Welcome to the FTI Consulting First Quarter of 2026 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need any assistance today, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw a question, please press star then two. Please also note that this event is being recorded today. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mollie Hawkes, head of investor relations. Please go ahead. Good morning. Welcome to the FTI Consulting Conference Call to discuss the company's first quarter 2026 earnings results as reported this morning. Management will begin with formal remarks, after which they will take your questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, including the company's outlook and expectations for the full year of 2026 based on management's current beliefs and expectations. These forward-looking statements involve many risks and uncertainties, assumptions and estimates, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. For a discussion of risks and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ from those contemplated by forward-looking statements, investors should review the safe harbor statement in the earnings press release issued this morning, a copy of which is available on our website at www.fticonsulting.com, as well as other disclosures under the headings of Risk Factors and Forward-Looking Information in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2025, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and in our other filings with the SEC. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this earnings call and will not be updated. FTI Consulting assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. During the call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. A discussion of any non-GAAP financial measures addressed on this call and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the press release and the accompanying financial tables that we issued this morning. Lastly, there are two items that have been posted to the investor relations section of our website for your reference. These include a quarterly earnings presentation and an Excel and PDF of our historical, financial, and operating data, which have been updated to include our first quarter 2026 results. These formalities out of the way, I'm joined today by Steve Gunby, our CEO and Chairman, and Paul Linton, our Interim Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer. At this time, I will turn the call over to our CEO and Chairman, Steve Gunby. Thank you, Mollie. Welcome, everybody, and thank you all for joining us today. As you may have seen this morning, we reported once again solid results for the quarter. I will talk to those results in a moment briefly, and then Paul, of course, will talk to them somewhat more extensively. With your permission today, I'd like to start discussion, however, in a somewhat different place. Typically, in these sessions, I start with some perspective on the quarter or on the last few quarters, and then try to zoom out from those to see if I can draw from them any lessons as to why we've been successful, and then some lessons about the future, why typically, I at least continue to believe that that experience suggests an extraordinarily bright future. Today, let me reverse that order, drawing on some of what we just experienced at our all SMD meeting a couple weeks ago, and see if I can use that experience to perhaps share some perspective on this year and on this quarter. We finished that all SMD meeting just a few days ago. At every one of these meetings, so many people come up to me or others after the meeting and say just how terrific a meeting they felt it was. In terms of the work that got done, but I think for most people, even more powerfully, in terms of the sense of pride, sense of excitement, a sense of conviction about the future of the company that people emerge from those meetings with. That's been true at prior meetings. After this one, my ExCo colleagues and I were struck by just how many people came up to us and shared those thoughts and just how deeply they seem to be feeling them. I thought I might share a little bit about that, why that might be, and why it is that after such a meeting like this, that so many people leave with a conviction about the magnitude of the opportunities yet in front of this company, and the conviction that this company is still so much closer to the beginning of the powerful journey we're on than the end. Why was this meeting so good? I think actually part of the power of the meeting had nothing to do with the meeting itself. It had to do with just how pumped up so many people were coming into the meeting. Pumped up, particularly about what they had each individually and collectively accomplished over the prior 18 months. Paul and I today will talk about all the stuff we still have to do because there's always stuff to do. We have a long way to go on Compass Lexecon. This quarter, we did also had some of the normal blips. For example, FLC didn't quite perform as we intended. Our tax rate was a little higher than expected. We had some higher SG&A expenses and so forth. If you go back 18 months, you might just recall just how many of our businesses were facing truly tough challenges exiting 2024 and heading into 2025. If you remember, CorpFin had been down two quarters in a row. FLC was facing fundamental uncertainty because of tremendous new regulatory changes. Tech was facing a major second request headwind. Strategic Communications was coming off probably the most challenging 18 months it had faced in a while. People coming into this meeting in Orlando knew that notwithstanding those multitudes of headwinds, in the end, they, we had managed to deliver a record level of performance as a company in 2025 as a whole and in the bulk of our businesses. We ended the year with tremendous momentum in most of our businesses. The fact that we had gotten through 2025 and turned every business, Compass Lexecon, Compass Lexecon aside, but every other business back onto its long-term tremendously positive trajectory created, I believe, a powerful sense of pride, motivation, and importantly, confidence that people brought into the meeting, even if they credited Mollie and others for creating it in the meeting. That was one cause. I do think those feelings were powerfully reinforced by some of the stories told in the meeting. The stories of the actions and activities in 2024 and 2025 that led to those results, but also some of the powerful multi year success stories that were brought to life once again in the meeting. Those stories at an aggregate level were powerful, and they are powerful. I can't talk about all of them, but an example is Michael Eisenband talking about the fact that CorpFin today is 3 x the size it was eight years ago. Or perhaps even more powerfully, he and others talking about how folks in the room made that happen. The extension of our restructuring practice around the world, the doubling down of the restructuring practice in the U.S. and U.K., even though it had always been strong, the extension into new businesses and transactions and transformation, or analogous stories about the people in this room in other segments or geographies. For example, Sophie talking about all the efforts that took Technology from a struggling business that won to one that is in the face of very challenging market conditions, is continuing to win, and at least in my measure, is growing faster than any other competitor. I think people came in really motivated, but that motivation got tremendous reinforcement by plenary presentations, but also, I think at least as powerfully, by sharing stories with colleagues about the actions that each person had taken, the actions that led to those overall results embedded in the plenary presentations. It suggested it wasn't magic wands that somebody waved. It wasn't markets that gave us those results. It was what people in that room individually and collectively had done that got us to where we are. The third reason that people highlighted, and actually I think probably highlighted more than the first two as motivating, was just the group of the people in the room. Somebody said to me, "You know, you look around and it's just a group you are proud to be associated with. Group of people, some of whom I've known for a while and I've loved working with. You also see this terrific group of promotions and these people who you've managed to attract." At the end of the opening speech, we asked people to think back to the all SMD meeting we had at the end of 2018, and asked everyone in the room who had been in that room in 2018 from a bunch of geographies to stand. We asked anybody from Italy who was in the room today and had been there in 2018 to stand, as well as the Nordics and Amsterdam and the Middle East. We started with that group. zero people stood. We asked people from Germany to join them, and a few folks stood. As did a few more when we went through the rest of the continent of Europe and the continent of Australia and Asia and Latin America. In the aggregate, in a room of 700 people, there were a few handfuls of people standing. We asked everybody from those markets today to stand, and over 200 people got up. We did a similar exercise for the U.S. and U.K., and of course, we had powerful position in the U.S. and the U.K. in 2018. When we had the entire group of SMDs in the U.S. and U.K. today, it was double the ones that had been there in 2018. We talked about that, the transformation of our capabilities represented by those changes in terms of geography, of our position in those geographies. We also talked about the fact that we could do the same exercise by segment or practice and see the power of the growth of our capabilities in areas like cyber or transactions or aviation or financial crimes investigations. That stand-up exercise triggered tremendous, terrific capability conversations. I think actually even more powerful for most of us was at the end of three days when people had working sessions with the folks who stood. Working sessions with longtime colleagues, but also new colleagues, which allowed in a much more tangible sense, not just seeing people stand in the room, but in a tangible sense of just how much capability we have in this firm and how much capability we continue to add to this firm. So my speculation is the reason we got that feedback at the end of the meeting is a combination of those. People brought in pride and conviction to the meeting because what they had accomplished over the prior 18- 24 months. That pride was reinforced by the stories they heard, but also the stories they shared about the number of places around the world where our teams are building businesses, creating adjacencies, reinforcing core positions, turning around difficult positions. That in turn was reinforced by the power that always comes from deep connection with longtime colleagues you respect, people who have inspired confidence for extended periods of time, as well as exposure to fabulous new colleagues who are bringing new expertise and new energy. All of that energy ended up getting devoted into work sessions, not only celebrating where we're great today, but importantly, confidence and conviction as to where we can take this business further. I think not surprisingly, people came out of a meeting like that finding myriad opportunities in every practice and every geography, which I think left a lot of people in a position that I've been in for a while, which is the sense of the extraordinary opportunity yet in front of us and feeling incredibly strongly the company is much closer to the beginning of our journey than the end. Let me turn back to the quarter. I think our performance this quarter, the forecast we have for this year are simply consistent with this story. It is a story of a firm that I believe has proven that our essential DNA is a simple one, to support great professionals, to help them build businesses that they are passionate about to build. A firm that understands that if we do that, if we find those professionals, support them in their ambitions, though there will be zigs and zags, if we do that, we ultimately control our destiny. We grow market share, we support clients more fully, and we deliver for you, our shareholders. This quarter is consistent with that story. Like all quarters, it doesn't mean we didn't have some zags. Our FLC business, which has been performing incredibly this last while, had a short-term zag this quarter. It doesn't mean that anybody in FLC is less bullish about its future or the capabilities we've built, the aspirations we have, or the future we believe we can target. Our tax rate happened to be higher than we expected this quarter. We had some SG&A expenses that exceeded our expectations. These are things we have to look at and can address. We do have one longer-term issue that we've been talking about and that we are still working through, which is Compass Lexecon. Compass Lexecon's performance was in line with where we thought it was gonna be this quarter, that certainly leaves us with multi quarters of work yet to do. Of course, that has also always been true for this company in many prior years. We have not always had every business every year set up exactly to soar. This year, we have work to do in Compass Lexecon, and we are doing that work. We have headwinds, particularly in econ, in the face of those headwinds, I hope you saw we grew close to double-digit revenue this quarter. I hope you saw that Strategic Communications's delivered yet another record quarter, and Corporate Fin delivered double-digit revenue growth year-over-year in all three of its sub-businesses. Tech came out of the other side of the headwinds it faced last year, and the non-Compass Lexecon team in Econ is having another great quarters. Paul will go through the quarter in more detail. To me, what is more powerful than the fact that we delivered yet another solid quarter, and we believe we're on track for the year, is that in the context of the last eight years, eight years in which we've had some solid quarters, some extraordinary quarters, and some quarters that weren't so good, all of which added up, however, to an incredible run of growth in multiple geographies and multiple segments around the world, building a stronger, more capable group of people with a set of leaders with a conviction of where they can take us, and putting us on a solidly, with zigzags, but solidly upward sloping set of lines. My view is that if we continue to invest in the ways we know behind great people with ambition and the sort of conviction and drive and energy that was demonstrated at this meeting, people who take responsibility for turning that into results, this firm is and will be much closer to the beginning of this journey than the end. With, Paul, let me turn this over to you. Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everybody. In my prepared remarks, I will take you through our company wide and segment results for the quarter. First quarter of 2026 revenues of $983.3 million increased $85.1 million or 9.5% compared to the first quarter of 2025. The increase was primarily driven by revenue growth in our Corporate Finance, Strategic Communications, and Technology segments, though partially offset by a revenue decline in our Economic Consulting segment. Excluding an estimated positive impact of FX, revenues increased $60.8 million or 6.8% compared to the prior year quarter. Net income was $57.6 million compared to $61.8 million in the prior year quarter. The decrease was primarily due to higher direct costs and SG&A expenses, which included legal settlement in the prior year quarter, as well as an increase in interest expense and a higher effective tax rate compared to the prior year quarter, which more than offset the increase in revenue. Direct costs of $676.5 million compared to $608.9 million in the prior year quarter, primarily due to higher compensation expenses, which included an increase in variable compensation, salaries, and forgivable loan amortization compared to Q1 2025. SG&A of $222.3 million or 22.6% of revenues increased $38 million from $184.3 million or 20.5% of revenues in the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily due to higher legal expenses this quarter as compared to Q1 of 2025, which included the benefit from legal settlements that did not recur in Q1 of 2026, as well as higher compensation and T&E expenses. Excluding an estimated negative impact of FX, SG&A increased approximately $32.4 million compared to the prior year quarter. First quarter 2026 adjusted EBITDA of $96.8 million or 9.8% of revenues compared to $116.2 million or 12.8% of revenues in the prior year quarter. Our first quarter 2026 effective tax rate of 26.6% compared to 23.3% in the prior year quarter, primarily due to a less favorable tax benefit related to share-based compensation as fewer shares vested, as well as an increase in valuation allowance recorded against current period losses compared to the prior year quarter. While our tax rate this quarter of 26.6% was higher than expected, we continue to expect our full year tax rate to be between 22%- 24%. Weighted average shares outstanding or WASO for Q1 of 30.3 million shares compared to 35.5 million shares in the prior year quarter. A 14.6% decrease. Earnings per share of $1.90 compared to $1.74 in the prior year quarter. As a reminder, in Q1 2025, our EPS included a $25.3 million special charge related to severance and other employee related costs, which reduced GAAP EPS by $0.55. Excluding the $0.55 Q1 2025 special charge, adjusted EPS was $2.29 in Q1 2025. Billable headcount increased by 1.1%, with growth in our CorpFin and FLC segments being partially offset by declines in Strategic Communications, Econ, and Tech. Non billable headcount decreased by 0.4% compared to the prior year quarter. Now turning to performance at the segment level. In Corporate Finance, revenues of $409.5 million increased 19.2%, primarily due to higher demand and realized bill rate in turnaround and restructuring, which grew 19%, transactions which grew 18%, and transformation which grew 20% compared to the prior year quarter. Excluding an estimated positive impact of FX, revenues increased 16.7%. In turnaround and restructuring, revenue growth was driven by roles in some of the largest bankruptcies globally, from Spirit Airlines to Saks in the U.S., to Prax Oil Refinery in the U.K. and Azul Airlines in Brazil. Notably in transactions, our engagements have expanded in size and scope as we continue to bring more of our services to clients across the deal lifecycle. In addition to working for PE backed clients, we are working on some of the largest mergers, integrations, and carve-outs in the market, including Omnicom's merger with IPG, Skyworks Solutions merger with Qorvo, and Lumen sale of their fiber to home business to AT&T, among many other brand-building cases. In transformation, our performance this quarter exceeded our expectations. In fact, the number of million plus engagements nearly doubled compared to Q1 2025. We continue to win our share of end-to-end cost takeout, supply chain, and operational efficiency mandates in key industries where our experts bring deep real-world expertise such as healthcare, industrials, communication services, and financial services. Segment operating income of $85.2 million compared to $41 million in the prior year quarter. Adjusted segment EBITDA of $88.7 million or 21.6% of segment revenues compared to $55.9 million or 16.3% of segment revenues in the prior year quarter. The increase in adjusted segment EBITDA was primarily due to higher revenues, which was partially offset by higher compensation. Sequentially, Corporate Finance revenues decreased 3.2%, primarily due to lower success fees and lower passthrough revenues. Adjusted segment EBITDA increased $8.5 million, primarily due to lower compensation. Turning to FLC. Revenues of $192.9 million increased 1.2% due to higher realized bill rate for risk investigation and construction solution services, which was partially offset by lower demand for dispute advisory services. Excluding an estimated positive impact of FX, revenues decreased by 0.9%. Segment operating income of $23.1 million compared to $30.1 million in the prior year quarter. Adjusted segment EBITDA of $25.3 million, or 13.1% of segment revenues compared to $37.5 million or 19.7% of segment revenues in the prior year quarter. The decrease in adjusted segment EBITDA was primarily due to higher compensation and SG&A expenses, which included an increase in hiring-related expenses and an increase in bad debt. Sequentially, FLC revenues were flat and adjusted segment EBITDA increased by $1.4 million, primarily due to lower compensation expenses, which was partially offset by an increase in hiring-related costs. In general, disruptions the world is facing increases the need for our expertise, from national security and cyber threats to AI-related risk and compliance to shifting geopolitical issues, among others. That, of course, does not play in our favor every quarter, and this quarter FLC underperformed our expectations. Some of this underperformance is timing-driven, as there are always quarter-to-quarter volatility in our business. As we've discussed during the last several calls, our team is supporting complex headline and brand-building matters, but those engagements are often large and lumpy, with starts and stops that are often driven by factors that are outside of our control. In Economic Consulting, revenues of $175.6 million decreased 2.3%, primarily due to lower demand for antitrust services, which was partially offset by higher demand for financial economic services and higher realized bill rates. Excluding an estimated positive impact of FX, revenues decreased 5.7%. Segment operating loss of $7.3 million compared to segment operating income of $12.1 million in the prior year quarter. Adjusted segment EBITDA was a loss of $5.9 million, compared to $14.4 million or 8% of segment revenues in the prior year quarter. The decrease in adjusted segment EBITDA was primarily due to higher compensations, largely related to the increase in forgivable loan amortization and lower bills. Sequentially, Economic Consulting's revenues were potentially flat, and adjusted segment EBITDA decreased $6.9 million, primarily due to higher compensation expenses, which was partially offset by lower bad debt. We have, as expected, made some good progress over the past months in Europe in particular, and we expect that to begin to show up in the P&L as this year goes on. Although we've added terrific talent to our complex antitrust business in North America, we're just beginning to rebuild that revenue base. Technology's revenues of $102.3 million increased 5.3%, primarily due to higher demand for litigation and information governance, privacy and security services, which was partially offset by lower demand for investigations and M&A related second request services. Excluding an estimated positive impact of FX, revenues increased 2.8%. Higher demand for litigation was largely driven by clients in the healthcare, media, and technology industries, and demand for information governance, privacy, and security services was driven by a large privacy breach. Look, the complexity of data is compounding. Our Technology business combines domain experts, operators, attorneys, and investigators with deep technical experts who have worked with artificial intelligence for over a decade to solve their clients' most complex, high-stakes issues at the intersection of law and regulation. This combination of experience and expertise has long been a core differentiator for our Technology business, that's why the world's leading AI companies are turning to us for their most complex matters, from IP and copyright to privacy, security, and data monitoring, to building custom defensible tools for specific client uses and workflows based on our expertise collecting and analyzing massive scale AI system data from activity logs to RAG databases. Segment operating income was $7.7 million, compared to $6.6 million in the prior year quarter. Adjusted segment EBITDA of $11.8 million or 11.6% of segment revenues, compared to $11.6 million or 11.9% of segment revenues in the prior year quarter. The increase in adjusted segment EBITDA was primarily due to higher revenues, which was partially offset by an increase in compensation. Sequentially, Technology revenues increased 3.3%, primarily due to demand for information governance, privacy, and security services, which was partially offset by lower demand for investigation services. Adjusted segment EBITDA decreased $3 million sequentially, primarily due to higher compensation, which more than offset the increase in revenues. Strategic Communications record revenues of $103 million increased 18.4%, primarily due to higher demand for corporate reputation, public affairs, and financial communication services. Excluding an estimated positive impact of FX, revenues increased 14.5%. Worth noting, Strategic Communications's continued powerful results reflect the strength of our multi-year investments to build out our higher-margin, event-driven offerings in areas such as crisis, cyber, transactions, and activism, as well as frequently teaming with the other segments to address complex client issues in our largest global cases. Segment operating income of $20.8 million compared to $8.7 million in the prior year quarter. Record adjusted segment EBITDA of $21.9 million or 21.3% of segment revenues compared to $12.9 million or 14.8% of segment revenues in the prior quarter. The increase in adjusted segment EBITDA was primarily due to higher revenues, which was partially offset by an increase in compensation expenses, largely related to variable compensation. Sequentially, Strategic Communications revenues were up 3.6%, primarily due to higher demand for financial communications and public affairs services. Adjusted segment EBITDA increased 15% sequentially, primarily due to higher revenue. Let me now discuss a few cash flow and balance sheet items. As is typical, we pay the bulk of our annual bonuses in the first quarter. Net cash used in operating activities of $310 million compared to $465.2 million used in the prior year quarter. The year-over-year decrease in net cash used in operating activities was primarily due to a decline in forgivable loan issuances, higher cash collections, and lower income tax payment, which was partially offset by an increase in compensation payment. During the quarter, we repurchased 787,098 shares at an average price per share of $161.11 for a total cost of $126.8 million. As of March 31st, 2026, approximately $354.9 million remained available for common stock repurchases under the company's stock repurchase program. Total debt, net of cash, of $556.7 million at March 31, 2026 compared to $8.9 million as of March 31st, 2025, and $99.9 million at December 31st, 2025. A sequential increase in total debt, net of cash, was primarily due to annual bonus payments and share repurchases. Turning to our outlook. First, let me remind you of the guidance ranges for 2026 that we provided in February. Revenues of between $3.94 billion and $4.1 billion. EPS of between $8.90 and $9.60. Based on our solid Q1 performance, we are maintaining our guidance ranges, which incorporates the following considerations. First, in our Compass Lexecon business, though we believe our adjusted segment EBITDA in Economic Consulting has hit its low point this quarter, as Steve said, we have multiple quarters of work ahead to get the P&L back to the levels we are happy with. Second, we're an event-driven business, therefore our results can be lumpy. As mentioned, we had several jobs in FLC that rolled off during the quarter or started later than expected. We have some large jobs rolling off in other segments where our work is event-driven. As mentioned previously, our ability to win the largest headline making jobs in the market reflects the continued power of our platform and the relevance of our people. Third, the M&A market has had a strong start to the year in terms of deal volume and mega deals. We saw solid demand for our businesses that support M&A related activity in CorpFin, Econ, Tech, and Strategic Communications. We can never be certain how activity will continue through the remainder of the year, particularly amid continued market uncertainties. Fourth, we continue to invest in talent. In 2025, we announced 85 senior hires. In 2026, we plan to add more senior professionals where we see the right opportunities. We have announced 29 SMD and affiliate hires year to date in key geographies such as Australia and the Middle East, where we are benefiting from competitive disruptions as well as in key adjacencies such as transactions, transformation, public affairs, cybersecurity, data privacy, and AI. We also intend to build teams around these leaders. In the second half of the year, we expect to increase senior hiring in parts of the business that lagged in hiring in 2025. Fifth, we now expect SG&A expenses for 2026 to be approximately $60 million higher than 2025. The increase is largely due to higher legal and compensation expenses. As a reminder, as Steve mentioned, we held our all SMD meeting in April. We expect Q2 2026 to be the high point for SG&A, or approximately $5 million higher than Q1 2026. Before I close, I want to reiterate four key themes that I believe continue to underscore the attractiveness of our business. First, in an increasingly uncertain and disrupted world, our powerful platform and unique set of offerings allow us to deliver impactful results for our clients as they navigate their most significant crises and transformations, from bankruptcies and M&A transactions, investigations and cyber breaches, regardless of business cycles. Second, we continue to attract top talent when the right people are available, regardless of short-term economic impacts, particularly in the backdrop when many competitors are facing major challenges from expensive debt and poor liquidity to heightened client skepticism around the quality of their core offerings. Third, as we continue to hire, our management team remains focused on both growth and utilization. Fourth, our business generates excellent free cash flow, and we have a strong balance sheet that provides us the flexibility to boost shareholder value through organic growth, share buybacks, and acquisitions when we see the right ones. Before we open up the call for your questions, I want to take one more opportunity to welcome our new Chief Financial Officer, Angela Nam, who will join us on May first. We're looking forward to introducing Angela on our next earnings call in July. With that, let's open up the call for your questions. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing those keys. To withdraw a question for any reason, please press star, then two. At this time, we will take our first question, which will come from Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Appreciate you taking my questions. The first one is just kind of on the macro environment. A lot of helpful color on the puts and takes at the segment level. I just wanted to ask kind of at a big picture level, you know, CFR, you saw really good growth on both the restructuring side and the transaction side. How feasible is it, whether it's over the course of this year or even multiple years, for both of those businesses to grow at such strong rates simultaneously? Typically, you'd expect a little bit of, you know, conflict between a restructuring environment or a strong restructuring environment and a strong M&A environment. Just kind of interested in, you know, whether or not you see those conflicting in the coming quarters and years. Yeah, let me take a crack at that. Paul, you probably have views on that too, if you wanna add. Look, I would say, there's a couple different forces going on there. There's the market forces that, you know, which I think you're right. You know, markets that tend to support lots of M&A will often not be markets that are big restructuring markets. You have some macroeconomic forces that have historically suggested that these don't all go aligned. I think the other thing that goes on here is that we've actually done our teams have done a fabulous job of adding talent and expanding the businesses. These are not just U.S. businesses today. They're global businesses where we have powerful positions overseas, we continue to be attracting talent. Some of what you see here is the market forces coming coalescing in an unusual way and all supportive. I think some of it has to do with actually us gaining share, particularly in transactions and transformation. Look, that just depends on us doing the right things and the right talent coming available, and us being bold enough to jump on that talent when it's available. I think one of them says they're inconsistent, they shouldn't all grow together. The other one says, if we do the right things, we can defy those market realities a bit. Does that help, Andrew? Yeah, no, that's helpful. Appreciate the color. Then for my follow-up on kind of segment margins, I think both FLC and Strategic Communications, kind of their first quarter results were a decent bit different than what we've seen over the past several quarters. Just kind of curious how we should think about those two segments' margins. With FLC more specifically, you know, last year was a really good year for profitability. Understand that the top line's a little bit lumpy, but is there a margin profile that you think is, you know, quote unquote, "normal" for this business that we should kind of gear our models to? Thank you. Yeah. I don't think we're gonna give any specific guidance around margins, but maybe I can help a little bit with FLC. I mean, we have been, you know, adding talent in FLC, and particularly over the last little while, a lot of the talent we've added has been at the top, you know, in terms of SMD. That investment in building out our expert model, which will allow us to continue to, you know, drive the revenue in some of these higher margin services, we feel is kind of the right investment for the business. There's also, you know, some one-time stuff that we talked about earlier in the call that drove, you know, some margin to be a little bit lower than our expectations. I think in the long term, we feel pretty confident in the business. Strategic Communications, to the point, has had a fabulous quarter and, you know, we never project people to take the best quarter and then multiply it, and multiply it and extend it forever. Let me say this, I think though you never wanna take a quarter where everything's on fire and just make that the normal quarter, I will say there's stuff underlying in Strategic Communications that is powerful going on. There's been a move over now a number of years, but that starts to show up in the numbers towards much more of a highest value part of its business, crisis, transformation, cyber deals, so forth. That, that is a, it's a lumpier business, but it's of course a crisis business, which tends to be a higher margin business for us. The other thing is, I think that's a business that has adjusted its leverage ratio in taking account AI. You know, the high end of that business, the core advisory business is like the rest of our business where crisis is why people are hiring us. We used to need a lot of people to help summarize things like EU regulations. You need fewer of those. Some of the leverage ratios have changed. Look, I think that business is headed in a great trajectory, but you never wanna take the quarter where, I mean, even Paul sounded rapturous about the numbers. You know, you never wanna take that and just say, "Oh, that's the new normal." Does that help, Andrew? Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you very much. Our next question will come from James Yaro with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Good morning, and thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just starting first on restructuring, I just wanted to touch a little bit more on that and dig in a little bit on some of the things you've already alluded to. I'd love to just get your perspective on what, you know, the disruptions in private credit and software, and obviously the two are related, but basically the nexus of those two things means for the business. I think a number of investment banks out there have talked about the liability management opportunity potentially over time. Obviously, that's not where your restructuring business is lies. And so just love to get your perspective on whether private credit and software could have a positive impact or impulse on your restructuring business. You want me to take that? You wanna take it? Okay. Look, I think, we have good relationships with private credit. You know, look, our business is helping companies that have challenges, and private credit in general tends to be companies that lend money to more risky, more venturesome activity. They're taking risk, when things get stressed, that's where we are the strongest, okay? I would say that has not been the major driver of our growth so far. We have very good relationships there, we have also relationships that are important, not just in CorpFin, but in FLC and investigating. You know, some of these are very covenant-light loans, therefore covenant-light loans on average have more susceptibility to misstatement or frauds and so forth. We have an FLC business that specializes in fraud investigation. I would say that, you know, depending on how that market evolves, it could be a terrific source of revenue growth for us. I think our private equity clients are hoping it's not, that the world is calm going forward. We are well-positioned if it is. You're right, we don't do liability management exercises. As you know, James, not every liability management exercise works out. The number of the bankruptcies we're working on now were liability management exercises a couple years ago. Look, we know these clients well. We think they're valuable clients. We stay close to them, we stand ready to serve if and when they need us. I think if they need us, we will get significant revenue from them. Does that help, James? Super helpful, as always. Maybe just zooming out on a somewhat related topic, but Steve, I'd just love to get your perspective on what you think are the businesses that could be most impacted by the disruptions we're seeing, whether it's AI, software, private credit, and the global conflict, and perhaps in which ways. You talking about our end customers, or are you talking about our businesses? I guess your business yes, your business. Let me think about that. You know. Well, sorry, Steve, let me just clarify the point. I just wanna clarify the point. My apologies. That was imprecise of me. Just to clarify, how do you think those large items could impact your end customers and therefore drive more business for you? Yeah. Look, I think, I think it's true for all of our businesses. I mean, our business, you know, and maybe when we acquired all these businesses, you know, 15 years ago, or 20 years ago now, you know, they were somewhat different. I mean, maybe our Strategic Communications people wrote annual reports at that point in time. I mean, at this point, so many of our businesses really are businesses that designed to serve companies at their biggest times of change and potential disruption in the marketplace or transformations they're in. To the extent the world is more disruptive or in response to anticipate disruption, people are transforming their businesses with greater rapidity and more frequently, it's a boon to the businesses. It's hard for me to pick favorite children out of that because you can see that in Strategic Communications right now. You can see that in Restructuring right now. All of those things lead to Litigation, which, we're expert witnesses and testifier. Sometimes people misrepresent things, and that leads to fraud. I'm pretty bullish about our position to help companies. As I think I said once, if the world were the kind of world that we try to describe to our two-year-olds, you know, wonderful world, everybody gets along. You're trying to tell your two-year-old that 'cause he or she is beating up on the four-year-old. You know, a peaceful world where everybody's getting along, there's no litigation, there's no crisis, and the world isn't changing, that's not what we're set up to serve. To the extent the world has other aspects, it's a pretty big driver for us. Does that respond, James? Yep, yep. Extremely helpful. Last one just for you both. Just as you think about hiring, you talked about accelerating hiring towards the back half of this year. You also highlighted a number of substantial number of recent senior hires. I just would love to get your perspective on, you know, what gives you the confidence or the ability to accelerate the hiring so substantially. Is it, you know, greater disruption, like even greater disruptions among the firms from which you hire, or just even more investment on your side, or maybe a combination of both? Yeah. Let me distinguish between the junior hires and the senior hires. The junior hires we're forecasting for the second half of the year is to catch up because we have been so fortunate in the number of senior hires that we've been bringing on, that our ratios in a number of our businesses are below where we've historically been, okay? I think the junior hires in the second half of the year is not based on some forecast of disruption in the world. It's we got senior hires, we have to bring in some people below them. The senior hires is really a supply side driven thing. You know, I'll give you an example of Australia. At one point in Australia, we had several good leaders down there. They couldn't attract anybody. We were not number one or two in any market position. Nobody believed the global network was worth anything. We had really good people trying to recruit people, nobody would come. It just transformed itself. I think today we may have more SMDs per capita for GDP, whatever, in Australia than anyplace else. What happened is, there was a breakthrough. Some of the number of leading restructuring people came over, and they founded a tremendous platform. We made the global network work. That went around the market. That led to a few additions, you're right, competitors had real missteps. When competitors had real missteps, now we were the destination that everybody wanted to talk to. Didn't mean only us, everybody wanted to talk to. They talked to us, and they talked to the people and said, "Wow, these are people I wanna join." When they join, that gets around the market as well. We've gone from a position where nobody would take our calls 10 years ago or eight years ago. The phone is ringing off the hook, I don't know if we released the exact number of SMDs. Mollie, she's shaking her head, where it's ringing off the hook. I think that's what we bet on, because if we can get those people, maybe we get those people three quarters ahead of where they can bring in revenue or sometimes they have restrictions, it's six quarters before they can bring in a lot of revenue. That, we think, is the single best fuel of long-term growth for us, what we've bet on. What we showed, what people were talking about in this all SMD meeting is why we have driven this. On the senior head count, that's the reason, James. Does that respond? Extremely helpful. Thank you, Steve. Yeah. Maybe I'll just add to that just a little bit. I mean, part of your question was, you know, why do we have the confidence? I'll point you to Strategic Communications and CorpFin. The growth that you saw in Q1 of 2026, those are investments that were made three years ago, two years ago, one year ago that enabled. Now, some of it's pricing, but without the heads, that growth is not possible. The performance we're seeing in those business gives us confidence to continue to invest behind those businesses to drive not only restructuring, but transactions and transformation. In Strategic Communications, not just financial communications, but all those other event-driven services such as, you know, cyber. We're gonna continue to invest if we find the right people in the market because that's the way we deliver the growth you saw this quarter. That's super clear. Thank you, Paul. Our next question will come from Tobey Sommer with Truist. Please go ahead. Thank you. We've heard from some other managements at various consulting firms that think that one of the impacts of AI could be a move towards some more fixed pricing structures, as well as potentially changes in ratios of juniors to seniors. You've made a couple of comments on the leverage ratio of juniors to seniors in different directions or hiring a little bit more in the back half to support some of your new senior hires. How do you see fixed price and changing ratios evolving over a little longer stretch of time? Look, it's a good question, Tobey. I think it's one I talk with the managing partners of a number of law firms. I talk with managing partners of other professional services firm. I mean, everybody is thinking through what the pricing dynamics are in an AI environment. I would say, nobody has a perfect answer for any of them, there's lots of experiments going on. You know, in our tech business, where we have a really leading set of offerings AI related, they do require then really smart senior overview to make sure that you don't have the sort of AI hallucination legal issues that some people have. That has reduced some of the junior most work, but it has required some of more senior work, which is billed out at higher rates. How that nets out, I don't know. Right now, I would say, it's probably netting out with a few hours, but us gaining share because we're leading edge, you know? There's all these dynamics that are going on. We're clearly, in some places, looking at fixed price contracts because, you know, we're focused on trying to use AI to make sure we're delivering more value, which typically means the value faster, either broader with deeper sources or faster. That has more value for your clients as well. We're experimenting with multiple models in multiple places. Like on most things on AI, it's moving so fast that you have to be ahead of it, but the immediate impact of those pricing decisions right now is muted. It's just that we're staying on top of it because it's pretty damn critical for the going ahead. We're looking at lots of different versions. Does that help, Tobey? Sure. Yeah, it does. With Economic Consulting, you kind of described a multi quarter path to trying to grow that business and improve profitability. Could you dig into, you know, what the likely path is to improve profitability? 'Cause last year you handed out a bunch of forgivable loans, and that's gonna weigh on things. I'm just wondering, as you placed some of those bets on people who weren't necessarily commercially proven, as some of them do prove themselves and become successful, how do they not get sort of marked to market for that new improved condition? Yeah. I don't think we're really too worried about the people getting, you know, getting commercial with. They're, you know, that's not gonna be a problem for us. You know, we're worried about those who don't get commercial, Tobey. What we did was we bet on some very proven rainmakers, and they've come in and generally been driving revenue. That's pretty straightforward. We have bet on some very leading-edge academics. I think we've talked about the Meta case that came out and, you know, one of the academics from University of Chicago was behavioral economist, was cited by the judge multiple times in that case. You know, those people are incredible assets for the biggest stakes litigation, which is the place where we still win most of the, you know, we're the leading player in that. That's it. Those people are not necessarily automatically economic for us because you sign them up, and then over time, behavioral economics gets accepted in the courts, and then behavioral economics gets used more. We have structures for each of those people. As they get used more, they will get paid more. Their forgivable loan doesn't go up. The economics of them getting used more are positive for us, not worse for us. You know, we made a lot of those bets, and some of them will take quarters to start to prove out, and some of them will take years to start to prove out. They were very intelligent bets. These are bets on people who, you know, some of our people are the leading academic journals in economics, and they have insight into people who are really leading edge which is the foundation of Compass Lexecon. Many of those bets are not near-term payback, and therefore, we're saying it's a multi quarter journey for us. Does that help a little bit, Tobey? It does. If I could ask one follow-up. Is there a path or strategy for you to regain your position in competition consulting domestically? Yeah. Let me just separate out a few things. As we might have imagined, there's like three or four different parts of our business. Our Europe business was not particularly hardly hard hit by the competitive disruption. Last year, it happened to have a tough year, partly because of distraction by some of this. I think they're on their way back to the position, and they are still the leaders, to my knowledge, we are the leaders in global antitrust, based on a terrific team over there. That's starting to show up as this year goes on, I believe. In the U.S., we've always been the leader, I believe, in the finance practice, and I think our revenue year on year has been up on the finance practice, and we still win the largest cases, and I don't think we lost anybody of significance in the competitive disruption. The hit we had was to the U.S. antitrust business, but even there, it's nuanced. The biggest cases in the U.S. when it goes to litigation, people want the depth of expertise we have. We have people like Dennis Carlton, we have the people like I've just mentioned, these affiliates like John List, who were on the Meta case. We have added to that some tremendous people like Doug Bernheim. We, I think, are still the go-to person for the leading litigation-related cases in antitrust in the U.S. I think you can check that out with different sources on that. Where we've gotten hit is surprisingly on the more routine standard merger clearance cases, where we lost some people. The people we have, we still have some very good people, but they tend to be pretty academics and shy, and they're not out there marketing, and we've lost a lot of share on that in the U.S. That's rebuildable. It's not a unique characteristic, but it does require us going out and meeting the attorneys and so forth, and we've got a ways to go on that. I think that's doable. Even that, you know, when people have entrenched relationships, it takes a while to get a crack and then prove yourself. We've got a ways to go particularly in the more routine merger agency-related clearances in the U.S. Does that help, Tobey? Thank you. I wanna say thank you to everyone for attendance. I think since I won't say thank you to Paul for being the CFO yet because we'll wait till Angela's here, and she can thank you. Also because you are not going anyplace, right? You're gonna come back and still be our Chief Transformation Officer. Thank you everybody for your time and your support, and I hope this meeting was helpful. Have a great week. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.