transitioning our field offices. Our business continues to generate significant operating cash flows And we were again active in repurchasing our stock during the Q2. The strength in our balance sheet And availability under our credit facility allows us to be opportunistic with respect to returning additional capital to our shareholders, While continuing to evaluate potential tuck in acquisitions, we will continue to apply very stringent cultural and financial Given our confidence in our future growth prospects, we expect to remain active in purchasing our shares at current stock price levels. In addition, our Board of Directors recently approved a 13% increase to our quarterly dividend, which is the 2nd increase in 2021.
Our dividend is up 30% from prior year levels and we believe a strong signal of our belief in the strength of our business. As we look ahead, we are incredibly excited about our strategic position. We have the right team in place to capture additional market share Financially elevated the imperative for companies to rapidly digitize their businesses, transform business models and drive productivity gains through technology I will now turn the call over to Joe Liberatore, President, who will give greater insights into our performance, Recent operating trends and other insights into our operating environment. Dave Kelly, CFO, will then give greater detail on our financial results and position, as well as our financial expectations and guidance for the Q3. Joe?
Thank you, Dave, and thanks to all of you for your interest in Kforce. The momentum across our business is continuing to accelerate. Total revenues for the Q2 exceeded the high end of our guidance and grew 17.7% on a year over year basis and has improved 19.1% compared Q2 2019. Total firm year over year growth in the Q2 is the highest organic growth rate we have on record. The operating trends we continue to experience in our technology business have been impressive.
New assignment starts are not only reaching all time high, but they have been remarkably consistent and broad based throughout the Q2 and thus far in the Q3. We believe that this speaks volumes as to the vital non discretionary mission critical work that we are performing across our blue chip client portfolio. While the clear driving factor to our record levels of technology growth is demand for additional resources, we continue to see increases in bill rates. Our average bill rate is now approximately $81 per hour, which is indicative of the demand for higher end technology talent for project and solutions work. Billable consultants on assignments began increasing shortly after the inception of the pandemic and have grown sequentially for 4 consecutive quarters.
Consultants on assignments are now at levels 28% greater than in June 2020 and increased 6% from the beginning of 2nd quarter to the end of the quarter, which is a great indication for accelerated growth year over year in the Q3. Job order flow has largely returned to pre pandemic levels and we are also continuing to see higher fill ratios due to the improved job order Quality as clients are executing against an overall higher mix of critical technology initiatives. We also believe the trends we are experiencing are reflective Of the growing confidence in restarting projects that may have been deferred or delayed, the scarcity of high end IT resources and securing resources for new transformative initiatives. We continue to see the acceleration of critical technology initiatives within our clients in areas Such as cloud, mobile, data analytics, project and program management with a strong focus geared towards improving the consumer's digital experience. The investments that we've made in front end technology and processes over the last several years have matured our capabilities to efficiently provide Clients with highly diverse top talent at scale and a now boundary less environment across the U.
S. A significant accelerant to our overall technology growth has been the investments we've made over the last 3 years in our managed teams and solutions capabilities to provide higher value differentiated offerings to our clients. We have continued to add highly talented experienced resources coming out of the most solution providers to this dedicated team and are investing further to arm them with state of the art tools and technology. Growth in this offering is outpacing that of our overall technology staffing business due to the success we've had in bringing this offering to our clients where we have strong long standing partnerships. We intend on making further investments in this capability throughout 2021 and for The foreseeable future given the long term demand environment we see for these services.
We feel extremely confident in the positioning of our technology business and the ability to continue expanding our market share. There remains broad strength in demand across virtually every industry. This was true in particular in business services, financial services and wholesale retail during the Q2. The same highlighted industries have shown resilience throughout the pandemic and have been significant contributors to our growth on a year over year basis. Given the momentum we've carried into the Q3, we expect revenues in our technology business may grow approximately 25% on a year over year basis, which would represent over 20% organic growth over the Q3 of 2019 pre pandemic.
We are clearly continuing to take market share, which we would attribute to the lack of distraction with an operating model Technology solutions to world class clients and an outstanding team of Kforces that are executing at levels we have not experienced in our history. I cannot be prouder of how our teams have responded. Their innovation combined with a lean forward, not look back attitude since the start of the pandemic has played a major role in the success Kforce is experiencing. Our FA Flex revenues were up 2 0.7% year over year in the Q2, which included the contribution of approximately $35,000,000 of revenue from our support of government sponsored initiatives Tied to the economic fallout and recovery efforts from the COVID-nineteen pandemic. The results of our FA business were consistent with our expectations.
The vast majority of these projects concluded at the end of the second quarter and into the 1st part of July. Thus, we expect COVID revenues could approximate $5,000,000 to $7,000,000 in the 3rd quarter. We made decision not to pursue business beyond our existing commitments in support of our long standing client relationship once it became clear that the recovery was well underway. This will allow us to focus our efforts on forward looking FA strategy. Our non COVID FA Flex Business declined 7.1% sequentially per billing day, but grew 5.3% year over year.
As we mentioned previously, we are transitioning our FA business towards more highly skilled assignments Such as analytics and decision support roles that are less susceptible to technological change and automation and more synergistic with our technology footprint. We will continue to support lower end skill sets for certain clients where we have long standing relationships that are strategically important to Kforce's ongoing success in our We have seen natural assignment ends of our lower skilled FA roles in the first half of twenty twenty one where Strategic client relationships do not exist and expect that to continue in the Q3 and be completed by the end of the year. We expect our non COVID FA revenues to be down in the mid single digits on a year over year basis in the Q3 due to the repositioning activities. When combined with the expected COVID revenue decline, total FA Flex may be down nearly 50% on a year over year in the 3rd quarter. Direct Hire revenues in the 2nd quarter increased almost 30% sequentially per billing day and approximately 85% year over year.
Direct Hire remains an important part of our service offering, though we have not allocated significant investments here and it now represents approximately 3% of total revenues. Against this backdrop, our 2nd quarter results demonstrate the depth of high quality longstanding relationships this credible and capable team possess. We expect direct hire revenues may see a sequential decline, which is typical during the summer months We are continuing to invest in strategic initiatives to better position our firm for long term sustainable profitable growth. Our most recent significant investment is in our talent relationship management system, which went live in the Q1. Our fully integrated CRM, TRM systems are cloud based and seamlessly integrated with other Microsoft product offerings.
As Dave highlighted, Investments to further develop these tools along with enhancing capabilities in other areas such as our managed teams and solutions offerings are continuing. We believe great opportunities still exist to further enhance productivity, which will drive future profitable growth. We have made tremendous progress advancing Kforce towards a fully integrated technology enabled hybrid operating model To enhance the experience and life work balance of our internal teams and the interaction with our clients, candidates and consultants. We refer to this initiative launched in May 2020 as Kforce Reimagined. Early into the pandemic, it was clear to us Work is something we do, not a place we go.
Our future work environment in this new age we are entering will be what we are referring to as office occasional, Whereby our people can have maximum flexibility driven through trust and technology with a remote first approach along with the opportunity to leverage Our collaborative physical office design, when desirable for activities such as training and team building and for activities that are best done through in person Active collaboration inclusive of client and candidate face to face interaction. Productivity metrics continue to improve across our tenured associate base. Given the tremendous growth trends we are experiencing, most notably in our technology business, we have begun making selective investments to increase the number of associates in our technology business, especially in our managed teams and solutions capability. Overall capacity remains sufficient to support our well above market growth rates and should improve due to our continued investments in technology and greater enablement of communication and collaboration tools and processes that have been so successful for us since we transitioned to remote work last March. We have supported and retained our best people, structurally reduced our fixed costs and refined a more scalable model that we expect will result in positive leverage As accelerated growth continues to compound and we reimagine the future of how we work, resulting in further improving retention of our most talented associates.
Our customer and employee satisfaction levels continue to be at an all time high. We continue to carry the highest Glassdoor rating among our peers I maintain a world class Net Promoter Score from our clients and consultants and are the most recognized firm by technology consultants per SIA. I greatly appreciate the trust our clients, consultants and candidates have placed in Kforce. Our teams Continue to inspire me daily as we work together creating something beyond special for tomorrow and into the future To position Kforce as the most desirable destination for top professionals in our industry, I will now turn the call over to Dave Kelly, Kforce's Chief Financial Officer. Dave?
Thank you, Joe. We are very pleased with 2nd quarter revenues $403,600,000 exceeded the high end of our guidance as we experienced record organic sequential and year over year growth in our technology business. Profitability levels also exceeded the high end of our guidance With record earnings per share of $1 in the 2nd quarter, which represents an increase of nearly 113% year over year. Our gross profit percentage in the quarter of 29.5 percent increased 110 basis points year over year As a result of a greater mix of direct hire revenues and an increase in overall Flex gross profit margins, which improved 30 basis points year over year to 27.3%. Flex margins in our technology business were essentially flat as growth In our higher margin Managed Teams and Solutions business has largely offset the slight spread compression we experienced In our traditional technology staffing business, due to the strong relative growth we are seeing in our largest clients, which carry a slightly lower margin.
Overall, average bill rates and pay rates continue to modestly increase. Sequentially, Spreads in our technology business expanded slightly from Q1, while overall margins improved due to seasonal taxes And lower healthcare costs compared to Q1. Flex margins in FA expanded 180 basis points year over year, primarily as a result of a higher margin short term COVID project that ended in June. When looking at the underlying FA business that we are migrating towards, We are seeing early indications of improvements in Flex margins and overall average bill rates. As we look forward to Q3, We expect spreads in our technology business to be stable with 2nd quarter levels, while FA will improve sequentially from our repositioning efforts And the decline of lower margin COVID projects.
Should we begin seeing wage inflation within our consultant population, Which we have not yet experienced in any meaningful way, we are confident in our ability to work with our clients to appropriately align bill rates So that they can retain the valuable technology resources needed to complete their critical projects. We believe the continued rise in wages It's a sign of strengthening demand for technology resources and is a long term net positive for our business. We also continue to experience success in growing our Managed Teams and Solutions business at a growth rate that significantly exceeds our overall technology business. This offering carries an approximately 400 basis point higher margin profile than the rest of our technology staffing business, which helps stabilize overall technology spreads and over the longer term creates an opportunity to increase margins and overall profitability. Overall SG and A expenses decreased as a percentage of revenue by 2 50 basis points Year over year, due to operating leverage provided by our revenue growth, significantly improved associate productivity,
The gain on
the sale of our corporate headquarters facility and lower costs in areas such as lease and office expenses. Due to our strong growth, Increases in performance based pay have partially offset these reductions and are expected to continue to do so for the rest of the year. Our 2nd quarter operating margin was 8.2%, which is an increase of 370 basis points From 4.5% in the Q2 of 2020, the sale of our corporate headquarters in the Q2 of 2021 Benefited our operating margin by 50 basis points. We believe the improving quality of our revenue stream, Continued productivity improvements and ongoing lower structural operating costs will collectively allow us to continue to invest aggressively in our business to drive sustained above market growth rates, while continuing to drive improvements in profitability levels. As previously noted, the COVID project revenue streams will significantly decline in the second half of the year.
The revenue and profitability that resulted from the COVID projects allowed us to not only sustain critical infrastructure and talent Needed to maintain the growth of our business during the pandemic, but to also accelerate certain other investments, which we believe will enhance Future growth. These investments have been primarily focused in our technology business and specifically in support of further improving overall productivity And building our managed teams and solutions capabilities. Despite the fall off of these COVID revenues, we plan to sustain and potentially accelerate this Investments in talent and tools, which we believe is critical to both take advantage of the existing market conditions and to enhance our longer term growth 3rd quarter operating margins of between 6.6% 7% reflect a decline from Q2 levels Due to the non recurring gain from the sale of our headquarters, which benefited Q2 by 50 basis points, a 10 basis point impact from the leaseback of our headquarters And 40 basis points to 50 basis points from the accelerated investments in tools and talent. These investments are primarily targeted for our technology and managed service offerings. The impact from the incremental investments is expected to last for the Q1 of 2022, while additional leaseback costs ended January 2023.
We previously stated that as revenues reached $400,000,000 quarterly, That operating margin would be at least 7.8%. We expect to return to this margin trajectory by Q2 2020 And also to derive annual savings of $1,000,000 to $1,500,000 as we transition to our new Tampa headquarters with the expiration of the leaseback. We will also continue to investigate additional opportunities to improve our operating model to drive additional future profitability improvements. We've had great success in rebuilding our front office technology processes and tools over the past 5 years, And we believe equal opportunity exists to drive efficiencies in the back office. We've recently begun assessing the opportunities in this area, which we believe could benefit Operating margins by 60 basis points or more and dramatically improve how our back office supports the firm once this multi year program is complete.
This transformation will be planned in phases and could take up to 5 years to complete. It may involve some upfront costs in each phase. Once complete, this investment, along with the accelerated investments in our managed services capabilities, will enhance our ability to generate double digit operating margins as we grow. We look forward to sharing further details in future calls. Our effective tax rate in the 2nd quarter was 29 point 4%, which was consistent with our expectations.
This included a negative impact of 280 basis points As a result of the previously announced termination of our supplemental executive retirement plan, EBITDA in Q2 was $35,800,000 which represents an 81.5% increase from the Q2 last year. Operating cash flows were $14,100,000 in the And we returned $18,100,000 in capital to our shareholders via $13,400,000 in share repurchases and 4 point $1,000,000 in dividends. We ended the 2nd quarter with $17,300,000 in net cash. The number of billing days are 64 in the Q3 of 2021, which is the same number of days as the 2nd quarter in the same number of days as the Q3 of 2020. We expect Q3 revenues to be in the range of $385,000,000 to 393,000,000 dollars and earnings per share to be between $0.83 $0.91 Gross margins are expected to be between 29% 29.2%, while Flex margins are expected to be between 26.8% and 27%.
SG and A as a percent of revenue is expected to be between 21.9% And 22.1 percent and operating margins, as I mentioned, should be between 6.6% 7%. Weighted average diluted shares outstanding are expected to be approximately 21,000,000 for Q3 and the anticipated effective tax Our guidance does not consider the potential negative impact on the demand environment From a significant increase in COVID-nineteen variant cases, the effect, if any, of charges related to any one time Costs or charges related to any pending tax or legal matters, the impact on revenues of any disruption in government funding or the firm's response towards regulatory, legal or future tax law changes. Overall, we believe we're in an exceptional place. We believe the strategic decision to focus the vast majority of our business in providing domestic technology solutions is paying dividends. The range of guidance at the midpoint focused on technology, which permeates every aspect of business and society and an FA business that's directly focused on complementing those technology efforts.
Our shareholders continue to benefit from strong performance and efficient capital allocation as exhibited by a return on invested capital of approximately 40 Our predictable cash flows provide significant future flexibility to make investments and continue returning capital to our shareholders. On behalf of our entire management team, I'd like to extend a sincere thank you to our teams for their efforts in outperforming market expectations Through the adversity and uncertainty of the past year and a half and continuing to build on that success for the remainder of 2021 beyond. Operator, we'd now like
to open up the call for questions.
Sure, sir. From the line of Josh Vogel. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone.
Good afternoon, Josh.
Thank you. First question I had, I know there's a lot of moving parts, So when we look at this 85 to 15 target revenue split, especially entering 2020, And we think about the nature of the work being done, you have increasing bill rates, consultants on assignment, client mix, direct hire, but you already have a Gross margin profile is back to 2019 levels even with mix working against you back then. So, I'm curious what sort of margin profile should we think That the business can get to later this year and in 2022.
Yes, Josh. Hi, this is Dave Kelly. So When we think about margins prospectively, we think about them, at least in the near term, to be stable, right? They've been relatively stable, As you pointed out, for the last couple of years, we turned to the 2019 levels. I've mentioned sequentially that we're looking at The stability in our tech margins is 85% of the revenue stream.
I think we're doing a really nice job balancing The growth in the portfolio with appropriately pricing. So we look at this as a pretty stable environment for the foreseeable future.
All right, great. And obviously, very impressive results with the tech staffing business.
Who do you
think you're taking share from? And when we look at the 9% sequential, 21% year over year growth, parse out maybe what's Coming from share gains versus the heads up, I know that may not be easy, but any sort of thoughts there?
Hey, Josh. This is Joe Liberatore. I think it's really when we look at the competitive I think you have full awareness of the publicly comps that are out there. And so I think You can say part of it's coming from there, part of it's coming from the local operators, regional operators. What we're seeing is demand is Broad based across all geographies and industries and it's also very balanced in our portfolio.
So we compete with different types of Companies inside different organizations, the large organizations typically national scale players, when we get into local, More local based company or regional based company, that's when we run into the regional and local providers. And I think it's really indicative when you look at where our growth is coming from. Our top 25 accounts grew at a rate of about 20 point 2% and our non PAC-twenty five accounts grew at 21.6%. So very balanced across the portfolio regardless of the size of This type of company that we're working with. And we're also capturing some solution business embedded in our overall mix.
And the competitors that we're up against in the solution space, a lot of them are what I would consider local or regional, each players. And then also we are capturing some business from the larger, more global providers, but that's really typically carve out type projects where we have Our unique expertise and relationship within the organization.
I appreciate all those insights. And one more and I'll hop back in the queue. But Knowing that we should expect COVID related business to significantly decline and now for the strategic move that you're doing on your end, but as the pandemic lingers and the delta variant spreads, is there potential that there could be Significant upside to that business and I guess I want to get an idea around how easily you could scale that back up if need be.
Yes. I'd say, could we scale Ocac up? The answer is yes, because our teams did a tremendous job in Tens of thousands of candidates over a very short period of time. So we still have connectivity with the candidate pool to service me. But also the flip side of that is, as we've been very clear on, these were a byproduct of long standing relationships we had with certain organizations.
And so unless this is kind of the same specific type of engagements Reengaged, I would say more than likely he won't see us turning out COVID related revenue irrespective of what might With the delta variant and when you look at where our concentration of business was, I think it's even a lower probability that those engagements We're reengaged based upon conversations that we've had with our partners that we helped out during that time period.
Understood. Well, certainly impressive results and thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you, Josh. Thanks, Josh.
Your next question comes from the line of Mark Martin. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon, everybody. I I was wondering, can you talk a little bit about the strong growth that you saw in perm? And just how you're Thinking about that long term strategically considering the continued labor shortages that are out there that don't seem to be abating anytime soon.
Well, Mark, on our roots go back to par. And while we have a lot of people that are highly competent in K for the little, which is why I really referenced them in my opening comments. They have a lot of deep long standing relationships. So, we're perm is very important to the offerings that we bring to our clients As we've articulated countless times, the way we service that on the technology side, which is the bulk of the revenue that we derive, It's really more in a blended model. So if the client has a perm need, we'll service that perm need if it's strategic and makes sense and it's a value add for the client.
We are dedicated farm teams on the FA side of the house. We haven't invested Sensibly to build those teams. However, we are selectively adding to those teams where we have a really good footprint. And we can use additional resources on those teams, but that kind of fits within our strategy. We made this strategic move many years ago.
I mean, you You remember the days during dotcom, when we saw our quarterly perm revenues go from about $42,000,000 a quarter down to 6,000,000 that are out there. So we really we like how we're positioned from a product standpoint. And that's kind of strategically, we've been very
Okay. You've been very consistent and the reasons Have been consistent over the years. I was just wondering if there is perhaps any sort of downturn just given How strong the level of demand has been, but you answered that. And then with regards to the additional investments that you're making Across the board, how soon do you think you can ramp up your new people In order to get them up to productivity levels, particularly with the new systems that you've been laying in?
I would say everything we're doing is really to drive 2 things, which is to increase productivity capability of our proven seasoned people. And we've really started to see some of the fruits of the investments we've been making. I mean, our productivity from a technology standpoint It's up over 25% year over year. And FA is actually a little bit north of that in our core FA business. And I think this also dovetails back into our ability to ramp up new hires.
A lot of what we've been doing here over the course of the Pandemic is looking at different ways that we can create more leverageable training and development platforms, and our team has done a fabulous job. And we're just getting to the point Now we're starting to deploy some of the work that we've been pursuing for the better part of the last 16 months as part of our Kforce Reimagine strategy. So I think all those things will play into our ability to more quickly ramp new hires as well as continue to provide tools, Technology and process to further drive productivity gains of our existing people. Great. Yes.
So Mark, I think I would add to that, right. So The idea of investment, especially in technology for us, isn't particularly new, right? So we've been investing and Joe mentioned the productivity enhancements That we've seen over the years, this is an opportunity, as we said, to accelerate this investment. It is as much long term as it is An opportunity to take advantage of a great operating environment, obviously, the productivity enhancement is driving that 20 plus percent growth. So this is Technology as well as the talent as well as I think specifically as we had mentioned, is the investments in The capabilities of highly skilled people in these managed teams and managed services offering.
So it's a holistic look at that And continuing to evolve our model. Just a little bit
more on that. That's great.
And then just on the Managed Team and solution capabilities within technology and tapping into an even bigger market, Who are you running into the most? What's the most common scenario that you're being brought in? And What's gone better than you expected? Where are you seeing the best opportunities?
Yes, as I say, and I touched upon this a little bit earlier, but we mainly run into regional and local niche solution We also are capturing a number of what I would call internal projects where the clients looking to hand those off to someone with expertise in areas where we have capabilities. And we also are getting some carve out type projects where Large integrators might be in there as the dominant provider on a large scope and scale project that there's a niche opportunity. Yes. So we've also we've continued to hire a lot of SMEs from large solution providers that are highly capable and confident in We've been very fortunate with the individuals that we've been able to bring on to our team to just continue to further build out on our capabilities
Call. Your next question comes from the line of Sam Kirschner, your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions here. Relating to remote work, do you have a sense for what percent of your client base was offering remote work positions prior to the pandemic? And how does that compare to the situation I guess I'm just trying to get a sense of how fast the market is shifting towards this new way of working and also if this has any implications to your margin structure.
Yes, I would say, pre pandemic, you saw some remote work going on. It was usually much more specific To unique needs, whether it be the candidates' need and based upon what their unique skills were Or certain client opportunities where maybe they didn't have adequate space or they were resounding people and having them work remotely. That all got turned on and said when the pandemic hit. Virtually 100% of our technology resources were working remote outside of those that were Physically working in labs on actual physical technology where they had to be there from a hardware standpoint. What we've seen at this Point in time, since we've seen the majority of our customer base is still predominantly functioning at a remote We do have a number of customers and you read about those in the media, the large I'm trying to bring people back on premise.
However, I will tell you what we've seen here probably in the last 3 weeks As we've seen people backtracking on their back to office programs mainly associated because of the things that are happening So the majority of our clients are very flexible in hiring remote talent. Some prefer that talent to actually be closer in market, but work remote. Others that are really truly after getting the best Alan, we're completely flexible on having that talent be located anywhere. In fact, I would say from what we're doing on the Managed King Solutions front is really, I guess, showing us that because those customers are looking for the best talent in the marketplace. And When we're engaging in those type of projects, we're seeing a much higher percent of flexibility for those people to be based anywhere.
They're really after the best talent.
Great. I appreciate the color there. Maybe switching gears a little bit here, but You know, labor availability, it's been a huge issue that many companies have been struggling with. I imagine in many ways this benefited your business These companies are partnering with you to help address their labor shortage. But I also wonder if there are some positions you'd like to have build that you can't because the right labor is so scarce.
Can you share your thoughts on the issue and its impacts of the business right now?
Yes. I would say from a labor shortage Standpoint, the areas where we typically play have been labor short categories long before the pandemic hit. High end technology individuals, even when unemployment was running mid to upper Single digits, still running negative in terms of the amount of things there are for the amount of people capable of performing those. So in our world, it really boils down to what is our recruiting capability to go out and identify that top talent And then secure that talent for our clients. And that's really the core competency at Kforce.
That's what we do for a living. If there's one thing that others, I would say is our core competency. It's on the recruitment side to be able to go out, identify and Track and then retain that talent for our clients. So we're not really seeing any particular openings where We can't fill the position. Some are obviously more difficult than they are, but that's all supply demand driven.
And then we're really working with the client to get the client Flexible enough to open up their requirements so that we can identify the talent based upon what's in the marketplace. Great. Appreciate the answers. Thanks. Sure.
We have no further question at This time, I will now turn the call over back to David Dunkel for closing remarks.
That's great. Well, thank you again for your interest and Support of Kforce. And once again, I'd like to say thank you to each and every member of our field and corporate teams. Once again, just Incredible efforts and incredible results to our consultants and our clients for your trust in Kforce and partnering with you
and
again allowing us the Privilege of serving you. We've delivered another quarter of exceptional results and we look forward to speaking with you again after our Q3. Thank you very much and good evening.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.