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

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Ronan Kennedy: Okay. Thank you. And as a follow-up if I may please. With regards to the macro and just interested in your assessment of your visibility in terms of what you had said into November on the 3Q call, how you expect the fourth quarter to play out, the assumption of a stable macro, just what kind of what that had entailed and what ultimately developed versus your expectation and what the outlook is for ’23 also in consideration of the data we’re seeing from JOLTS et cetera. So, just some further thoughts on macro and as macro specifically related to hiring and trends?

Joshua Peirez: Sure. Thanks, Manav. And it’s Josh. I’ll start off and Peter can chime in. So I think first of all in Q4, we had messaged that we did see a slowdown in a number of verticals where our clients had really slowed down their hiring, taking a pause, waiting for their budgets to get set, to finish their years, to really understand what their plans look like for this year and then what we saw after our call, really around Thanksgiving through the end of the year was two things that happened. One, we saw that expand into other vertical or two, that we had not seen before that, and that was something that was not expected at the time that we gave that guidance, those verticals have again started their hiring programs and that is reflected in Peter’s remarks about the improvement we’ve seen already through January and February in Q1 on that base growth, hiring from what we saw in December.

The second thing we saw in December which Peter mentioned, was a return to seasonality in our business that we had not seen in the previous two years, where we had firms like in the staffing and retail space too and in international Gig who would typically not do much hiring in the last few weeks of the year. But in 2021 and 2022 they did do a lot of hiring. They returned to that seasonality, and then again picked right back up in January. So that was something we saw really isolated in the month of December and in the back half, especially for those verticals and that seasonality. In terms of 2023, we are assuming that it remains a rocky somewhat uncertain macro environment like we are seeing. But we’re at a point now where people have their plans for the year, they’ve given their guidance for the year, our clients are moving forward with their revenue plans, hiring plans, et cetera for the year.

So at this point, unlike what we saw in Q4 where they sort of froze a little bit while they were waiting to get their plan set here, here we are seeing them now start to ramp exactly as they are saying and move forward. So what we’re assuming is the macro remains uncertain, we’re not expecting an improvement to it, but we are expecting that at least our clients are able to continue operating against the plans they have put in place with the full knowledge of the uncertain macro that they’re dealing with. Thanks for the questions.

Operator: The next question is from Kyle Peterson from Needham Kyle. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Kyle Peterson: Great. Thanks. Good morning, guys. I appreciate you taking the questions. Just wanted to touch on the competitive dynamics here, I mean it seems like we’re in kind of more challenging macro environment probably for a lot of especially smaller players, getting tougher funding and more difficult labor market, have the competitive dynamics changed for you guys at all in the last, whether it’s three to six months or kind of what are you guys kind of seeing when you’re going to market and bidding on new deals?

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