Sterling Check Corp. (NASDAQ:STER) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Shlomo Rosenbaum: Hi. Thank you very much. Hey, Josh. I just wanted to ask a question in terms of like retention, I understand that you — Sterling has a lot more capabilities particularly above the small end of the market, but there is a Tier 2, where there are several large firms that are actually not public and don’t have to report their margins to Wall Street and are you concerned about them, particularly lowballing on price? I know net pricing is not the main aspect when it comes to clients selecting a provider, but it’s certainly something that’s taken into consideration. And do you think that there could be some kind of impact in terms of retention as we think about it this year?

Joshua Peirez: Thanks, Shlomo. I think that to the extent that that’s true, that’s always been true, and it’s baked into the 96% that we’ve had for the last two years on gross retention rate. Where it is, it is the case that we do compete with mid and smaller sized players. What I will tell you is, we do not see them really undercutting price to get there, that’s not one of the dynamics that we see, in terms of losses and I think that one important thing I would say is, I can’t remember a single conversation with the client where they told us they chose us or stayed with us because of price. They choose us because of the service, the quality, the tools, the product, the people.

Operator: And the final question today goes to Jason Celino from KeyBanc. Jason, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Jason Celino: Hey, guys. Thanks for fitting me in. Just maybe a quick one. It sounds like the new business pipeline is holding up, all things considered, maybe can you talk about the factors which get customers to change or add background checks provider, which isn’t affected by macro? Thanks.

Joshua Peirez: Sorry, Jason, I Just want to clarify that last part of your question. So the question is about why clients choose to come to us from a new business perspective or why clients choose to do background screening who weren’t doing it before?

Jason Celino: The first part, why they come to Sterling you talked, if that makes sense. I can rephrase if you want?

Joshua Peirez: No. That’s okay. So I think when we, when we are out there pitching business and I go on many of these visits myself for anything over $100,000 or so I tried to be there if I can. What we hear from clients is a few things, first of all, the moment we show them our products and what the experience looks like for their employees doing their job of ordering background screens, managing the process, being able to do adverse action, if it’s in the U.S., being able to look at our analytic tools. The experience that their candidates are going to have in our mobile-first tool. The fact that we are able to collect most of the information if not all of it that we need upfront, where many of our competitors have to keep going back and having an ongoing dialog, that almost sells itself.

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