Resources Connection Q4 2026 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, and welcome to RGP's fourth quarter fiscal 2026 conference call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to remind everyone that management will be commenting on results for the fourth quarter ended May 30th, 2026. They will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. An explanation and reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in the press release issued today. Today's press release can be viewed in the investor relations section of RGP's website and filed today with the SEC. Also, during this call, management may make forward-looking statements regarding plans, initiatives, and strategies, and the anticipated financial performance of the company.

Such statements are predictions, and actual events or results may differ materially. Please see the Risk Factors section in RGP's report on Form 10-K for the year ended May 31st, 2025, for a discussion of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the company's business, results of operations, and financial condition to differ materially from what is expressed or implied by forward-looking statements made during this call. Such discussion will also be included in the Risk Factors section in RGP's report on Form 10-K for the year ended May 30th, 2026, which is expected to be filed on or around July 23rd, 2026. I will now turn the call over to RGP's CEO, Roger Carlile.

Thank you, and welcome everyone to the call. This is my third time speaking with you about our quarterly financial results. I continue to learn about our markets, clients, employees, and services as I work with our leaders to execute our strategy. I remain optimistic about the future of our business as market conditions appear to be showing some stability, providing a more consistent backdrop for us to continue activating our strategic priorities and related investments. Consistent with the prior quarter, our fourth quarter results were aligned with the outlook we provided for revenue, gross margin, and run rate SG&A expense. You will hear more about this later in the call from our CFO, Jen Ryu. For now, let me touch on market conditions as we see them, results from our recently completed Voice of the Customer survey, and our progress against our strategic priorities.

From our perspective, global market conditions remain broadly consistent to the third quarter, with some regions and industry sectors showing more progress than others. In the fourth quarter, revenue for our North American markets served by our On-Demand Talent, Consulting, and Outsourced Services segments performed as we expected compared to the outlook we provided. Compared with the third quarter, North America's revenue was flat on a GAAP basis but did exhibit a modest decline when adjusting for the number of business days and currency fluctuations. Revenue in our Europe & Asia Pacific markets was softer this quarter, driven entirely by weakness in Europe. Our Asia Pacific markets performed in line with both our outlook for the quarter and the prior quarter's results. The trends we faced in our European markets appear to be non-systemic situations within our specific clients rather than larger economic or geopolitical issues.

In addition to this operational view of our markets, we very recently completed a voice of the customer survey in which we surveyed 500 decision-makers and buyers from customers who are either currently working with RGP or who have worked with RGP in the past several years. We undertook this survey to ensure we anchor our strategy and investments in market reality, moving from assumptions to data-driven decisions that support our strategic priorities to drive growth, client retention, and differentiation. This survey allows us to understand how clients truly perceive RGP in terms of delivering differentiated value, being prepared to meet their stated needs in the areas of finance, technology, and operations, and how we compare to the competitive alternatives.

While we've only just begun to analyze this data, some important perspectives are already clear, including RGP being rated stronger head-to-head with other execution and staffing-focused competitors, but still having work to do against larger traditional consultancies. The top thing for why clients choose RGP include trusted partnership, speed of execution, flexibility of delivery model, and the quality of our people and services. While there is a spectrum of data points for us to examine and act upon, we can take pride in having a strong Net Promoter Score, with 95% of our customers indicating their intent to increase or maintain their level of engagement with RGP. Given the relative stability in our markets and the early understandings from our customer survey, we continue to focus on our strategic priorities. These priorities are, one, refocusing our On-Demand Talent segment offerings. Two, scaling our Consulting segment.

Three, pursuing AI as both a client service and an internal opportunity. Four, streamlining our operations to align our cost structure with our revenue levels. In the fourth quarter, we made additional focused investments to support these priorities, and we continue to expect these and the investments we made in the third quarter to drive revenue growth as they mature through their anticipated ramp-up period. In terms of refocusing our On-Demand Talent segment and scaling our Consulting segment, we made additional investments during the quarter, which we expect to drive future revenue growth. These include adding seven new professionals to our sales team, as well as adding additional senior professionals to our Consulting segment. While we will continue to take advantage of opportunities to invest behind these priorities, we have completed the initially planned level of investment to support our business goals for fiscal year 2027.

AI remains an important strategic priority for RGP. We see AI fundamentally changing how work gets done across finance, risk, technology, and transformation, creating new opportunities for both our clients and our business. Our approach is practical and disciplined, helping our own teams use AI to improve productivity and accelerate delivery while building AI-enabled solutions, talent, and partnerships that address our clients' highest value business challenges. We believe the greatest value will come from combining AI with deep functional expertise and strong governance, enabling clients to adopt AI responsibly while delivering measurable business outcomes. Regarding our goals of simplifying how we operate and aligning our cost structure to our current revenue levels, those two activities are becoming increasingly intertwined as the simplifications we are implementing increasingly involve both process and technology modifications, which have longer implementation periods.

While we have additional cost reduction initiatives planned for the fiscal year 2027, our focus is increasingly shifting towards simplifying how we go to market, how we serve our clients, and how we operate through more streamlined processes and technology. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Jin Rhu.

Thanks, Roger, good afternoon, everyone. Our performance in the fourth quarter was largely in line with expectations. Consolidated revenue and run rate SG&A expense were both within our outlook ranges while growth margins beat the high end of the range. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was negative $0.6 million. Starting with revenue, consolidated revenue for the quarter was $106.1 million, representing an 18.3% decline on a same-day constant currency basis compared to the prior year quarter. Revenues in the On-Demand Talent and Consulting segment were largely in line with our expectations. However, down from the third quarter on a same-day basis, reflecting timing of project activity within an otherwise stable demand environment in North America. Our focus remains on accelerating the ramp of recently hired go-to-market professionals and strengthening sales execution under our new sales leadership team to improve pipeline generation and conversion.

In the Europe & Asia Pacific segment, the Asia Pacific region delivered solid revenue performance in the quarter, including year-over-year and sequential growth in China and the Philippines. While Europe continued to experience some choppiness in the timing of projects at several large clients, which weighed on segment revenue for the quarter. Our Outsourced Services segment continued to perform steadily, generating stable year-over-year results and sequential growth. Turning to growth margin. Growth margin for the fourth quarter was 37.6% compared to 40.2% in the prior year, primarily reflecting less favorable leverage of indirect cost of services and lower consultant utilization. Enterprise-wide average bill rate was $120 on a constant currency basis compared to $125 a year ago, with results reflecting the geographic mix of revenue during the quarter, including a greater contribution from the Asia Pacific region.

At the segment level, average bill rates in our North America segment remained strong. On-Demand Talent average bill rate grew to $145 from $143 a year ago, while Consulting's average bill rate grew to $163 from $159. In Europe & Asia Pacific, the average bill rate was $57 compared to $64 last year on a constant currency basis, again, largely reflecting a higher proportion of revenue generated in Asia Pacific relative to Europe. Now on to SG&A. Fourth quarter run rate SG&A expense was $40.5 million, a 12% improvement compared to $46.2 million in the prior year quarter. This year-over-year improvement reflects the benefit of the cost actions we have executed over the past fiscal year. During the quarter, we took additional steps to simplify our business and further reduce cost structure, including the divestiture of Sitrick and continued resource alignment to the current revenue level.

Non-run rate SG&A expense totaled $14.1 million, of which $6.4 million was non-cash and $7.7 million was cash expenditures related primarily to the Sitrick divestiture and employee termination costs, including those related to the COO transition. With significant cost actions now largely complete, we will remain focused on additional opportunities to improve efficiency over time. We have begun reallocating capital toward targeted investments in go-to-market leadership, sales capacity, and client-facing capabilities that can support stronger revenue generation over time. We will continue to deploy capital with discipline, balancing growth opportunities with cost management. Turning to segment performance. As a reminder, the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 contained one less week compared to Q4 of fiscal 2025. All year-over-year revenue comparisons are adjusted for business days and currency impact, and a segment-adjusted EBITDA excludes certain shared corporate costs.

On-Demand Talent revenue was $40.4 million, a decline of 18% from the prior year quarter. Segment adjusted EBITDA was $3.1 million or a 7.6% margin compared to $6.4 million or a 12.1% margin in the prior year quarter. Consulting revenue was $36.6 million, down 23% year-over-year, which continued to pressure utilization and therefore gross margin and segment EBITDA. Segment adjusted EBITDA was $2.3 million or a 6.3% margin compared to $8.3 million or 16.3% margin in the prior year quarter. Europe & Asia Pacific revenue was $17.1 million, down 14% year-over-year. Segment adjusted EBITDA was $0.4 million or 2.1% margin compared to $1.9 million or 9% margin in the prior year quarter. Outsourced Services revenue was $10.3 million, down 1.6% year-over-year. Segment adjusted EBITDA was $2.1 million or a 20.2% margin compared to $3.1 million or 27.8% in the prior year quarter.

Our balance sheet remains strong. We ended the quarter with $82.4 million of cash and cash equivalents with no outstanding debt. Quarterly dividend payments totaled $2.3 million, representing a 6% annualized yield based on our stock price at the end of the fourth quarter. We replaced our previous credit facility with a new revolving credit facility designed to provide increased flexibility within our covenant structure and better align to our capital needs. With our cash position and available borrowing capacity under our new credit facility, we will continue to take a balanced approach to capital allocation, investing in the business to support long-term growth while returning capital to shareholders through dividends and opportunistic share repurchases. At quarter end, $79.2 million remained available under our share repurchase program. I'll now conclude with our outlook for the first quarter of fiscal 2027.

We expect first quarter revenue to be relatively consistent with fourth quarter levels, adjusting for normal summer seasonality and the impact of the Sitrick divestiture. We expect revenue in the range of $97 million-$102 million. We expect gross margin to be between 37%-38%, also reflecting typical seasonal dynamics in the quarter. Run rate SG&A expense is expected to be in the range of $41 million-$43 million, which reflects the targeted reinvestments we've made in the business. Non-run rate and non-cash expense are expected to range from $2 million-$3 million and consist primarily of non-cash stock compensation expense and amortization of capitalized system transformation costs. We made meaningful progress in fiscal 2026, aligning our cost structure, strengthening the organization, and investing in key growth priorities.

With a strong balance sheet and improving operational foundation, we believe we are well positioned to execute more consistently and create long-term shareholder value. With that, we will conclude our prepared remarks and open the call for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press * one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press * one one again. One moment for questions. Our first question comes from Joe Gomes with Noble Capital. You may proceed. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Roger, I was wondering, you got the four priorities that you talked about, you've talked about here for the past couple of quarters.

If you look at them today, how far along would you say or how close to completion are you on each one of the four? What kind of % done, I guess, for each one of the four are you at?

Well, thank you for that question. Most of those things frankly never stop. In terms of thinking of them as seasons or innings or something like that, I think I mentioned in my comments at the beginning of the call that for FY 2027, we are basically complete with those investments. We need to see those pay off. We expect that to occur in the latter half of the year. Every day, we would hope that it improved, we think the ramp-up period pushes some of that result to the last half of the year. It doesn't mean that we won't see some opportunistic opportunities to invest in each of those areas as we go along. In terms of what we were doing to get ready for 2027, we are, for the most part, complete with that.

Thank you for that. I know you did the survey and it's early days there in getting all the data analyzed, when you sit here today, what kind of gives you confidence that the demand environment has stabilized, and we should hopefully see some improvement here in 2027?

I think we're trying to point to that in our commentary. I think operationally, we see that the markets seem to be somewhat stable. I think you have to look at everything we look at for the markets, maybe we're not perfect competitors running every little sector the way every other competitor is. When we look at the markets, we see stability there. That makes me feel good. We just look at our own results, I think they're the last quarter to this quarter, fairly stable. Yes, the seasonality, it'll look a little down, but I think the activity seems stable heading into the first quarter of 2027. I think that stability helps us feel like perhaps we're nearing a bottom of that kind of market activity driven downdraft.

The survey that we did, our customers appreciate us, think of us highly, and said they intend to, 95% intend to engage with us at the same or higher levels. That all makes me feel good, and there's only one thing that does it, which is that sounds really good, why aren't we killing it, right? I think our expectation is the reason we're not killing it yet is we have a lot of work to do and we have a lot of investments that we need to start paying off in later in this year.

Okay. You, one last one from me, I'll get back in queue. You talked about some additional cost reductions planned for 2027. I don't know, maybe give us a little more color on that. Are you planning on taking some more charges in 2027 on the cost out?

Jen could probably answer it more clearly on that. I think for the things that I'm speaking about there, yes, there'll be a little bit more cost takeout and charge related to that, I believe.

Joe, we're always looking at our resources against capacity and demand in the business. There are still some occupancy costs that we're planning to take out. As Roger mentioned in his remarks, the size of the cost takeout is going to be less significant than what we've done this fiscal year. The additional cost takeout will require more work, right? As we're looking at our systems and looking at ways in which AI can help us become more efficient. That's going to take a little bit of time. Overall, the one-time charge, we're expecting our non-run rate charges in fiscal 2027 to be kind of normalized. I guided $2 million-$3 million of non-run rate, non-cash charge for Q1.

I expect that we won't deviate too much from that for the rest of the year.

Okay, great. Thanks, Roger. Back in queue.

Thanks, Joe. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mark Marcon with Baird. You may proceed. Good afternoon.

Thanks for taking my question. Jen, just one quick numbers question.

On the SG&A of $41 million-$43 million, that is exclusive of the $2 million-$3 million of non-run rate charges?

Yes, that's correct. Okay. What sort of covenants do you have on your new credit facility?

Actually, we entered into this new facility. Really the goal was to provide us more flexibility with the way we can use our cash, especially with respect to restricted cash payment so that's shareholder returns, right? In terms of dividend and share repurchases. It really is going to give us a lot more flexibility. Outside of that, we have the typical covenants, restriction on investments and loans and indebtedness and so on and so forth. The two main financial covenants were a fixed charge coverage ratio and a minimum liquidity ratio. The fixed charge coverage ratio is a springing covenant. We actually don't expect that to come into play at all.

Yeah, hopefully. Yeah. Hopefully not.

Okay, great. Roger, I know this is only your third conference call, and you're trying to turn things around. I was just wondering, can you talk a little bit about some of the things that you talked about last quarter? We ended up having Prashant Lamba come in. We had Jessica Block come in. What are you seeing there? What's the progress in terms of the Central U.S.? Just in terms of, you came into a rough situation, fully recognize that. We're just wondering, on the new changes that you've made, what sort of progress have you seen?

I'll go to the ones you specifically mentioned, then I'll broaden from there a little. You probably saw in the comments just a moment ago that we spoke maybe more about AI than we have historically.

Right. Adding Jessica and Prashant, both of who had worked together and with me in the past, both have, although they have differing roles in the firm, they both have backgrounds in AI.

Prashant ran the AI labs at his prior employer and worked closely with Jessica. We see a lot of opportunity for RGP, both internally. More of Prashant's work will probably be working with Jen and others internally in terms of how can we use those technologies and tools to make things more effective and efficient. Jessica's doing a lot of things that are both internal and external, we're doing a lot to raise the general awareness and knowledge of our employee base regarding AI. Virtually every conversation that we have with our clients, whether it's our most senior consultants, our sales team, AI is in every conversation.

We're working to ensure that we have in our On-Demand Talent team or on-demand employee base, that we have people there that are sophisticated in learning AI, we're infusing AI into all of the things we do with clients. That's everything from getting their data ready to have AI applied against it, helping with governance, as they put those tools into their systems, helping them decide what systems to do and choose and reaching those efficiencies in their business. There's a lot happening in the AI world, my view has been. You hear a lot of in the press, in the market, there's a range of beliefs. There's a number of people that want to paint AI as the death knell for professional services and Consulting and those things, I don't buy it.

I've been through many technological changes, my experience is generally when the customers are trying to achieve something, there's a level of confusion. It's actually a little boom for consulting. I think that's what will happen for some time. It may not be forever. Things eventually get integrated fully, but I think for those firms that prepare themselves and take advantage of it, I think it's going to be useful, and we do too. We have a lot of work to make that a reality, and so that's what we're about. I think a lot is going on there that's positive.

Just all of those investments we've been talking about more last quarter, but a little bit in two quarters back in terms of being sure that our sales team is growing and is skilled in the areas that we're selling, that we're simplifying our business down to talk to clients about a specific set of things. All of that continues to go on, and that's really what the Voice of the Customer survey was about, was making sure that, one, we know how our customers see us, and secondly, are we focused on the things that they see us as well-positioned to help them address. Maybe I'll stop there, but I think that addresses most of that question.

I was just wondering about the Central U.S. team, how long would it take for the seven new salespeople that you hired to get productive?

I'm sorry. I misunderstood. You're talking about the fact that we hired a sales leader in the Central U.S.

Right. I took the U.S. to be the central part of the question.

Oh. No. Well, that's the same what I was saying.

That's all progressing well. The additions of those sales team leaders, both in the Central U.S. and the Northeast, they're coming up to scale quickly. Our leadership team is across the whole U.S. met, and making sure that our approaches and processes are consistent and we're driving towards the same results. I think that's moving along well, and they're making a great impact. I think on average, it depends how people want to think about the ramp-up period for any professional. I think we think it takes over one year before a person will hit, a sales team member will hit their full year targets or quotas.

It takes anywhere from six to nine months for them to start hitting a monthly portion of that, so they can get up to sort of their monthly portion by the sixth to ninth month. Over the next 12 months, they should be capable of hitting their annual quota.

Okay, great. On the Consulting side, you mentioned that the utilization rate is lower. Where is that utilization rate now?

Yeah. Hi, Mark. We're around in the low 60s right now for our salary consultants. There's definitely room for improvement there.

Where would you hope for it to go? What would it take in from a revenue perspective to get it up to a level that would generate a decent EBITDA margin?

Yeah. Our target utilization for full-time, delivery consultants, generally, it should be above 75%-80%, probably even above 80. I think with that, I'll just comment on the potential sort of gross margin impact of getting our utilization up in that range would be I think roughly 200-plus basis points.

Okay, great. Thank you. I'll jump back in the queue.

Mm-hmm. Thanks. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one to queue up for a question.

Our next question comes from Dylan Bandy with North Coast Research. You may proceed. Hey, thanks for taking the question.

I guess staying on Consulting, you guys had a pretty healthy pipeline. What has the conversion timeline kind of looked like lately, and has that changed at all over the past six months?

Yeah. For our Consulting pipeline, overall Consulting or On-Demand, we're seeing generally pretty healthy activities at the top of the funnel. We said this, Consulting deals generally take longer to close. It depends on complexity, depends on the size of the projects. Whereas On-Demand is a much quicker turn. So our conversion over the last two quarters or plus quarters, we're definitely seeing, we've commented on longer sales cycle, I don't think it's lengthening every quarter, but in general, it has gotten longer, especially as we've integrated our Consulting segments, all of our Consulting assets, we're focused on selling more Consulting work, it's definitely lengthened the sales cycle.

Okay, thanks. Then going back to your cost actions, if you guys are taking further cost actions next year, as your revenue kind of normalizes a little bit, what kind of incremental margin should we be thinking about?

I think we can get to the more normalized, I would say 6%-8% margin when revenue gets above $500 million.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Roger Carlile for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Thanks everyone for joining our call today. We appreciate your interest in RGP, and don't hesitate to reach out with any additional questions. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes the conference.

Thank you for your participation.