Kforce Inc. (NASDAQ:KFRC) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call July 31, 2023 5:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Joe Liberatore - President, Chief Executive Officer
Kye Mitchell - Chief Operations Officer
Dave Kelly - Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, Secretary
Conference Call Participants
Mark Marcon - Baird
Trevor Romeo - William Blair
Kartik Mehta - Northcoast Research
Josh Chan - UBS
Jasper Bibb - Truist Securities
Marc Riddick - Sidoti
Operator
Good afternoon, and welcome to the Kforce, Second Quarter Earnings Call. My name is Brianna and I will be your conference operator today. Please note, that this call is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]
I will now turn the call over to Joe Liberatore, Kforce’s President and CEO. You may begin your conference.
Joe Liberatore
Good afternoon. This call contains certain statements that are forward-looking. These statements are based upon current assumptions and expectations and are subject to risk and uncertainties. Actual results may vary materially from the factors listed in Kforce’s public filings and other reports and filings with the security of change commission.
We cannot undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. You can find additional information about our results in our earnings release and our SEC filings. In addition, we have published our prepared remarks within our investor-relation portion of our website.
Our results for the second quarter reflect the continuation of an uncertain economic environment, and we believe the actions being broadly taken across industries by our market-leading clients, to ensure they are prepared for the possibility of a slowdown.
This view is informed by our internal metrics, discussions with clients and other industry and economic data points. There have been wide-spread concerns and frankly, expectations that the U.S. economy would fall into a recession of uncertain severity since the Federal Reserve began aggressively raising rates in March 2022 to address persistently high inflation.
The yield curve continues to be significantly inverted, which has been a very strong indicator of a likely recession going back more than 50 years. We also experienced the collapse of several large financial institutions over this time. Though the pace of hiring has slowed, and we have seen an increasing level of layoffs, the labor markets have continued to be remarkably resilient with continued historically low levels of unemployment.
More recently, there have been some indicators suggesting significant moderation in inflation, the increasing discussions of a possible soft-landing to the U.S. economy. While we are not economists, my point in sharing these data points is to articulate the significant uncertainties that exist in the macro-environment. We believe this is causing companies, broadly speaking, to exercise restraint and a number of new technology investments they initiate and to selectively trim existing projects that don’t create an immediate return.