ASGN Inc (ASGN) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, and welcome to the ASGN Inc. Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Kimberly Esterkin from Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today for ASGN's Third Quarter 2022 Conference Call. With me are Ted Hanson, Chief Executive Officer; Rand Blazer, President; and Marie Perry, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that our commentary contains forward-looking statements. Although we believe these statements are reasonable, they are subject to risks and uncertainties and as such, our actual results could differ materially from those statements. Certain of these risks and uncertainties are described in today's press release and in our SEC filings. We do not assume any obligation to update statements made on this call. For your convenience, our prepared remarks and supplemental materials can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at investors.asgn.com.

Please also note that on this call, we will be referencing certain non-GAAP measures, such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income and free cash flow. These non-GAAP measures are intended to supplement the comparable GAAP measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures are included in today's press release.

I will now turn the call over to Ted Hanson, Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Kimberly, and thank you for joining ASGN's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. Before we begin, on behalf of the entire ASGN team, I would like to welcome Marie Perry to her first earnings call as our CFO. We're excited for Marie to participate in today's discussion. With that said, let's now turn to our third quarter results.

As is evident from our Q3 financials, growth continued to build quarter-over-quarter and demand for our services and solutions remain strong. revenues, which were a record for the third quarter came in above the midpoint of our guidance range for Q3 and totaled $1.2 billion, up 11.6% year-over-year. This growth was largely driven by our Commercial segment and specifically our consulting business. This record top line performance would not have been possible were it not for the incredible efforts of all of our professionals in service of our clients as the ASGN team collectively strives to meet and exceed their expectations.

Consequently, these results bring us closer to our goal of $6 billion in revenues by 2024. I'll provide some comments on our 3-year plan later in today's call. Our Commercial segment accounted for 75.1% of consolidated revenues, while our Federal Government segment accounted for the remaining 24.9% of revenues. The strength and breadth of our account portfolio contributes to our success with virtually almost all of our revenues derived in the U.S. and largely from Fortune 1000 accounts.

Moving down the income statement, adjusted EBITDA of $148.7 million was also above the midpoint of our guidance range, improving 8.9% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.4% for the quarter. Free cash flow from continuing operations totaled $79.5 million, an improvement of 18.8% over the prior year. Quarter making the best use of this cash is our balanced, flexible and disciplined approach to capital allocation, which includes investing organically in our business, making strategic acquisitions of profitable, high-growth companies in relevant solution areas and returning value to our shareholders through our stock buyback program.

Before speaking further on our recent acquisitions and segment performance, I'd like to provide the following 3 highlights that continue to drive our performance. First, ASGN maintains a large and diverse enterprise account portfolio, representing the most significant portion of the revenue base. Second, the IT services market remains favorable and with the support of our large account portfolio, ASGN is successfully executing and gets these opportunities. And third, favorable bookings in both the Commercial and Government segments provide us with visibility and position ASGN well for 2023.

Now let's review the segment performance. Our Commercial segment which services large enterprises and Fortune 1000 companies had another solid quarter with growth in both IT staffing and consulting services. Revenues of $900 million, increased 16.1% over Q3 of last year as well as improved 12.9% organically year-over-year on a difficult comparison. Apex Systems, our largest division accounted for 84.1% of the segment's revenues for the quarter, with top and retail accounts, both achieving double-digit growth rate. Creative digital marketing experienced a lower growth rate compared with Q3 2021 due in part to the high growth rate in the prior period. From an industry perspective, four out of our 5 Commercial segment industry verticals achieved double-digit growth for the quarter, while Business and Government Services was up low single digits versus the prior year.

Within Apex Systems specifically, Financial Services had solid performance in banking with even greater year-over-year growth amongst our fintech and wealth management accounts. Growth in technology, media and telecommunications or TMT industry was again led by double-digit growth in technology and telecommunications accounts. Progress in our commercial and industrial accounts reflected strength across all sectors as compared to the third quarter of 2021 with the exception of materials.

In particular, we achieved double-digit growth year-over-year in energy, utilities, consumer discretionary and consumer staples. Healthcare industry revenues also grew double digit driven by both provider and payer accounts. Finally, growth in our business and government services vertical was led by mid-single-digit growth in our Business Services accounts, while Aerospace & Defense accounts were up low single digits versus the prior year. Gross margin for the Commercial segment was 33.1%, up 70 basis points for the prior year driven by our growing contribution of high-margin commercial consulting and permanent placement business.

Commercial consulting revenues totaled $268.6 million for the third quarter, an increase of 43.2% year-over-year and up 29.8% organically. Revenues derived from our work in web, mobile and application development, data analysis, cloud architecture and migration engagement, along with work for our new ServiceNow solution, led our commercial consulting's quarterly performance. We also had a solid quarter for commercial consulting new bookings which totaled $254.3 million, up 36.9% year-over-year. This translates into a book-to-bill of roughly 0.9:1 for the quarter and 1.3:1 on a trailing 12-month basis. Keep in mind, seasonally, the third quarter is typically our lowest book-to-bill quarter. Our early October performance supports a healthy bookings outlook.

In addition to our bookings, our pipeline of new business opportunities also remain strong. ASGN continues to be favored by our clients in the consulting space due to our intimate relationships which span decades, our solutions portfolio, which continues to expand and our solutions delivery model, which enables us to meet our clients' demand with the necessary skilled workforce at economical price points.

As I mentioned, we continue to enhance our solution capabilities -- and at the beginning of July, we officially closed our acquisition of GlideFast. The addition of GlideFast puts ASGN on the map as a key ServiceNow player. In a fast-growing technology market, it's important that we offer services that promote our clients' digitization pathways. GlideFast does just that, extending our value proposition through its ServiceNow capabilities, while at the same time, being an important source of revenue and margin expansion. After 1 quarter with ASGN, GlideFast is performing ahead of our expectations for both its revenue run rate and new business secured. For example, during the quarter, Apex Systems and GlideFast jointly won a contract with a client who is currently in the process of modernizing its asset management system by moving this capability from a legacy system to ServiceNow. Once this capability has been transferred over to ServiceNow, our client can now conduct an initial audit for deployed hardware and software assets.

This particular asset management capability has become important in the past few years as remote teams put stress on their existing asset systems and processes, resulting in a lack of precision on what applications have been deployed and on which devices. ASGN's underlying objective with this particular client was to improve the visibility and security of its asset management capability and to reduce costs. This contract is a great example of work won and now delivered as a result of our new ServiceNow solutions capabilities.

Let's now turn to the Federal Government segment, which provides mission-critical solutions to the Department of Defense, the intelligence community and federal civilian and agencies. Revenues for the quarter totaled $297.9 million, down slightly year-over-year but up 2.3% sequentially. As we discussed in recent calls, this year-over-year decline resulted from our strategic decision not to recompete a low-margin web services resale program in the third quarter of last year, which was partially offset by the impact of businesses we acquired in 2021.

Federal Government segment gross margins were up 120 basis points compared to the prior year due to favorable business mix. New contract awards for the quarter were approximately $560 million, which translates to a book-to-bill of 1.9:1 for the quarter and 1.0:1 on a trailing 12-month basis. This significant quarterly award activity demonstrates that the government continues to drive its spending in areas in which ASGN is focused including that of cybersecurity, cloud, AI/ML and IT modernization. Our strong book-to-bill for the third quarter supports the Government segment's continued growth.

Contract backlog improved from $2.9 billion at the end of the second quarter to total $3.1 billion at the end of the third quarter or a healthy coverage ratio of 2.8x the segment's trailing 12-month revenues. Beyond our backlog, which extends for multiple years, our pipeline of opportunities is at an all-time high, providing great visibility into 2023. The strength of our pipeline is an indication that our Government segment is in the right markets, Homeland and Justice, Defense and Intelligence and federal civilian and providing the right solutions. During the quarter, we won a number of key contract awards, including a new contract with the FBI-supervised enterprise IT operations; a recompete supporting U.S. Transportation Command's software development, help desk in engineering for its global Air Transportation Execution System or GATES; an important recompete with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, whom we maintain a long-standing history; and a strategic recompete to expand and advance cybersecurity and zero trust solution to the United States Army and other defense agencies.

On the topic of cybersecurity, at the beginning of October, we acquired Iron Vine Security, a leading cybersecurity company that designs, implement and execute cybersecurity programs for federal customers. As with all of our acquisitions, Iron Vine represents a high-growth business whose contributions will be accretive to both our gross and EBITDA margins. Iron Vine adds key new accounts to our portfolio, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Department of State and the National Institute of Health. Iron Vine also significantly strengthened ECS' cybersecurity offerings to government accounts while making us more competitive for future work, Iron Vine is off to a strong start, and we are excited to welcome their talented team to ASGN.

With that, I will turn the call over to Marie Perry, our CFO, to discuss the third quarter financial results and our fourth quarter and full year 2022 guidance. Marie?

Thanks, Ted. It's great to speak with everyone today. As Ted mentioned earlier, our revenues for Q3 exceeded the midpoint of our guidance estimates and a record for the third quarter. Revenues were $1.2 billion, up 11.6% year-over-year on an as-reported basis and up 8.4% organically, which adjusts for $34.2 million contributions from acquired businesses. Revenues from our Commercial segment were $900 million, up 16.1% on a difficult year-over-year comparison. All commercial divisions grew with the highest growth coming from the commercial consulting services which carried higher gross margins than our IT staffing services.

Revenues for commercial consulting, the largest of our high-margin revenue stream were $268.6 million, up 43.2% year-over-year. Consulting services included approximately $25.1 million of revenue from GlideFast. Revenues from our Federal Government segment were $297.9 million, down slightly year-over-year on a difficult compare but up 2.3% sequentially. Revenues for the third quarter of 2021 included $13.4 million of a low-margin web service resale program that the Federal Government segment chose not to renew in Q3 of last year. Revenues for the third quarter of 2022 included $9.1 million from acquired businesses. Gross margin was 30%, up 130 basis points over Q3 of last year. Both business segments and all operating divisions reported a year-over-year expansion in gross margin driven by improvements in business mix.

Gross margin for the Commercial segment was 33.1%, up 70 basis points year-over-year. The expansion was a result of double-digit growth of our high-margin commercial consulting and permanent placement services. Gross margin for the Federal Government segment was 20.5%, up 120 basis points year-over-year as a result of changes in business mix. This improvement resulted from a smaller contribution of cost reimbursable contracts, which carry a lower margin than other contract types. The contribution of higher-margin businesses we acquired in the third quarter of last year and the decision not to renew a low-margin web service refill program in the third quarter of last year.

SG&A expenses were $232.6 million, up 20.7% year-over-year. This increase in expense is commensurate with the growth in the business and also reflects increased investment in our head count to support future growth. SG&A expenses also included $3.3 million in acquisition and integration expenses that we do not include in our guidance estimates. Excluding these acquisitions and integration expenses, SG&A was slightly above our guidance estimates, primarily as a result of greater-than-expected incentive compensation from higher growth in revenues and gross profit. Income from continuing operations was $71.1 million, up 7.2% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was up 8.9% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.4% for the quarter, a 30 basis point decline year-over-year due to the incremental investments in SG&A previously discussed. At quarter end, cash and cash equivalents were $211.2 million, and we had $204 million available under our $250 million revolver.

Free cash flow from continuing operations totaled $79.5 million, an improvement of 18.8% over the prior year. Our senior secured debt leverage ratio for the quarter was 0.96:1. We deployed $59.5 million on the repurchase of approximately 624,000 shares of the company's common stock during the quarter and year-to-date, have repurchased 2.2 million shares for a total of $227.6 million.

Turning to our guidance. Our financial estimates for the fourth quarter are set forth in our earnings release and supplemental materials. These estimates are based on the current production trends, assume 60 billable days in the fourth quarter, which is 4 days fewer than Q3 of 2022 and 1 day fewer than Q4 of 2021, and include an estimated revenue contribution of $48 million from the recent acquisition of GlideFast and Iron Vine. For the fourth quarter, we are estimating revenues of $1.123 billion to $1.143 billion, an implied revenue growth rate of 6.6% to 8.5% on 1 fewer billable day and on difficult comparables.

As the fourth quarter of 2021 benefited from high revenue growth, on a sequential basis, the implied revenue growth rate for the fourth quarter of 2022 is expected to be up on the same number of billable days. We are estimating net income of $54.2 million to $57.8 million and adjusted EBITDA of $128.5 million to $133.5 million. We expect gross margin to remain relatively consistent year-over-year and sequentially The estimated sequential decline in adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin primarily relates to sequential decline in revenues and gross profit attributable to fewer billable days in the quarter. The midpoint of our fourth quarter guidance range anticipates full year revenue growth for 2022 of 13.8%, net income growth of 15.3% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 15.6% compared to 2021.

Thank you. I'll now turn the call back over to Ted for some closing remarks. Ted?

Thanks, Marie. It has been just over a year since we introduced our 3-year plan in September 2021. While many things have changed in the past 12 months, Demand in our end markets remains favorable, and we are successfully executing against these opportunities. Our ability to succeed quarter after quarter comes down to our resilient operating model. maintains a large, diverse enterprise account portfolio with strong commercial and government bookings that position us favorably for the future. Our balanced but flexible capital deployment strategy enables us to act in the best interest of all of our stakeholders, including successfully completing acquisitions that provide us with new solution capabilities that are in high demand by our customer base.

With that as a background, I'd like to provide some commentary on where we are tracking versus the 3-year plan we laid out last September. For reference, you can find the full 3-year plan and anticipated growth rates in the Investor and Analyst Day presentation posted on our Investor Relations website.

Starting with revenue. Given the outperformance of the business in the first half of the year and continued strong top line growth in the third quarter, we continue to track ahead of our baseline revenue growth expectations. Taking into account acquisitions, revenue growth rates remain within the previously projected range. As a reminder, we plan to deploy $1.25 billion to $2.1 billion in acquisitions from 2021 to 2024. And based on our acquisition pace to date, we sit squarely within this range.

Lastly, in terms of adjusted EBITDA, we are currently tracking towards the high end of our guidance range on both a dollars and a percentage of revenue basis. Overall, we are pleased with the growth we have seen across the business and are tracking in line, if not better, than our initial expectations. While the types of contracts and work requested may be evolving in line with market and client needs, the demand for ASGN's IT services and solutions remain strong. We are confident that this demand, in combination with our strong pipeline of work will carry us solidly in the fourth quarter and into future years. That said, it's not just the type of services we offer that sets our business apart, it is also the quality of the service we provide our clients project after project that continues to differentiate ASGN from the competition.

As we conclude our remarks, I'd like to again sincerely thank our entire team for your hard work and dedication this past quarter. Our success is certainly a reflection of your efforts.

With that, let's open the call to questions. Operator?

(Operator Instructions) We have a first question from the line of Timothy Mulrooney with William Blair.

This is Sam Kusswurm on for Tim. We asked this question last quarter, but given the times we're in, I think it makes sense to check in on this again. If we break down IT spend in the 3 broad buckets, those being workforce management, digital transformation and modern enterprise. You mentioned that modern enterprise would be the one area where you would likely see softness first. So can you talk about that if you're seeing any cracks in spending there? And then also maybe any other high-level thoughts that you have around the other 2 buckets.

Rand?

Yes. Well, as I -- the trend we've been on is the digital transformation bucket is growing the most and bigger share of the pie. The workforce mobilization management is still a big part and growing, but a smaller piece of the pie and the modern enterprise, we suggest will start growing a little bit more, particularly with ServiceNow capabilities. So I think we're seeing about what we thought. We -- just as you said, we'd like to continue to see the digital transformation and the monitor enterprise were particularly around ServiceNow continue to grow.

Great. I appreciate the color. And then one more for us. Can you comment on the pace of your internal headcount increases? I know you've been pretty aggressive here. kind of capitalizing on the strong demand that you've been seeing. But curious if that is slowing down at all given the more macro uncertainty we're headed to right now.

Yes. Well, look, we'll have to monitor that as we go. So through the third quarter, we've continued to invest in headcount to meet opportunities in the market. And I think we have an approach where over a period of time, our headcount growth will grow a little bit less than our growth in revenue, and that's just kind of the pace of business that we follow here. So if we see something develop in the marketplace, we can react to that pretty quickly by growing headcount at a slower pace, we're not growing it. We also have a natural attrition rate, something to rely on, which we understand well and have pulled that lever or watched that lever work in the past.

So I'd just say as of the third quarter, with opportunity in the market, we continue to invest in what we see going forward, we'll have to address that as we go.

We have the next question from the line of Tobey Sommer with Truist Securities.

In the consulting business, you talked about seasonally lower booking activity in 3Q, but you're already seeing something better in 4Q. Could you give us a sense for what the differences in seasonality between those quarters since we don't have sort of our own explicit data series over a number of years to understand what it's like ourselves.

So I'll let Rand talk about the seasonality. Tobey, I'll remind everybody that if you go to the supplemental that we give quarterly book-to-bill but Commercial and Federal separately for the last 3 years. So that data will be out there. But Rand, anything on why Q3 in Commercial is typically...

Yes. First of all, Tobey, when you look at 2020, there was a COVID quarter, quarter 2. But if you look at the other 3 quarters, quarter 3 was smallest in bookings, although very healthy. Same with 21 and now again in '22, we believe. Honestly, I don't think we necessarily have an answer for you, Tobey, why it's seasonal to the commercial marketplace. I mean a lot of them set their budgets at the beginning of the year. Some of them are on not calendar years, but years it began in April 1. So it probably has more to do with their budget cycle than it does anything else, but it seems to work out that way.

And then the only thing I'll add Tobey and you know this, but just for the larger group there's a big difference here between commercial and the federal market, typically, as was this year, the federal market, Q3, which is the calendar Q3, but the end of the government fiscal year, is always the strongest new bookings and book-to-bill quarter, and you see that in our federal numbers here for our calendar Q3.

Yes. And I understand we have the supplemental data, but you've been so sort of acquisitive in the consulting area over the last few years. I wasn't sure how dependably seasonal patterns would shine through there. You segued into the government, so I was going to ask a question about that. Contract awards, you point out were healthy in the quarter, but I think at least amount of that was recompete. How much of that was either new or (inaudible) our expectations for growth in the federal business? .

So a little more than half of that number was recompete a little less than half was new work one that we didn't have before or contract growth on existing work.

(inaudible) to sort of inform us about over the next -- if you look 2023 and/or so kind of 2 questions. Does the (inaudible) resolution get in the way contract pursuits that you're aiming at here in calendar 4Q and maybe the early part of next year if the CR extends that far.

Okay. So I heard most of what you asked, you blipped out a little bit. So I think that usually, calendar Q4, which is the first quarter of the government fiscal year is the like -- very light from a new booking standpoint because of the wave in Q3. I think this year, we think that might be a little different. There may be a little more strength in the Q4 number, but that's just that's more about the cycle of the government contracting agency coming off the COVID situation and the new budget from March. I think we'll have to watch the election play out and see how that affects this, if any, it may not. I can tell you, it feels like the administration is working hard to try to get everything out on the street and bid and awarded that they can. We see a lot of activity. But it would be difficult for me to comment on anything in 2023 and beyond.

And last question for me. Could you quantify the impact of the acquisition that closed in October on the fourth quarter revenue guidance and profit guidance. I think the press release quantify contribution from acquisitions [plural] but not that discrete one, which I don't think was already incorporated in consensus.

Tobey. So yes, so the fourth quarter, we talked about $48 million from acquisitions. And so half of that is for Iron Vine and the rest -- the other half is GlideFast.

And then on the EBITDA margin side, Tobey, as we say, generically and it's true in this case as well, expect middle- to high-teens EBITDA margin rates from the contribution of these acquisitions.

We have next question from the line of Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Markets.

This quarter, some of the other IT services firms have been talking about sales cycles lengthening a bit and some have mentioned, projects potentially ending early or having a little bit more difficulty selling add-on work? Are you guys seeing any of that at all?

Rand, do you want to take that one?

I would say nothing more than the normal dose of both.

Okay. Short and sweet. And just switching over to the Federal Government segment. it looks like -- and forgive me if I'm just misreading it, but it looks like adjusted EBITDA margins in that segment were down both sequentially and year-over-year. Was there something specific to point out there?

It's -- the thing that's going to drive our margins there are the mix of business. And so I don't think there's anything to call out specifically. Marie, you can add anything in there you want otherwise. Yes. So nothing to call out, Jeff.

Okay. Great. And just one more. I've had a few people ask me to ask this. CyberCoders, I know it's small, but can we talk about how large it is and what the trends are in that segment -- in that line of business?

Well, we can't talk about CyberCoders individually, but we can talk about perm placement overall. We told you in the second quarter and the third that we expected it to be a slightly lower contribution to the overall revenue mix, which is true. Because we have other units that are growing faster like commercial consulting plus you've got the addition of acquisitions here. So naturally, that's going to continue to come down. It was just a little over 4% in the third quarter, and it's going to be somewhere between 3% and 4% in the fourth quarter. And I think that kind of is in sync with what our peers gave in the second quarter.

We have next question from the line of Heather Balsky with Bank of America.

I wanted to piggyback off the last question with regards to perm placement. That line of business in general for the staffing industry tends to be hyper cyclical. And I'm just curious if you could help provide some perspective in terms of what you saw during COVID in terms of how that business performed. And then your thoughts on the margin side in terms of your ability to try margins if we go into a downturn and that business does soften.

Well, look, that is true. Perm placement is the most cyclical part of the staffing business in general. That's why we manage it the way we do as a percentage of the total revenues, it together with Creative Circle was down over 20% together is what we said during the COVID period.

Today, it's performing very nicely, and we're expecting it to have a similar market in the fourth quarter, although we break that out specifically. But they're going to perform as we expect, to believe we're just looking 1 month into the fourth quarter. And like we said earlier, it's going to be a lower percent of the revenue mix based on what we said before. So I think that, that probably, Heather, is the best way to look at it as a very small piece of a $1.2 billion revenue mix.

And is there any color you can sort of help us think through, even though it's a small part of revenues, the impact on EBITDA, or just your thoughts on EBITDA if that business were to cycle down.

Well, look, I think you can kind of do your own downside scenario. I mean, if you think that part of the business is going to be down, you could pick a number of 20% again, which is what we said before between those 2 business units. And then the effect on gross margin is more because it's a high contribution to gross margin. But again, I mean, I think around the edges, based on what we're seeing, I don't think that it's the big. It will be the 1 that's soft first, but it won't be a crusher, if you will, to gross margin and bottom line. At least that's not what we've seen in the past. Certainly has an effect on it, but won't be the biggest contributor to it.

We have next question from the line of Surinder Thind with Jefferies.

I'd like to start with a question around the guidance. Marie, can you maybe provide a bit more color on the sequential decline? And what I mean by that is when I do the math, I don't see any sequential growth adjusted for day count. Any color there.

On the revenue side?

On the revenue side, yes. Because day count is 60 days versus 64. And so when I adjust for that, I get to kind of an $1.122 billion number? And then adding the acquisition in Iron Vine get to like an $1.114 billion type number, and that's within your guidance so that it kind of says that it's -- there's not -- there's not revenue growth in it sequentially.

So there's slight revenue growth. We call it about 1% sequentially once you adjust for those 4 billing days coming from Q3 into Q4. .

Correct.

Got it. And any color in terms of where amongst the segments?

In terms of the individual business unit surrender?

Yes, that is correct.

Yes. Our guidance is for the total enterprise at the ASGN level. So we're not going to break it down, but we would say both businesses are going to have performance here in the fourth quarter. I just would leave it at that. Because in the federal unit, you have to adjust, right? You're adjusting for acquisition in and out. But you just call it up slightly adjusted for billing days in the fourth quarter from the third.

And commercial was slight positive.

Yes. Yes.

Got it. That's helpful. And then in terms of just the bigger macro trends that you're seeing, can you maybe talk about the visibility that you have in the consulting side of the business maybe versus the visibility on the staffing side? Maybe compare and contrast those 2 in terms of where we are in the cycle and how comfortable you are when we think about other IT services firms, they're able to guide or they tend to provide guidance that you're out. And you guys are now about 50-50 in terms of your revenue mix.

Do you want to take that one?

Well, I'll start, Surinder. I think we've always said our staffing, we have somewhere a little north of 6 months or half a year visibility. In consulting, we have more than that. It would approach a year, 9 months to a year visibility because they're discrete contracts, they are longer term and they're signed and funded. So in staffing, of course, the client can make a decision today to change their posture with us at any moment. So -- but I think given our account base, we're pretty comfortable that we have visibility out for somewhere between 6 to 12 months for sure between staffing and consulting. Consulting has definitely more disability.

On the government side, similar, it's much more I'd say predictable because of contracts that are set usually for the fiscal year of the government and funded. So we have relatively good visibility there, which is a consulting type business, right?

Understood. And then 1 related question to that in terms of the visibility component. Are there also differences in behavior that we should maybe be thinking about in a down cycle in the sense that would the staffing part of the business or do clients tend to focus on that more whereas with your consulting, maybe that's I would call it, safer revenues? Or how should we think about that component in terms of the reactivity of clients?

Ted, I'll start. I think Ted mentioned already, perm placement is the most cyclical, but it's a very small percentage of our total portfolio, right? Staffing would -- appears to be the most cyclical because clients can quickly make a decision to cut resources or to add resources in a surge manner anywhere along the line. So it tends to be a little bit more sensitive to client decision-making. Consulting usually are well thought-out projects by our clients that they're on a path, on a road map, they have budget for a year and they're off and running. That doesn't mean they won't change their mind somewhere along the line or redirect the work, but it's definitely the one that's probably more consistent.

Now having said that, Surinder, you know very well following us many years. For the most part, we've had in our staffing side, a lot of our staffing work is in infrastructure, "keep the lights on" kind of work, a certain percentage is there. That's why we were cushing so well in '08 and '09 and in the COVID period in the commercial business. So there are a lot of different components that go into it, the more infrastructure work you're doing, the a little more you see it as an annuity, if you will, or more a consistent revenue path.

But definitely perm placement placing would be the most uncertain, but a small, small part of our business, as Ted said. Staffing next, although we're cushioned by the size of our accounts and by the infrastructure spend and consulting last because those are generally well thought-out projects that on a pathway to achieve some objective for the client.

And Surinder, if you want to follow up on the billable day question, please do after the call, and again, up slightly in commercial, up mid-single digits and federal slightly up for ASGN sequentially when you make your adjustments.

We have next question from the line of Kevin McVeigh with Credit Suisse.

Just to follow up on the guidance. I don't know if I picked it up wrong, but it looks like the EPS relative to revenue, a little bit of a delta and it looks like a lot of the incremental expenses in SG&A. And I didn't have Iron Vine in there. But if my math is right, I don't know if it is, it looks like there's an incremental $15 million of SG&A. Is that right? And if it is, what is that?

Coming from the third quarter to the fourth, Kevin, is that what you're saying?

That's right, Ted.

Yes. So I don't think the SG&A is up $15 million. I think that -- and I would tell you the biggest factor is the 4 less billing days because you're fully loaded for cost. So when you see in normal years, if we went back before COVID coming out of the third quarter and into the fourth quarter, you would see a decline in EBITDA margin from third to fourth. You didn't see that in 2020 because of the COVID ramp and you didn't see it in 2021 because we had a very abnormal quarter of acceleration from third to fourth. That was for both units, it was above 5%, which is not normal. So you really -- I mean this is not something -- this is normal for us we're used to seeing from the third to the fourth, but you'd have to go back to '19 and prior to see that.

Actually down.

Great. And then the lower-margin web contract, how much did that help in the quarter, right? Because it sounds like it was obviously lower margin, but the revenue wasn't there. Any sense of what the margin benefit from it was?

Well, I mean, I think in the past, we said each quarter, the contribution is plus or minus $15 million, and it had virtually no margin associated with it.

We have next question from the line of Mark Marcon with Baird.

I was wondering -- can you talk a little bit about the joint contract between Apex Systems and GlideFast? How is the profitability of a contract like that compared to kind of a single contract. And based on what you're seeing now, how quickly could you expand those sort of joint wins?

Well, first of all, I'd like never to talk about anything other than it's one win, it's Apex Systems win in the commercial account. And when we win the ServiceNow, it's a -- basically, we do it on Apex paper, if you will, but it's GlideFast rate, it's GlideFast capability. Apex is bringing the client to the bench, if you will, or to the troughs and then working to make sure that the GlideFast team understands the client environment.

Mark, we expect healthy growth in this area because Apex has an account base that's second to none. And if you ever listen to Bill McDermott and ServiceNow, they have a huge penetration in the Fortune 1000 and Fortune 500 with their licenses now. I will also tell you, I think Bill would say most of these Fortune 500 companies are using ServiceNow in a very small way, not in a large enterprise way. So there's a lot of room and opportunity here for them as a company and for us as a service agent of their products. So I mean, we said when we made the acquisition, which we talked about last quarter or I guess, in the GlideFast publication, we expect that there's a lot of great synergy between us. We didn't price it based on the synergy, we price it based on GlideFast own, which was stellar.

That's great. And then there have been a lot of questions around visibility. Obviously, the reason for that is because there is some concern with regards to macro slowing given the increase in terms of interest rates. You've been through multiple cycles. First of all, are you -- with your clients, Ted and Rand, are you hearing anything among those Fortune 1000 clients in terms of concerns or thoughts about, hey, we might slow down? And secondly, you've done a great job in terms of navigating through prior cycles. Just for people who aren't as familiar with you, if you can just kind of remind people in terms of some of the variable cost components that you have and your ability to adjust as need be.

Right. So let me start and Rand can hop in here. So lots of headlines in the news right now about slowing rates of hiring or maybe even layoffs. What we're finding is clients are doing that, but in areas that are not IT. So I think Ran said earlier that -- we're not seeing any disruption other than the normal specific accounting here or there around not signing up for a piece of work or maybe changing sentiment on hiring. So I think that we're I can't call anything in that regard. So it's just a normal -- we're having normal conversations right now. And a lot of the reasons that clients are using us to achieve digital transformation or cost optimization or otherwise, what I'll just call improved data and analytics, a move to the cloud, all these other things continue. They haven't gone away just because we're all watching what's going on in the news.

So I wouldn't say any overreaction to clients right now. And I think when you hear the headlines, Mark, and you know that you have to kind of bifurcate it between or some of these big companies saying they have too many people in the warehouse or logistics or administrative or what have you and kind of separate that from really what's going on in IT. So that would probably be the first thing.

When the business -- now to your second question, when the business grows more slowly or may not grow at all, we find that our P&L naturally adjust to that as we take the actions that we know we need to take. So if revenue is lower, margins -- gross margins are pretty well intact, and so gross profit moves together with that. Our SG&A is highly bearable like in terms of the fact that it's mostly compensation, it's modest, fixed cost, and it's highly incentive and those incentives adjust with changes in revenue and gross profit. So in that way, we maintain pretty stable margins when you come to the bottom line. And you can go back and see that during the COVID period is the best example of that.

And then Rand and I, obviously, in Apex as a private company went through this in '08 or '09 and saw similar things. So our clients were such an important part of the fabric around how to get things done, not just new things, but just to operate their shop every day that -- and it's a better tool for them than big fixed internal workforce. And we've seen that secular change play out here for years. And so in that way, they need us to stand by them and help them operate their technology operations and accomplish the projects that are important to the business.

Got it. And I appreciate that. And then lastly, we obviously have an election coming along. You did announce a number of really nice contract signings on the government space. Do you think the pace of the decisions is going to actually increase here? And what would happen during a lame duck session, particularly if there's kind of a split from a party perspective.

Well, look, I think that we -- evidence of our numbers, and you'll see our peers report, but the pace quickened in Q3, right? So I think there was a build during the first 2 quarters after the budget became effective. And then now you've seen it begin to happen here in Q3. And we think there'll be maybe a little bit more strength in new bookings for the sector overall in Q4.

What happens if we get into a different situation as it relates to the parties and who's in power. Again, I can't really comment on that. I will tell you that we -- the threat is not getting any less or easier. It's out there and it continues to grow. And it's cybersecurity, our solutions around AI, machine learning, and for the government continue to modernize its system so that it can do the work that it needs to do. Those things are not going away. And I think whatever party is empowered, they're going to support those things.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. And I'd like to turn the call back over to Ted Hanson, CEO, for closing remarks. Over to you.

Right. Well, thank you, operator, and I appreciate everyone being on our Q3 earnings release call, and we look forward to speaking with you in February and discussing the fourth quarter and our outlook for the first quarter of 2023.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.