Welcome to the HIRE Technologies Q2 2022 financial results conference call. If at any time during this call you require assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded, and I would like to turn the conference over to Caroline Sawamoto, Investor Relations for HIRE Technologies. Please go ahead. Welcome and thank you for joining HIRE Technologies Q2 2022 financial results conference call. Speaking on our call today is HIRE's Chief Executive Officer, Simon Dealy, and Chief Financial Officer, Dan Teguh. Our Q2 2022 results were disseminated yesterday and are available on SEDAR and on our website at www.hire.company. Before we get started, I wish to inform everyone that this presentation, including the question- and- answer component, contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially from those suggested by our comments today. The most significant risk factors that could affect future results are detailed in our most recent SEDAR filing, including our interim management discussion and analysis. Also, please note that all of the statements made today are current as of today, August 30, 2022, and are based upon information currently available to us. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update any such statements as of this date. On this call, we will refer to the company as HIRE Technologies or HIRE. With that, I will turn the discussion over to Simon to share the company's update and then over to Dan to provide financial highlights. Please go ahead, Simon. Thank you so much for the introduction, Caroline. Everyone, it is good to have you on the call today. As Caroline had mentioned, I'm joined by Dan Teguh, HIRE CFO, to give you an update on our Q2 2022 results. HIRE and our portfolio companies continue to benefit from a highly favorable employment market and have carried forward our ongoing momentum, enabling HIRE to achieve its seventh consecutive quarter of industry-leading revenue growth. This achievement is marked by a 56% year-over-year revenue growth, allowing HIRE to generate CAD 18.5 million in revenue year to date, and is a true credit to the hard work of every employee across the organization. HIRE continues to benefit from an employment market with candidates in high demand across several industries, with job orders outpacing candidate availability. For HIRE, this results in a growing number of clients in a highly durable employment market and has allowed our brands to focus on the most profitable staffing segments and high margin on occurrence permanent placement job orders. Evidence of this is seen in our record high gross margin numbers, which have topped 50% for the first time in the company's history, coming in at 54% for the quarter and 52% year to date. As we reported in the previous quarter, the company is required to record the accounting treatment of our contingent considerations for upcoming revaluation payments into the P&L, something that may intuitively be expected to be seen in a balance sheet entry. Therefore, we focus on our adjusted EBITDA results, where we have achieved CAD 1.3 million for the year and CAD 0.3 million for the quarter. As we look forward to the remainder of 2022, we see a positive outlook for the company and anticipate continued growth in 2022, with Q3 being at a slower pace due to typical summer seasonality. We remain confident that HIRE's broad range of services, national footprint, and continued investment in our brands will enable the company to benefit from the labor market structural supply and demand forces. Our operational flexibility allows us to react swiftly and effectively to market changes, even in an uncertain macroeconomic environment. With the unpredictability of financial markets near term, it is important that we focus on positioning the company for sustainable long-term growth. We will continue to explore operational strategies for long-term value creation for the remainder of 2022. Again, we have achieved some fantastic results, and I'm truly honored to be the one who gets to report them to you. It is a credit to our amazing team who are working tirelessly to provide staffing support in all major Canadian cities and who are quickly making HIRE a leading name in the human capital marketplace. I'll now turn the call over to Dan for his comments on the company's financials. Thank you, Simon. Good afternoon and good morning to everyone on the West Coast. I'm pleased to report that HIRE posted record revenues for Q2. Revenue for the quarter was CAD 9.4 million and CAD 18.5 million for the year. This was HIRE's seventh consecutive quarter of record revenue. Our record results were driven by strong client demand across verticals matching our appetite. More on that in a moment. Organic growth was 38% across our portfolio, 18 points better than our publicly traded peer group. Of note, 42% of the change in revenue comparing Q2 2022 to Q2 2021 was driven by our entry into the executive search market via Leaders International. The non-recurring permanent and executive search book now makes up 42% of our revenue, up 12 points versus 29% a year earlier. Gross margin exceeded 50% of revenue both for the quarter and the year for the first time in our short history. Gross margin was 54% for Q2, 16 points better than Q2 2021. This was again attributable to our portfolio mix, reflecting our preference for higher margin on occurrence permanent placement business, especially in verticals where we have not traditionally focused on it. In our healthcare and light industrial segments, for example, where contract wage rates continue to increase as a result of demand, we have become more selective about client and job order acceptance. As a result, cost of services on recurring contract revenue as a percentage of recurring contract revenue has remained steady at 80% for the last two quarters, down considerably from 86% a year earlier. Looking at SG&A now. SG&A, as a percentage of revenue, was 71% for Q2 on a reported basis, and 51% excluding transaction restructuring and non-operating items, contingent remuneration from acquisitions, and share-based compensation. This was a modest uptick versus 48% for Q2 2021 on the same basis, and was a result of CAD 0.7 million in profit share compensation paid to the former shareholders of Taylor Ryan based on EBITDA thresholds exceeded in the year. Year SG&A was 62% on a reported basis and 45% on an adjusted basis. SG&A was flat year-over-year. Moving to our bottom line results now. We've had improvements across the board on profitability metrics. Adjusted EBITDA was CAD 0.3 million for the quarter and CAD 1.3 million for the year, comparing favorably to losses of CAD 0.6 million and CAD 0.5 million a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA excludes restructuring and other non-operating items, realized gains on financial instruments, other unrealized fair value through profit or loss, mark-to-market gains, earnout payments treated as future contingent remuneration from acquisitions, and share-based compensation expenses. For the quarter, these normalizations totaled CAD 2.9 million, while for the year, these adjustments were CAD 4.7 million in aggregate, including CAD 2.5 million in contingent remuneration and CAD 1.8 million in losses recognized on the revaluation of contingent consideration. For certain transactions executed in 2020, we provided vendors with the opportunity to revalue their businesses based on EBITDA results in subsequent years. I agreed to pay the multiple it paid at the closing of the transaction on incremental EBITDA generated for a trailing 12-month period in the future, where certain portfolio companies do better. Additional losses and expenses are recognized on the re-estimation of future payment obligations and are classified as remuneration or consideration depending on conditions, including employment, among others. Adjusted net loss was CAD 0.2 million for the quarter, up almost 1 million versus Q2 2021, and adjusted net income was CAD 0.2 million, up CAD 1.4 million versus last year. On an adjusted per share basis, we are operating at break-even levels both for the quarter and the year. In summary, we've achieved bottom-line profitability across the portfolio. Tremendous organic growth and continued repositioning towards higher margin recurring business resulted in record Q2 results. It was a great first half the year for the people and the businesses that make up our network. I'll now turn it over to the operator for your questions. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. One moment for your first question. It will come from Christian Sgro at Eight Capital. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions today. I wanted to start with a high-level question on the staffing industry. I believe our market's still hot, north and south of the border. From your view, what happens, you know, if and when the labor market starts to slow down? What are some of the puts and takes in the staffing industry? Hi, Christian. Great question. Thank you for that. Yeah, we will probably see something similar to what's happened. I guess it's the benefit of the staffing industry. It's been through those typical slowdowns in the market, the cyclical nature of the market. You know. It's fairly predictable as how you enter that and what happens with the staffing market in general. We would expect to see, you know, the number of permanent placements, for example, that may slow down and our contract book would start to pick up. As companies become maybe a little bit more pessimistic about what they wanted to do as far as their full-time employment levels, they may start to increase or typically do start to increase their hourly or contingent workforce. What we've seen coming out of the pandemic is that companies have actually maintained a higher level on that contingent side to allow them to have that flexibility. 'Cause again, the uncertainty of the market, you wanna have that flexibility. We would expect to see on the perm side that potentially slowing down and then, you know, an increase in what we would typically have on our recurring revenue or the contract book. That's very helpful. The perm side is doing very well. Q2 is an example of that. It sounds like you're gonna try to focus there. Does that seem to be the case, Simon, through the balance of the year? I guess with where the labor market is, there's still tons of demand on that side, shifting focus there 'cause it's higher margin. Does that all sound accurate? Yeah. I think there was recently a jobs report came out saying, you know, the job openings in the U.S., I think it was about 11.2 million, and there was about 5 point something million candidates available for those jobs. It makes sense for us to really focus on the very high margin perm side while that demand is there and take an opportunity of that. Plus it helps us develop new long-term relationships with clients. You know, we are seeing an expansion of our client book as well, and so it allows us to sort of expand that reach that we have. If the market does start to cool off and these companies wanna go to more of the contingent side, then we have the availability to support them there as well. Okay, nice. On the Q3, the seasonality in the industry, you called out that the summer months can be slower, and I think all of your peers see that as well. Is that across both segments, would you say, Simon? Or is that more specific to either the recurring or the permanent side of the business? Yeah. Typically, you'd see it more on the permanent side because our contract book it gets filled up in advance, so it sort of carries on into even into the summer months. It's more to do with the hiring managers. You know, you've got these people who are making those hiring decisions going off on vacation, typically, not being available to make those decisions until they return. You end up getting a sort of a pent-up sort of demand there as you're coming out of the summer months into Q4. It would more impact on the permanent side than it would typically impact on the contract book. Okay, nice. Maybe a question for either yourself, Simon or Dan, but looking to the balance sheet and the EBITDA and cash flow profile, I mean, are there any plans to raise capital or is there any access to debt or equity capital available through the next say couple quarters? Or is part of the plan to focus on the margin profile, you know, conserve costs where appropriate and then, you know, inflect further EBITDA positive through the cash flow breakeven? What's the plan there? Yeah. Certainly the bottom line is very important to us. We want to maintain, you know, positive cash flow, positive EBITDA. That's very important. As far as capital raising in this particular market, I don't see us doing that, though we do still have access to other forms of debt that we can use. You know, part of the profile out there for us would be looking at, you know, what industries do we wanna focus on. You know, what are those ones that for the long-term growth of the company make the most sense for us as well as, you know, leveraging those acquisitions where you might do 2.5-3 turns and getting your debt leverage might be 3-3.5 turns, allowing us to bring those entities online even without the need to go out there and raise capital, which is just not something we would like to do at these levels right now. Okay. That's helpful, Simon. I've got one more question for today. This is on. I just wanna understand the business dynamic around the demand and the margin compression in some of the more challenging sectors. Is my understanding correct? It's more difficult for HIRE and other staffing companies to source workers in these segments, right? And that compresses the margin into your end clients. Is that correct? And is there a possibility to pass on those wage increases? Like, let me know if I'm understanding that all correct and if that's what you're seeing. Yeah. I've said on several occasions that I always see the staffing industry as being a good inflationary hedge because as salary and wages increase, so does our revenues. Now we're getting paid our percentages of those placement fees. The greater the salary, the greater what that results in dollars for us. Where the squeeze or where the pressure comes on is more to do on the contract side, you know, if you've got candidates that are wanting to get paid more because they're in very, very high demand and the client's not understanding or they're having a lag of sort of what they understand the market demand or prices in those markets to be. We would typically pass and do pass on those cost increases or changes through to the client as well, when we're doing that, especially for the very high demand. Now that translates more into the very high demand types of candidates. That's really what we're trying to focus on as a business is where those greater margins are, so we can be very selective in some cases. You know, we've got large amount of job openings. What are the job openings that we can most easily place and place quickly, enabling us to get good margins on those? Perfect. That's all very helpful, Simon, and congrats on the strong revenue quarter, and thanks for taking my questions. Yeah, great. Thank you very much, Christian. Thank you. This concludes the question- and- answer session, and I would like to turn the conference back over to Caroline Sawamoto for any closing remarks. Thank you everyone who have joined us on the call today and for asking such meaningful questions. If you have any follow-up questions, please reach out to HIRE's investor relations team. Thank you again, and have a great day. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you again for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.