Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mark Marcon from Baird. Please go ahead.
Mark Marcon: I was wondering, Gary, you talked a little bit about this reset and lasting a few quarters and particularly getting used to the higher for longer interest rates. Aside from the labor hoarding that you’re observing, what other factors are you thinking about? And you mentioned that you might be able to take advantage of some of those. What are you thinking about from that perspective?
Gary Burnison: Well, I think our consulting business is perfectly positioned to take advantage of — companies are going to continue to execute, I think, a strategy that somewhat mirrors ours. I think you have to optimize what you have. You have to innovate or you have to consolidate. And when I look at some of the new wins in the consulting business, they’re absolutely around companies optimizing and reorganizing and restructuring. We haven’t seen the impact of a higher cost of carry — of higher interest rates, really. I mean, we’ve seen a little bit of it. And the level of consumer savings that they had, at least in the United States, has been that’s lasted way longer than what people would have thought six quarters ago.
But I think that this — the companies are absolutely — you can only shrink the packaging and raise the pricing so much. And what we’re starting to see, and particularly the consulting businesses, organizations and governments turning to us on how they can rethink their organizational structure, their people, their talent, all of that. So, I think that’s a great opportunity for us and to continue to use the digital platform as well that we have to drive change within organizations.
Mark Marcon: Great. And I mean you have a lot of high-level discussions. I mean, when you’re talking to some of the business leaders at some of your Marquee accounts, I mean, what is your sense for how they’re thinking about like how long this is going to last?
Gary Burnison: Well, it varies. Some are more optimistic than others. And I think it does depend what geography this summarizes in parts of the world where things are just going all out and very, very robust, and there’s others where they have a more pessimistic mood. But you just — you look, you step back and the reality is over two to three decades, much of the world has been used to cheap money and low interest rates. That is being reset. And it’s being reset to, I think, a more historical norm. And companies are going to have to adapt to that environment. I really don’t see that changing over the next few quarters. Now, for us and for the business that we’re in, not only on the consulting side, but look, the labor force really hasn’t grown.
And if you look out longer term, there’s real demographic challenges that most western economies have. And I think that’s extraordinarily positive for our business. And I think that the concept around flexibility and work and people living longer and wanting to contribute, I look at the interim business and say that that should be a $1 billion business for Korn Ferry. And that’s what we’re going to continue to invest in that market, particularly around skill positions, technologists, finance and accounting, supply chain, that’s a big market opportunity for us. I personally think that this is multi-quarter. I think that this kind of environment that we’re in now, barring some disaster, I think it’s — I think we’re in this for a little bit here.
Mark Marcon: Agreed. Gary, with regards to the interim business, you gave us the total revenue numbers. What was the organic growth within Salo and the different components that you’ve bought? What are you seeing in terms of just organic growth with regard to that business?
Gary Burnison: Yes. When I look at — let me just go to new business, okay? So I’ll just take the trailing — let’s take trailing four months new business, not revenue. I would say that same-store sales, new business in interim is down about 6% or so, in actual dollars would be down 2%. So, same-store sales organic is down about 6%.
