Korn Ferry (NYSE:KFY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Bob Rozek: Hey Gary, it’s Bob. I would just add to that one point. So if you think about where we — Korn Ferry shine relative to our clients, it’s helping them work through disruption, right? And like you said, wherever Generative AI is going, nobody knows for sure, but I think the likelihood of it being disruptive, obviously, is there. And you think about what we’ve done during times of social disruption, COVID, remote, hybrid working and so on, we’ve been partnering with our clients to help them work through those disruptive periods. And as I look at this, I think this is just another step along the way for us to help our clients work through disruption and continue to drive their businesses forward.

Jasper Bibb: Appreciate the detail there. Last one for me. You mentioned China picked up from a search perspective a little bit in May. At least domestically, it seems like we’ve seen capital markets activity start to pick up a little bit of really low levels in June. Maybe it’s early, but are you seeing any green shoots domestically for the search business in June, just given, I guess, the rebound in equity markets and maybe the IPO pipeline starting to warm back up?

Gary Burnison: When you say domestically, are you talking about domestic China or domestic United States?

Jasper Bibb: Domestic United States.

Gary Burnison: Well, like one month doesn’t make a trend. What we saw in May was certainly good news. When you look month sequential, so not month year-over-year. But if you just look month sequential, you take April to May, our normal seasonal pattern, we would expect new business to be down 3% to 5%. And we were up 5% on an organic basis, it would probably be in that down 3% to 5%. So right in line. May to June, we would expect to see month sequential, not year-over-year, but month sequentially, we would expect that to be up 5%, and we haven’t closed out June year. We have a number of days left, and then you’ve also got the 4th of July, and we’re kind of in line with that kind of number. So I think it’s — I think you’re right, it may be too early for green shoots, but certainly, it’s more encouraging than not — that over the last few months, we’ve seen a stabilization in the Executive Search business.

And in North America, May was — May new business was — the trend was better than it was the previous month or two. So — but again, with our consulting and digital and interim businesses, those have really held up quite well overall.

Jasper Bibb: That’s fair enough. Thank you for taking the questions.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question is from Trevor Romeo from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Trevor Romeo: Hi, thanks so much for taking the questions. First, I just kind of wanted to ask about fourth quarter results relative to your expectations, particularly on margins since revenue was above the guidance. EPS is kind of more in line. I think Gregg’s comments had talked about the mix shift in revenue, start-up costs with some RPO engagements, investments in headcount and product development. I was just wondering if you could maybe talk about which of those factors had more of an impact than you might have thought going into the quarter, if any? Just any kind of color on the margin performance in the quarter would be great.