HireQuest, Inc. (NASDAQ:HQI) Q2 2024 Earnings Call August 8, 2024 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

John Nesbett - Investor Relations
Rick Hermanns - Chief Executive Officer
Steve Crane - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Kevin Steinke - Barrington Research

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the HireQuest, Inc. Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, John Nesbett, IMS Investor Relations. John, the floor is yours.

John Nesbett

Thank you. I’d like to welcome everyone to the call. Hosting the call today are HireQuest’s CEO, Rick Hermanns; and Chief Financial Officer, Steve Crane.

Let’s take a moment to read the Safe Harbor statement. This conference call contains forward-looking statements as defined within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. These forward-looking statements and terms such as anticipate, expect, intend, may, will, should or other comparable terms involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future. These statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of HireQuest and members of its management as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based.

Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, involve risks and uncertainties, including those described in HireQuest’s periodic reports filed with the SEC and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Except as required by federal securities law, HireQuest undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed conditions.

I would now like to turn the call over to the Chief Executive Officer of HireQuest, Rick Hermanns. Please go ahead, Rick.

Rick Hermanns

Good afternoon. Our second quarter of 2024 was characterized by sustained profitability as we continue to mitigate costs, leverage our unique franchising model and execute on our business strategy. We are focused on driving enhanced results as the market for staffing solution slowly recovers from what has been a particularly difficult environment for the industry overall.

Despite these headwinds, HireQuest has performed well compared to its peers. We believe that we are beginning to see a leveling out of this downward trend on the daily pay and commercial staffing side of our business as year-over-year declines have lessened compared to recent quarters. HireQuest Direct, in particular, generated franchise royalties that exceeded Q2 ‘23 levels, and system-wide sales were only just a little bit below last year. We’re not where we’d like to be, but we’re noticing some encouraging trends that suggest that the market is finally beginning to find a baseline.