ASGN Incorporated (NYSE:ASGN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

And these technologies we know are critically important to the whole data structure and to the mapping of data to potential use cases in AI, which is the game. That’s the game right now.

Unidentified Analyst: Great. And then you did mention earlier in the discussion that consulting kind of follows some of the trends that you see on the assignment side. Obviously, assignment is still tough. You wouldn’t expect consulting to, I mean, given the momentum that you have there, the way that you’re reconfiguring things, your relationships, you wouldn’t anticipate that consulting would actually end up declining at some point this year, would you?

Theodore Hanson: Well, look, Mark, we’re growing low single digits. Could that vary in a quarter to flat or slightly negative? I wouldn’t promise that it couldn’t, but our bookings trend does not tell us that it’s going to really have significant year-over-year declines. And so I think you have to rely on that. And we do rely on that bookings number because that gives us really good visibility into that work that’s going to be completed over the next 12 to 18 months. Could something happen in the world where they really kind of don’t just slow it down, but they really slow it down and then ramp it back up? Well, sure. There’s no indication of that right now.

Unidentified Analyst: Great. I just want to make sure nobody misinterpreted. Hey, Ted and Mark, is it worth mentioning, Ted has said many times in the past year, year and a half, the first to go is firm placement, the second to go or discretionary spend around things like creative HR, that sort of thing. The next to go would be IT staffing, the last thing to go would be IT consulting.

Randolph Blazer: Well, if you think about what’s going to happen as we start seeing the world come out of it, you’re probably going to see the reverse of that. You’ll start seeing IT consulting going up, then it’ll work related staffing, then ultimately to the discretionary areas and to perm placement. I mean, if you believe that’s the way it unfolds, going down, it presumably reverses that when we’re going back up. So that’s another evidence besides bookings Ted mentioned that gives us confidence in the consulting side.

Unidentified Analyst: That’s great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I’ll now turn the call back over to Ted Hanson for close remarks.

Theodore Hanson: Great. Well, I want to thank everyone for being here this evening for our quarter one earnings release and conversation. We look forward to speaking with you soon about quarter two. Have a great evening.

Operator: And this concludes today’s conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.