Before we pause to take your questions, I want to again say a special thank you to all our wonderful people for their professionalism, hard work and dedication. Without them, we could not have accomplished all the good things that we have shared with you today. Now Kim and I would be happy to answer your questions. Please ask just one question and rejoin the queue with a follow-up as needed. If there’s time, we’ll come back to you for additional questions. So the question-and-answer period will now start.
A – Derek Dewan: And one of the first questions is regarding a stock buyback versus a potential for a dividend payout. We have engaged DC Advisory to explore all these strategic alternatives, including capital allocation strategies and the best use of our funds. So that will be included as part of the analysis. And we expect that information to be furnished to us in conclusion of the project, which will probably be somewhere in 45 days or so, possibly 60 on the outside. But they will do an extensive review of all the alternatives, including the potential for dividend or otherwise. The next question is, why didn’t you start on time? To be honest, I held back the start time for the benefit of our shareholders who were logging-in in rapid numbers.
And we can actually see when you log in, so I felt like I need to give all shareholders an opportunity for a couple of minutes, and we started approximately at 11:03. Company performance, in a nutshell, this was a tough year. Are we satisfied? Absolutely not. Did we do well under the circumstances? You know what, we did pretty well generating cash flow and profitability, but we’re never satisfied. So complacency breeds poor performance or mediocrity, that’s not in my vocabulary. So going forward, I can assure you that winning matters to us and as Vince Lombardi said, winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. And I believe that give us some time we will get to where you want us to be and where I want us to be. And I am a significant shareholder as is Kim.
And we will continue to execute our largest shareholders on the Board of Directors and he has affirmed our strategy going forward and is totally supportive of where we’re going upward. Why on earth should we have equity investments in your company? The answer to that is, because we believe that you will ultimately do well given a period of time and not too long based upon our strategies and how we execute. And there’s a lot of arrows in the quiver to deliver success and we are focused on that. Rest assured, we are not satisfied with the performance or complacent, because complacency breeds mediocrity and that’s not in our vocabulary. Let’s see. For peer group analysis, we’re happy to provide that separately from discussion, and we can talk about that.
So if you want to make an inquiry to us on a separate call about talking about the peer group in the industry, including statistical data, we have that information. We’re happy to share it with you. So just let us know if you’d like to conduct a call regarding that. By the way, misery may love company, but we don’t like it. So just because the peer group is not doing great because of external factors that doesn’t mean we’re complacent and satisfied. So rest assured, we’re doing everything in our power to deliver great results. We don’t think we had a great year. We think we had a good year relative to the circumstances, but not a great year. Let’s see. Why is the stock price dropping? Well, it’s pretty clear that due to the results not being as Stellar as they were the prior year, some people take that to mean that’s indicative of a longer term downfall in results.
That is not what we think nor predict. So I would say rest assured, we’ll get back on track where we need to be or want to be and move forward. Revenue run rate going from here, is Q3 a baseline going into next year? The important thing here is that we do believe that the industry suffered this year some decline clearly in permanent placement or direct hire revenue across the board, that was down substantially. But also there’s been a pause in the labor markets on hiring due to uncertainty in the macroeconomic sense, higher interest rates, so projects were put on hold as well, and there was tepid hiring, particularly in the fourth quarter for us. The indicative, someone said is Q3 indicative of what you can do. It is, but we don’t know when that faucet turns on.
Is it first quarter, which has seasonality in it, or is it second or third quarter. The important thing is, on a fairly short strategic view, we think we are going up and we will turn the corner. The other thing is, I mean, we are working on keeping SG&A down, but we don’t want to cut too much. We are actually hiring people to generate revenue. So that’s very important to be prepared for an upswing. And cyclicality in this industry over the years, and we are happy to share that with you privately, because I don’t want to get into a dissertation about it. But you can see the downswing and upswing. And I do want to say that typically in a downturn, firm gets hit first then temp a bit. But on the upswing, contract starts upward and then firm follows.
So that’s been traditionally so and you can go back to ’80-’81, ’90-’91, 2000-2001, ’06 to ’08 and then the decline in a recession and then the upswing again. COVID tepid performance in 2020 but then the upswing ’21-‘22, and last year was a big COVID bounce, because of really cutting to the bone unemployment by many companies and then of course a quick recovery. So our goal is to normalize profitability upward as far as revenue growth as well. Which vertical show improving demand? IT, which was industry down 10% to 12%, but we are seeing good solid movement. The key is the rate of decline slowed and then now we are starting to see some pickup. So that’s historic as well. And I can tell you that as I sit here today, I am focused on growth and profitability, and I think we are starting to see improving demand.
