FTI Consulting, Inc. (NYSE:FCN) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ajay Sabherwal: Yes, so essentially James, what we are saying is, don’t take Q3 and start multiplying. Take the first three quarters and extrapolate. That’s the main message we’re giving you. I’m not going to give you the guidance and trend lines for next year just yet. Give me till February to get there. But that’s the main theme that we’re indicating. I’m not taking anything away from the strength of this quarter. Despite hiring 316 people from university, our utilization was strong, which meant our bill rates and utilization for the first quarter, the more senior professionals were higher than we anticipated and good strong performance. We also had very strong realization, especially in corporate finance and restructuring from work that was done in prior quarters where, whether it’s releasing gaps or getting LOE signed, we could, we could realize the revenues, a good strong quarter, but you must take the first three quarters and extrapolate and not take the third quarter, whether good or bad and multiply.

Steve Gunby: I guess the only other thing I’d add, Ajay, is to underscore your other point, which is we do have holidays and we’re a professional services business in the fourth quarter. And that is, occasionally we have weird stuff happens at the end of the year where we close deals so that you don’t see it in the numbers. But if you look back over multiple years, our Decembers are much weaker and it’s not because our business fell off, it’s because people took some well-deserved vacation around the holidays that we bill by the hour. So that’s the other factor to have in mind, James.

James Yaro: Absolutely, that’s very clear. And then for just my last question, I just want to turn to cash flow conversion. Despite very robust earnings, cash balances were down sequentially and the three-Q day sales outstanding are substantially above historic 3Qs. Maybe you could just speak to the drivers of the lower conversion and perhaps whether there’s anything structural that is different versus prior years.

Ajay Sabherwal: There isn’t anything structural. That’s the first part of that. Look, we launched a new ERP system in April, and in April, our billing was depressed. Since then, our billing has picked up substantially. Last few months, we’re billing over $300 million each month, but there’s still a little bit of a lag. Our revenues have surged, which I’m delighted about in the same time frame. So as billing and collection is picked up, it’s lagging the revenue. And I think in the fourth quarter, we will flip that.

James Yaro: Okay. Thank you so much.

Operator: Our next question will come from Tobey Sommer with Truist. Please go ahead.

Tobey Sommer: Thank you. I was curious, from a historical perspective, what’s a reasonable revenue range for what constitutes a large project at the company in a single quarter? Is there a high degree of variance across the segments? I don’t expect specific numbers, but if you could ballpark it for us, because we do know that it’s a big project firm.

Steve Gunby: Did we answer that, Ajay? I’m happy to answer it. I just don’t know if we give out that information or not. I don’t know why I answered that.

Ajay Sabherwal: Yes. In general terms.

Steve Gunby: So let me say this. They do vary. They do vary a lot by segment. I mean, they all have big jobs, smaller jobs. But if I think back over the years, the largest job in Stratcom has been less than the largest job in Econ or the largest bankruptcy we’ve done in Corp Fin or the largest investigation we’ve done in FLC. I don’t, do we respond to the range and the size of the jobs?

Mollie Hawkes: I mean, I would say what we will do is we will call out if any one job is more than 10% of segment revenues. So, from time to time, we’ll have that size of case. And more recently, it’s been around econ, larger matters there, and technology. I think last year, actually, in technology, we called out that we had one large mandate that was over 10% of segment revenues.