Healthcare Services Group, Inc. (HCSG) 2026 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Healthcare Services Group 2026 second quarter earnings call. (Operator Instructions) The matters discussed on today's conference call include forward-looking statements about the business prospects of Healthcare Services Group, Inc. For Healthcare Services Group Inc. most recent forward looking statement notice, please refer to the press release issued this morning, which can be found on our website, www.hcsgcorp.com.

Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied as a result of various risks, uncertainties and important factors, including those discussed in the Risk Factors, MD&A and other sections of the annual report on Form 10-K and Healthcare Services Group's other SEC filings and as indicated in our most recent forward-looking statements notice.

Additionally, management will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these items to US GAAP can be found in this morning's press release.

I will now hand the conference over to Ted Wahl, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to HCSG's second quarter 2026 earnings call. With me today are Matt McKee, our Chief Communications Officer; and Vikas Singh, our Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we released our second quarter results and plan on filing our 10-Q by the end of the week. Today, in my opening remarks, I'll discuss our Q2 highlights, share our perspective on the general business environment and discuss our strategic priorities for Q3.

Matt will then provide a more detailed discussion on our Q2 results and then Vikas will provide an update on our liquidity position and capital allocation progression. We will then open up the call for Q&A. So with that overview, I'd like to now discuss our Q2 highlights.

I am pleased with our second quarter results, which underscore the strength of our business model and the continued disciplined execution across our operations. For the three months ended June 30, we reported revenue of $470.8 million, net income and diluted EPS of $22.7 million and cash flow from operations of $21.9 million and cash flow from operations excluding the change in payroll accrual of $27.9 million.

I'd like to now share our perspective on the general business environment. Industry fundamentals continue to gain strength, highlighted by the multi-decade demographic tailwind that is now beginning to work as acute care system. In 2026, the first of the baby boomers are turning 80 years old.

And by the year 2030, all 70 million-plus boomers will be over the age of 65 with the oldest being in their mid-80s, the long-term post-acute care utilization. We expect that the demand and opportunity for service providers in this space, especially for those with compelling value propositions, durable business models and market-leading positions years ahead.

The most recent industry operating trends remain positive as well, highlighted by steady occupancy, a growing industry workforce that has now recovered to its prepandemic baseline and by recent announcement, it's on deregulation, payment rules and survey processes, which better align with the changing and expanding needs of our nation's most vulnerable and the provider communities we service. Beyond our core industry trends, we are closely monitoring the broader macro landscape, including sustained volatility and global energy and supply markets resulting from the ongoing geopolitical conflicts.

Our role as financial stewards for our clients remains a nonnegotiable priority and serves as our North Star as we navigate this environment -- and trends. Fundamental to these efforts is the depth of our long-standing vendor partnerships, which provide the critical visibility and stability necessary to navigate market volatility with confidence. In the event that specific supplies or food items experience outsized inflation or cost pressure, we are prepared to pivot our sourcing strategies to mitigate direct exposure.

Ultimately, the rigorous work we have done to enhance our contractual frameworks allow us to pass through unavoidable cost increases, ensuring we preserve our margins while continuing to deliver market-leading service.

Looking ahead to Q3, our top three strategic priorities remain driving growth by developing management candidates, converting sales pipeline opportunities and retaining our existing additional execution and prudent spend management at the enterprise level and optimizing cash flow with increased customer payment frequency, enhanced contract terms and disciplined working capital management. We are reaffirming our 2026 mid-single-digit growth outlook with a focus on realizing the substantial growth opportunities in the second half of the year and beyond.

So with those introductory comments, I'll turn the call over to Matt.

Thanks, Ted, and good morning, everyone. Revenue was reported at $470.8 million, Segment revenues and margins for Environmental Services were reported at $213.2 million and 13.3%. Segment revenues and margins for Dietary Services were reported at $257.6 million and 7.5%. Our 2026 growth plans continue to be oriented around mid-single-digit revenue growth with third quarter revenue expectations in the $475 million to $485 million range.

Cost of services was reported at $396 million or 84.1%. Cost of services benefited from strong service execution and lower bad debt expense. Our goal is to manage cost of services in the 86% range. SG&A was reported at $52.6 million. After adjusting for the $6.9 million increase in deferred compensation, SG&A was $45.7 million or 9.7%.

Our goal is to manage SG&A in the 9.5% to 10.5% range with the longer-term goal of managing those costs into the 8.5% to 9.5% range.

Other income was reported at $8.8 million. After adjusting for the $6.9 million increase in deferred compensation, other income was $1.9 million. Our effective tax rate was reported at 26.8%, and we expect our 2026 effective tax rate to be approximately 25%. The net income and diluted earnings per share were reported at $22.7 million and $0.32 per share.

I'd now like to turn the call over to Vikas.

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. Starting with our liquidity and cash flows. Our primary sources of liquidity are cash flow from operating activities, cash and cash equivalents and our revolving credit facility. Cash flow from operations was reported at $21.9 million. After adjusting for the $6 million decrease in the payroll accrual, cash flow from operations was $27.9 million.

We wrapped up the second quarter with cash and marketable securities of $200.9 million and our credit facility of $300 million was undrawn with utilization limited to else only.

We continue to execute on our capital allocation priorities across organic growth, M&A and share repurchases. Our approach continues to be grounded and disciplined and our current liquidity provides us the flexibility to pursue all of these priorities in tandem. On the M&A front, we closed a small strategic acquisition within our Campus business during the second quarter.

With regards to share repurchase, we announced plans in February 2026 to further accelerate the pace of our share buybacks and target $75 million of our common stock over 12 months. In the second quarter, we repurchased $20.9 million of our common stock, bringing our year-to-date total to $44.9 million. We now have 8.3 million shares remaining under our share repurchase authorization.

With that, we will conclude our opening remarks and open up the call for Q&A.

(Operator Instructions)

AJ Rice, UBS.

Hi, everybody. Thanks. Just thought I'd ask about looking at the top-line performance that you're expecting for the back half of the year. It sounds like smartest growth in the third quarter and then maybe an acceleration in the fourth quarter.

Can you comment on what you're seeing in terms of new business opportunities, housekeeping versus dining, cross-selling versus new customer bills? And is, I guess, the gating factor the demand on the part of the clients, or is it your ability to get managers to take on new business?

Hey, good morning, AJ, and thank you for the question. I would start with the fact that the demand for the services remains as strong as ever. We have a robust and growing pipeline of new business opportunities that are at various stages of development, but that pipeline is managing a highly structured sales process from cultivation through closing, so we have significant visibility into that pipeline.

We also continue to execute on the organic growth strategy by developing management candidates to fund new business opportunities, all the while retaining greater than 90% of our base business. I know we've talked about this in previous conversations, but the key driver for us in delivering mid-single-digit growth either at the higher end or the lower end of the range in any given year is timing.

The timing of HCSG management capacity and then the timing of client start date preference and timing can be fluid quarter-to-quarter knowing there's always going to be a subset of intra-quarter opportunities that may be pushed out or pulled forward depending on those key drivers. I would also add that timing dynamic applies to our corporate development efforts as well.

Over the past couple of years, we have put forth significant effort in building a pipeline of strategic acquisition opportunities that align with our long-term vision, our strategic plan, and perhaps most importantly, our culture, and we continue to cultivate those opportunities we remain excited about the future growth opportunities they'll provide.

So more than anything else, what gives us conviction and confidence in that back half of the year ramp is grounded in the robustness of our collective pipelines and then our assessment of the timing considerations I highlighted.

I think specifically to the segments you mentioned, our new business pipeline is split fairly evenly between EVS and dietary, although from a revenue contribution perspective, a dietary. Account is typically 2x that of an EVS account on the same store basis.

So, even if we're onboarding a comparable number of accounts, dietary and EVS revenue would increase proportionately. And just as a reminder, we're just still 50% or so penetrated in dietary services within EVS, the EVS customer base. So, that cross-sale opportunity remains the ultimate low-hanging fruit from a growth perspective.

Okay, great. And then maybe just a follow-up question. I know your costs are getting passed through, but I'm just curious, have you seen any change in underlying hourly wage rates versus the trajectory you've been on? And how about any comment on food inflation?

Yes. I'd say we see food at home inflation for the second quarter did step up to 1%. So that was actually the first sequential quarter-to-quarter increase that we've seen after three consecutive sequential quarterly step downs going back to the third quarter of last year. So certainly continue to keep an eye on that. And then on the wage side, we're seeing ongoing stabilization and then improvement within the labor market, and certainly, we're -- that's manifesting itself in our ability to both hire and ultimately retain employees as well.

Specific to the BLS ECI data, those Q2 data won't be released until next week. But we did see a nice downward trend in the wage inflation through the full year of 2025. One of the trends we've seen more recently is that the first quarters in the past several years had the highest wage inflation. So the data showed an uptick sequentially in Q1 to 1.1%. And we'll certainly keep an eye on what those Q2 print data look like.

But ultimately to bring it all home, I would just remind everyone that whatever the data show and certainly, we're acting as stewards on behalf of our clients to mitigate any and all exposure to food inflation, wage inflation, but ultimately, in as much as we experience those cost increases, we do have a contractual rights to pass through both food and wage inflationary increases to our clients.

Sean Dodge, BMO.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Maybe just staying on the cost for a moment. Your COGS in the quarter came in well below your 86% target. Matt, I think you mentioned cost control and lower bad debt contributing to that.

Any more color you can give on the bad debt piece? How much did that benefit in the quarter? And I know you said longer-term managing 86%, but just how we should think about kind of, I don't know, cadence or how that looks over the back half of the year.

So as Matt mentioned in his opening remarks, cost of services benefited from strong service execution and lower bad debt expense. Those were the key contributors for making this quarter come out the way it did. With respect to bad debt, the bad debt expense for the quarter was $4.3 million, which is relatively flat versus where we were last quarter, which was $3.8 million.

And when you think about where that number stacks up compared to our historical average, historically, we've been about 1% to 1.5% of revenue. The last two quarters have been less than 1%, so that is definitely favorable with respect to our cost of sales outcome, and it's a result of our collections initiatives the contract enhancements and that is contributing several millions of dollars versus the historical norm.

The other aspect here is just service execution, which is the primary reason why we continue to deliver the kind of results we do. I know we briefly talked about the cost backdrop with respect to food prices and wages, but as you think about what we are experiencing there is, to date, we've seen minimal direct impact from higher food supply or material costs flowing through our invoices, and that is continuing to benefit our cost of sales.

I know there is chatter around what's happening in the broader economy, and we do operate within the broader economy. So we are not completely immune from inflationary pressures, but we've done a pretty good job of mitigating those pressures and not seeing a direct impact in our cost of sourcing, whether it's food or material costs, where we've seen some anecdotal evidence of inflation is -- in elements like discretionary spending like travel, but again, those elements are a small percentage, insignificant percentage of our cost base and the fact that we continue to execute on the bigger sourcing items.

Along with the bad debt piece have definitely benefited us. The one factor we've talked about in the past, which was not really material this quarter, is the benefit we tend to accrue from workers' comp and general liability.

That number was in excess of $4.5 million in Q1. That number has come down. It's a much smaller number this quarter. It's $1.3 million benefit. And again, as we've said about that number in the past, that number can be lumpy, it could be lower or absent in the subsequent quarters. So from our perspective, the outperformance this quarter is really dependent on service execution and the bad debt piece.

Okay. Great. And then just on cash from operations, you had another great quarter there. How should we be thinking about that for the year? I guess, in context of your other targets for revenue growth that you gave, the margins that you supplied, how should we think about kind of overall, the outlook cash from operations with or without the payroll accruals.

And then the ERC payments, are there any more of those out on the horizon or are those pretty much done now?

So starting with the ERC receipts. We got a few receipts last year across Q1, Q2 and Q3. We did not get any receipts in Q4 of '25 million. And year-to-date, we've received no further receipts on that end. That said, some of our claims are still pending, but the timing of those is very uncertain, and there is no way to figure out when the next payment will come through if it does come through.

So we are not seeing any benefit in our cash flows from ERC this year. And we're not billing that in how we think about the business and the liquidity go forward.

In terms of thinking about cash flows for the rest of the year and what that will look like. I think from our perspective, the modeling continues to hinge upon the overall guidance we give on our cost structure, which is cost of sales at 86%, SG&A in the short term at 9.5% to 10.5%, so call it, 10% at the midpoint, which leads you to a 4% pretax margin, add back 1.5% for D&A and stock-based comp if you're doing an EBITDA math.

But ultimately, net income derived on that math is the best proxy for cash flows from our perspective. Now as you can imagine, Sean, there will be quarters where we outperform or underperform that broad metric, but we've seen historically that proxy tends to do really well for us.

Andy Wittmann, Baird.

Sorry, Vikas, I wanted to just dig in a little bit more on the comments that you had on insurance to understand the quarter better. I think I heard you say that the first quarter benefit was $4.5 million. That was actually a benefit. That wasn't the year-over-year delta. That was actually a benefit last quarter.

And did I hear you say that you had a $1.1 million benefit this year? Again, I wanted to confirm that, that was the actual benefit from the actuarial review rather than the year-over-year change. Is that right?

Correct. So I was talking about the benefit numbers. The benefit this quarter is $1.3 million. And you're right, the benefit in Q1 was in excess of $4.5 million. And from our perspective, the number coming down is just a reflection of the actual estimates in closer and closer to a steady state.

I think we've talked about the dynamic there that when we set up the captive self-insurance entity, we had put in reserves which were on the conservative side.

And as we've gathered more data over the last decade, we've enhanced our best practices around educating our workforce, keeping them incident-free. We've seen some benefits accrue from those reserves. And our expectation is, over a period of time, that benefit will have a soft landing and tend towards zero.

Now there will be quarters depending on the number of recent claims and the severity of those claims that the number may bounce up or down. But our ultimate goal would be to take this benefit down to 0 and create a steady state such that the expenses we associate with our self-insurance are completely in line with the payouts we make over time.

Yes. Okay. I think that makes sense. I want to just ask one more clarifying question and this one for my benefit and I think the benefit of everyone. This is the actuarial review accounting true-up that you're talking about for the benefit.

I mean there are -- obviously, the company has general liability costs, workers' compensation costs that are actual cash costs that have to get paid out.

What I'm hearing from you is that even net of those costs, these items this quarter on a GAAP basis were positive to you. You want to get the adjustments on the actuarial side down to 0 and talk about that soft landing, but there will still be typically a cost. I want to make sure I understood that correctly. And then just maybe just on the follow-up -- okay. So I got that right. Okay.

Yes.

So then for the benefit of everyone, maybe just one other way of asking this one. I'll just ask this, then you can address the whole thing. I just want -- this is obviously because of the actuarial adjustments and the unpredictable nature of those actuarial adjustments, this is always a little bit of a tough number for us to get at. What do you think, Vikas, is the best way for the investment community to think about modeling this? This has been a pretty big variable in the last few quarters.

And I know there's not a lot you can do about it, but I thought I'd maybe give you a little bit of a form as to what do you think the best guess way to think about this is.

Yes. So let me first clarify how it's set up, how it's working. And you're absolutely right. Even after attaining the steady state, we will have an expense every year. And that is the premium we are paying into our self-insurance captive entity only because we do have payouts we have to make for workers' comp, general liability and auto each year, right?

So -- and what we've seen in the recent past is the premium we are putting into our captive entity has, by and large, matched the cash outflows that we've paid to settle any claims that come up.

So I think we've got that spot on that the premium we pay matches the cash outgo, give or take in any given year. The benefit we are accruing is really because of the fact that when we set up reserves for this entity going years back, we because we did not have all the historical data, it is a new entity.

You start conservative, one and two, our best practices have evolved over time such that our incident rates both in terms of number and severity have gone down. So when we talk about this benefit coming our way, it's really a function of the actuaries looking at our data, this is an external provider, not us looking at our data.

They look at our data and say, your number of claims and the severity has come down, you do not need as much reserves go forward.

And as those reserves come down, we accrue this benefit. Now there will be a limit to our ability to improve our safety standards. And ultimately, there will be a steady state and this benefit coming from reduction in reserves will go away. What will stay forever is premium into the entity and the payout. With respect to modeling, it's a little challenging to precisely predict this number.

Again, while we might do everything that we are supposed to, there can always be unfortunate incidents such that we see a spike up in the number of claims next quarter or our claims might go down but the claims that do come in are more severe. And that just depends on any unfortunate incident that might happen across our very large workforce.

So predicting it has been a little bit of a challenging task. Again, we're saying that over time, it should trend down towards 0 if we get our actuarial model right. What I'll say is the best way to think about what the numbers might be would be to look at the average that has prevailed in the last few quarters. So if you go back over the span of mid-'23 to mid-'25, the average quarterly number coming our way was about $3 million.

The previous two quarters here, Q4 of '25 and Q1 were slightly higher than that number and now we've ended up with a number that's lower than $3 million, but $3 million has been our average going back two to three years, but we do expect that number to come down.

So look, if you had to model something, it will be hard for me to point to a number, but the range we've seen in the last two to three years is 1.5% all the way to 4.5%, call it. And I think you'll have to work with a bit of a range there in terms of how to best predict any given quarter.

I've obviously asked about this lots over the years, and that was the most comprehensive answer for it. So I appreciate that, Vikas. Ted, just on the 4Q implied ramp in your growth outlook, obviously, you're kind of guided now through the first three quarters and three or just above range, at least at this midpoint that you've got here for 3Q.

To get to the midpoint, obviously, that's a big ramp in 4Q. I'm just wondering, is that because that's when the school year starts, and you're expecting to take a bunch more business in that kind of upstart business on the campus side.

Is that to what you can attribute the 4Q ramp? And maybe another way of asking the same question would be, do you have the start dates on the calendar already for that 4Q ramp to give you confidence to have that acceleration in 4Q.

Yes. without pointing to a specific division, whether it be the campus division or geographically a division within HCSG Healthcare, I -- the core health care market, I would point first and foremost of the pipeline, and I alluded to it in one of the previous answers, but it's a mix of -- in terms of stages of development, there's a mix of groups that are signed and started. There is a mix of groups that are signed and not yet started. And of course, there's, in our lexicon high probability.

And then you look at that alongside the other components that we consider, including strategic acquisition and investment opportunities. So without pointing to a specific one, Andy, it really comes down to timing. So I talked about it earlier. Ultimately, what gives us confidence in the back half of the year ramp is the timing as we assess it within our pipelines and the composition of the groups that we're set to grow with.

Ryan Daniels, William Blair.

This is Matthew Mardula on for Ryan. Is there any update on the Genesis bankruptcy? I know you have previously talked about it, but I just want to make sure we are not missing anything or we should be expecting anything in the second half from Genesis? And are you still doing business with them on a normal cadence?

We are. Overall, we continue to provide services to the Genesis facilities without disruption in operations or operational outcomes or payments, and we continue to expect that to be the case through the duration of the post-petition period. I think in terms of updates, I highlighted this previously, but in January, the bankruptcy court did approve the sale of Genesis to 101 West State Street, which is a group of well-known operators in the space with whom we have an existing relationship.

From a timing perspective, the closing of that transaction appears to be on track with an expectation that late Q3 or early Q4 it would, in fact, close. But again, in the meantime, our priority is providing quality services to the Genesis facilities, and we do not expect any disruption in operations between now and the sale date.

Great. And then given your strong cash balance, could you update us on the M&A pipeline and just overall environment that you're seeing? I understand the potential acquisitions are focused on smaller deals and on that education segment. But are you seeing more actionable opportunities today than you were maybe 6 to 12 months ago or still a more relative selective environment?

No, I think we're definitely seeing a bigger pipeline of transactions, and we have been selectively proceeding with the M&A transactions that fit our goals. So if you think about our execution last year, we did one small transaction last year. We finished one deal in Q2 of this year. Again, small deals, but we are continuing to look for further opportunities. And we do have a pipeline that is today more robust than what it was 6, 12, 18 months ago.

And we feel that as we think about all our strategic priorities, organic growth, M&A and share repurchases, we want to have the elevated enhanced liquidity that shows up on our balance sheet because it is allowing us the flexibility to go after all strategic growth avenues without having to do any trade off or offset one versus the other.

So we continue to make progress on all fronts and our balance sheet, our liquidity is letting us do it in a manner that is to our liking. So yes, the pipeline is continuing to build up, and we are prepared to execute on those opportunities with cash at hand.

Great. And then one very quick follow-up. You talked about that one deal in Q2 of this year. Kind of what impact did that have on the quarter?

So we closed this acquisition in mid-April, and the revenue contribution from the acquisition, frankly, in this quarter or in subsequent quarters is insignificant given the size of the acquisition. From our perspective, it's a niche acquisition within our campus business, and it enhances our footprint and offering capabilities, frankly, in a business at this point of time, five years old and is still ramping up. So it's more about the strategic fit than creating any day one top line boost for us.

Ryan Halsted, RBC.

Maybe just a quick follow-up on the campus on just the contribution overall of the campus services business from a top line perspective?

Yes. Ryan, we talked previously abouit the campus business achieving that $100 million in '25, but it is still a relatively small base, less than 10% of total company revenues. And certainly, we see continued growth opportunities from that base.

And we've talked about the synergies that exist between our environmental offering. Another element that I think is worth noting for purposes of this call that relative to the academic calendar year, and Sean Dodge alluded to this in his comments, but many, if not most, of our campus clients right now are schools.

And obviously, we're in kind of the slowest season here in the summer as far as their operations go, although our operational teams are planning and working ahead to be ready for next year's academic year.

And one thing that we've really tried to introduce into this vertical, if you will, would be really trying to break out of the typical cyclicality of the strict academic year calendar and are really pushing from more of a year-round focus on selling and even initiating new client engagements rather than what had historically been an end market that was very rigidly cyclical.

And then as Vikas noted, we are actively scanning the campus landscape to identify businesses that might be attractive acquisition targets for us, either to establish a stronger presence in a given market via a regional well-respected brands, that sort of land-and-expand strategy, if you will, or by capturing additional services that would fit neatly under that campus offering.

Great. That's helpful. And then I just wanted to follow up on the -- just the dietary how are you thinking talking about being able to execute on that opportunity in kind of the back half of the year.

Yes, it's a great question. And I would say on the heel of the answer that I just provided, it applies in that campus offering in addition to the legacy health care, skilled nursing and long-term and post-acute care segment. So I would say that the demand for our services remains robust. And certainly, as Ted alluded to, that dining cross-sell, the ultimate low-hanging fruit for us. And as it relates to the pipeline and growth opportunities, I would call out really COVID was certainly a time that we would never want to repeat.

But if there was a silver lining, it did offer us an opportunity to really bolster the resonance of our value proposition within our respective end markets, and that applies both to our dining offering and our environmental services offering. It really offered an opportunity to reintroduce the company and our services to the market and remind folks of the myriad benefits that come with partnering with Healthcare Services Group.

And that resonance has carried through today, and we continue to see inbound interest in our services and obviously, an opportunity to continue to build out that pipeline. So there is that split in the dining offering relative to health care -- I'm sorry, to the environmental services offering.

As Ted noted, there's only about 50% penetration in providing dining services within the Environmental Services customer base in long-term and post-acute care. And that same cross-sell opportunity exists in campuses where we have our Campus Services Group brand offering environmental services and Meriwether Godsey, our blue-chip premium dining offering in that space, and there's plenty of opportunities for team play and introductions and the opportunity to co-introduce and offer services within that vertical as well.

Great. And if I can just squeeze one more in. You talked about the managerial staffing opportunity. I guess, in this labor market, just curious to hear if you are -- if you're finding more success in terms of recruitment and/or retention, where do you think you're really seeing the most, I guess, progress in terms of getting the managerial candidates?

Yes. It's interesting, Ryan, if you look -- I mean, the labor market is strong, and the health care sector continues to drive most of the job gains. So that's a favorable backdrop against which we are recruiting and positioning our company. If you look at BLS since 2023, education and health services super sector is how they qualify it, has accounted for more than three in four of all private sector job gains. And that growth is really powered by health care, which accounts for about 88% of that super sector's total employment.

There was another interesting analysis done by ADP that if the current trends continue, health care alone could become the largest private sector employment category in the US in about 10 years. So looking specifically at nursing care facilities data, employee counts have now surpassed pre-pandemic levels, and that's definitely a marker that the industry has been watching for years now, and that was against a loss of nearly 0.25 million employees at its peak. So as Cliff Porter, the President and CEO of AHCA noted, it's not a magic number, but it certainly demonstrates the industry's resilience and recovery.

So all of that is to suggest that health care as -- within the labor market context continues to build strength and momentum. And as far as Healthcare Services Group, we're in a really good spot relative to that strength. And our wage growth has remained stable, applications are high, and that's across the spectrum of both line staff employees and for our management opportunities. There's always going to be markets that have specific ongoing challenges, but we're able to allocate our resources to focus and address those situations as they arise.

And the way that I would characterize ultimately the labor market and our ability to both hire, train, develop and ultimately retain employees at both the line staff levels and that critical management training level that you noted in your question, Ryan, we would describe it as business as usual. And that's a really strong spot for us to be in, whereby the assessments and the hiring are all executed locally within our district structure. So business as usual and certainly, we look like -- we look forward to a very continued strong labor market and hiring and development opportunity and environment.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Ted for closing remarks.

Okay. Great. Thank you. As we enter the back half of 2026, our 50th anniversary, the company's underlying fundamentals are more robust than ever. And with the industry at the beginning of a multi-decade demographic tailwind, we are incredibly well positioned to capitalize on the abundance of opportunities that lie ahead and deliver meaningful long-term shareholder value.

So on behalf of Matt, Vikas and all of us at Healthcare Services Group, Ben, thank you for hosting the call today, and thank you, everyone, for joining.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.