Eric Coldwell: When we — shifting gears. When we think about macro operational challenges and not necessarily your hiring things of that sort, but there have been mentions in the industry about study sites, not having access to ample staffing or at times, various supply chain challenges in lab-based businesses, etcetera. What is the external view of the operating environment? Is it improving from where you’ve been over the last few quarters, weakening? And how does it stack up today versus, say, if you will, a normal pre-pandemic operating environment?
August Troendle: Sure. It’s been a really tight environment, particularly at sites that have been — the inflation rate at sites has far outstripped I think the inflation rate among — the wage inflation rate among CROs and the rest of the industry. So there has been very significant challenges at sites. I would say it’s maybe starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, and there’s some improvement. But it is pretty early. There has been a lot of strain there. There’s been a very tight labor market overall, but I think more so at sites. I think that we’ve seen recently still a pretty tight labor market in hiring new employees. The one area that I think we found it to be substantially easier is IT-related staff. But otherwise, we see it as still a pretty historically tight labor environment. So I don’t know if I can provide any more detail on that.
Eric Coldwell: That’s great. And then maybe for Kevin. One on the tax rate here. I know you have historically had some fairly pronounced volatility in quarters. This last year was no exception with first quarter and fourth quarter in that 6%, 7% zone and then middle of the year, around 20%. I’m curious if you could give us more detail on the driver of the low tax rate in the fourth quarter. And do you see any — or could you, at this point, guide us to any volatility in tax rate over the next four quarters? Are there any expected periods where the tax rate might be above or below that 18% enough so that you would want to call it out.
Kevin Brady: Yes, Eric, in the fourth quarter, as you know, our rate is heavily influenced by stock option exercises. And so what we saw in the fourth quarter and what really drove that 7% in fourth quarter was the accelerated stock price increase and people exercising their options. And it’s very difficult to obviously predict when people are going to exercise options. We don’t — in each passing year, the influence of stock options in theory should get a little bit less as our operating income increases and the impact of that goes down. So to answer your question in relation to 2023, it’s hard to predict what that quarterly impact could be. And so for now, I would just recommend using kind of that 17.5% to 18.5% per quarter, and we’ll kind of see how it goes.
Eric Coldwell: Okay. That’s all from me. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. I’m showing no additional questions in the queue at this time. I’d like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.
Lauren Morris: Thank you for joining us on today’s call, and thank you for your interest in Medpace. We look forward to speaking with you again on our first quarter 2023 earnings call.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.
