Sheila Kahyaoglu: Great. Thank you.
Horacio Rozanski: Thank you.
Operator: One moment. And our next question will come from Bert Subin of Stifel. Your line is open.
Bert Subin: Hey, good morning.
Horacio Rozanski: Good morning.
Bert Subin: Hey, Horacio, you noted before and you’ve noted over time, you know, the Booz is supply not demand constrained. Now you just grew client staff down almost 4% quarter-over-quarter, which is clearly benefiting sales. Do you have any concern that pendulum starts to swing the other way in utilization becomes a factor, maybe not this quarter, but as we go further into the calendar year?
Horacio Rozanski: That’s a great question. And here, I want to give credit to really our team and operating teams, the work that Kristine Martin Anderson and our people team are doing. They really have re-wire the way we hire to – against the velocity dimension, so that we actually can hire faster. And then – and this is really mentioned, we really haven’t spent as much time before so that we can put people that are hired into billable opportunities faster. And I think we’re seeing some benefit of that. The other benefit is demand, as I mentioned, is very strong across the board. And so I’m not sure even if we wanted to, that we could keep people on the bench very long. So you put all of that together and at least for the moment because who can predict the long-term future, there’s a lot of momentum in the business.
And we are doing this – we’re seeing this dynamic where we’re hiring at almost record levels or at record levels, and we’re placing people on contract fast enough that our billability or utilization is remaining very, very high. So again, when we talk about confidence and momentum in the business, that’s – I think that’s what’s underneath a lot of our words.
Bert Subin: So maybe just for my follow-up. You also mentioned during your prepared remarks, greater clarity for your customers post budget in late December. Have you noted any acceleration in spending following the passage of the budget? And if you haven’t, when would you expect that to start materializing? I could that provide some acceleration from the already high growth you’re seeing.
Horacio Rozanski: You know, I – we have not seen a significant change. I think what we have seen is a steadiness and confidence that the emissions that they’re focused on are going to be supported at least through the balance of the current fiscal year. And so I think that’s been positive. As we’ve noted and others have the award environment isn’t the fastest, we’ve ever seen in terms of things moving to the ride and protests and all of that. That seems to continue. But against an overall very strong demand backdrop, as you can tell by our numbers, we’re obviously not demand constrained. We’re doing really well on hiring. And when you put it all together, again, it’s a story of both momentum that we’ve seen over the last few quarters, and we expect – or we hope to continue.
Bert Subin: Thank you, Horacio.
Horacio Rozanski: Thank you.
Operator: One moment. And our next question will come from Louie DiPalma of William Blair. Your line is open.
Louie DiPalma: Good morning, Horacio, Matt, Nathan and Meg
