And so it’s not just about cost anymore, it’s about finding the right talent pools that can offer our clients and especially on these consulting engagements, what they need. So, we’re very excited about what we’re building in India, and we’re doing the same thing around finance talent — finance and accounting talent in the Philippines. I mean we’re all reading the stories about finance and accounting talent exiting the profession in North America for a variety of reasons. And so needing to find these talent pools that exist in other parts of the world, I think will be increasingly important to remain not only competitive financially, but also competitive in terms of winning the work.
Andre Childress: Great. Thank you so much for that color.
Kate Duchene: You’re welcome. Thank you and Happy New Year.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Marc Riddick with Sidoti. You may proceed.
Marc Riddick: Hi. Good evening.
Kate Duchene: Hi, Marc.
Jennifer Ryu: Hi, Marc.
Marc Riddick: So I wanted to start with — thanks for all the color that you’ve already provided. I wanted to start with if you could give some thoughts and commentary around sort of where you finished the quarter on the headcount and kind of where you — comfort level as to maybe what you’re seeing maybe for the next couple of quarters, if you’re kind of where you want to be or if you feel as though there are other adjustments that need to be made are some areas that you would — would need to shore up or how should we think about sort of where we ended the quarter versus where you might want to be six months to 12 months from now?
Jennifer Ryu: Marc, are you referring to consultant headcount? I just want to make sure I’m answering…
Marc Riddick: Yeah.
Jennifer Ryu: Yeah. So our consultant headcount at the end of the quarter it didn’t really decrease all that much from the end of last year around the same time. One movement is because we added a pool of consultants or talent from CloudGo from this acquisition. And then the other — you remember the consultant count that you’re looking at, at the end of the period is as of one point in time. So it depends on the talent that we’re adding to serve or, for example, our large clients in the Philippines, and we had some kind of onetime add there, a group of independent consultants that’s working on that. So overall, if you look at the average, our consulting count, I would say, decreased about anywhere between 300 to 400 , if you look at the average year-over-year. Yeah.
Marc Riddick: Okay. And then I was wondering if you could — shifting gears. I mean, I appreciate the commentary on CloudGo. I wondering if you could talk a little bit about — you did briefly touch on uses of cash. And certainly, there’s another $5 million or so on share repurchase during the quarter. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the acquisition pipeline that you’re currently seeing, whether that look has changed, evaluation is changed or maybe how you’re looking at the current pipeline today versus maybe three months to six months ago?
Kate Duchene: So let me just comment on M&A and pipeline activity, and then I’ll hand it to Jen to talk about our uses of cash and capital structure. But, we continue, as I’ve talked about, we are building more diversification in our business to follow higher-margin and higher-growth businesses. We see consulting as an opportunity for us to also scale with our Agile business. And the Veracity and CloudGo business is exactly a testament to that strategy. And so as we continue to do that, we’re going to look at additional consulting assets that can drive that strategy forward. We’re also in the process of analyzing and mapping what our consulting capabilities have been in our PCS business and bringing them closer together with what Veracity does in their strategy practice, especially around user experience.
So we bring both user experience and functional expertise closer together. Again, that is a part of strengthening the consulting part of our business and then being able to scale those practices with our agile talent. And M&A will play a role in that. Jen, now I’ll hand it to you.
Jennifer Ryu: Yeah. So from a capital allocation standpoint, Mark, we have a number of areas in the business as we want to continue to investing to drive long-term growth. So one area, as I said in my remarks, is to complete our digital transformation project. And for the remainder of the year, we’re still looking at about anywhere between $8 million to $10 million of spend in that area. And as I also said, we’re going to – we’re looking at our acquisition pipeline and continue to assess the deals in the pipeline, and that’s an area we could deploy some cash. And just as a reminder, right, on a year-to-date basis, we have spent around $15 million on shareholder return via dividends and share buyback so far. I think given the uncertain environment and just overall lower expected earnings in this fiscal year, we are going to remain prudent on our capital allocation strategy.
Marc Riddick: Great. And then the last one for me. In your prepared remarks, you mentioned around a couple of client verticals, financial services was mentioned, I believe. You mentioned some of the geographic footprints around some of the Northern Cal and – versus the rest of North America and that kind of thing. So why you could talk a little bit, were there any other sort of areas that might be ventures, things like pharma and health care and anything that kind of stood at any particular either positive or negative as far as recent activity? Thanks.
