Earnings call transcript: Kelly Services Q3 2025 misses forecasts, stock drops

Kelly Services reported its Q3 2025 earnings on November 6, revealing a significant miss on both earnings per share (EPS) and revenue forecasts. The company’s stock reacted negatively, falling sharply in pre-market trading.

Key Takeaways

• Kelly Services reported an EPS of $0.18, missing the forecasted $0.3775 by 52.32%.
• Revenue for Q3 was $935 million, below the expected $987.43 million.
• The stock price dropped 16.39% in pre-market trading following the earnings release.
• The company reported a goodwill impairment of $102 million and a non-cash tax valuation allowance of $70 million.
• Kelly Services is focusing on AI talent solutions amid a sluggish labor market.

Company Performance

Kelly Services faced a challenging third quarter, with revenue declining 9.9% year-over-year. The company’s gross profit also decreased by 12.5% compared to the same period last year. Despite these setbacks, Kelly Services is actively pursuing growth opportunities, particularly in AI talent solutions, as it navigates a sluggish labor market and macroeconomic uncertainties.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $935 million (-9.9% YoY)
• Earnings per share: $0.18 (vs $0.21 prior year)
• Gross profit: $194 million (-12.5% YoY)
• Adjusted EBITDA: $16.5 million (-36.7% YoY)
• Operating cash flow: $94 million YTD

Earnings vs. Forecast

Kelly Services reported an EPS of $0.18, significantly below the forecasted $0.3775, resulting in a negative surprise of 52.32%. Revenue also fell short of expectations, coming in at $935 million compared to the forecasted $987.43 million, marking a 5.31% miss. These results indicate a challenging quarter for the company, reflecting broader industry trends and internal challenges.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Kelly Services’ stock dropped 16.39%, closing at $9.54. This decline positions the stock near its 52-week low of $9.18, reflecting investor disappointment with the company’s performance and outlook. The broader market has shown resilience, making Kelly Services’ stock decline more pronounced.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Kelly Services anticipates a revenue decline of 12-14% in Q4 2025, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 3%. The company expects continued revenue and margin pressure through the first half of 2026. Despite these challenges, Kelly Services remains focused on growth, efficiency, and transforming its corporate culture.

Executive Commentary

CEO Chris Laydon emphasized the importance of growth, stating, "Growth is the single most important value creation lever at this stage in Kelly’s journey." He also highlighted the demand for AI skills, noting, "50% [of employers] told us that they are struggling to find the right operational and technical skills to help them navigate this transition into the AI-enabled workforce."

Risks and Challenges

• Macroeconomic pressures and sluggish labor markets are impacting demand.
• Reduced demand from key customers, including the federal government.
• The ongoing transition to AI presents both opportunities and challenges.
• Goodwill impairment and tax valuation allowances may affect financial stability.
• Potential government shutdowns could have a minor revenue impact.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on the company’s AI strategy and its impact on future growth. Questions also addressed the potential effects of a government shutdown and the company’s plans for small acquisitions. CEO Chris Laydon reassured investors that AI is seen as a growth opportunity rather than a current demand inhibitor.

Full transcript - Kelly Services A Inc (KELYA) Q3 2025:

Conference Call Operator: Good morning and welcome to Kelly Services’ third quarter earnings conference call. All parties will be on listen only until the question and answer portion of the presentation. Today’s call is being recorded at the request of Kelly Services. If anyone has any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host, Mr. Scott Thomas, Kelly’s Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Scott Thomas, Head of Investor Relations, Kelly Services: Good morning and welcome to Kelly’s third quarter conference call. With me today are Kelly’s Chief Executive Officer, Chris Laydon, and our Chief Financial Officer, Troy Anderson. Before we begin, I’ll remind you that the comments made during today’s call, including the Q&A session, may include forward-looking statements about our expectations for future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those suggested by our comments. We do not assume any obligation to update the statements made on this call. Please refer to our SEC filings for a description of the risk factors that could influence the company’s actual future performance. In addition, we’ll discuss certain data on a reported and on an adjusted basis. Discussion of items on an adjusted basis are non-GAAP financial measures designed to give insight into certain trends in our operations.

For more information regarding non-GAAP measures and other required disclosures, please refer to our earnings press release, presentation, and once filed, Form 10-Q, all of which can be accessed through our investor relations website at ir.kellyservices.com. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Kelly’s Chief Executive Officer, Chris Laydon.

Chris Laydon, Chief Executive Officer, Kelly Services: Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. It’s great to be with all of you. Let me start by saying what a privilege it is to serve as CEO of Kelly, the sixth in our storied history and the first to be selected from outside the company. Having spent my entire career in this industry, I’ve known and admired Kelly for many years. Our brand is iconic, synonymous with the industry we created when we were founded by William Russell Kelly in 1946. Since then, Kelly has connected millions of people to work, improving families, communities, economies, and the world. This is also a company I’ve competed with. Throughout my career leading commercial organizations and customer pursuits, I’ve experienced up close Kelly’s ability to win in the market.

Our diverse portfolio of businesses has significant scale in attractive specialties and differentiated global capabilities that are widely recognized as leading the industry. With our education business, Kelly has proven the ability to drive rapid organic growth in emerging markets, having established a dominant position in K-12 staffing and tripling the revenue of the business since 2020. This is among the best examples in our industry of what’s possible when a team combines clear vision, sound strategy, and consistent execution. Instead, I’ve watched a business that has acquired scale in higher margin, higher growth specialties like technology and telecom, moving up the value chain as a consultant to partner to employers seeking differentiated technical solutions.

At the same time, SET has continued to win and retain market share in our established life sciences and engineering specialties, where for years, Kelly has led the market as the second and fourth largest staffing provider, respectively. In ETM, Kelly brings enterprise customers unmatched global workforce capabilities and insights through our technology-enabled and AI-powered offerings delivered at scale. This includes talent solutions, business process outsourcing, and staffing services, which Everest just recently recognized as leading the market. I’ve seen firsthand the competitive advantage that this breadth and depth of capabilities creates as employers increasingly seek partners who can meet their total talent management needs. Because of these assets, Kelly’s track record of driving value for customers, including many of the largest employers in the world, is as strong as any company in this space.

Never have our core strengths and ability to enhance flexibility and agility in an employer’s workforce been more important than they are today. As I step into this role, the operating environment is evolving, driven by a dynamic macroeconomic landscape, a sluggish labor market, global and domestic policy shifts, and the AI boom. The impact of these trends on our industry is significant, and Kelly is not immune. These dynamics were more visible in our results in the third quarter. Despite continuing to capture growth in more resilient markets, our performance as a company fell short of expectations. Our team and I know that we can achieve more, having proven as much in the organic growth and margin expansion that Kelly has delivered in recent years.

To consistently win in the market and unlock Kelly’s full potential, it’s critical that we maximize our core strengths and address head-on opportunities to improve our strategy and execution. To better understand where these opportunities exist, I’m spending much of my time in the field meeting with and listening to our employees and customers. Through my conversations with our team, it’s clear that we have a highly engaged group of workforce experts who are passionate about winning in the market and serving our clients and talent. The expertise and high level of service they provide are among our key differentiators that drive employers to choose Kelly to meet their workforce needs. In meeting with many of our top customers, I’ve heard how Kelly’s tailored solutions and unique insights are helping our clients maintain a competitive edge in their industries.

I’ve also had the pleasure of connecting with the investment community, who have shared with me their growing interest in the value creation opportunity we have here at Kelly. During my time in the field, a few common themes have emerged. First, it’s fundamentally important to customers that it be easy to do business with Kelly. We must ensure our structure and processes are designed with customers in mind, and they must be straightforward and intuitive to navigate. Next, the skill Kelly has acquired in higher margin, higher growth specialties is a tremendous asset that has repositioned the company in the market. This has created inroads with employers in attractive end markets who are eager to know how our expanded capabilities can meet their evolving needs. Completing the integration of these investments is critical to our ability to realize their full value and capitalize on these growth opportunities.

Much work has been done by our team to reduce complexity and improve efficiency. This work continues today with the efforts underway to consolidate disparate front, middle, and back office systems, leveraging the leading technology stack we obtained when we acquired MRP. We must continue to assess our resources, from technology platforms to our workforce mix, to ensure they’re optimized to drive profitable growth. These early observations are helping inform how we move forward on the next leg of Kelly’s strategic journey. I’ll share more in a moment about our short-term priorities and long-term focus. First, I’ll turn it over to our CFO, Troy Anderson, to provide more details on our results in the quarter.

Troy Anderson, Chief Financial Officer, Kelly Services: Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everybody. Before I walk through our results, as a reminder, beginning in the third quarter, the Motion Recruitment Partners acquisition we completed in the second quarter of 2024 is fully in our year-over-year comparable results. Thus, I will only speak to reported and adjusted results for the current quarter. Revenue for the third quarter of 2025 totaled $935 million, a decrease of 9.9% versus Q3 of last year. This was lower than our expectations, most notably due to lower-than-expected growth in the ETM staffing specialty, education, and select other specialties. As we discussed last quarter, we had discrete impacts from reduced demand from the federal government and three of our top customers. Combined, these impacts drove approximately 8% of year-over-year revenue decline, consistent with our expectations, leaving us with an underlying decline of 2% excluding these impacts, which is in line with industry performance.

Kelly’s underlying performance reflects positive trends in each business area that reinforces our confidence in our strategy. Education continued its long-running streak of quarterly growth and achieved a 90% fill rate overall in the quarter for the first time. Within SET, the telecom specialty achieved double-digit growth in the quarter after strong growth in the second quarter, while the engineering specialty has grown each quarter this year. SET’s underlying performance was consistent with the second quarter and continues to outperform the market. Within ETM, staffing underlying revenue has been consistent across the quarters despite the macro variability. Outcome-based solutions, excluding contact center and payroll process outsourcing, or PPO, both continue to grow in the quarter and have shown growth all year.

Finally, our managed service provider, or MSP specialty, showed modest growth in the quarter for the first time this year, reflecting the new customer wins we have referenced in prior quarters. For Q3 revenue by service type, staffing services reflects modest growth in our education business and pressure from government, large customer, and macro environment impacts in SET and ETM. Our outcome-based offerings, excluding contact center solutions, were down year-over-year, reflecting timing of both project demand and new business within SET and ETM. Talent solutions was down modestly year-over-year in the quarter, reflecting a mix of performance across the individual specialties. Perm fees represented approximately 1% of revenue, which was consistent with the prior year. Drilling down into revenue by segment, education grew 0.9% year-over-year in the quarter, driven primarily by ongoing fill rate improvement.

While we believe we want our fair share of the new business opportunities for the school year, we saw a number of decision delays in light of the broader macro environment, and the fill rate improvement benefit was lower year-over-year given our maturing customer portfolio, thus the relatively lower growth in the quarter. As a reminder, education volumes and revenues are reduced significantly in the third quarter due to the summer break. In the SET segment, revenue was down 9% in the quarter, or 3.5% excluding the federal government impact. Our telecom and engineering specialties continue to be growth areas within SET, while life sciences and technology saw year-over-year declines consistent with the second quarter. In the ETM segment, revenue declined 13.1% year-over-year, or an underlying decline of 1.9%. Staffing services revenues declined 16.4%.

Driven primarily by the large customer and federal contract demand reductions, along with lower hours volume across other clients. Outcome-based revenues decreased by 17.2%, reflecting demand pressure from the large contact center customer that has fully run off as of the end of the quarter. Excluding contact center, ETM outcome-based solutions grew modestly. Talent solutions revenue decreased 1.4% overall, reflecting growth in PPO, MSP new customer wins, and reduced customer volumes and recruitment process outsourcing. Reported gross profit was $194 million, down 12.5% versus the prior year quarter, primarily from reduced revenue. The gross profit rate was 20.8%, a decrease of 60 basis points compared to the prior year quarter, and a 30 basis point sequential increase. The sequential lift, which is typical with the seasonality of our business, was more muted than we expected given the revenue dynamics, along with elevated employee-related costs in the quarter.

Education’s GP rate increased 20 basis points, while SET declined 80 basis points, and ETM declined 60 basis points. We made significant progress improving our SG&A expense profile in the quarter, with reported SG&A expenses of $194.4 million, a decrease of $24.6 million, or 11.2%. On an adjusted basis, SG&A expenses decreased 9.7% year-over-year, reflecting the momentum we are gaining on structural and volume-related cost optimization efforts. Expenses increased in our education segment in support of the revenue growth, while expenses decreased across the rest of the company. With the increased revenue pressure, we’re enhancing our efforts to drive durable and sustainable efficiencies in our operating model through technology enhancements, including leveraging AI, process efficiencies, and multiple other levers. Existing initiatives like the formation of the ETM segment and integration of MRP and other acquisitions within SET are progressing well and will drive both go-to-market and cost efficiencies going forward.

In connection with our various efforts, we recognized $4.7 million of charges in the quarter, down from $6.4 million in the second quarter. These included costs associated with improving technology and processes across the enterprise, as well as severance expenses and executive transition costs. We expect to see these expenses increase in the fourth quarter as we make continued progress and expand upon our various optimization efforts. Related to the realignment of SET and acquisition integration, during the quarter, we assessed the current Goodwill Reporting Unit and determined it was appropriate to combine them into a single SET segment reporting unit. As a result of the assessment, along with declines in the current and projected business performance driven by macroeconomic and industry conditions, we concluded that there was a triggering event for a non-cash Goodwill impairment totaling $102 million in the quarter.

We are excluding the impairment from our adjusted results. Additionally, with the impairment activity, we were also required to reassess the recoverability of our deferred tax assets. While we have confidence in our business over the future recoverability time period, with a three-year cumulative loss position in our near-term actual and expected financial performance, it was necessary to record a valuation allowance of $70 million, which is also non-cash and excluded from our adjusted results. As a result of the Goodwill impairment and tax valuation allowance, our reported loss per share was $4.26 for the quarter. On an adjusted basis, earnings per share was $0.18 compared to $0.21 in the prior year, with the decline over the prior year primarily due to lower profitability and discrete tax items. Adjusted EBITDA was $16.5 million, a decrease of 36.7% versus the prior year period.

While adjusted EBITDA margin declined to 1.8%, both of which were below our expectations, reflecting the revenue and gross profit declines I previously noted. SET expanded margins by 60 basis points year-over-year, despite the lower gross profit due to their expense optimization efforts. ETM saw margin pressure due to the elevated revenue and gross profit declines, despite substantial progress on their SG&A. Education experienced margin compression due to the seasonality of that business. Moving to the balance sheet and cash flow, we are generating strong operating cash flow this year with $94 million through the third quarter, up significantly versus the prior year. Total available liquidity as of the end of the quarter was $269 million, comprising $30 million in cash and $239 million of available liquidity on our credit facilities, leaving us ample capital allocation flexibility.

Total borrowing of $118 million increased versus the prior quarter due to our normal working capital seasonality. Our debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio was less than 1 at the end of the quarter. We don’t expect a material change in our net debt position over the remainder of the year from normal operations. We ended the quarter with $40 million remaining on our current Class A share repurchase authorization. We continue to believe the data demonstrates that the company is measurably undervalued by the market. With that backdrop and our capital allocation flexibility, we anticipate being active in our repurchase program during the remainder of the year. We also maintained our quarterly dividend of $0.075 per share. These actions reflect our confidence in Kelly’s strategy and our commitment to opportunistically deploying capital in pursuit of attractive returns for shareholders.

As we look at the fourth quarter, we are assuming no material change in the macroeconomic or industry dynamics and a positive resolution to the federal government shutdown during the quarter. For revenue, we expect a decline of 12%-14% in the quarter, which includes 8% of negative impact associated with reduced demand from discrete large customers and for federal contractors, consistent with the third quarter impact. Excluding these items, our underlying revenue decline would be 4%-6%. The incremental revenue decline relative to the third quarter is primarily due to the strong growth we saw in the fourth quarter of last year and includes a modest impact related to the government shutdown. For adjusted EBITDA, we expect margin of approximately 3% in the quarter.

This represents a sequential increase of 120 basis points consistent with the prior year change, despite the incremental revenue pressure, and a decrease of approximately 70 basis points year-over-year in the quarter, consistent with what we experienced in the third quarter. While we’re not providing specific guidance beyond the fourth quarter, as we look out over the next few quarters and the anticipated residual year-over-year impacts from the reduced demand for federal contractors and from the three large customers in ETM, it’s likely we’ll see continued revenue and margin pressure, at least through the first half of 2026. As Chris said, across Kelly, we’re addressing head-on opportunities to continue to improve our execution. This includes in the finance organization, where we’re well underway with implementing measures that will enhance our agility, efficiency, and business impact in this evolving operating environment.

I’m grateful to all of the Kelly team members for their unwavering commitment and resilience as we position the company for growth and enhanced profitability over the long term. I’ll now turn the call back to Chris for his closing remarks. Thank you, Troy. As we move forward, our immediate focus is on stabilizing Kelly’s performance, and actions to this end are underway. We’re moving swiftly to align resources with current demand trends while continuing to drive structural efficiencies across the enterprise. As part of this effort, we made the difficult but necessary decision last month to implement strategic restructuring actions that resulted in a targeted workforce reduction. These actions addressed excess capacity while further streamlining our organizational structure following the consolidation of the OCG and P&I businesses into the single ETM segment.

We’re also continuing and, where possible, accelerating our technology modernization initiative within SET and ultimately across the enterprise. This initiative will unlock substantial growth and efficiency opportunities, making it easier for our employees to serve our customers and talent, reducing expenses associated with managing disparate and outdated systems, and enabling more rapid innovation and integration of AI. While executing our near-term priorities, we’re also keeping our sights set on the future. As I conclude my initial assessment of the business, our team is aligned where we must focus longer term to accelerate progress on Kelly’s strategic journey. First and foremost is growth. Growth is the single most important value creation lever at this stage in Kelly’s journey.

To drive organic growth, we’ll continue to enhance how we go to market, especially with our large enterprise customers, to bring to bear the full strength of Kelly’s portfolio and win more market share. We’ll also continue to drive inorganic growth by pursuing targeted investments that add scale and capabilities in higher margin specialties. We’ll focus on evolving our product mix as well to address changing buyer preferences, such as the shift toward statement-of-work solutions and to capitalize on the AI boom. Our widely recognized Global Rework report found nearly half of executives surveyed are struggling to find the talent with the right operational and technical skills in AI. This unmet demand represents a significant opportunity to position Kelly as the partner of choice for employers navigating the transition to an AI-enabled workforce. Next, we’ll continue to focus on efficiency.

This means continuing to align resources with demand while re-engineering our cost base to drive further structural efficiencies. That includes our initiatives to modernize our technology stack and integrate legacy acquisitions. Finally, culture. Culture is fundamental to how we’ll achieve our ambitions and win in the market. We’re committed to building on the strong culture that exists here at Kelly, doubling down on customer centricity, visibility, and accountability. I look forward to sharing with you more about these areas of focus and our progress as we move forward. We’re navigating a complex moment for our industry and our company. These circumstances call for decisive action to address near-term dynamics while positioning the company to realize the significant value creation opportunity before us.

There’s much work to be done, but I’m excited and energized to meet this moment together with our team and contribute my operational experience to accelerate our progress. Our core strengths: an iconic brand, a differentiated portfolio, and an engaged team give me the confidence that we’ll emerge more agile, resilient, and primed for growth. I’m grateful to the board of directors for placing their trust in me to lead Kelly at this moment on the company’s journey. I also want to extend my appreciation to Peter Quigley for his support as I’ve stepped into this role and for his distinguished service to the company over the last 23 years. And to our team, thank you for welcoming me with openness and enthusiasm. I look forward to working alongside you to realize our collective ambitions and create long-term value for all of our stakeholders.

Operator, you can now open the call to questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press Star 11 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the Star 11 command. If you’re using your speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, you may press Star 11 at this time. For our first question, we’ll go to Joe Gomez from Noble Capital. Joe, your line is now open. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Good morning, Joe. Morning, Joe. I wanted to start out. Troy, I don’t know if you can kind of break out these discrete between the federal government and a large customer impacts.

I know in total it was, I think you’d say, roughly 8%, but I don’t know if you can break that down. What was for the federal government and what was for the large customers? Yeah, Joe, thanks for the question. They’re roughly equal. So it’s roughly two points each, plus minus a little bit, but I’d say, generally speaking, they’re roughly equal. Okay. Thanks for that. I know Chris, you just talked about some of this go-to-market here. Optimizing large enterprise customer share wallet. You see that, and I understand that goal, but then I also see, hey. Three customers had a significant impact on revenue this quarter. How are you kind of squaring that circle and making sure that if we get even more concentrated in some big customers, the same things don’t happen down the road? Yeah, thanks, Joe.

This is Chris, and it’s a good question. Let me just start by reiterating that we know Kelly can achieve more. We saw the headwinds, and we know there’s also execution gaps that we’re going to continue to address head-on. One of the things that you heard me talk about is the breadth and depth of our portfolio. As we’ve gone and acquired really significant scale over the last few years, that’s also built on a foundation where we have had incredible strength, right? Number one in education, number two in science, number four in engineering, just outside the top 10 in our technology business. Everest-recognized specialization and strength in our MSP, BPO, and staffing services. As I’m talking to customers, not only.

The three impacted, but also the thousands of customers we’re working with from around the globe, they want to be doing more with Kelly. They want to make sure that it’s easy to work with us, that we’re bringing all of our capability to them. One of the things I have been impressed with, and I saw this from the outside before I got here, and I’ve been even more impressed as I’ve joined, is the depth of these relationships, the length of time we’ve been working with customers around the world. We know we’ll continue to partner with them in new ways as we continue to make sure that we’re showing up. That we’re easy to work with, and we’re showing up with all of our capabilities.

We do have opportunity as we move forward around some of that execution, but that’s what we’re taking head-on. I have some confidence as I’ve been engaging with customers over the last 60 days. Yeah, Joe, this is Troy. I would just add that these four discrete items are somewhat unique and completely unrelated. They just happened to all be around the same time, but the macro environment affected each of them in varying ways. Policy decisions affected them in varying ways, and their industry challenges are also affecting them in varying ways. It is less about customer concentration and more about stickier services and just growing. We have relationships, by the way, with all those customers still, and still very significant for at least one or two of them.

Anyway, just wanted to remind, since we did not really get into the details of what they were, but remind everybody of that. Appreciate that. One more for me, if I may. Troy, you got a slide here in the deck about the revenue trends, and you kind of break out excluding discrete impacts. If I take a quick glance at those, the quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, they are pretty much trending the wrong way. Just trying to get an idea. I understand the federal government shut down. What else needs to occur in the macro environment that you think we can start to see these revenue trends reverse and start becoming positive, as opposed to negative, and/or start growing again as opposed to trending downward? Yeah, it is a fair question.

Again, I would say that SET, and again, they’re somewhat unique across the three segments. SET is fairly consistent across the quarters. We had great strength in telecom, double-digit growth there this quarter after nearly double-digit last quarter. Engineering’s been growing all year, and consistent rate of decline in technology and life sciences. We did expect a little bit more out of SET this quarter, but we’re still pleased that, despite the broader environment around us, we saw at least consistent performance and some strength there in those two areas. Education, again, somewhat of a unique dynamic there. Market, some decision delays. Those are decisions we still expect to win at a future date, but there was some hesitancy in the market just given some of the policy changes and dynamics around the broader macro environment.

We expect education to continue to grow and us win our fair share, if not more. We’ve been taking share in a growing market there. On ETM, again, the underlying still low single digit. We think we’re competitive in the market, as Chris said. Highly ranked by the industry experts, and we saw growth in MSP, so we’re starting to realize the benefits of some of the new logo wins there. Staffing has been consistent across the year. Despite the macro headwinds, the underlying staffing, and really, that decline there was just less growth in PPO and a bit of a downturn in RPO, the recruitment process outsourcing. There’s different dynamics in each, and there’s significant opportunity in each, as Chris outlined in his prior response. I think it’s just a matter of moving us forward with some of the initiatives.

Getting through some of the softness that we see more in the macro dynamics around us. Okay, great. Thanks. I’ll get back in queue. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Stanke from Barrington Research Associates. Kevin, your line is now open. Great. Thank you. I wanted to start out by asking about the various factors in the operating environment that you noted in your earnings release are currently impacting your results, largely the macroeconomic landscape and sluggish labor market. On top of that, you specifically added in the AI boom. I’m just kind of wondering what you’re seeing in terms of the impact of AI on demand for your business currently. On the flip side, you also mentioned that could be an opportunity over the longer term as your customers look to find AI talent.

Maybe if you could walk through the dynamics you’re seeing with AI currently. Yeah, Kevin, thanks. This is Chris. We really see there to be an opportunity to continue to capture new AI growth opportunities. And from our standpoint, really, not just in the SET business, but in ETM and in education. We’ve got a unique opportunity in the market based on our capability to bring employers a flexible, more scalable solution as they’re bridging into a more AI-enabled workforce. We think that’s going to unlock a lot of value in a way that will combine the power of people and technology. And we have that opportunity as we move up the value chain in our SET business with a lot of the work we’re doing and things like data modernization and other digital work. That’s solutions-based business. And again, that’s in growing demand.

As we indicated in our prepared remarks, more broadly across employers in our research, 50% told us that they are struggling to find the right operational and technical skills to help them navigate this transition into the AI-enabled workforce. We see it as a real opportunity for us on the go-to-market side. Internally, you heard Troy and I both talk about how we are going to continue to accelerate the modernization of our technology stack, the technology stack that we acquired when we acquired MRP. That continues to be a priority as we think about ways to improve both processing and efficiency across our teams and bring our teams new tools. A lot of that is underway, the integration of those AI-based tools in our recruiting process, in our client portals.

We’re going to continue to see that add value and drive opportunities for efficiency and productivity over the next couple of quarters. Okay, great. It sounds like AI offers a nice longer-term growth opportunity for you. I was just curious if in the shorter term, perhaps are some customers kind of holding off or delaying hiring decisions as they assess the impact of AI on their businesses and as they assess whether they need to add as many people as in the past, given that AI will bring them greater productivity. I’m just wondering if that’s having any short-term impact on demand for your services. Let me start, and I’ll have Troy build on it. First, I think we just need to step back in the broader context of what we’ve been seeing, a pretty sluggish labor market. Many of the.

Businesses that would support some of the disruption maybe you’ve seen and the lack of job growth that we’ve seen really pretty consistently across every month this year is a bit embedded already in the workforce dynamics. We see and have been seeing that sluggish impact all year. Now, outside of that, we continue to see companies invest in bridging themselves into a more AI-enabled workforce. We believe there could actually be opportunities not only on the solution side of how we can help companies navigate that, but it also could be an indication at some point on the staffing part of our business that companies use flexible labor as a bridge into that as they’re navigating more certainty around the demand for their products and services. We will continue to be navigating those indicators.

That will impact both parts of our business, our staffing and our solutions. Yeah, Kevin, I would just add, this is Troy. I wouldn’t say there’s been a change this quarter versus last quarter or two quarters ago in terms of any impact that AI may have had in terms of our positions, the type of positions we staff, or the type of opportunities we pursue. What we are seeing is an uptick in our ability to leverage AI in terms of providing support to our customers, be it with our platforms from a workforce management perspective in the ETM space, be it some of the solutions that we’re bringing to bear in SET. Not just in the technology vertical, but also in telecom and engineering and life sciences. We are starting to be able to now move upstream into bumping into some of the major.

Consulting players. With some of our nimbleness and the capability that we bring, trying to fill that gap that Chris highlighted about companies not being able to find the right skills and the right workers. Yeah, so no real change in what we’ve seen. If anything, it’s creating more opportunity for us to bring our solutions to bear. Okay, great. All right. Good to hear. I just wanted to get a little more insight on education. You mentioned just some delayed decision-making there due to macro factors. I’m just kind of trying to relate the macro environment to the K through 12 space and perhaps why customers have been holding off on decisions there. Yeah, sure. In this, Troy, the, so I guess two things. One, again, I want to highlight across our portfolio.

A billion-dollar business now, largely in the K through 12 substitute teacher, we achieved a 90% fill rate in the quarter for the first time ever. That is a tremendous value that we deliver to our clients. We have some of our largest customers closer to 100% even. We have tremendous offering there in value for our customers. The new business there are really new opportunities for outsourcing. It is less about us and competitors taking each other’s customers, and it is more about us competing with in-house offerings. Even when we lose a client here or there, it is usually they bring it back in-house. It is stabilized, and they now feel confident they can run it in-house. They may have implemented a technology solution that enables them to do that. That, again, does not happen very often. What we saw with the—so two things, really.

The fill rate, we are maturing that portfolio. We’ve had tremendous growth there over the last number of years. Chris highlighted in his comments we’ve tripled that business over the last five years. As those clients mature, I mean, you can only get to 100%. You can’t get above that. As all those relationships mature and we’re operating in that 90-plus % range, we’re just not going to get as much fill rate lift across the portfolio that we’ve seen over the last few years that has been supplementing the new business wins. We’ll continue seeing some benefit there. A little bit less benefit there than we’ve seen in prior years. And then.

The decision delays is really just around keep in mind back in the summer, there was a $6 billion grant from the Department of Education that was withheld and put under review. Right around the time where certain decisions might have been made. Typically, these awards are done in the spring, late spring, and early summer, and then implemented for the new school year. There was the future of the Department of Education. There was just a lot of noise in the system. For a school district to venture into this new space of outsourcing their substitute teacher delivery, some felt like that was not a step they were ready to take. The work has been done. The relationships have been built. The value proposition has been sold. Now it’s more of a win than an if on those.

We have confidence that we’ll get, again, more than our fair share of those as they come back to market. Okay. Got it. All right. That’s helpful. Can you just talk a little bit more about the timeline on the integration work going on in the SET segment? Chris, I believe you said you’re looking to even accelerate that a bit and just tie that to the completion of the process. I think you said it would be also beneficial with taking that SET offering to the market in an integrated way and driving greater growth out of that offering. Yeah, that’s exactly right. As I mentioned a little earlier, we have significant scale and we’ve deployed about $900 million of capital, mostly in the SET business. And.

Our customers, as we’re talking to them, continue to want to leverage those capabilities, not just in technology, but technology and telecom, technology and life sciences. What we’re doing is accelerating the modernization of that tech stack. When we acquired MRP, they had a leading tech stack. We were in the process of looking at various ways to integrate our disparate front, middle, and back office. We have selected the tech stack that we acquired when we bought MRP and are in the process now of migrating the rest of the organization to that tech stack. We’re starting with the integration, though, of our SET business. We know that that will give us an unlock as we go to market, making sure that it’s easy for our internal teams to be collaborating, winning new business, helping go to market faster, leveraging that tech stack.

As we get SET integrated and the legacy SET acquisitions integrated into that technology stack, we will also be bringing through our education and ETM segments. That is all underway, and all of it is on schedule. Yeah, Kevin, I might just add this, Troy. We have a big cutover here at the end of the year with the legacy acquisitions being integrated into the MRP tech stack. In 2026, the rest of SET, and we will start making, as Chris just indicated, we will start moving some of the enterprise capabilities, likely leading with the human capital management component along with the rest of SET, and then quickly follow that with education and ETM beyond 2026. Those are some of the key near-term milestones around that. The go-to-market side of SET has been integrated. The management teams.

The sales teams and the like there, but they’re on separate systems, as Chris said. That creates some inefficiencies and some challenges with some of the collaboration. We’ll get through that here pretty quickly. Again, first big cutover into the year and then through 2026. Okay, great. Yeah, that’s helpful. Just lastly, you talked about the fourth quarter outlook, assuming a positive resolution to the government shutdown. I mean, it sounds like the impact on you has been pretty modest, but kind of what’s the swing factor there in terms of if this shutdown dragged on even longer than we expect? Yeah. We can measure the direct impact, right? We know what our government business is. We were fortunate that there was a larger percentage of the positions that we have that were deemed essential.

That was a pleasant surprise if there’s such a thing in the dynamic. Less than a point. If it goes all the way through the quarter, maybe closer to a point of revenue impact. We tried to capture that in the 12-14% expectation, give us some room there. What we can’t measure really is the indirect impact. Just yesterday, right, 10% of flights across 50 major airports being reduced 10%. That’s going to have a ripple effect. There could be other ripple effects in other industries the longer this goes on. That’s a bit of a wild card that we don’t know. Really, all we know right now is what we can directly see. I think the longer this goes on, it’s not going to help anybody. Yeah. Okay. All right. Understood. Thanks for taking the questions.

I’ll turn it back over. Thanks, Kevin. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Riddick from Sidoti. Mark, your line is now open. Good morning. Morning, Mark. Morning, Mark. I was wondering if we could talk a little bit on cash usage and prioritization. Maybe we can start with what we’re looking at for CapEx for this year and then how the technology plays into how that might skew 2026. I have a follow-up after that. Yeah, sure, Mark. This is Troy. The CapEx year to date is about $7 million. Probably be $10 million-ish on a full-year basis, plus or minus a little bit. Some of that spend on the technology deployment is cloud-based implementation work, so it doesn’t show up as CapEx, but it still gets capitalized. Third-party labor and some of the software costs, etc.

It’s up in the operating section of the cash flow statement. Overall, again, strong cash flow for the year. With that, we’re seeing the opportunity to, with some of the debt paydown that we’ve done this year, we’re seeing the opportunity to, in the fourth quarter here, given the share price and just the undervaluation of the stock, also engage in some repurchase activity. I think net net, as I said in my prepared remarks, no material change in our net debt position relative to the third quarter here, which is about $90 million or so, $118 million in debt and $30 million in cash. The wild card could be if perhaps there’s a small tuck-in acquisition or something like that that we’re able to get over the goal line before the end of the year. Otherwise, that’s what we’re expecting. Okay.

You kind of led yourself into where I was going next, which is acquisition. What you’re seeing with the pipeline currently, maybe valuation-wise, and are you seeing how many opportunities out there vis-à-vis maybe six months ago or so? There seems to be a little bit of a pickup in activity there overall. I was sort of wondering what your appetite is at the present time. Or should we, as far as larger acquisitions, are we staying sort of on the sidelines for larger acquisitions now, or how are you feeling about that? Yeah, it’s a fair question. I mean, we’re active. We have an active corporate development team. They’re constantly evaluating pipeline. We’ve been expanding our network of sources for opportunities. We have seen some.

Certain assets that are fairly richly valued and that we’ve passed on or that we’ve thrown in maybe an inquiry, but quickly decided that was going a direction we didn’t want to go. We continue to be active. We’re looking at, across primarily in the SET and education areas, type of opportunities, therapy add-ons, some of the other add-ons that we can do in the SET verticals, be it technology, be it engineering, or life sciences. As we sit here today, unlikely that there’s a large acquisition in the near term, we never say never. Certainly, we’re going to continue looking at building upon the scale that we’ve achieved. We’re going to continue looking at adding capabilities. We believe we have a great foundation to be building upon, both for organic growth and inorganic growth.

We’ve got strong cash flow, and we expect to continue to be able to deploy capital opportunistically across the various options, as I mentioned earlier. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jessica Luz from Northcoast Research. Jessica, your line is now open. Hi, Chris. Hi, Troy. Thank you for taking my questions. First of all, I don’t know if it was already touched on, but I have a brief question and then a follow-up. First, in terms of the current macro environment having an impact on the quarter, just to go a bit deeper, how would you characterize the sales cycle for the business overall? The sales cycle is still really robust. We’re continuing in some of the work I shared in my prepared remarks. Our focus on growth.

Is at the core of what we’re doing right now, making sure that we are in front of our customers, helping them understand all of the ways that we can add value. We are going to continue to make sure that all of Kelly is coming to our largest enterprise customers. We’ve also seen in our SET business a really strong retail pickup this year, which has been driven by some of the stability in the SET business and some of the growth in engineering and in telecom. Finally, in the education space, as Troy indicated earlier, we’re number one in the market on the heels of a 90% fill rate in the quarter. It is maybe as exciting of a time as any to go and sell with that track record of success.

We are everywhere in the market talking to districts that are insourcing their model and helping them understand how we could add value as their partner. We are going to continue to have that be a priority as we drive growth into the future. All right. Thank you. And then just for the brief follow-up again, if it was touched on or not. In terms of the pricing environment for the three segments, do you see any specific pressures within any of the segments? Yeah. I’ll maybe start, and Troy, you feel free to weigh in. We are going to continue, I would say, overall. Just to kind of set the stage to be disciplined in how we are going to approach new opportunities in the market. We are not going to go by business. We continue to see rationality in terms of where we play. We have got a huge opportunity.

To continue to move up the value chain in the statement of work solutions-based business, particularly in SET. That continues to be a priority. We are going to continue to monitor that over the next couple of quarters. I do not know if Troy has anything else you want to add. Yeah. I think as we look across the three segments, education and SET are, I would say, stable. The spreads there are stable to actually improving, as, again, we move up the value chain with both current and prospective clients on new opportunities. I would say it is a little more mixed in ETM, as some of the large enterprises come up for renewals. Of course, we are trying to work with them on their cost structure, and so there could be a little bit of concession here or there. Generally speaking, I would say.

Maybe we see a little bit in ETM and actually more positive momentum than the other two. It is not really translating. Our gross profit was, I commented, not as strong as we were expecting, down 60 basis points year over year. It was really more a function of the business mix and some elevated cost of service in the quarter versus really spread or pricing pressure. I think perfect. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. I would now like to turn it back to Chris Laydon for closing remarks. Thank you all for joining today. That concludes. We will see you next quarter. Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect.

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