Rick Hermanns: So what I would say to you — and this is more anecdotal. I don’t have the exact number, and I’d be happy to have Steve reach back out to you with I’m saying with the exact number. I would say anecdotally, we had a really decent, if you recall, and you cover a bunch of companies. So it’s not like you should recall this. But our first quarter of last year was actually really strong, while a lot of our competitors were down 10% already from the first quarter of 2022, we were actually flat last year. So we were way ahead. But then right around this time last year, then we saw that 10%, 12% drop. And so I would just simply say is that — the fourth quarter was pretty much consistent with Q2 and Q3 as far as being down about, let’s say, 10% or so overall from the prior — from the prior period. Now given that there were some tech sales mixed in, into the fourth quarter, you certainly could take the approach that the fourth quarter was the weakest of the 4.
Kevin Steinke: Okay. All right. Understood. Just lastly, you mentioned in the earnings release that you continue to monitor the market for accretive M&A opportunities. Just wondering what the pipeline of opportunities looks like on the current economic environment?
Rick Hermanns: So I would say that, there is clearly — almost I say this every quarter, there’s always plenty of acquisition opportunities up there, out there. It’s always about price. There are — I would just simply say, there’s probably a bit more distressed properties available now. That doesn’t mean they’re going to sell for what they should sell, saying for what they should sell, because you still have people looking at a longer time frame and thinking that they’re worth what they were in 2022. But I believe that there will be no shortage of opportunities. If the staffing and recruiting industry doesn’t recover by the second half of this year, like I said, I suspect that there will be a fairly pretty strong increase in opportunities at realistic prices.
Kevin Steinke: Okay. Great. That’s helpful. Thanks for the commentary. I will turn it over.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Peter Rabover from Artko Capital. Please proceed.
Peter Rabover: Hi, Rick, I think my questions were sort of answered, but I’ll ask again. One is maybe if you could give some comments on how the year is progressing and how the economy is doing. You always give pretty good comments on that. And then you touched on capacity — maybe I can ask it another way, but where do you think you guys have about 600 million in system-wide revenue, 580. What do you think your capacity is in a good economy? So just any ballpark you can give us would be great? Thanks.
Rick Hermanns: Yes, appreciate it. And so to answer your questions. Number one, and again, what makes it a little more difficult to make those comparisons as our first quarter of last year really was pretty good. It was — compared to the industry, it was great. And so therefore, in making comparisons, we’re really almost comparing it to 2022 numbers. And so there is still weakness out there. There is absolutely weakness that’s extended into the beginning of the year. I’m really loath to say this. I mean, I don’t last week or two, I’d say, am I seeing a couple of green shoots, yes, I’m seeing a couple of green shoots, but it could just as easily be a false positive. So — but the way I view things and admittedly, I could be completely wrong.
But when you think about, let’s say, during the – the staffing industry was obviously incredibly sensitive to the pandemic. And we had drop-offs of sales during the pandemic of 40%, 45%, certain jurisdictions way more. And then 2021, especially the second half of 2021, you had the most unbelievable market for staffing and recruiting really in my 34 years in the industry, I’ve never seen 35. I’ve never seen anything like it. And so, I think part of what ’23, it’s interesting, you’ve got a lot of companies that are out there, 2023 was a decent year. And then there are other ones where it’s bad. I was just reading a story this morning. I was called, shoot, oh Santa. It was in the Wall Street Journal. It was talking about a company that had a pandemic upswing and a pandemic downswing in how they handle their firm payroll.
Or even, I guess, a better example would be, let’s just say, Peloton, right? During the pandemic, all of a sudden, they couldn’t make enough of them. And then all of a sudden, it’s like, a lot of people bought these things. And then when life turn — returned to more normal, really, it turned out it was just ’21 and ’22 was really more of a cannibalization — was just a cannibalization of what maybe would have occurred in 2023. I would argue that, that’s what happened to the staffing and recruiting industry in 2023, is a lot of companies went out and brought in huge amounts of staffing and recruiting because you couldn’t find people. And now as things have eased off a bit normalized a bit more, it’s become ’23 for the staffing industry feels like a recession, even though the overall economy is certainly not in what could be described as a recession.
So all that being said, I do believe that as long as the economy writ large doesn’t go into a recession, is that we’ll get back to a more normal position regardless of what, regardless of what happens because then things will find their equilibrium. All that’s an incredibly long way of saying, so far, we haven’t — so far, our first quarter hasn’t really — has been no great shakes. Although there might be a false positive or then again, it might be green shoots really literally in the last week or two. As far as the – gosh, that was such a filibustering answer that I forgot the second part of your question.
Peter Rabover: It was great. No, I love it. The second question was, I’m just kind of curious, especially….
