ASGN Incorporated (NYSE:ASGN) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Theodore Hanson: Yes. There’s just a lot of gyrations going on in the whole procurement world within the federal government. Still has hung over from COVID, it’s still not quite cycling and working like it should. The government is going to big, multilayered RFPs and awards where they can to be more efficient. And that naturally is slowing down the procurement wheel to get to get something an RFP put together to get it on the street to get the right firms to respond to it, to adjudicate all that and then to finally make award. And then on the back end of all that, the world of protest has just taken on another level of craziness. There’s just a lot more protests going on. It used to be you were very careful about making a protest because you were basically telling your customer they were wrong in terms of how they looked at a certain situation and adjudicated down to a final award.

But today, nobody is afraid to adjudicated or to protest. It seems like that’s the first response, the minute an award is made. So — and now that only are you seeing protests on the back end after awards are made, you’re seeing them on the front end when firms don’t agree with how the government customer is putting together the criteria when they put a contract out for bid. So it’s just — there’s just a different level of stuff going on in that whole procurement world. And it’s quite honestly kind of just bringing complexity and slowing down the machine, if you will beyond the effect of the lingering effect from COVID.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Ted Hanson, CEO, for closing comments.

Theodore Hanson: Great. Well, thank you for being with us today. We appreciate all your questions and your time, and we look forward to announcing our second quarter results. later in July.

Operator: This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.