presentation is TrueBlue, ticker is TBI. Joining us today is Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Carl Schweihs, the Chief Financial Officer. We will start with some prepared remarks from them, as well as going into a bit of a chat as well. We also have room for your questions, so feel free to just click on the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen, and we will certainly have to get to those as well. With no further ado, I turn the call over to TrueBlue. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you so much, Mark. Hello, everyone. I'd like to start by sharing what an honor it is to serve as CEO, leading TrueBlue forward as we focus on returning the company to growth. TrueBlue has tremendous strength and assets, including sophisticated technology, talented people, scale, expertise, deep client relationships, a significant footprint, and a strong track record of free cash flow, and returning capital to shareholders. We also have compelling opportunities for growth and a talented leadership team that brings strong industry and functional expertise, including our CFO, Carl Schweihs, who is with us as well today. Carl and I have worked together very closely for a decade, and between the two of us, have run every TrueBlue business segment, in addition to Carl's nearly five years as a leader in TrueBlue's finance organization. Before we take questions, as Mark mentioned, we'll give a brief introduction to the company. Just a quick reminder that our safe harbor statements apply to our discussion today and are provided here for your reference. I'm going to walk you through what we consider our key investment highlights during our time together today. We'll spend time talking about TrueBlue's differentiated market position, how we are uniquely positioned to help customers solve their workforce challenges. We'll walk you through three compelling strategies that we are focused on across our business to drive top line growth and margin expansion, enabling us to unlock the power of our assets at TrueBlue. And finally, we'll review our focused capital strategy, as well as the experience of our leadership team has in driving growth and delivering results. At TrueBlue, our mission is to connect people and work. As one of the largest U.S. industrial staffing providers, and also one of the largest global recruitment process outsourcing providers, we generated $1.9 billion in revenue last year by connecting over 400,000 people with work and supporting more than 60,000 clients. Our teams are consistently recognized as leaders, with accolades from both staffing industry and business organizations. Our talented team of mission-driven employees are dedicated to serving customers with excellence each and every day. The world of work is quickly evolving, and companies are turning to human capital experts with innovative workforce solutions to help solve their growing talent challenges. We are energized by this evolution. It aligns with our strengths and creates compelling long-term opportunities for our business. The combination of our technology and our ability to quickly scale up and down with changes in hiring volumes make us a more efficient solution for businesses with changing workforce needs. Companies are seeking new solutions to growing labor challenges. They are looking for digital engagement and insights, ways to be more nimble and more efficient, and the ability to adapt to varying levels of workforce complexities. Fulfilling our mission to connect people and work requires agility and adaptability, and that's what our business model provides. TrueBlue is and will continue to be at the forefront of connecting people and work, supported by our high-touch, specialized digital solutions, making us a leader in the changing world of work and elevating our growth and profitability potential. To support our clients' various needs, we currently operate in three segments. PeopleReady is our largest segment and a leading provider of on-demand, general, and skilled trades labor for the North American industrial staffing market. We service our clients through a national footprint of physical branch locations, supported by our JobStack mobile application. PeopleScout is our highest margin segment and a global leader in filling permanent positions through our recruitment process outsourcing services. PeopleScout is supported by our Affinix technology, with buyers often citing it as a key factor in choosing PeopleScout over other market solutions. More than 80% of our client engagements are using Affinix to support recruiting and hiring efforts. PeopleManagement provides contingent, on-site industrial staffing and commercial driver services in North America. The essence of a typical PeopleManagement engagement is supplying an outsourced workforce that involves multi-year, multimillion-dollar on-site or driver relationships. Having been in all of these businesses for more than three decades, we have very well-established brands, deep expertise, and competitive advantages of scale, technology, and industry expertise that other smaller staffing providers simply cannot match. TrueBlue is in a strong position to capitalize on growth opportunities both now and as the market rebounds, with tremendous strengths and assets. We have a robust team of talented, dedicated, and mission-driven people, serving clients with excellence each and every day. Our proprietary technology allows us to provide a differentiated user experience. We have significant scale and an expansive local market presence, and we have deep expertise and long-standing client relationships.... The combination of our presence, our client relationships, and proprietary technology positions us very favorably to capitalize on opportunities in high-demand verticals that will drive growth and increase margin. We have clear strategic priorities that are focused on top line growth and margin expansion, enabling us to unlock the full power of our assets. We are focused on advancing our digital transformation across the enterprise, expanding our market presence into high growth, under-penetrated end markets, and simplifying our organizational structure. We're confident that these priorities will help us capitalize on the growth opportunities ahead, enhance shareholder value, and advance our mission to connect people and work. We continue to advance the digital transformation of our business, positioning us to drive efficiencies and expand our reach. We recently achieved a significant milestone in this area with the launch of our new proprietary version of our JobStack app, which is a critical component of our PeopleReady business. This new version allows us to control our roadmap, implement competitive enhancements, and quickly address the evolving needs of our customers and our associates. We're on track to complete our rollout of this new app by the end of the year, and we have already had some early success with our initial launch in the form of improved usability for our associates, with a fully digital application and onboarding process. In addition to JobStack, we have other technologies that help connect the clients and associates, driving efficiencies to optimize reach and engagement. In our PeopleScout business, our Affinix technology helps connect clients and candidates using AI, machine learning, predictive analytics, and provides a superior candidate experience. Our Stafftrack mobile app supports the associates in our on-site business in viewing schedules, picking up shifts, viewing attendance, payslips, and more. Finally, our Centerline mobile app keeps our drivers connected by allowing them to view and enter time schedules, refer friends, and access training and safety information. The combination of our proprietary technology with our expansive local presence differentiates us from competitors by providing our customers, associates, and employees with a more customized technology experience that ultimately allows us to drive revenue. Another key strategic priority is expanding our presence into high growth, less cyclical, and under-penetrated end markets to capitalize on long-term secular growth opportunities. We already have a proven track record in the renewable energy space and a strong position to capture further growth opportunities in that market. It's the fastest growing end market in our portfolio and continues to represent a significant growth opportunity, with strong demand and a healthy pipeline for continued potential growth. Our apprenticeship program enables individuals with minimal experience to build careers in this industry, while helping us bolster our talent pool and positioning us well for Inflation Reduction Act projects. We are also well-positioned to fill staffing shortages in skilled trades and have experience and relationships to drive growth in other end markets, like transportation and hospitality. And then, finally, within our RPO business, we are focusing efforts on diversifying into higher-skilled placements and more specialized product offerings in attractive end markets to increase market share and revenue potential. And another strategic priority is the simplification of our organizational structure to drive enhanced focus, growth, and profitability. While we will continue to go to market under our current well-established brands, streamlining our organization and breaking down silos will create opportunities to drive efficiencies and bring our teams closer to our clients and associates, which ultimately will create greater focus on operational excellence, cross-selling, and innovation. We've made strides in this area with the sale of our on-demand labor business in Canada, which allows increased focus on our U.S. staffing operations, where we are an industry leader. We have also streamlined our on-site skilled trades and global leadership structures to maximize synergies and drive some enhanced efficiencies as well. With a more focused structure, we will have enhanced agility to capitalize on evolving market dynamics and leverage our strengths and synergies to help us drive that long-term profitable growth. Additionally, contributing to this simplification is our disciplined approach to enterprise cost management efforts, reducing overall cost and helping fund organic growth, as well as our investments in technology people, and resources. As we execute these strategic priorities, we are driven by our corporate values and code of conduct to serve our stakeholders with a strong commitment to being a good corporate citizen. We have a rigorous ESG approach and consistently perform well on external ESG measures. We also have a long-standing commitment to being a responsible corporate citizen, creating a culture of belonging, where all people feel valued, empowered, and supported. Ensuring that we are strengthening our communities, investing in our employees and associates, and being mindful of the impact on the communities we serve and the world around us is part of our DNA. Simply put, we are committed to being a force for good in the communities that we serve. I'll now pass it over to Carl for a review of our capital strategy. ... Thank you, Taryn. We have a strong balance sheet, zero debt, and ample liquidity, and it provides us with the flexibility to weather economic headwinds and also make key strategic investments to support future growth opportunities. Along with our strong track record of free cash flow, this solid financial foundation also allows us to return capital to shareholders, completing roughly $170 million of share repurchases over the prior four years. We're proud of this, and we continue to view our own stock as a compelling investment. In terms of our capital allocation strategy, share repurchases remain an important, but they're balanced with protecting our balance sheet and making strategic investments, especially around technology, to further advance our business model. Investing in the business is a top priority, with a focus on high ROI investments in sales and automation, as well as through product differentiation and efficiency-enabling tech investments. We remain an opportunistic, accretive acquisition strategy, especially for targets that help us diversify our hiring mix and penetrate high-growth, resilient market verticals. Now I'll pass it back over to Taryn for the last remaining highlights. Great. Thank you, Carl. I'd like to just take a moment to highlight our leadership team, which is the driving force behind everything that we have discussed today. Collectively, the team you see here has almost a hundred years of staffing experience to guide the company through current market conditions and long-term growth opportunities. This team, along with their teams, are not only experienced, but they're talented, dedicated, and mission-driven in advancing our strategic priorities. I'm certainly proud to serve alongside them as we work together to lead TrueBlue forward. As we close, we continue to navigate this challenging economic market with agility and discipline. And I just wanna take a moment to reiterate the tremendous strengths and assets that we have at TrueBlue. Our team is talented and dedicated to our mission to connect people and work. We are a market leader with strong industry growth prospects and compelling strategies that we're focused on advancing. We have a strong balance sheet and a history of consistently returning capital to shareholders, and we have a leadership team with deep expertise and commitment to success. So with that, thank you so much for your interest in TrueBlue, and Mark, we're ready to take questions. Excellent. As a reminder, if you would like to submit a question, just feel free to click on the QA button at the bottom of the screen. As well as, you know, feel free to jump in at any time there. I wanted to start, maybe if you could talk a little bit about some of maybe the general trends that you're seeing, and maybe you could talk a little bit about the differentiation with the client verticals. There was some commentary in the prepared remarks around some of the things around healthcare and renewable solutions. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing in different client verticals. Yeah, Carl- Yeah, I'll take that one, Mark. So if we kinda look at Q2 results, most of our verticals and geographies, we saw continued softness in demand trends, with the largest being really in retail, hospitality, and service industries. There were a couple of bright spots, though, as we mentioned earlier, within our customer base. So our renewable energy work is now in its eighth consecutive quarter of growth. Our commercial driving business has been in its second consecutive quarter of growth as well. And we're continuing to capitalize on attractive verticals and maintaining a really high level of engagement with our customers and our associates, so that we're well-positioned for the eventual rebound. And then one of the questions that we have comes in regarding the segment slide that you had there, and it's regarding PeopleScout. And the question regards the profit outperformance there, and what represents that, and what leads to that profit strength and margin strength within? From a PeopleScout, I'll start here, and then I'll let Taryn kind of add in. But from a PeopleScout perspective, look, we're really outsourcing recruitment processes for our customers, and there's a lot of value that we add in that process. It's on a, you know, fixed-fee basis, for our customers. And, because of that value and really allowing our customers to flex up and down with their needs and provide that variability, we can tend to price that, one for our customers to add more of them, and also, our customers get value in us delivering those services. I'll just add that the PeopleScout business is built to scale on behalf of our customers, and oftentimes their thesis to outsource to a provider like PeopleScout will be to add flexibility within their overall cost structure. And so, we have built the organization to be able to scale very quickly up and down to meet our customers' various hiring volume needs. Excellent. And then one of the areas that it's always been sort of tricky, of course, is availability of talent and labor. I was wondering if you could sort of give an updated view as to maybe what you're seeing, if there are any particular areas or pockets that you're beginning to see changes or potential improvements around labor availability? It's a great question. Despite the tight labor market, our fill rates remain strong and above historic levels. So the challenges that we're facing in this current environment is really around demand and less so around supply. Now I'll say that our teams do a phenomenal job of recruiting. It's something that we specialize in. Our businesses use multiple channels to attract associates to our network and certainly drive that volume. I would also say that the launch of our new JobStack app, where new associates can go through an onboarding process in a completely digital manner, has also helped us, we think, bolster those fill rates in our PeopleReady business. That's very helpful, thank you. And then, another question that came in, sort of mixing my own with the ones that are coming in, so one is a question around the overall market and a big picture question, asking regarding the temp staffing market being in decline, and maybe what's driving that and what happens to market growth if unemployment starts to rise? Take that, Carl? Yeah, I'd like to take that one, too. So yeah, so from just an overall market perspective, Mark, yeah, we have seen the temporary staffing market has seen a decline, right? Over the last kind of 28, 29 months. We've seen that temp help services has declined, and you know, as we mentioned earlier, you know, we provide that flexibility for our customers so that they can turn on and turn off services, and that variability that we provide them is what allows them to use us. One of the really important things that we would mention in kind of Q2 is this is really a demand story. So we've stayed really, really close to our customers. Although we didn't see the kind of sequential build that we typically see from Q1- Q2 in our PeopleReady business, we did see our customer count grow, and we've maintained the customer counts that we've seen in our onsite business as well. So it's really a story of demand, and as that turns back on, we expect to see better revenue growth and increased profitability. Thank you. And then we had commentary around, besides not just JobStack, but other technology advancements in some of those areas. Can you talk a little bit about sort of how that compares to competition, the areas where that may lead to some competitive advantages that you anticipate seeing going forward? That's a great question. I think when we look at our competitive advantage, overall, we have a national footprint, significant local presence, that is digitally enabled, and that's really what sets us apart. It is having that local presence combined with the technology that differentiates us from our competitors. As you know, it's a highly fragmented market, and we are competing with a lot of small and regional players that don't have that same level of capability. In our businesses outside of PeopleReady, we're really proud of the technology that we bring forward, and we're winning deals based on the strength of that technology that we have in our PeopleScout business, Affinix, that I mentioned earlier. So, we certainly have a competitive advantage there. I was wondering if you could talk a little about... This is more a little bit big picture sort of question, but, you know, the pacing of return to office versus the work from home and how folks maybe thought that might evolve, you know, post-pandemic, has certainly been sort of slow to change, I would say. It's not very different than it was this time last year. I was wondering if you could, you know, get a sense of maybe, sort of what you're seeing, expecting, planning for, and maybe any feedback that you're getting from customers as to where those trends may go. Yeah, it's a great question. You know, certainly the world of work continues to evolve and create additional workforce complexity, which we think leads to compelling opportunities for our business. Virtual work in particular is pulling permanent employees out of jobs that do require a physical presence, which leads to more companies turning to human capital experts to help them solve those challenges. And so, we're certainly well positioned to help with those permanent hiring needs, the temporary hiring needs that we think will increase as that virtual work pulls people out of the office. And we made commentary around not just the JobStack, but maybe talk a little bit around the client-facing technology, the ones that have been maybe that the clients have been very receptive to thus far, the ones that you know have maybe given you maybe a little bit you know been encouraged by what you've seen with that, with that advantage of the technology investments that you've made and the ones that have sort of really resonated with clients when they're initially introduced. Yeah, absolutely. I'll talk about Affinix, as that is one that we've really focused on ensuring that the Affinix platform will create a differentiated candidate experience for our customers. So that's in our PeopleScout business, as we go to market as our customers, with their brand, attracting talent into their organization. So it's really critical that the experience that those candidates have are world-class and can help our customers attract and capture the best candidates out in the marketplace. And so Affinix really plays that role in terms of providing that candidate experience that candidates enjoy when engaging with our customers' hiring processes. Great. And then one of the other questions that came in regards the revenue mix of PeopleScout. Do you expect to increase PeopleScout's share of revenue moving forward to further drive profits? Yes, that is part of our plan, so as we kind of talk about where we're expanding into end markets and diversifying our hiring mix, we've really made a you know concerted effort to look at professional hiring. That's a big part of the total TAM for the RPO market, and it's something that our team has made really good progress on in the first two quarters of the year, as we've had a focus on kind of professional hiring, and even seeing kind of double-digit growth in our placements within the professional side of the business, so that is a big focus for us, and we've made really good progress so far. Great. And then one of the other questions that came in is, regarding the, sort of the margin expansion opportunities, specifically the level of revenue that you think you might need to get to, to reach pre-COVID EBITDA margin, level. So multi-part question, but let me stop there, and you address that part first. Yeah, so let me. I'll take this one, so historically, kind of our incremental EBITDA margin in our business on additional revenues, call it 15%-20%. Traditionally, our financial performance improves quickly as revenue grows. We've made significant progress, particularly in the area that Taryn mentioned, too, on simplifying the organization, and that's along with our cost structure. We've taken out about $70 million out of cost, with many of that being permanent in nature, and so we expect that our incremental margin on this rebound to really be a couple points north of what we used to experience, and then call it 20%-22%, but another driver for us on margin expansion is technology. It plays a big role in differentiating our services, but it also helps us become more efficient in providing leverage to drive those higher margins. I'd also say that I just mentioned this, we're targeting those high growth, higher margin, less cyclical verticals as well, and so we're well-positioned to continue to capitalize on those as well, Mark, and then finally, just our lean cost structure, kind of improved efficiencies and market expansion-focused mean that we're gonna be better positioned as the industry demand returns. And then maybe shifting over to the capital allocation discussion, can you sort of give us an update on your thoughts on the mix and maybe the potential for increased industry consolidation, M&A opportunities, and maybe where valuations are looking now versus maybe where they were earlier in the year? Yeah, I'll hit that one first. So just kind of industry consolidation, look, given the current market conditions and the cyclical nature of the staffing industry, it's not a surprise that we're seeing some more M&A activity, given where valuations are at this point. Also, when we kind of look at it from a total talent view, consolidation in the industry and technology, they're playing a greater role. But when you think about the kind of the U.S. staffing market, it still remains highly fragmented, with no dominant competition and a large volume of kind of small regional players. For us, from an M&A standpoint, look, I'll just say from a capital priorities, first, it's balancing ample liquidity, right? We have a healthy balance sheet, we wanna make sure that we're doing that. We're continuing to invest in strategic initiatives that are in high ROI investments, particularly in sales and automation and other areas there. And then finally, returning excess capital to shareholders, which we've had a strong history of doing so. And through Q2, returned about $17 million of capital back to our shareholders. From an M&A perspective, we're always exploring all possible opportunities for ways for us to expand our presence. You know, and I'd say we're interested in targets that will continue to diversify our hiring mix and enter into those high-growth, resilient market verticals. And then I would be remiss if I didn't ask you the question that a lot of folks have been asking throughout the day, and it's sort of the big picture political election-related question regarding client demand, and so wondering if you can maybe share some general thoughts as to maybe what you're hearing from customers. We got our interest rate cut earlier today, but maybe you could talk a little bit about the political and election potential for maybe generating a little additional client demand post-election, or maybe what you're hearing from clients. Yeah, our clients are really just looking for more certainty in the environment overall. Whether it's the political landscape or the interest rate, we got good news today, are really looking for more certainty as they're planning for their business investments, which will drive their ultimately their workforce needs. So that's what we're hearing, is, "We just want some certainty in in the future so we can all move forward. Excellent. And that's actually a pretty good place to conclude our questioning, I suppose. I wanna thank all of our participants for joining us, and TrueBlue for joining us this afternoon. And, everybody, have a wonderful and productive rest of the day.