And we are ready to begin with our next presentation. My name is Marc Riddick. I'm Senior Analyst with Sidoti & Company, and I thank you for joining us at the Sidoti September Small Cap Virtual Conference. Now, our next presenting company is Resources Connection, Inc., ticker is RGP, and joining us today is CEO Kate Duchene, Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Ryu, and Senior VP of Corporate Development Strategy, Julie Shaver. We are going to have room for questions at the end of commentary, but we are doing some commentary and some fireside chat, so there'll be plenty of opportunity to add questions. Just click on the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, and with that, I'll be honored to hand the call over to Resources Connection.
Thank you, Marc. We appreciate you hosting this conference, and we thank Sidoti for putting it together. I also want to welcome another executive that's on the call today. It's Bhadresh Patel, who is our newer COO. He was appointed in April, and he's on the call as well today and available during the Q&A session. So welcome, Bhadresh. We'll go through this quickly and hopefully have time for questions. So I will proceed. First, I don't know why this isn't advancing. There we go. Just this is our forward-looking statement admonition. I will not go through it, but it's in our deck. The next slide is RGP in a nutshell. As Marc said, we're traded on Nasdaq. Our ticker symbol, if you want to learn more, is RGP.
We are a professional services business operating across the globe with main theaters in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. If you don't know the founding story, quickly, we were founded within Deloitte & Touche as a venture-backed idea twenty-seven years ago, and the thesis at the time was that there was a talented group of professionals who were falling out of the Big Four partnership, largely women, who wanted to work in a different way, had incredible skill sets, and operational focus that they could bring to clients, and clients should not be engaging with their audit firm for that work. So we created a business model to bring that supply and demand together. Fast-forward in a post-COVID environment, our consultant base is gender-neutral now, and we've certainly learned that men want to work in a different model, just like women.
And so we have built this business over the last 27 years, serving some of the world's best brands by providing highly experienced consultants to plug into client projects, either as on-demand experts or from a consulting capacity, in order to move business transformation projects forward. We consider ourselves a modern professional services firm because we don't operate in a partnership model. We do not layer different levels of service delivery like the Big Four model does. We deploy really experienced consultants that roll up their sleeves, work with the clients to create faster execution and impact. Increasingly, we believe we're the compelling destination for seasoned knowledge workers who want more flexibility, control, and project choice. Largely, we do not operate from a bench.
We give our consultants choice in their project engagements, and that creates, I think, a stickier environment, but also, from a client perspective, means greater impact because our consultants choose to be on the projects they're delivering. Increasingly, we have pursued what we call the dynamic or blended workforce strategy, which these are trends in the macro environment where clients are realizing post-COVID, we don't need to hire full-time for every skill set we need. We need to blend our workforce strategies, meaning bringing in talent from the outside to work with their own full-time employees and equivalents in order to move work forward. This slide quickly addresses our investment highlights. As I just mentioned, we believe the secular macro trends are driving opportunity.
While it's been choppy in the last twelve months as there's been a lot of economic uncertainty, we really look and plan for this business over the long term, and we've done a lot this past year to organize the business and develop the right strategies to drive a long-term success, and I'll touch on that in a minute about what that means specifically. We continue to have an impressive client base. We serve an extensive global client base, and we have incredible retention of that client base, which drives opportunity. As I said before, 70% of our cost structure is variable.
So as we've had to weather the past twelve months, certain macro challenges, we're able to scale our cost structure, too, to really fit that demand profile, and that's something very unique that's different than, say, a partnership model and how it works. This allows us to create a strong balance sheet, even in the face of macro uncertainty, and allows us to be flexible in terms of our delivery to clients and consultants. We have robust free cash flow generation, supporting a reliable return to shareholders, and I'll certainly call out our industry-leading dividend yield.
There's no question that in the past probably 24 months, the consulting and human capital industry is undergoing significant shift, driven by the rapid adoption of technology, automation, I think the decline of interest in the traditional partnership model, and clients wanting to own more of their own strategy and execution, but in a different way. We think we are perfectly positioned, and this is the inflection point for our business to be able to deliver on what the marketplace needs. By that, I mean, clients need support from companies that understand functional workflows and technology and digital channels, and it's that combination of functional and digital that allows us to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. We've invested in bringing in more digital transformation capability. That started in 2019 with our acquisition of Veracity.
We supported that strategy with an acquisition in November of last year to build more global capability, and now we are currently undergoing the consolidation of our consulting capability under one brand. That will be Veracity, bringing together functional expertise and digital transformation expertise to deliver something new to our client base. This slide reflects RGP by the numbers as of the end of fiscal 2024. There's no question that started a challenging year. Remember, our fiscal year begins in June and ends in May. So, this past year, while Q1 of 2024 started strongly, we saw a market decline throughout the year as clients put new projects on hold in a high interest rate environment.
And given the uncertainty about recession or not, we were able to extend many of our consulting projects, but we just didn't see new project starts happen as robustly or with the same pace that we saw coming out of COVID. We're starting to see some green shoots of how that's moving in a more positive direction. You know, we all recognize that the Fed just announced a fifty-point decrease in interest rate levels, so we think that will be a positive step for our clients as they assess confidence in the market and the ability to unlock some capital. From this slide, I'll highlight a couple of points. We do have a very consistent client base. We have the right to do business globally at 1,700 companies.
Many of them are brand names you would all recognize. We continue to get repeat work from that client base and continue to serve them in a seamless way globally. What's different about us than the partnership model is that we are not a collection of partnerships that have to figure out how to work together on the client's behalf. We're one team that can execute globally. We've also, in the past eighteen months, developed centers of excellence, both in the Philippines in Manila and in India, in order to deliver services with more of a blended talent approach, a center of excellence approach that allows us to compete for larger projects on a global scale and deliver the right value proposition for clients. We have great client retention. We serve clients, you can see, in thirty-seven countries around the globe.
And we have continued to increase the consultant tenure. Remember, our model is all about choice. Consultants can move in and out of our model, depending upon their own personal preferences and professional desires. But as we continue to build more tenure in that client base, that means that we reduce time between supply and demand, and that's a good thing for our business. We're very proud of how diverse we are as an organization. While some companies are moving away from DE&I, we are not. We believe that creates better solutions for our clients, bringing in diverse perspectives to problem solve, and at the end of the day, we are a problem-solving business.
We've been recognized by Forbes the last several years as both one of the best management consulting firms in America, and also one of the best mid-size employers, and we believe we've achieved those for a reason. We've talked about this slide before, which is enabling the project economy, and that touches on something I said earlier about as one of the investment thesis. Clients moving more toward a blended solution or a dynamic workforce, recognizing that you don't need to own all the skill sets you need full-time throughout the year, but you need a trusted partner in order to access those skill sets when you need them, for as long as you need them, where you need them. And that's what we've been exceptional at over the last 25 years, and we haven't changed.
We support project needs, both that are operational and transformational in nature. We're highly focused on the buying set in finance and accounting, digital supply chain, and regulatory transformation. You can see on the left side of the slide some of our key buyers in the C-suite include the CFO, the Chief Accounting Officer, the Chief People Officer or CHRO, the CIO or CTO. Increasingly, we're serving the needs of the Chief Marketing Officer, as we continue to move forward. We also, as we move into fiscal 2025, for the first time, and we report earnings next on October 1st, we are evolving our operating model, and therefore, our reporting packet, to our investors to align around three distinct business units. Our on-demand business, which gives our clients access to experts that execute.
That's core RGP being able to find and deploy the very best and match to exactly the client need in terms of substantive skill set, consultant desire, and also soft skill match. We will be aligning around our consulting business, which is really being able to deliver full-service business transformation across people, processes, and technology, and that consulting business will go to market under the Veracity brand. And then, aligning around our outsourced services business, which is a outsourced capability for finance and accounting and HR, led by our Countsy brand. So if you don't know much about that business, I'd encourage you to visit our website, www.countsy.com. That business unit started as a service offering for startup businesses. Now, these are not stage-one investment.
These are more sophisticated startups, but businesses that did not want to build a whole infrastructure around finance and accounting and HR until they reached a certain level of stability and scale. We've now expanded that business to support scale-ups, and also spin-outs or carve-outs. In fact, we just won a piece of work from one of the private equity, large private equity firms, that has an asset that is being carved out. There is no transition services agreement aligned with that carve-out. They are not bringing over personnel to support finance and accounting or HR, so they needed an outsourced, immediate solution to stand up their financials and their accounting in a different way. We increasingly see in the marketplace that carve-out or spin-out opportunity is a perfect growth area for the Countsy business.
We provide not only the technology platform that is centered around Oracle NetSuite and a complementary set of technology tools to support the finance and accounting function, everything from payroll, time and expense, FP&A, and also provide people, so fractional CFOs that can support the needs of that client segment. Here are the main enterprise drivers for our business. We are maximizing our new go-to-market structure. That means that we are actively training and educating our own internal sales force related to how to unlock the cross-sell, how to get to new buying centers. You know, traditionally, the CFO has always been the core buyer of RGP services, but we have more to offer now, and increasingly, we're seeing other C-suite leaders making the kind of decisions for our services and solutions, and we need to get to those buyers.
We've done a lot of work bringing clarity and focus to our positioning around our on-demand consulting and outsourced services. We will be introducing our new positioning and digital assets in connection with our next earnings call on 1 October . So I'd encourage all of you to take a look at both our press release and then visit our sites to get a full understanding of what I call the new version of us. We've continued to transform digitally. You've heard us talk about Project Phoenix in the past. That's our own technology transformation project that we are engaged in to connect us globally as a business so that we can better serve our clients, but also to drive operational efficiency and support growth without having to add headcount by using state-of-the-art technology tools. We've been working on pricing.
Even in this environment, we've made progress on our pricing, especially in North America, and we'll continue to do so. We believe we're an incredible value vis-a-vis the competition, but we need to ensure that we're being paid fairly for what we bring. Then, M&A is a part of our growth strategy. This past year, we did two acquisitions, more in the consulting space. The latest one was to bring more advisory and strategy support to our financial services client base, especially around technology, infrastructure, and data strategy. With that, I wanna hand it over to Jen to handle capital allocation and some other financial specifics.
Thanks, Kate. So from a capital allocation standpoint, RGP has a very pristine balance sheet and has consistently generated very strong cash flows from operations. You know, what that allows us to do is the ability to be able to invest in our growth and provide return to our shareholders, you know, while still keeping our debt leverage ratio low. Currently, we have zero debt on the balance sheet. On the last 12 to 18 months, our capital allocation was, you know, more focused on inorganic growth. As Kate mentioned, we closed two acquisitions, as well as investing in our digital technology to run the business.
You know, looking forward, though, in the short term, midterm, you know, while we will continue to assess M&A opportunities and invest if the right asset is identified, but the primary focus this year will be on execution and integration of the deals that we did close. So I think the focus is going to shift a little bit, especially, you know, given where we are trading right now. We strongly believe that we are very undervalued. So we'll continue to provide returns for our shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. Kate, you wanna go to the next slide?
Certainly.
Yeah, and this slide really just to give you some stats on our shareholder return. 5% dividend yield, which is above our peers, and in the last five years, you know, we've purchased $48 million of share buybacks and then as well as $92 million of dividends. So with that, I think that is all we have prepared. We'll turn it over for Q&A.
Thank you so much. And once again, if you have any questions that you'd like to submit, feel free to just click on the Q&A button at the bottom of the page there. I wanted to actually start, so you made mention, of course, you were gonna be reporting in the next couple of weeks, but you also last week released an update on us corporate responsibility and initiatives. I was wondering if you could maybe just take a moment and talk about that for those who may not have seen.
Yeah, so we just launched our new ESG site and fact sheet, which we're very proud of. We've done some great work this past year in order to strengthen our ESG program. So if you haven't visited our website, please do, to get the latest update. We think it's important from an investor perspective and also from a client perspective. Because as we serve some of the world's biggest brands, this is on their mind, and in order to continue to compete and win for business, we have to be aligned in the values and the focus in the ESG area. I'll also say, I think ESG is a business opportunity for us. Increasingly, we're getting some questions, especially as it relates to technical accounting, on how do we properly disclose the work we're doing at clients.
We're starting to see some opportunity there that we are supporting. What makes us different than just the Big Four is that we bring both the functional or the industry perspective to the work we do, and translating that into technical accounting disclosure.
Great, thank you. And then, one of the sort of general themes that we've come across in a lot of the conversations and presentations so far today is, of course, around the upcoming election and some of the potential shifts of either client demand or focus. I was wondering if there are any particular areas or any thoughts that you might have had around what we might see from a political or regulatory impact on clients?
I think it's more about just getting certainty and building confidence. So no matter what happens in the election, getting it behind us, having certainty about who is in that leadership position, what does Congress look like, and moving forward. You know, there could be, depending upon the outcome of the election, changes in tax. You know, tax is an area that we're continuing to build. It's a real focus of growth for us now. And depending on what happens there, there could be increased opportunity or just more certainty. So we have heard in the tax space, some clients say we wanna understand who's in charge and what's gonna happen from a congressional perspective, as we move forward. But other than that, I think it's just about giving the market more certainty in general.
You know, getting more confidence that we can avoid a recession. I mean, the news has been better in hindsight than you know, the confidence level at the time, so we need to align that more as we move forward and unlock a more positive environment in the macro environment.
... Thank you for that. And then we, you did made, make mention, and Jen made mention of some, the, a couple of the recent acquisitions, transactions. Maybe you could talk a little bit about maybe the most recent one with Reference Point, which closed over the summer, maybe sort of give a bit of an update there.
Yeah, so we are actively working on integration to bring our combined capabilities together, and then get our salespeople trained in having what I'll call a broader conversation with our clients and what we're capable of, so we're actively engaged in that right now. You know, financial services has traditionally been one of the largest buyers of professional services, so we think it made sense to add capability in this area, especially as many of those large institutions are facing technology and infrastructure transformation and also regulatory pressures and changes, so we think this is a good space for us. They bring really additive capabilities to what RGP has been capable of delivering on our own, and so we're heavy in integration right now.
Excellent. You made mention in your prepared remarks around some of the green shoots that you're seeing so far. Obviously, the client demand picture has certainly been a challenge for pretty much everyone in this space throughout the year. But just wonder if you could talk a little bit about maybe some of those green shoots, and also maybe if there are any particular either industry verticals or geographic areas that you would like to call?
Yeah, I'd like Bhadresh to take this one. Thank you.
I'm happy to. I was about to. I think, you know, green shoots is a relative term. I think, you know, the opportunity that we have ahead of us right now, as especially as Kate, you know, explained how we have segmented our capabilities, is the fact that we have a robust client base, 1,700 MSAs in large Fortune 500 or larger clients, is our expansion into other buying centers and the capabilities around consulting and outsource services, and the cross sell is where our green shoots are really gonna come as we start to ramp up our sales force and all of our abilities... capabilities beyond finance and accounting, into supply chain, into digital, I mean, to AI, into brand UX and technology implementations.
And I think that's where we are highly focused in a captive audience that we have, of how do we kind of go into the existing buying centers of our clients? And I think the third piece of this also is, we're heavily investing in a global delivery center, both out of Philippines and India as well. Most of our clients, you know, leverage capabilities that, you know, we deliver capabilities both from, you know, onshore here as well, as well as, you know, remote capabilities. So we're building a depth of talent across the other side of the pond as well.
And then I feel as though I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up, sort of where you are currently with, potential for clients that they're embracing of AI and digital transformation efforts. And maybe you could sort of give us a bit of an update of maybe what you're hearing from clients as to maybe how they might be planning things, for the remainder of the year and going into next year.
I mean, you know, I'd be happy to take that. What we're really hearing from clients is everyone wants to do AI, even at a CEO level. Every organization is taking a different point of view on how to approach AI, whether they're setting up centers of excellence to take AI, whether they're leveraging technology, right, and the capabilities of technologies that they have in AI. But, you know, we're finding two thematic challenges. One is data. AI is only going to be as good as the data that the organization holds, and governance around it, and then kind of what their real strategy is.
You know, for us, we're having conversations with clients that are akin to when digital became a big word, and digital transformation became a big phrase for clients, where they set up chief digital officers or someone in the organization really running the digital initiatives, but they weren't fully aligned with the business or IT. AI is still there in its early stages right now, and we're seeing mixed things, where clients are doing specific use cases, and other clients are still saying: "What does AI mean for us, and how do we realize it?" So, a lot of our conversations are around, are you really ready for AI, and what is it gonna take for you to be ready?
How do you start to kind of, you know, put a roadmap in place that actually shows a justifiable ROI, versus just the big buzzwords that are out there, about AI and trying to consume it?
Well, that actually brings us to the conclusion of our time together, today, which goes by very quickly. It always does, so I wanna thank all of our participants for joining us, and wanna thank the team for this connection. Everybody, have a wonderful, productive room.
Great.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye. Bye.