Greetings and welcome to ASGN's corporate update. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Kimberly Esterkin, of Investor Relations. Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to discuss today's announcement. With me are Ted Hanson, ASGN's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Ed Pierce, ASGN's Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that our commentary contains forward-looking statements. Although we believe these statements are reasonable, they are subject to risks and uncertainties, and as such, our actual results could differ materially from those statements. Certain of these risks and uncertainties are described in today's press release and in ASGN's SEC filings. We do not assume any obligation to update the statements made on today's call. For your convenience, the prepared remarks and related supplemental materials, including an updated Q1 2021 presentation that presents the Oxford business as discontinued operations for the last nine quarters and full years 2019 and 2020, can be found on the events and presentations page of the Investor Relations section of ASGN's website at investors.asgn.com. Please also note that on this call, we will be referencing certain non-GAAP measures, such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, and free cash flow. These non-GAAP measures are intended to supplement the comparable GAAP measure. Reconciliations between the GAAP and non-GAAP measures are included in today's supplemental material. I will now turn the call over to Ted Hanson, ASGN's President and Chief Executive Officer. Thank you, Kimberly, and thank you for joining us this morning. Today, we announce the sale of one of our business units, Oxford Global Resources, reconfirming to all our stakeholders our long-term strategy to be an industry leader of IT services and solutions to large commercial and federal government clients. With that said, I'd like to take the opportunity today to provide some additional background on our strategic thought processes regarding the sale of Oxford and what this means for our business's long-term growth strategy. Ed Pierce, our CFO, will then address the financial impact of the sale and our increased estimates for the second quarter, figures which reflect ASGN's strong performance to date and clearly demonstrate the strength of our underlying business. Let me turn to some background on today's announcement. Today, we announced that we entered into a definitive agreement to sell the Oxford business unit for $525 million in cash to an affiliate of H.I.G. Capital, a global alternative investment firm. In connection with the decision to divest our Oxford business, we will now be reporting only two business segments, including the commercial segment and the federal government segment. The commercial segment includes the former APEX segment, along with CyberCoders, our permanent placement business, which was previously part of the Oxford segment. Our ECS business will now comprise the federal government segment. Now, back to the sale of Oxford. As many of you know, ASGN acquired Oxford in 2007. Oxford offers high-end on-demand consulting talent for niche, commercial, IT, healthcare, life sciences, and engineering clients. At the time of Oxford's acquisition, we were much more focused on providing high-end niche services to life sciences, healthcare, and engineering markets and service a greater number of small mid-market customer accounts. Our business model has significantly evolved since that time, and over the past several years, we've become much more IT-centric and, in doing so, expanded and increased our market share in our large account Fortune 500 and federal government portfolios. As would be prudent, we regularly evaluate our portfolio of businesses and their strategic fit with our long-term strategy. With the economy improving, we looked at each of our business units. Again, for those who have been following ASGN, you know that we have been actively adding strategic top-end acquisitions over the past few years to bolster our capabilities and industry expertise. We therefore have reevaluated Oxford's place within this new set of businesses, and while Oxford has consistently shown improvements since the lows of the pandemic, their business is no longer as relevant to our overall model now that we are focusing on large account IT services and consulting solutions. All of ASGN's business units compete for new capital investment, and naturally, we support our highest growth, highest margin units that drive our long-term strategy forward. With that said, new ownership by H.I.G. is exactly what the Oxford business needs to continue to grow and achieve its potential. We believe that M&A offers the highest return on invested capital for all of our stakeholders, enabling us to bring in new capabilities with industry-domain expertise that will position ASGN as a leading provider of IT services and solutions for the commercial and government marketplaces. I'm therefore pleased that the proceeds from the sale of Oxford, our cash on hand, which was $386.5 million at the end of the first quarter, and no borrowings under our $250 million revolving credit facility will enable us to continue to be highly active in M&A. We will also be able to redistribute our capital into faster-growing, higher-margin businesses. With a sharpened focus on IT services and solutions, you can expect that we will continue to make strategic top-end acquisitions that provide new capabilities, solutions, or contracts that are in high demand by our customers. One of these we just announced today. On June 30th, ASGN acquired the Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP, Healthcare and Manufacturing Consulting Business Unit of Avaap, a modern enterprise solutions integrator with domain expertise for $86 million in cash. The Avaap unit and its roughly 240 talented employees are now part of APEX Consulting Services and will strengthen our modern enterprise solution capabilities in the healthcare and consumer and industrial sectors. Through this acquisition, we will be able to provide our current healthcare and consumer industrial customers with new and expanded advisory and managed service offerings while also enhancing the offerings the Avaap team can provide their customers now that they are part of APEX and ASGN. With budgets for major IT investments expanding, we expect significant opportunities ahead for the Avaap business as legacy users of the S/4HANA Enterprise Platform upgrade to the cloud, specifically healthcare and manufacturing users, amongst other industry users as well. Before I speak further about our long-term strategy, I'll now turn the call over to Ed Pierce, our CFO, to discuss the financial impact of these transactions and our updated second quarter guidance. Ed. Thanks, Ted. Good morning, everyone. We entered into a definitive agreement to sell our Oxford business for $525 million in cash, and the after-tax proceeds from the sale are estimated to exceed $400 million. This transaction is expected to close after the receipt of the HSR and all antitrust approvals. To provide some perspective on the size of Oxford relative to the company as a whole, Oxford for the past three years has accounted for just over 10% of ASGN's consolidated revenues, net income, and adjusted EBITDA. Over the preceding four quarters, Oxford generated revenues of $442.1 million, or 11.1% of consolidated revenues, and adjusted EBITDA of $46.8 million, or 10.5% of consolidated adjusted EBITDA. As a result of our decision to divest the Oxford business, we will present the financial results of Oxford as discontinued operations. Since this change in reporting applies to historical periods, we have included in our updated supplemental materials restated financial results that present the Oxford business as discontinued operations for each of the last nine quarters and for the full years 2019 and 2020. These materials can be found in the events and presentation section of our Investor Relations website. These updated materials also reflect the changes made to our segment reporting, which is also on a retrospective basis. As Ted noted, with this divestiture, we now have two financial segments: commercial and federal government. Our commercial segment is comprised of APEX Systems, Creative Circle, and CyberCoders, while our ECS segment has been renamed as our federal government segment. In today's announcement, we included revised guidance estimates for Q2 of 2021, as well as restated historical results for Q1 of this year and Q2 of last year to present the Oxford business as discontinued operations. Our revised guidance estimates, together with our restated historical results, are included in our updated supplemental materials. Keep in mind that our earnings estimates do not include any acquisition, integration, or strategic planning expenses. We currently estimate these expenses will total approximately $5.5 million, of which approximately $2.5 million relates to continuing operations and will be included in SG&A, and $3 million relates to discontinued operations. Virtually all these expenses relate either to the Oxford transaction or ongoing acquisition activities. Our guidance estimates for continuing operations for Q2 of 2021, which excludes the Oxford business, are above our previously announced estimates, primarily related to the higher-than-expected operating performance of our commercial segment and approximately 10% growth in our federal government segment despite a difficult prior year comp. For the quarter, we're estimating year-over-year revenue growth from continuing operations of 15.4%-16.6%, which is up from the previous estimate of 11.8%-14.2%, and adjusted EBITDA growth of 19.7%-22.3%, up from the previous estimate of 10.2%-15.5%. We're expecting both growths and adjusted EBITDA margin expansion as a result of the higher relative growth of our commercial segment, which carries higher margins than our federal government segment. Within the commercial segment, margins are benefiting from the high growth in consulting services and permanent placement revenues. For the second quarter, we're estimating revenues from continuing operations of $960 million-$970 million. Our net income, which includes income from discontinued operations of $8.7 million, is estimated to range from $64.6 million-$66.4 million. Our adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations ranges from $114 million-$116.5 million. Consistent with the commentary on the first quarter call, all operating divisions will be up both year-over-year and sequentially. We plan on announcing our second quarter results on Wednesday, July 28th, and will not be providing any additional information on the quarter on this call. A formal announcement on the release date and details on the regular quarterly investor conference call will be made next week. Thank you for your time. I'll turn the call back over to Ted for some closing remarks. Ted. Thanks, Ed. The economy is improving. Our customers are actively increasing their IT budgets, and we are executing on our long-term business model exactly as planned. With a strong balance sheet and ample cash flow, we will continue to make acquisitions in the commercial and government markets that provide us with industry expertise along with new capabilities, new customers, and new contract vehicles. You can expect us to become increasingly focused on building our commercial consulting practice, which has reached an annual revenue run rate of $470 million and continues to grow as a percentage of our total business mix. We will also continue to invest in our federal government business, which has now surpassed $1 billion in annual revenues. The divestiture of Oxford business marks an important milestone for the company. It accomplishes a number of strategic objectives, including the freeing up of both capital and management bandwidth to focus sharply on building a high-growth, high-margin, diversified IT services business in the commercial and federal government sectors. Our acquisition strategy will continue to focus on the businesses that expand our IT consultative capabilities, which can be leveraged across the breadth of our entire organization. Our operational planning will continue to focus on making appropriate investments that support higher growth and profitability of our business. With this divestiture, the strong resurgence of our commercial business, and the growth and stability of our federal government business, we are confident that we have taken the appropriate actions to not only weather the pandemic but to position the company for the long-term sustainable growth in the markets we serve. We are currently planning an investor day later this year, in which we will communicate to our investors and the market our near and long-term vision, strategy, and goals. The details of this event will be forthcoming. To conclude, ASGN is in the right markets with the right capabilities at the right time. Thank you for your time today. We will now open up the call to your questions. Operator. Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your headset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Our first question is from Gary Bisbee with Bank of America Securities. Please proceed. Hey, guys. Good morning. Strategically, this makes an awful lot of sense to me. You've got a business that's been slower growth and a lot more volatile performer, and getting a decent price to reinvest into the stronger businesses just makes a lot of sense. I guess the first question I've got: how quickly do you believe you can put the proceeds to work from M&A to offset the dilution from selling this? As part of that, when you've thought about the rationale for doing this, it looks like it's about one-time sales, pre-pandemic sales that you're selling it for. My sense is, on the consulting acquisitions you've done, you've been paying more like two times. It strikes me, with those proceeds, you probably can't replace what you're selling. Did that come into play as a consideration, or I guess just how do you think about that? Thank you. Hey, Gary. It's Ted. First of all, thanks for the question. I think just by way of announcing our acquisition of the healthcare consulting unit of Avaap today, you can see that we're actively in the market, pursuing opportunities. Strategy remains the same. I mean, these are capabilities that are highly sought after in the market. We have a blue-chip account portfolio, and if we can bring consultative capabilities with industry expertise, then we can pull that across, and that's been a win in terms of revenue synergies for the clients and for us. I think that's just an example. The pipeline is very active. We're really pleased with the opportunities that are in front of us. We have to continue to develop them. I think that that was kind of half of the equation that made now the right time to consider divesting Oxford. The second was the productiveness of the M&A markets right now provided us, we thought, with the best opportunity to put Oxford out as an independent company and to reload the balance sheet here with cash that we could really lean forward into our strategy here. I think a combination of things. On the multiple side of things, Gary, I don't know that higher-value assets could come at higher multiples. I mean, we've also seen them in the range that we traded Oxford for. I wouldn't say it's an absolute. I would say there will be things that maybe are slightly more expensive than what we realized from Oxford, but I don't think that's really the play here because it's really building the right portfolio capabilities so that we can really deliver this to our existing account base and then really find those revenue synergies and make this all work. Maybe just the bigger picture question, probably pulling forward what you'll talk about at this investor day. How do you think about where you want the mix to be? I know APEX is a real important asset, but how do you think about how you're thinking about the assignment business in general, how important that is, how much you want to grow it? Is this five years from now, do you expect consulting to be significantly bigger and really be more of a consulting company than as you've traditionally thought about high-end technology temporary employment company? Sure. Look, our IT, digital, creative staffing capabilities are very important, and they enable what we do in consulting services, and it differentiates us from many of the consulting firms out there and kind of the big project consulting firms you could imagine. That will always be an important part of the business. We'll continue to go at all the opportunities there that we can and grow it faster than the market. In the future, will consulting be larger than staffing? It could be because of the size of the marketplace, and I would say that's probably really the determining factor there. I mean, if you think about the IT staffing marketplace before COVID, it was approaching more beyond $30 billion in the US. Depending on how you define IT consulting in the US marketplace, it approaches $300 billion, and it's growing faster. Just by way of total addressable market, I think you could kind of discern that that likely could be a bigger part of our business somewhere down the road in the future. Those are very important to us. If I could sneak one quick one in. Can you give us just a rough revenue size of the acquisition that you announced here? Thank you. Ed, I don't think we released that. We released the number of employees, correct? That is correct. Gary will have more to say about this when we release second quarter. Okay. Okay. All Okay. All right. Fair enough. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Our next question is from Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed. Thank you so much. I know you don't disclose separate operating profit or EBITDA margins for the different divisions, but were Oxford's adjusted EBITDA, were they lower than APEX? Ed? Hey, Gary. Or I'm sorry, Jeff. One thing you can do is you can look at the numbers that we put out when we isolate Oxford because we gave EBITDA for Oxford, so you can kind of back into the numbers. But generally, yes. Oxford's EBITDA margins, operating margins, actually, adjusted EBITDA margins were lower than the other commercial units. Okay. That's really helpful. In terms of net proceeds, I know you talked about making future acquisitions. Is share repurchases potentially in the mix as well? I think, Jeff, our thoughts on capital allocation going forward remain the same. I mean, we would always tell you that, based on our track record, we believe that our investments with Shareholder Capital and M&A represent the highest return. Beyond that, if we do not have something in the near term at the whip of the cup, I mean, we have an open authorization to repurchase stock, and so we are kind of ready to do that. I will tell you today that the pipeline is full and active, and we are working many opportunities. I think you can look for more of the same out of us. Okay. I know you went to market somewhat separately between Oxford and APEX, but is there any overlap? For example, are you serving any APEX clients with Oxford services that could impact the APEX segment? No. Nothing material. Okay. Fantastic. Thanks again. Thank you. Our next question is from Tobey Sommer with Truist. Please proceed. Thank you. I think you laid out the rationale for the divestiture quite well. I wanted to ask about the existing continuing operations having exhibiting strength, as your quarterly update describes. Could you talk to us a little bit more about a phenomenon that's come up in the past in the conversation in which you talked about the pandemic and work from home and all the repercussions of that as spurring a higher level of IT investment in some of your key industry verticals and what that could mean for sort of a medium-term growth rate for your markets? Look, Toby, I can't speak too much about the quarter specifically as it relates to the industry because we didn't result that. I will tell you that we continue to see the things we've said in the past about what's going on with our clients around digital transformation, our positioning to help them with the future of work, how the future of work is changing, and how our model is going to be favored in all that. I think we continue to see that there's good strength behind that. When we get to the end of the quarter, we'll be able to talk about what we're seeing industry by industry and talk to Rand about examples of that. I would just say, for now, the comments we've made in the past, I mean, we're pleased to see they continue to play out inside our business. Thanks. I have one follow-up. On the federal side, in the current administration, at least, the budget proposal weighted spending growth on the civil side of the federal government and sort of just keeping up with inflation on the defense side. Are you comfortable and happy with the company's exposure to the civil side, or does that represent an area of focus for expansion? Yeah. Look, I think we're very happy with our position both on the defense side and the civil. There are places in both of those markets that we would like to be bigger, and some of that's just going to be organically accomplished in other ways. M&A provides the right pathway to make that happen. Even on the defense side, I would go back to point you back to what we said at the end of the quarter, the first quarter, that we are in the fast current, if you will. Money is being allocated into those areas around the services that we provide at a heavier rate than just increase for inflation. We still feel very well positioned, and things are getting increased budget from both sides of the fence. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Kevin McVeigh with Credit Suisse. Please proceed. Hey. Let me add my congratulations as well. Hey, Ed, can you give us a sense of how long you were engaged on the sale of Oxford? Was it something you decided? How long was the process? Yeah. Kevin, I won't speak specifically about the length of time, but it was Oxford, not APEX. Oxford. I apologize. I apologize. Yeah. No problem. Look, we're kind of in a routine, both thinking about the marketplace and what the needs of our clients are, thinking about our business units and how we're positioned to seize that opportunity and where we need to fill in with M&A and also what units may not fit for the future. That's an annual cycle for us. We've been thinking about this for a period of time. I think just looking for the right moment in time to make a strike here, both on the divestiture and to be ready for M&A. This is that time. Those things have come together here. While we're happy to have this strategic action with Oxford and prepare ourselves for the future, we're also very excited about pipeline. I think this was the right time for us. That makes sense. I guess I don't know if you'll comment or not, but obviously, there's going to be some acquisitions, but are you done on the dispositions? Are you still evaluating kind of the core set of assets you have? To the extent you can comment on that at all? Yeah. I can't really comment about any one unit, but I think our actions kind of speak to you for what it's worth. We're very pleased with how we're positioned to go to market here for the future and excited about adding to those capabilities from the M&A side. I'll just leave it there. That's helpful. Just a couple of things on N4, if I could. Is that purely consulting, or was there a blend of staffing as well? If you bring that into the folder, are you going to be able to source some of the 10 candidates into that model? Is there any client overlap already, or do you see an opportunity maybe to scale the revenue as you bring it into the Amazon fold? Yeah. Great question. With Shirley Consulting, it's deep domain expertise in healthcare and ERP for healthcare providers as well as certain areas of manufacturing. We definitely see the opportunity to pull those consulting capabilities across our current APEX account set. That is really what the name of the game is here. We are very pleased with the revenue opportunities we think on a going forward basis, both what they brought in with their practice and what we can do together. Congratulations. Thank you. Our next question is from Mark Marcon with Baird. Please proceed. Hey. Good Good morning. Ted and Ed, and nice to see this move. I'm wondering, can you talk a little bit more about the process with regards to your interactions with Avaap? And how did that process come about? Were you specifically interested in the ERP unit, or did you have broader conversations about some of their other solution areas? How easy was it for them to split that out? How emblematic is this transaction going to be relative to some of the future ones that you might end up pursuing? Yeah. Thanks for the question, Mark. I mean, I think this is very emblematic of the things that we're looking to do in the future, just to hit the last one first. We are, while they bring a wonderful capability around N4, which is a leading ERP solution for healthcare providers, we're even more impressed with their domain expertise in many different areas. I think we've got a real opportunity here to deploy that against one of APEX's biggest industry verticals. Obviously, when we're developing pipeline opportunities in the marketplace for M&A, we have a targeted shopping list. It kind of starts with how robust the consultative capabilities are, how deep is the domain expertise, and how does that fit with our account portfolio inside of APEX and our need to within those key industry verticals. That's really the name of the game here. We're pleased to plug this hole and have this opportunity on the healthcare industry side. We look to continue to fill in the gaps here as we go. Right. Was this something that there was a book out on, and you pursued it, or did you know about this ahead of time in kind of a single bid kind of situation? I will not speak to this individually. Mark, you see these come together both ways. We are both developing proprietary opportunities based on players we see in the market who we may partner with or otherwise be known to us. Also, we are reacting to bank opportunities. I would not say we are over-indexed in one or the other. They come about both ways, and we react to them as they come. Great. Would their margins be a little bit higher than what the overall APEX margins would be? I would say not to be too specific on this one, but I mean, we talked to you about the margins within our consulting services unit being higher than the company average. And you can assume that as we're making acquisitions here, businesses in this area, that they all come both accretive to growth, to gross margins, and to our EBITDA margins overall. Great. I mean, in terms of thinking about just the cadence with regards to future M&A, it seems like this is a really good time now that you've got the capital freed up and you have been identifying opportunities. In general, just broadly speaking, probably more likely sooner rather than later, no? I think that it's opportunistic, Mark. I wouldn't say that. I mean, I think that's kind of a line of my prior comments about how active the M&A pipeline is for us right now. I won't comment on how soon that might be. Obviously, we're leaning in here. We're going to continue the past year with a defined shopping list, if you will, that we feel are the right strategic opportunities for our business overall, both in commercial and government. We're going to pursue those here and bring the value that we feel this side of the business brings to the overall firm. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back to Ted Hanson for closing comments. Great. Operator, thank you for taking the time today and everyone's continued interest in ASGN. We look forward to speaking with you about Q2 in more detail on July 28. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you very much for your participation and have a great day.