Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Huron Consulting Group's webcast to discuss financial results for the second quarter 2022. At this time, all conference call lines are on a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session for conference call participants, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to point all of you to the disclosure at the end of the company's news release for information about any forward-looking statements that may be made or discussed on this call. The news release is posted on Huron's website. Please review that information along with the filings with the SEC for a disclosure of factors that may impact subjects discussed in this afternoon's webcast. The company will be discussing one or more non-GAAP financial measures. Please look at the earnings release and on Huron's website for all disclosures required by the SEC, including reconciliation of the most comparable GAAP numbers. Now I would like to turn the call over to Jim Roth, Chief Executive Officer of Huron Consulting Group. Mr. Roth, please go ahead. Good afternoon, and welcome to Huron Consulting Group's second quarter 2022 earnings call. With me today are John Kelly, our Chief Financial Officer, and Mark Hussey, our President. In the second quarter, we continued to experience strong demand across all three operating segments, enabling us to achieve 19% revenue growth over the prior year quarter and record quarterly revenues. Our digital capability grew 47% over the prior year quarter, reflecting ongoing strong demand for our technology and analytics offerings across the healthcare, education, and commercial industries. Despite uncertainties in the macro environment, we anticipate continued demand across all of our operating segments for the remainder of the year, leading us to raise and narrow our full-year revenue and earnings guidance. I will now share some additional insight into our second quarter performance. During the second quarter, healthcare segment revenues grew 12% over the prior year quarter. The increase in revenues was driven by strong demand for our health system clients for our digital and revenue cycle managed services offerings. Our digital capability revenues in healthcare grew 53% over the prior year quarter, reflective of the ongoing demand for enhanced technology and analytics offerings across the provider industry. While many hospitals received CARES Act funding to help address the significant losses incurred during the pandemic, that federal support is now largely gone. What remains for many health systems, and particularly academic medical centers, are significantly higher labor costs, ongoing supply chain issues, and more recently, higher debt financing and capital costs. Collectively, these factors are contributing to dramatically lower margins that are not expected to dissipate in the near future. While trying to offset spiraling operational costs, our hospital and health system clients continue to seek new sources of revenue and opportunities to optimize their operations, including through the use of technology and automation. With our broad array of offerings, we are well-positioned to provide strategic, operational, financial, and digital solutions to help them achieve a more sustainable future in this complex healthcare environment. Turning now to the education segment. In the second quarter of 2022, the education segment achieved record quarterly revenues, growing 46% over the prior year quarter. The increase in second quarter revenues was driven by strong, broad-based demand across all of our offerings, highlighted by 44% growth in our education digital capabilities. There are numerous reasons for the continued strong growth of our education business. I will mention a few of the primary drivers. First, there's been a significant increase in demand for our digital solutions, particularly our cloud-based ERP business. The recent demand is partly reflective of delays in starting new implementations stemming from the pandemic. More broadly, it's an indicator that the education industry as a whole is in the early innings of its own digital transformation, including much-needed enhancements to core administrative, student, and CRM systems. Second, our research business has been very strong, reflecting our clients' challenges managing complicated portfolios of clinical and federally funded research. Third, in recent years, we expanded our portfolio of strategy and operations offerings. The investments we've made in talent in this part of our business have enabled us to offer a wider array of services to the education industry at a point in time when traditional university operating models are increasingly at risk. Finally, in our student business, our investments in Whiteboard Higher Education in the fourth quarter of 2021, has enabled us to increase the number of clients for our student solutions and deepen our education industry relationships, achieving the strategic goals we set forth as part of that transaction. To support this strong demand across the segment, we continue to make investments in our people. We are accelerating the hiring of resources, particularly in our digital capability, to support the backlog and anticipated demand for our ERP offerings. We have established a strong training and development program, which, when combined with our deep industry functional and tech, technical expertise, provides us with additional leverage to achieve our strong growth goals in this segment. Turning to the commercial segment, in the second quarter of 2022, commercial segment revenues grew 3% over the prior year quarter, driven by strong demand for our digital offerings across commercial industries. The increase in second quarter revenues from our digital offerings were partly offset by a decrease in demand for our financial advisory offerings, as well as the decrease in revenues associated with our life sciences business, which we sold in the fourth quarter of 2021. Excluding the life sciences business, the commercial segment grew 13% in the second quarter of 2022 over the prior year quarter. Our digital offerings in the commercial markets grew 45% in the second quarter of 2022 as compared to the same period a year ago, further demonstrating the strong demand for our technology and analytics related services across the commercial industries. Demand for our digital offerings in the commercial segment is coming primarily from the financial services and energy and utilities industries, where each industry is facing new competitive entrants as these markets evolve. These market attributes are fueling strong demand for our digital transformation services, and our deep industry expertise has provided us with an increasing competitive advantage. Similar to the investments we are making in education, we continue to invest in hiring and training of resources to support increased demand in the commercial industries. We believe these investments will further position us for accelerated growth in this segment. Finally, let me turn to our outlook for the year. As our press release indicates, we are increasing and narrowing our annual revenue guidance to $1.04 billion-$1.08 billion. We are also raising and narrowing our adjusted EBITDA guidance in a range of 11.5%-12% of revenues and our adjusted diluted earnings per share in a range of $3.15-$3.45. We are raising our revenue and earnings guidance to reflect the current and anticipated demand for our services across all segments. While we are cognizant of the challenges in the U.S. and global economies, we believe that the underlying demand for our offerings will continue to be strong throughout the remainder of the year, and we are encouraged by our growing pipeline and backlog for 2023. Among the key reasons for our belief in continued growth is the extent of the transformation that is taking place in our core industries, where we have deep relationships and a tremendous amount of relevant experience. Our clients are operating in a challenging environment, and amidst those circumstances, they tend to rely on experts in whom they have confidence to help them achieve their desired strategic and financial goals. In turn, we remain focused on delivering on our commitment to sustainable revenue growth and improved profitability. Our first half results demonstrate our ability to achieve our financial objectives. The market remains vibrant for our offerings, and we anticipate demand across industries to continue as our clients' businesses face myriad strategic, operational, and digital challenges and opportunities. Before I turn it over to John, I'd like to make a few comments. First, as we execute our CEO transition, we are excited to have Ronnie Dail promoted into the Chief Operating Officer role. Most recently, Ronnie Dail led our healthcare performance improvement business unit, the largest business within Huron. In his new role, he will be responsible for ensuring operational excellence across the company while supporting our strategy of achieving consistent revenue growth and improved profitability. We look forward to working with Ronnie in his new role. Second, the strong results we achieved in the first half of the year are only possible because of the hard work of our incredible team. They have demonstrated a tremendous amount of dedication to our clients, our company, and to each other through a highly challenging time throughout the pandemic. I'm extremely proud of the team we have built and the culture we have fostered together, and I look forward to growing the company with the most talented team in the business. Now I want to turn it over to John for a more detailed discussion of our financial results. John? Thank you Jim, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I begin, please note that I will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, adjusted EPS, and free cash flow. Our press release, 10-Q, and investor relations page on the Huron website have reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, along with a discussion of why management uses these non-GAAP measures and why management believes they provide useful information to investors regarding our financial condition and operating results. Now let me walk you through some of the key financial results for the quarter. Revenues for the second quarter of 2022 were $273.3 million, up 18.8% from $230.1 million in the same quarter of 2021. The increase in revenues in the quarter was driven by growth across all three operating segments, reflective of the strong demand for our digital offerings across all industries. Revenue within our digital capability increased 47% in the second quarter of 2022 over the same period in 2021. In addition, revenues reflect continued strong demand for our consulting and managed services offerings within the education segment, which grew 47% in the second quarter of 2022 over the same period in 2021. Net income was $13.9 million or $0.66 per diluted share in the second quarter of 2022, compared to $12.8 million or $0.59 per diluted share in the same quarter in the prior year. Our effective income tax rate in the second quarter of 2022 was 36% compared to 21.3% one year ago. Our effective tax rate for Q2 of 2022 was less favorable than the statutory rate, inclusive of state income taxes, primarily due to tax expense related to nondeductible losses on our investments used to fund our deferred compensation liability, reflecting the broader investment market conditions during the second quarter. The earnings per share impact of the tax expense related to these nondeductible losses was $0.06 during the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $33.2 million in Q2 2022, or 12.2% of revenues, compared to $25.6 million in Q2 2021, or 11.1% of revenues. Adjusted non-GAAP net income was $17.5 million, or $0.83 per diluted share in the second quarter of 2022, compared to $15.1 million, or $0.69 per diluted share in the same period of 2021. Now I'll make a few comments about the performance of each of our operating segments. The healthcare segment generated 47% of total company revenues during the second quarter of 2022. The segment posted revenues of $128.5 million for the second quarter of 2022, up $13.7 million, or 12% from the second quarter of 2021. Revenues for the second quarter of 2022 included $1.2 million from our acquisition of Perception Health. The increase in revenue in the quarter reflects strong demand for our digital offerings as well as our revenue cycle managed services offerings. The digital capability in healthcare grew by 53%, reflecting increased demand for our electronic health record and ERP offerings. Operating income margin for healthcare was 23.6% for Q2 2022 compared to 26.6% for the same quarter in 2021. The quarter-over-quarter decrease in margin percentage was primarily attributable to the mix impact of the strength of our digital offerings during the quarter. We still expect full-year healthcare industry margins to be in a range of 24%-26%. The education segment generated 32% of total company revenues during the second quarter of 2022. Segment posted record revenues of $88.2 million in Q2 2022, up $27.8 million, or 45.9% from the second quarter of 2021. Revenues in the second quarter of 2022 included $1.9 million from our acquisition of Whiteboard. The increase in revenue reflects the continued strong demand for all of our offerings across the segment, including digital capability growth in the education segment of 44%. The continued demand for our offerings is further demonstrated by the education segment's 9% sequential growth in the second quarter of 2022 over the previous record of first quarter of 2022. The operating income margin for education was 24.6% for Q2 2022, compared to 23.4% for the same quarter in 2021. The quarter-over-quarter increase in margin was primarily due to revenue growth that outpaced our corresponding cost to deliver during the quarter. We now expect full year education industry margins to be in a range of 22%-24%, reflective of our investments in headcount growth and cloud-based technology training that we expect to drive continued strong growth for this industry into 2023. The commercial segment generated 21% of total company revenues during the second quarter of 2022. Segment posted revenues of $56.6 million in Q2 2022, up $1.7 million, or 3.1% from the second quarter of 2021. Revenues for the second quarter of 2022 included $900,000 of inorganic contributions from our acquisition of AIMDATA. The increase in revenues reflects continued strong demand for our digital offerings, partially offset by a decrease in demand for our financial advisory offerings, as well as a decline in revenues due to the divestiture of our life sciences business. In the second quarter of 2021, the life sciences business generated revenues of $5 million. Our digital offerings in the commercial markets grew 45% in the second quarter of 2022 as compared to the same period a year ago. The operating income margin for the commercial segment was 21% for Q2 2022, compared to 20.1% for the same quarter in 2021. We now expect full year commercial industry margins to be in a range of 22%-24%, reflecting favorable mix of revenue within our commercial technology offerings. Corporate expenses not allocated at the segment level were $29.9 million in Q2 2022, compared with $34.3 million in Q2 2021. Unallocated corporate expenses in the second quarter of 2022 included a $5 million reduction of expense related to the decrease in liability to participants in our deferred compensation plan, which is fully offset by the corresponding loss in other income related to the decrease in value of the assets used to fund that plan. Conversely, unallocated corporate expenses in the second quarter of 2021 reflected an increase of expense of $2.1 million related to the deferred compensation plan. Absent the impact of our deferred compensation plan in both periods, unallocated corporate expenses increased $2.6 million, which is primarily due to increases in salaries and related expenses for our support personnel and a leadership meeting during the quarter, partially offset by a decrease in legal fees. Now turning to the balance sheet and cash flows. DSO came in at 81 days for the second quarter of 2022, compared to 75 days for the first quarter of 2022 and 73 days for the second quarter of 2021. We expect DSO to be between 70 and 75 days for the remainder of 2022 as we collect on several large projects that have contractual payment schedules extending into the back half of the year. We finished the quarter with borrowings on our revolving credit facility of $342 million and with cash of $12 million for net debt of $330 million. Second quarter also included $28.3 million of share repurchases, or approximately 498,000 shares under our current authorization of up to $200 million. $78 million remained available for repurchases as of June 30, 2022. Our leverage ratio, as defined in our senior bank agreement, was approximately 2.2 times adjusted EBITDA as of June 30, 2022, compared to 2.8 times adjusted EBITDA at the end of Q2 2021. Cash flow generated from operations in the second quarter of 2022 was $29 million, and we used $5 million of our cash to invest in capital expenditures, inclusive of internally developed software costs, resulting in free cash flow of $24 million. Finally, let me turn to our expectations and guidance for 2022. As Jim noted, we are raising and narrowing our full-year 2022 revenue guidance to be in a range of $1.04 billion-$1.08 billion. The increase in our revenue guidance primarily reflects the strong momentum across our business and the significant growth opportunities in each of our core industries. In addition, we are narrowing our full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance to be in a range of 11.5%-12% of revenues and raising and narrowing our full-year adjusted non-GAAP diluted earnings per share guidance to be in a range of $3.15-$3.45. Finally, we expect our full-year effective tax rate to be in a range of 29%-31%. Thanks, everyone. I would now like to open up the call to questions. Operator? Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press star one one on your touch tone telephone. Again, that's star one one to ask a question. Our first question comes from the line of Tobey Sommer of Truist Securities. Tobey Sommer, your line is open. Recruiting, retention, and headcount growth. How do you think the back half shapes up in terms of those compared to the trends year-to-date that we already kinda have on the books? Tobey this is John, I can start. I think from a headcount perspective, we continue to expect to see our headcount increase into the back half of the year, reflecting expectations for continued revenue growth and then also really getting us prepared for 2023, where we're, you know, based on the pipeline and the backlog that we see right now, and we're confident that we're gonna have continued revenue growth into 2023, so r eally kinda getting the team in place from that perspective. You also asked about attrition. Like we've said on earlier calls, the attrition rate has really kind of stabilized from where it was in 2021. With all that said, it's still higher than it was in periods prior to the pandemic. It's still a tight labor market, but we've definitely seen it come down from where it was in 2021. Thanks. Asking a question specifically on the healthcare side in performance improvement, what do large projects look like, or project size in general? Any shifting preferences among your customers for the format with which they contract to more or less? Hey, Tobey. I can start on that. From a job size perspective, we really haven't seen a material shift in terms of either the size of the jobs in the performance improvement area in healthcare or the kind of a mix between fixed fee and contingent. I think that's been relatively stable over the past few years. You know, as we've talked about before, depending on the size of the system we're working on, depending on the size of the scope, that could be a project in the upper single-digit million range or even in a double-digit millions is the potential depending on the size of the project for the client. Okay. On the education business, I've noticed that in the news more sort of really small liberal arts schools kind of merging into larger schools. Is that something that drives any demand for your services, either directly or indirectly, or just sort of a symptom of the stress that industry is under? Tobey, this is Jim. You know, the trend you're identifying is absolutely a trend. There are more. I think there's not nearly as many as I think many of us once thought there would be when the pandemic hit. I think some of the federal funding is also dropping off for some of the educational industries. To answer your question directly, though, there are. Yeah, we do. We have been involved in some of these mergers or integrations, whatever the appropriate case may be, and it does vary. For the kinds of service we're providing at this point in time, it's not a material amount. We have been asked, and typically, we get asked by a larger, perhaps more healthy institution that's interested in taking over a small or less troubled one, and that's typically where we play. In the scheme of things, it really, for us, it hasn't amounted to any real material revenues from a M&A type of perspective. I wanted to ask one more on the digital offerings. Some of the headline technologies out there, the sort of motherships and software firms have described slightly longer sales cycles. Some of them have reported. Have you seen any change in appetite among your customer set for green-lighting new deployments and new engagements? Hey Tobey. John, you broke up a little bit during the question, but I think that the question was, you know, based on some of the platforms and them having reported longer sales cycles, if we're seeing any of that. I think we've seen some isolated cases here or there where we've seen a little bit of that. But I'd say from an overall perspective, in terms of our pipeline and our backlog, it has not been a big factor in our portfolio. Yeah, I mean, I think I would say, I think it's maybe a little different than you're asking Tobey, but as I indicated, I do think some of the strength in our digital business, particularly in education right now, and to some extent in healthcare also, less so on the commercial side, has really been things that have now freed up and that are now the sales cycles are beginning to come through because there was some hesitancy during the pandemic. You saw that in our revenues in the last, you know, during the pandemic, and I think that you're seeing some of the strength right now is that some of those things are beginning to pick up again. We expect that trend to continue for quite some time to come. Okay. I actually have a detailed question, just, John, in the numbers. The other income loss was a little bit bigger than I had anticipated. Could you give a little bit more color on that? I apologize if you already touched on it in the prepared remarks. I joined the call a little late. That totally is the deferred comp plan. We have a deferred comp plan for our employees that is funded by market assets, so you know think stocks, things like that. During the second quarter, when the broader macro market went down quite a bit, it's a net zero to our P&L. It reduced our corporate expenses by about $5 million, but then we had the offsetting loss of the assets that we used to fund the plan by about $5 million. It was a net zero other than the tax impact. The loss on the assets is not tax deductible for us, and so we did incur some extra income tax expense that I quantified in my remarks as about $0.06. That's what that is that you see in other income. Thanks for the refresh. No problem. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas of William Blair & Company. Andrew Nicholas, your line is open. Thanks, good afternoon. Wanted to first ask a question on education and the sustainability of growth there. Obviously, two really good quarters in a row, not expecting 40% plus growth forever. But is this a business that can reliably grow mid-teens in your view? And as we look ahead to next year, is there anything particularly lumpy to call out from the first half that would make it an especially difficult comp? Sounds like there was a bit of pent-up demand from delayed projects that came through in the first half. So just looking to get any additional color you can provide there. Yeah Andrew. This is Jim. I think, you know, we're looking at. First of all, as we indicated, the growth, frankly, in the first quarter and the second quarter was actually very broad-based across the whole segment. We expect that to continue for the rest of the year, and I think, you know, into 2023. We feel really good about the underlying reasons for the growth, and I went through many of those in my comments. I don't see them really changing. We've, you know, certainly there has been a freeing up of some of the larger ERP projects that are beginning to kick in right now. I think many of those larger projects are also gonna be, you know, are gonna continue to kind of roll out over the next three, four, five years. I think we expect that there'll continue to be pretty strong demand for our education services for quite some time to come. It's not gonna be certainly at the percentages that we've shown in the last two quarters, but it's gonna be quite strong in the coming years. That's helpful. Thank you. Then I guess you partially answered this question right there, but in terms of the growing pipeline for 2023, is it more of the same in terms of what you saw in the first half in terms of it being broad-based and across the various subsegments within each practice or are there particular pockets of strength that we might not even be seeing yet in the numbers? I think the portfolio mix is gonna look relatively similar in 2023. You know, the one exception is that, I think the one thing that's been a little bit subdued, despite the great performance, has been our student area. I think that's gonna really start to begin to pick up in 2023 in a bigger way as well. Beyond that, you know, I think if we look across the board at our strategy and operations, our digital practice, our research, they're all really doing well and I expect that to continue. Thanks very much. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Sutherland of Benchmark. Bill Sutherland, your line is open. Hey thanks. Yeah, hello, everybody. I was wondering on the hiring front if you are seeing some of your candidates flow from some of the Big Four that where there's a little bit of of you know uncertainty right now at some levels given the discussions about their you know their business plans. Are you seeing any candidates on that score? Hey Bill, hey, Bill, it's Mark. You know, there's always been a flow on that front, but I would say there's been no material change as a result of some of the recent discussions that's happened about the changes there. Certainly something we keep an eye on, and you know, we anticipate perhaps is a potential, but nothing that we've seen to date. The recession, if it begins to, you know, take on a little bit more impact in the economy, how should we think about your commercial segment in that scenario? Yeah, Bill, I think, you know, I think our commercial segment has been focused on financial services and energy and utilities. I think, you know, our sense is at this point in time that there could be a drop off in that. I mean, we've seen, you know, in the last year in our business advisory segment, we've seen a drop off. I don't think at this stage that we're not seeing anything in the market, at least the way that any so-called recession may be forming. We don't know any weaknesses that give us major concern at this point in time. Bill. Bill, I was just gonna add, it's a little bit sector specific based on how those particular sectors are being affected by the broader economy. You know, energy and utilities actually has been performing well for us. You know, we had a little bit more on the financial services where there's more impact. I think that mix will continue to be one that we'll again watch, but we haven't seen anything as Jim said. Maybe what I would add, Bill, is, you know, our distressed business has actually been, you know, one of the more subdued areas of our business in the early part of this year and last year as well. In that scenario now where we're seeing increased pipeline, we're seeing increased inquiries. That might actually be something that in a down market might go up quite a bit as we saw during the first half of 2020. One other comment from a digital perspective, you know, a lot of what we're seeing in our clients are, you know, they've already started to make some pretty big investments in cloud-based technology. Part of why they're doing that is they are trying to automate as many of their business processes as possible, especially in this tight labor market. A lot of the indications that we see from our clients is in this market, there's a premium on trying to automate, trying to get to the cloud. We're still seeing, you know, good demand and good inbound inquiries related to our commercial technology or rather our technology in the commercial markets related to that trend line. John, remind me how big the turnaround, bankruptcy business is? You say how big is it? Yeah. It's about 5% of our consolidated revenues. Last for me, while I got you John, is the guidance as I just level out the revenue from the second quarter levels for the segments. I get to the top end of your revenue guidance. Maybe is there any color you can provide as far as what the midpoint implies? Yeah. Our you know, when we looked at the guidance Bill, you know, we obviously were really pleased with the growth we've had during the first half of the year. Frankly it's been outpaced even, you know, kind of our initial planning assumptions at the beginning of the year. When we look out to the back half of the year, we're still confident in that we're gonna be able to post a pretty strong year-over-year growth numbers. I think right now when we look at the third quarter, our expectation is that we'll have growth in the 20% range year-over-year for the third quarter. The comparison gets a little tougher as you move on to the fourth quarter, and you're probably looking at high single-digit, low double-digit for the fourth quarter, at least based on what we see now. Of course we're still closing the pipeline there. At the midpoint, you know, we just wanted to keep a little bit of conservatism in there from a midpoint perspective, just given you know uncertainty in the broader general market, even though we haven't seen it in our pipeline yet. I'd say if you then talk about what would be the scenario to get to more of the upper bounds of the range, that would be where we have some you know continued sequential momentum into the back half of the year, and that's what we're looking at. Maybe just some additional color to give, I think at this point, if you look at the midpoint of guidance, we're expecting from an industry perspective, healthcare to be up in the mid-teens% range. We're expecting education to be up in the mid-30% range. We're expecting the commercial industry to be up in the mid-single-digit% range, but that's got the life sciences headwind in there. If you were to strip that out, that would probably be low double-digit% range. Then I'll also just give the spread between our capabilities. If you're looking at digital, we expect that to be for the full year, 30% year-over-year growth. For consulting and managed services in the low double-digit% range for full year. All those numbers I gave, Bill, were full year-over-year percentages. Got it. Thanks for all that. Full year, year-over-year percentages. Got it. Thanks for all that. The other question I was thinking about was the visibility you have with your backlog at a moment in time. Are the project durations about the same? Are they getting a little longer? I know they, particularly in healthcare, the duration went down a few years ago. I'm just curious if there's a direction there now. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think there's no noticeable difference really in the durations. Bill, I think it's just they're pretty much the same. We have some projects certainly that go on over multiple years. We also have a lot of projects where, you know, you've got one scope of work, and you complete it, and you get a second scope of work and a follow-on beyond that. That actually happens, you know, often. From a backlog perspective, that's only one chunk of it, so I don't think there's really been any dramatic changes in the duration of the backlog of what we have going on right now. Okay. Thanks for all the color guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Again, to ask a question, please press star one one on your touch tone telephone. Again, that's star one one to ask a question at this time. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Steinke of Barrington Research. Hi, I think I'm on. Kevin Steinke, Barrington Research. I just wanted to ask about the balance of the growth in the quarter. You know, it was the first quarter, fairly balanced growth between digital and then the consulting and managed services piece, whereas growth was more weighted towards digital in the second quarter. I don't know if there's anything to read into that, you know, if it's just kind of a quarter-to-quarter fluctuation that'll kind of even out as we move throughout the year. Hey Kevin, it's John. I think it is more of just a quarter-to-quarter fluctuation. I wouldn't read anything from a broader trend perspective into that. I mean, part of it was the digital business just really had a tremendous quarter in terms of growth that, you know, exceeded even our own expectations. As we look out into our forecast for the remainder of the year, we expect to see some nice growth coming from the consulting side of the business as well, and for that to balance out a little bit more as the second half of the year progresses. Okay. Understood. You know, just wanted to ask about labor inflation, and have you seen any pickup there? I know I think you're implementing some price increases this year to offset inflation. Maybe just talk about if those increases are keeping pace with inflation and, you know, maybe the acceptance of those increases across your client base. Hey Kevin, it's Mark. I think the labor inflation is one that, again, has been out there for a while. While the headline inflation numbers perhaps say something, you know, bigger, it's not like they started overnight. We've had market adjustments and stayed competitive throughout this, which is how we've been able to increase our headcount, you know, 21%, you know, a year. At the same time, as we go through the pricing that we sold, obviously there's always a little bit of a lag, but generally speaking, it's been something that our clients have not really highlighted in our conversations. Demand is there. Still a very competitive market overall in terms of just competitors who show up for pursuits. We're holding our own, and we're able to achieve the things that we're looking to achieve in the marketplace. At this point, we have a healthy confidence in the outlook. Okay, great. Lastly, I just wanted to ask too about an element of the guidance. You know, obviously, you know, revenue guidance range raised, you know, you Narrowed the adjusted EBITDA margin guidance range, not necessarily an increase there, but a narrowing. I think you touched on it a bit in your segment comments, but just the factors behind that. You know, the change in the margin guidance relative to the revenue guidance. I think it's just a balance of factors there Kevin, so o n the one hand, growth is outpaced some of our initial assumptions, which is a good thing because that's, you know, given us some additional scale on our corporate SG&A. You know, from an overall utilization perspective, we're not where we wanna be yet, but we've seen the ramp start to pick up in the second quarter. It's up about 200 basis points sequentially from first quarter to second quarter. That trend line is going well as well from a segment perspective. I think on the flip side of that, we have been making investments in the business. You know, we talked in our Investor Day about, you know, every year, the reality is we're probably, from an OpEx perspective, gonna be investing 50-100 basis points. We're at the upper end of that right now. We're probably closer to the 100 basis points, if not even a little bit over, both in terms of building a headcount ramp that we need to support this year's growth, but also next year's growth, as well as some of our training initiatives to get those employees ready to be deployed on the projects where we see demand. That's a definite factor that's going the other way. The other thing is, you know, a lot of our business is kinda getting back to normal from a travel perspective. The travel to clients is not at this point yet anywhere back to where it was, but in terms of business development, in terms of even, you know, we had a, as we noted in our prepared remarks, we had a leadership meeting during the quarter. We do have some of those expenses coming back, too, which we always expected and was baked into our guide for the year. In fact, as you know, business has been picking up, we've been seeing more of that, too. I think that's another factor. The net-net remains at the midpoint and expectation that margins will increase by 100 basis points last year versus this year. Those are some of the pluses and minuses netting out to that 100 basis point increase. Got it. Yeah, that's very helpful. Thanks. Thanks for the comments. That's all I had. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tobey Sommer of Truist Securities. Tobey Sommer, your line is open. Thank you. I had a follow-up on the Big Four potential split up some news. First question would be: Where do you most directly compete with the Big Four? While I heard your answer, I haven't really seen noticed any change. If we change the question and said, do you expect a potential split in news of it to drive any changes in the industry and for Huron? If so, what do you anticipate? Tobey, this is Jim. I think in terms of where do we compete the most, I think if you're asking what part of our business we compete the most, I'd say, you know, it varies, but I would say that our digital solutions is where we're gonna compete the most with not just the Big Four, but also, you know, Accenture and places like that. But it's mostly in our digital solutions. You know, every one of our businesses has a different set of competitive peers. But I'd say by and large, we compete the most with Big Four probably in our digital area. From an industry perspective, we probably have more, I mean, we have more competitive pressure from the Big Four in our healthcare, probably more than other industry verticals, would be my guess. Again, we've got robust competition across the board, so something we've been used to. Going back to your second part of the question, though, I don't at this stage, as Mark was kinda saying a little bit earlier, you know, I think this will play out. If something happens within the Big Four, it's gonna play out over time. I don't think that there's gonna be any material change either in the business or in the attraction of other people. There'll be some movement, but I don't think it's gonna be anything that's gonna, you know, move the needle sufficiently in terms of our competitive positioning, nor our ability to recruit. We feel good about both of them right now, irrespective of what happens with any Big Four transaction. We just kind of march on as though it's gonna be business as usual. If something changes, we'll deal with it then, but I think it'll probably be good for us, but not in any massive material way that would show up on any of our results. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no more questions, I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Roth. Thank you for spending time with us this afternoon. We look forward to speaking with you again in November when we announce our second quarter results. Have a good evening. That concludes today's conference call. Thank you everyone for your participation. You may disconnect.