Earnings call transcript: TrueBlue Q3 2025 beats earnings expectations

TrueBlue Inc. reported its Q3 2025 earnings, surpassing analysts’ expectations with an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.03, compared to a forecasted $0.02. The company also reported a revenue of $431 million, exceeding the expected $393.19 million. Despite these positive results, TrueBlue’s stock declined by 1.27% in after-hours trading, closing at $4.74.

Key Takeaways

• TrueBlue’s Q3 revenue grew 13% year-over-year, reaching $431 million.
• The company reported an EPS surprise of 50%, beating forecasts.
• Stock price fell by 1.27% in after-hours trading despite strong earnings.
• TrueBlue reduced its SG&A expenses by 8%, improving cost efficiency.
• The PeopleSolutions segment saw a significant 28% revenue increase.

Company Performance

TrueBlue demonstrated robust performance in Q3 2025, with a 13% increase in revenue compared to the same quarter last year. The company’s strategic focus on digital transformation and market expansion appears to be yielding positive results, particularly in the PeopleSolutions segment, which reported a 28% revenue increase. Despite a net loss of $2 million, the adjusted net income stood at $1 million, indicating operational improvements.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $431 million, up 13% year-over-year
• Gross margin: 22.7%, down from 26.2% in the previous year
• Net loss: $2 million
• Adjusted net income: $1 million
• Adjusted EBITDA: $11 million
• Cash position: $20 million
• Debt: $68 million

Earnings vs. Forecast

TrueBlue’s Q3 EPS of $0.03 exceeded the forecasted $0.02, marking a 50% surprise. Revenue also surpassed expectations, coming in at $431 million against the projected $393.19 million. This marks a significant achievement for the company, reflecting its strategic initiatives and cost management efforts.

Market Reaction

Despite the earnings beat, TrueBlue’s stock price dropped by 1.27% in after-hours trading. The stock closed at $4.74, which is within its 52-week range of $3.45 to $9.05. The decline may be attributed to investor concerns over the company’s net loss and declining gross margin.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, TrueBlue expects Q4 revenue growth of 4-10% year-over-year, with Healthcare Staffing Professionals contributing significantly to this growth. The company remains focused on digital transformation and market expansion, positioning itself for a strong start in 2026.

Executive Commentary

Taryn Owen, CEO, emphasized the company’s strategic positioning: "Our digitally-enabled specialized workforce solutions are uniquely positioned to help businesses solve complex talent challenges with precision, scale, and agility." CFO Carl Schweihs added, "We feel like with our optimized fixed cost base, we’re poised for significant incremental margins and expanding our profitability as demand rebounds."

Risks and Challenges

• Declining gross margin could impact profitability.
• Net loss of $2 million may concern investors despite adjusted net income.
• The transportation market remains challenging, affecting growth prospects.
• Client sentiment is cautious, which could affect future demand.
• Mixed impacts from immigration reforms could create uncertainties.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company’s strategy to address declining gross margins and the potential impacts of immigration reforms. Executives highlighted their focus on maintaining pricing discipline and optimizing the fixed cost base to drive profitability as demand rebounds.

Full transcript - TrueBlue Inc (TBI) Q3 2025:

Operator: Greetings and welcome to the TrueBlue Third Quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow a formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I want to remind everyone that today’s call and slide presentation contain forward-looking statements, all of which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and management assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties, some of which are described in today’s press release and SEC filings, could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Management uses non-GAAP measures when presenting financial results.

You are encouraged to review non-GAAP reconciliations in today’s earnings release or at trueblue.com under the investor relations section for a complete understanding of these terms and their purpose. Any comparisons made today are based on a comparison to the same period in the prior year unless otherwise stated. Lastly, a copy of the company’s prepared remarks will be provided on TrueBlue’s investor website at the conclusion of today’s call. A full transcript and audio replay will be available soon after the call. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Thank you, Operator, and welcome everyone to today’s call. I’m joined by our Chief Financial Officer, Carl Schweihs. Our third-quarter performance exceeded expectations as business trends continued to stabilize, and we gained traction with our strategic focus. We’ve made meaningful progress advancing our growth strategy, including enhanced performance and attractive in markets, most notably within our skilled businesses. Energy sector revenue more than doubled this quarter, reflecting our continued success and strong position in this growing market. Our commercial driver business delivered its fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. This growth is driven by our decades of commercial driver industry experience and deep expertise in the skilled trades labor market, where we are helping to address structural labor shortages and serving rising demand that is aligned with strong secular growth drivers. Our results demonstrate our commitment to realizing improved profitability.

We continue to execute with operational discipline, driving efficiencies, leveraging technology to scale, and positioning the business for sustainable margin expansion. These efforts are delivering results. We reduced our operating costs while growing revenue as our targeted actions to streamline our cost structure are translating into stronger leverage and enhanced profitability. We continue to lead on the digital front. Across the enterprise, we are integrating enhancements to our full suite of proprietary technology platforms to deliver faster, more precise, and transparent workforce solutions. This progress has earned us strong industry recognition and third-party validation for our intuitive, high-performing digital platforms, which are focused on improving engagement across the client and talent lifecycle. One recent enhancement I’d like to highlight is the price estimate feature we enabled within our PeopleReady JobStack platform.

This feature allows existing customers to view and accept a price quote directly in the app when placing new orders, enhancing transparency and improving efficiency of the overall workflow. The new functionality has been well received by our existing customer base, and we are expanding this feature to new customers later this quarter as we continue to elevate the user experience. Advancing our digital ecosystem remains a priority, positioning us to meet the evolving needs of employers and talent while driving higher engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Alongside our digital transformation, we continue to optimize and expand our sales function to accelerate growth and capture demand. In our on-demand staffing business, our transition to a territory-based go-to-market structure with expanded sales resources is driving improved results, enabling us to pursue opportunities in priority markets more effectively and to accelerate new client acquisition.

By reorganizing our sales model, we have been able to expand our sales capacity in the field by 50% and deploy localized sales strategies while maintaining operational excellence and discipline. This investment in local sales is driving favorable progress, with our on-demand business showing improved sequential trends at both the state and regional level. We continue to see momentum in our enterprise-wide strategic partnership program and cross-selling initiatives as well. Our recently announced strategic partnership with a leading group purchasing organization is unlocking new client acquisition channels and generating opportunities across our brands. The robust pipeline includes several multi-brand prospects and has already resulted in multiple new business wins. Greater enterprise alignment and collaboration is also building stronger partnerships across our brand portfolio.

For example, collaboration between our PeopleReady and commercial driver business teams recently helped secure a multi-million dollar deal with a leading energy solutions manufacturer, strengthening our enterprise relationship and fueling future growth. As we continue to build on this momentum, we are also successfully expanding our share in high-growth and under-penetrated markets. Since our acquisition of Healthcare Staffing Professionals earlier this year, we have continued to strengthen our position and expertise in the U.S. healthcare market. As a TrueBlue brand, HSP has expanded into three new states, highlighting the growth potential win backed by TrueBlue’s extensive reach, technology, and recruitment agility. Healthcare remains a significant long-term market opportunity with strong secular tailwinds, and we are scaling this business thoughtfully to capture sustained demand.

We are also capturing market share with our commercial driver business in under-penetrated and growing geographies, while our RPO solutions continue to expand coverage in attractive verticals such as engineering and technology through higher skilled roles. For example, after implementing an RPO engagement earlier this year with a large U.S. industrial distributor for engineering roles, we have now expanded to encompass 100% of their hiring needs, driven by our team’s exceptional service and execution. This reflects the transformative value of our specialized and scalable workforce solutions. In summary, this quarter underscores the progress we’re making on our long-term enterprise strategy as TrueBlue continues to strengthen performance, anticipate market shifts, and advance toward sustainable, profitable growth. Our key priorities are taking hold as we further expand in high-growth markets, accelerate our digital transformation, and optimize our sales function.

The staffing market is large and highly fragmented, with significant untapped potential, and TrueBlue is well-positioned to capitalize on these growth opportunities and deliver greater shareholder value as the market rebounds. I will now pass the call over to Carl, who will share further details around our financial results and outlook.

Carl Schweihs, Chief Financial Officer, TrueBlue: Thank you, Taryn. Total revenue for the quarter was $431 million, up 13% and exceeding our outlook, driven in large part by our skilled businesses, which continue to outperform the broader market with double-digit growth. Overall, business conditions continue to stabilize with our on-demand, on-site, and RPO businesses all showing improved sequential trends. Our recently acquired HSP business drove 4 percentage points of year-over-year growth, with solid momentum going into the fourth quarter. These are all encouraging signs that our strong value position is enabling us to both capture demand and to build on this momentum as we finish out the year and enter 2026. Gross margin was 22.7% for the quarter, down from 26.2% in the prior year period, primarily due to the changes in revenue mix and less favorability in prior-year workers’ compensation reserve adjustments.

The revenue mix impact stems from more favorable trends in our lower-margin staffing businesses and outsized growth in PeopleReady renewable energy work. As a reminder, renewable energy work carries a lower gross margin than the general PeopleReady business due to the pass-through travel costs involved. As for the workers’ compensation impact, you may recall last year’s gross margin benefited from a significant reduction in workers’ compensation costs due to a favorable development of prior-year reserves. As expected, that degree of favorability did not repeat this year. Certain software depreciation now being reported in cost of services also contributed to the margin decline. Keep in mind, software depreciation is non-cash and excluded from our EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA calculations. As Taryn mentioned, even while revenue grew double digits this quarter, we successfully reduced our SG&A by 8%. This improved leverage demonstrates our continued discipline in managing costs and driving efficiencies.

We’ve made significant progress in creating greater flexibility to scale and are well-positioned to drive enhanced profitability with our simplified cost structure and improved efficiencies as industry demand rebounds. We reported a net loss of $2 million this quarter, which included a small amount of income tax expense primarily associated with our foreign operations and essentially zero income tax benefit on U.S. operations due to the valuation allowance in effect on our U.S. deferred tax assets. As a reminder, the valuation allowance has no impact on our operations or liquidity. Adjusted net income was $1 million, while adjusted EBITDA was $11 million. Now let’s turn to the segments. PeopleReady grew 17%. Driven by heightened demand in the energy sector, revenue more than doubled in the energy vertical as we continue to leverage our deep expertise and strong client relationships to capture demand.

Our on-demand business is also showing improved trends with sequential growth during the quarter and the eastern region of the U.S. returning to year-over-year growth as we exited Q3. PeopleReady segment profit margin was up 180 basis points as our discipline cost management and increased efficiencies drove improved operating leverage. PeopleManagement grew for the third consecutive quarter, with revenue up 2%. This growth was driven by continued outperformance with our commercial driver business, which delivered its fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. While on-site client volumes declined for the quarter, our team continues to outperform the prior year in new business wins, securing $27 million of annualized wins during the quarter and positioning the business for a strong start to 2026. PeopleManagement segment profit margin was up 90 basis points as our disciplined cost management actions continued to drive improved efficiencies and greater operating leverage.

PeopleSolutions revenue grew 28%, with HSP performing in line with expectations and contributing 39 percentage points of growth, offsetting the segment’s organic decline of 11%. While overall hiring volumes remain subdued, our teams are doing a great job of adding new clients to our portfolio and expanding existing relationships, especially with higher skilled roles and serving attractive end markets such as healthcare, engineering, and technology. As customers’ hiring volumes return, the scale of these engagements positions us well to drive further revenue expansion aligned with long-term secular trends. PeopleSolutions segment profit margin was up 200 basis points, largely driven by cost actions to deliver efficiencies and greater scalability. Now let’s turn to the balance sheet. We finished the quarter with $20 million in cash, $68 million of debt, and $75 million of borrowing availability, resulting in total liquidity of $95 million.

During the quarter, we increased our working capital by $19 million, demonstrating our continued focus on operational efficiency and enhanced financial flexibility. We maintain a very focused capital strategy, managing a strong liquidity position and financial foundation to ensure we’re well-positioned to capitalize as market demand rebounds. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we expect revenue growth of 4%-10% year-over-year as we continue to build on the progress achieved in the third quarter. Our recently acquired HSP business is expected to grow sequentially from the third quarter, contributing 4 percentage points of growth in the fourth quarter and positioning us well going into 2026. I also want to provide additional details around the sublease agreement for our Chicago support center referenced in our 10-Q file today. Our extensive national footprint differentiates us in the market.

We’re always evaluating our real estate portfolio for opportunities to maximize our reach, which includes both our branch locations and support offices. While there will be a non-cash expense to align our right of use and leasehold improvement assets with the sublease terms, this reduction in corporate office space unlocks over $30 million of cash flow over the remaining 10 years of the lease. By continuing to optimize our fixed cost structure, we are better able to invest in the markets with the greatest opportunities for growth. Additional information on our outlook can be found on our earnings presentation shared on our website today. Before we open up the call for questions, I want to turn it back over to Taryn for some closing remarks.

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Thank you, Carl. As you have heard from us today, our strategic focus is driving meaningful results, strengthening our market position, and unlocking new avenues for growth. Our digitally-enabled specialized workforce solutions are uniquely positioned to help businesses solve complex talent challenges with precision, scale, and agility. By continuing to execute our long-term strategy, we’re not only accelerating growth and enhancing shareholder value, but also advancing our mission to connect people and work. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the call now for questions.

Operator: Thank you. At this time, we will conduct our question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. Please stand by for a moment while we pull for questions. Your first question comes from Mark Riddick with Sedoti & Company. Please state your question.

Mark Riddick, Analyst, Sedoti & Company: Hi. Good evening. Hey, Mark.

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Hi, Mark.

Mark Riddick, Analyst, Sedoti & Company: I was wondering maybe we could start with the strength that you’re seeing, the improvement in on-demand that you shared in prepared remarks. Maybe you could talk a little bit about, maybe parse that a bit as to how much of that is being driven by the PeopleReady sales territories initiative and maybe how much of that is sort of just general broader market demand growth.

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Great. Thanks for the question, Mark. We continue to see strong performance across our sales-enabled territories and throughout our on-demand organization with metrics that highlight both sequential growth and year-over-year profit improvement. Our sales-enabled territories saw stronger sequential growth versus the comp group, and we saw improved profitability in those territories. As I mentioned in prepared remarks, we have increased our sales capacity by 50% this year and aligned those sales reps in high-value MSAs. You might have also seen our announcement today that we have added a new head of sales to our PeopleReady on-demand business. Mike joins us with a track record of more than 25 years of sales operations and growth experience. He comes from companies like ServiceMaster and Aramark. We are really excited about his addition, and he will be a strong complement to that local sales strategy that we have implemented.

Mark Riddick, Analyst, Sedoti & Company: Okay. Great. Thank you for that. Maybe to switch gears a bit, you talked about maybe some of the client verticals and positives that you’re seeing there. Maybe you could share a little bit as far as differences between geographies or national or local customers. Maybe you could talk a little bit about those trends and maybe how that paced through the quarter and then maybe into the beginning of the fourth quarter as well.

Carl Schweihs, Chief Financial Officer, TrueBlue: Great. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, let me take that first. I’ll kind of give Mark a geography, and then we’ll go into intra-quarter trends following that up. Look, in our PeopleReady on-demand business, we saw a stronger performance actually in our local business versus our national accounts, which was really driven to a lot of those sales investments that Taryn just walked through. From a Mark perspective, we saw the biggest improvements in our energy sector, hospitality, and manufacturing. Retail continues to show some softness for us. One other thing that’s really important to note is our East region within our PeopleReady on-demand business achieved year-over-year growth in September, really marking the first region to do so in 2025. Notably, about a majority of our markets in this region grew year-over-year, so more widespread, with some of them even achieving double-digit growth.

From an intra-quarter trend, PeopleReady exited Q2 at minus 3. We exited Q3 at plus 18. And the monthly trends were plus 14, plus 19, plus 18. Our PeopleManagement monthly trends were largely in line with the results for the quarter. As you’re kind of thinking about outlook, look, our outlook typically reflects kind of the seasonal step-down that we see in Q4, along with some known headwinds. PeopleReady has historically seen some weather impact in Q4, specifically in our skilled businesses, and that impact’s factored into our outlook. PeopleManagement’s decline in Q4 is driven by some site shutdowns due to supplier disruption in the automotive industry, which is going to lead to about two points of that impact in the quarter, as well as some continued softness in retail.

As we mentioned in prepared remarks, a lot of new site implementations are positioning that business really well for a strong start to 2026.

Mark Riddick, Analyst, Sedoti & Company: Great. And then the last one for me, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about my drivers. I think you made mention of double-digit growth, I believe, on commercial drive. And maybe talk a little bit about what’s leading to that, as well as current bandwidth for taking advantage of further growth opportunities there. Thanks.

Carl Schweihs, Chief Financial Officer, TrueBlue: Yeah, thanks, Mark. Yeah, we’re really pleased with this business. Our commercial driver services delivered its fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth in Q3. It is coming at a time in a very challenging environment for transportation. We’re really getting this largely due to taking share in our managed offering. We feel that we’re really well-positioned that when volumes do rebound across the transportation market, we’d expect more opportunity for growth in Centerline, as much of that growth has been coming from that managed offering.

Mark Riddick, Analyst, Sedoti & Company: Thank you very much.

Carl Schweihs, Chief Financial Officer, TrueBlue: Thanks, Mark.

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Thanks, Mark.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Jeff Silber, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Thanks so much. Just to follow up on that line of questioning, there’s still a lot of uncertainty out there in the marketplace. I’m just wondering, from a conversational or tone perspective, what are your clients telling you? Are things getting a little bit more certain or less uncertain? I’m just curious what they’re saying. Thanks.

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Yeah, thanks for the question, Jeff. We’re seeing early signs of momentum and a return to growth among some of our clients and geographies. As you know, we stay very close to our clients to hear what they’re saying. Generally, we understand an inflection point when we’re hearing from our customers that they need staff. I would say overall that the customer sentiment remains cautious due to ongoing uncertainties. It is certainly still a cautious environment.

Jeff Silber, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Okay. That’s helpful. I get this question from investors, so I’ll just ask it to you. There’s been a lot of noise about immigration reform, ICE raids, etc. Any impact on your business, either from a positive or negative perspective?

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Yeah, it’s a great question. We’re seeing a mix of tailwinds as well as some challenges. When we’re looking at kind of the opportunities, particularly for us in the Southwest, it’s created some opportunities for us where we have added a handful of new customers that are really focused on ensuring that they have a compliant workforce. Conversely, we do have some regional impacts tied to ICE activity where we’re experiencing higher absenteeism from some of our staff as our customers from a full-time staff perspective, even when workers are eVerify compliant. We’re definitely seeing a mix of headwinds and tailwinds. We feel really good about TrueBlue’s position in this space. The changes that we’re seeing will create longer-term demand for a compliant staffing solution, which is a key strength of ours.

Jeff Silber, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Okay. Really helpful. Thanks so much.

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Thanks, Jeff.

Carl Schweihs, Chief Financial Officer, TrueBlue: Thanks, Jeff.

Operator: Thank you. A reminder to the audience: to ask a question, press Star 1 on your phone. To remove yourself from queue, press Star 2. Your next question comes from Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research. Please state your question.

Kartik Mehta, Analyst, Northcoast Research: Hey, good afternoon. Carl, you’ve made a lot of progress on the SG&A leverage. I know we’ve talked about this in the past, but as revenue stabilizes, how much incremental margin expansion would you expect before you have to start reinvesting in the business? I know Taryn said you’ve hired some salespeople. I guess I’m trying to figure out maybe capacity and margin opportunity before you have to start reinvesting.

Carl Schweihs, Chief Financial Officer, TrueBlue: Yeah. Thanks for the question, Karthik. Look, we’ve done a really good job kind of managing costs and controlling what we can in this market. I think Q3 was a good example of kind of our abilities to drive incremental margins, right? We ended up delivering better incremental margins here in this quarter based on increased revenue than we thought in our guide. I think that pointed to over that 20% incremental margins when we’ve talked about historically between 15%-20%. We feel like with our cost actions, we’ll do north of that. We’ve done that this quarter, and I think we continue to expect that. We will continue to look for opportunities for growth, as we’ve talked about, investing in sales and other areas to drive the top line.

We feel like with our optimized fixed cost base, we’re poised for significant incremental margins and expanding our profitability as demand rebounds.

Kartik Mehta, Analyst, Northcoast Research: Taryn, just the pricing environment out there. I know in certain areas, there’s been a little bit greater price competition than others. I’m wondering, as you’re competing with some of the smaller players, what the environment is?

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Yeah, that’s a great question, Karthik. We’re seeing the typical pricing pressure that you would expect in this kind of environment. Not only from competitive forces, but also our clients are looking to—they’re remaining very cost-conscious during this uncertain time as well. I think the team’s done a really nice job of maintaining pricing discipline and really continuing to look for ways to drive enhanced efficiencies so that we can remain competitive there.

Kartik Mehta, Analyst, Northcoast Research: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Thanks, Karthik.

Carl Schweihs, Chief Financial Officer, TrueBlue: Thanks, Karthik.

Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I’ll hand the floor back to Taryn Owen for closing remarks. Thank you.

Taryn Owen, President and Chief Executive Officer, TrueBlue: Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I want to take an opportunity to thank the TrueBlue team for their tremendous effort and dedication to providing our customers and associates with exceptional service, as well as their commitment to advancing our mission to connect people and work. We look forward to speaking with you at upcoming investor events and on our next quarterly call. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Operator: Thank you. And this concludes today’s conference. All parties may disconnect. Have a good day.

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