CBIZ (CBZ) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Date

Wednesday, October 29, 2025 at 5 p.m. ET

Call participants

President and Chief Executive Officer — Jerry Grisko

Chief Financial Officer — Brad Lakhia

Director of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations — Lori Novickis

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Risks

Benefits and insurance softness — President and Chief Executive Officer Grisko said, "You may have seen that our benefits and insurance revenues were a little soft this quarter. That's exactly what it's tied to. It's really tied to some trend, some lighter trend in this period. And some other factors within that P&C business as well as some softness in some of the more discretionary project work in that business. But largely, just a soft P&C market compared to what we've seen in prior periods."

Elevated integration costs — Chief Financial Officer Lakhia reported, "We've increased our estimated 2025 integration cost by $14 million to $89 million, which is primarily driven by additional severance costs related to streamlining our combined staffing levels."

Interest expense increase — Interest expense was $28 million in the third quarter, up $23 million from the third quarter of fiscal 2024 due to higher debt levels incurred for the acquisition.

Delayed revenue from government contracts — Grisko noted, in response to government shutdown effects, "The only place we've seen a little bit of impact is in our government healthcare consulting business. As you know, those are long-term contracts with largely state agencies. But those state agencies do get federal funding. And when there is any kind of slowdown or cutbacks at the federal level, from time to time, that will delay contracts. Those contracts, that work has to get done. That work, that revenue comes back. And the contracts stay in force, but it sometimes affects the timing of that revenue stream."

Takeaways

Revenue -- Revenue was $694 million in the third quarter, $2.2 billion year-to-date through the third quarter of fiscal 2025 (period ended September 30, 2025), up 58% in the third quarter and 64% year-to-date compared to the prior year, driven primarily by the Markham acquisition.

Adjusted EBITDA -- Adjusted EBITDA reached $120 million in the third quarter, $476 million year-to-date in fiscal 2025, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 17.3% for the third quarter and 21.5% year-to-date.

Adjusted diluted EPS -- Adjusted diluted EPS was $1.01 for the third quarter, $4.27 year-to-date in fiscal 2025.

Financial services segment -- $579 million in quarterly revenue, up approximately 80% in the third quarter, with adjusted EBITDA of $126 million in the third quarter and a 21.7% adjusted EBITDA margin in the third quarter; low single-digit organic growth in core accounting and tax services on an estimated pro forma basis in the third quarter mitigated by declines in SEC-related business.

Benefits and insurance segment -- $103 million in revenue and $22 million in adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter; year-to-date revenue increased 2.7% in fiscal 2025 and year-to-date adjusted EBITDA rose 6.7%.

Pricing -- Achieved mid-single-digit rate increases companywide in the third quarter and year-to-date fiscal 2025, attributed to relationship strength and market capability.

Net debt and liquidity -- Net debt was approximately $1.6 billion as of the third quarter, with $300 million in revolver availability as of September 30, 2025; share count is approximately 54.1 million, with a weighted average fully diluted share count of 63.6 million year-to-date as of September 30, 2025.

Share repurchases -- Repurchased 800,000 shares for $56 million in the quarter, totaling $128 million and 1.8 million shares year-to-date as of September 30, 2025.

Guidance maintained -- Full-year revenue guidance remains at $2.8 billion to $2.95 billion for fiscal 2025, with line of sight to the low end; adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS guidance unchanged.

Revised synergy target -- Synergy goal from the Markham acquisition raised to $50 million or more, with $35 million expected to be realized in fiscal 2025 and the majority of the remainder in 2026.

Summary

CBIZ (NYSE:CBZ) delivered quarterly and year-to-date results that met or exceeded internal expectations, driven by the Markham acquisition and realized operating synergies. Management confirmed integration processes remain largely on or ahead of schedule, supporting strategic objectives such as leadership blending, standardization of operating systems, and investments in AI and offshoring. With clear line of sight to achieve fiscal 2025 financial targets (period ended September 30, 2025), the company highlighted continued resilience in its recurring accounting and tax businesses and improved discretionary project revenue in the third quarter amid favorable market conditions.

Chief Executive Officer Grisko noted, "We are pleased with our retention of top talent and key clients through this transitionary period, and we're competing favorably on both fronts," emphasizing successful retention performance during integration.

Chief Financial Officer Lakhia stated, "At our current valuation, we believe share repurchases are accretive," indicating active capital return while balancing deleveraging goals.

Operational efficiency initiatives and transformation investments, including the launch of CBIZ Vertical Vector AI and expansion of offshoring capabilities in India and the Philippines, were outlined as ongoing drivers for future growth and cost structure optimization.

Fourth-quarter pro forma revenue growth is expected in the 6%-8% range, after adjusting for divested and discontinued businesses, according to Lakhia's Q&A session comments.

Industry glossary

Adjusted EBITDA: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, adjusted for nonrecurring or non-core items.

Markham acquisition: The 2024 purchase of Markham LLP, referenced throughout as a primary contributor to current year growth and integration activities.

Synergies: Cost savings or operating enhancements achieved by combining the operations of CBIZ and Markham LLP.

P&C: Property and casualty insurance, denoting the segment within benefits and insurance subject to observed market softness.

CBIZ Vertical Vector AI: Proprietary artificial intelligence platform deployed by CBIZ as part of its technology transformation efforts.

OBBBA: Regulatory change referenced as having a favorable impact on tax practice revenue; exact meaning not defined in call, but cited as a growth driver.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Lori Novickis: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call to discuss CBIZ, Inc.'s third quarter and year-to-date 2025 results. As a reminder, this call is being webcast, and a link to the live webcast along with today's press release and corresponding investor presentation can be found on the Investor Relations page of our website, cbiz.com. An archived replay and transcript will also be made available following the call. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that during the call, management may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures can be found in the financial tables of today's press release and investor presentation.

Today's call may also include forward-looking statements regarding our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, strategies, and prospects. Forward-looking statements represent only our expectations, estimates, and projections as of the date of this call and are not intended to give any assurance of future results. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause future results to differ materially, and CBIZ, Inc. assumes no obligation to update these statements except as required by law. A more detailed description of such factors can be found in today's press release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Joining us for today's call are Jerry Grisko, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Brad Lakhia, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Jerry for his opening remarks. Jerry?

Jerry Grisko: Thank you, Lori, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to have this opportunity to provide you with an update on our performance and our outlook on the business moving forward. This Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the Marcom acquisition, and we couldn't be more pleased with first, the quality of the Marcom organization, and the complementary fit between our two great companies. Next, the progress that we've made on integration, which is on or ahead of schedule in most key areas. And finally, the opportunities we now have to accelerate growth and break away from our competitors. We knew going into the acquisition that Markham was an outstanding firm. What we've learned since has even surpassed our initial expectations.

They brought great people, significant scale in key geographic markets, and a substantial and attractive mid-market client base that is similar to ours. They had also made substantial investments in areas that were strategically important to us and that complemented investments that we had made in other areas of the business. We are now able to leverage those investments companywide, including go-to-market industry groups, AI, and other crucial technologies, as well as offshoring resources. Markham also had very strong leadership throughout the organization, a significant number of whom have assumed key leadership roles in the new CBIZ, Inc. We were committed to bringing together the best of both companies.

We now have a blend of leaders and are establishing standardized processes, policies, and systems that allow our teams to bring the full value of the combined company to our clients. Now turning to integration. To support the ability of our teams to work together as one CBIZ, Inc., and thereby enhancing collaboration, resource sharing, and the pursuit of new business opportunities, we've aligned our collective teams under a common reporting structure. We've adopted many standardized operating processes and systems that allow our teams to work together in key areas, and we've begun to colocate team members in cities where we both have offices.

To improve operating efficiency, we've made significant investments in our shared resources centers, including by adding technical resources to our national tax office and to our national assurance quality and support partner, Tebus CPAs. We've also invested in transformation and innovation team, which now has over 60 members devoted to developing new products and solutions for our clients, and deploying AI and other technologies to improve operating efficiency, and we've increased our offshore resources in both India and in The Philippines.

In addition, to begin unlocking the value of the combined entity to our clients and to accelerate growth, we've identified and stood up 12 industry groups to bring unmatched breadth and depth of services to our clients through solutions that are highly tailored to meet their specific needs. We streamlined many client-facing processes to improve the client experience and to allow our client-facing teams to be more responsive. We've launched CBIZ Vertical Vector AI to enable our clients to leverage our proprietary AI platform and capabilities and to improve their business performance, and we've launched a new highly visible national brand campaign to promote the new CBIZ, Inc. and highlight our expanded capabilities to the market.

This campaign is already showing signs of improved brand awareness. Clearly, a lot of work has been successfully completed in a short period of time, and there are still more opportunities ahead. We are pleased with our retention of top talent and key clients through this transitionary period, and we're competing favorably on both fronts, which positions us for accelerated top and bottom-line growth beginning in 2026 and beyond. Brad will review more details on our results in a minute, but before I turn it over to him, I wanted to provide you with a few of my own perspectives on the third quarter and what we're expecting for the remainder of the year.

We were pleased to see that our recurring businesses held steady during the quarter. Our core accounting and tax business continued to deliver organic revenue growth consistent with the first half of the year, and increased demand for our project-based advisory businesses delivered improved growth relative to the first half. Encouragingly, as we look to finish out the year, the combination of our broader service offerings and improving market conditions should lead to increased conversion of our late-stage pipeline opportunities. We have clear line of sight to achieve our 2025 revenue outlook, and the entire leadership team and all our client-facing leaders are laser-focused on capitalizing on these opportunities and trends.

With that, let me hand it over to Brad to cover further details on our quarter and our financial outlook.

Brad Lakhia: Thank you, Jerry, and good afternoon. As Jerry said, we are very pleased with our third quarter results. Revenue and cash flow were in line with our expectations, and earnings exceeded. Benefits of greater scale and the resiliency of our business model once again are reflected in our operating and financial performance and leave us well-positioned for sustainable long-term growth. On a consolidated basis, third quarter revenue was $694 million, and year-to-date revenue stands at $2.2 billion, a 58% and 64% increase, respectively, driven by the acquisition. For the quarter, adjusted EBITDA increased to $120 million and now stands at $476 million year-to-date. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 17.3% in the quarter and 21.5% year-to-date.

Year-to-date adjusted EBITDA margin increased approximately 325 basis points versus last year, with lower incentive compensation expense representing approximately 250 of the 325 basis point improvement. Excluding the impact from lower incentive compensation, we believe our margin expansion is consistent or better than our historical performance, representing realization of the expected benefits of greater scale. Third quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share was $1.01 per share, bringing our year-to-date adjusted EPS to $4.27 per share. Third quarter interest expense was $28 million, $23 million higher than last year, driven by higher debt levels incurred to fund the cash portion of the acquisition.

Third quarter tax expense was $10 million, approximately $6 million lower than last year, driven by higher tax benefits related to stock-based compensation expense, lower pretax income, and lower state tax expense, which resulted from recent tax planning actions. Our year-to-date tax expense was $76 million or $25 million higher than last year, primarily driven by an $88 million increase in pretax income. Our year-to-date effective tax rate was flat compared to the prior year. Turning to our Financial Services segment. Third quarter revenue was $579 million, up $256 million or approximately 80%. Financial Services adjusted EBITDA increased 86% to $126 million, a margin of 21.7%. Revenue growth was largely driven by the acquisition.

On an estimated pro forma basis, and consistent with the first half, we delivered low single-digit growth in our core accounting and tax service lines, which mitigated headwinds in our SEC-related business. In addition, our advisory business captured improved market conditions in relation to the first half, which enabled single-digit growth. Year-to-date, financial services revenue increased by 85% to $1.9 billion, and adjusted EBITDA for the segment nearly doubled to $463 million. In terms of pricing, we were pleased to deliver strong mid-single-digit rate increases in the quarter and year-to-date. We are competing favorably and realizing rate increases that exceed overall inflation and capture the value our clients gain from our leading service capability.

Revenue from our Benefits and Insurance or B and I segment was $103 million with adjusted EBITDA of $22 million. Year-to-date, we're pleased with revenue growth of 2.7% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 6.7% for this segment. Turning to the balance sheet and capital allocation. We ended the quarter with net debt at approximately $1.6 billion and leverage largely unchanged from the second quarter. We had approximately $300 million of available liquidity under our revolver on September 30. In the third quarter, we took the opportunity to repurchase approximately 800,000 shares at a value of approximately $56 million. This includes approximately 400,000 shares repurchased under the terms of our right of first refusal and 400,000 shares in the open market.

This brings our year-to-date share repurchases to $128 million or 1.8 million shares. Our current outstanding share count stands at approximately 54.1 million shares, reflecting a net increase of approximately 3.9 million shares since year-end. Since we've had several questions regarding the potential impact of the shares issued and yet to be issued related to the acquisition, we have included a slide on Page 18 of our investor presentation posted today that provides some additional information to help clarify this dynamic. As a reminder, our U.S. GAAP earnings per share and adjusted earnings per share are reported on a fully diluted basis, which assumes all issued and unissued shares are outstanding.

As of September 30, year-to-date, the weighted average fully diluted share count stands at 63.6 million shares. In terms of capital allocation, our long-term priorities are unchanged. On Slide 21 of our investor presentation, we have included a summary of near-term and long-term capital priorities. You will see our near-term priorities are as follows. Our first priority is funding organic growth maintenance capital. This will include disciplined, targeted investment in client service delivery and operational excellence with a greater focus on technology, including AI, improving our offshore capability and capacity, and our ongoing investment in attracting and retaining the very best talent in our organization. Our second priority is debt repayment.

We continue to target allocating a significant portion of our free cash flow to bring our leverage to a target range of two to 2.5 times over time. When we set this target upon announcement of the acquisition, we assumed the majority of our free cash flow would be allocated to delevering and estimated we could achieve this goal exiting 2026. Given the opportunity we've had to allocate capital to share repurchases in 2025, the timing for achieving this range may shift to 2027. Our third priority is share repurchases and/or selective strategic high-return M&A. At our current valuation, we believe share repurchases are accretive. Therefore, our approach is to remain balanced, opportunistic, and disciplined with share repurchases and delevering.

And with regard to M&A, as always and consistent with our history, we will continue to evaluate targeted bolt-on strategic opportunities in high-growth service lines in key geographic areas. The strength and scale of our business model and our ability to generate meaningful free cash flow provide us with continued confidence in our ability to fund investments and high-return growth initiatives while simultaneously achieving our target leverage. I will wrap up my comments with guidance and modeling. We are maintaining our revenue and earnings guidance for the year. At this time, we continue to have line of sight to the low end of the revenue guidance of $2.8 billion to $2.95 billion we set earlier this year.

We are also maintaining our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS guidance, and we look forward to resuming reporting organic growth metrics in 2026. In terms of our revenue guidance, there are three factors that we believe enable us to deliver the low end of the range. First, the growth rate we have achieved thus far in the year within our core essential recurring accounting and tax businesses has proven resilient and sustainable, and we expect this to remain true in the fourth quarter. Second, the improved market conditions we witnessed in the third quarter have also continued thus far in the fourth quarter, and this will allow us to capture revenue opportunities in our nonrecurring project-based businesses.

And finally, we plan to execute on a key operational excellence initiative we expect will yield improved fourth-quarter staff utilization and will allow us to operate more efficiently in future periods. Our guidance and modeling assumptions are included on Page 17 of our investor presentation, and there are two updates I would like to highlight. First, we have updated our synergy goal from the acquisition to a total of $50 million or more. We expect to realize $35 million in synergies this year and the majority of the balance in 2026. Slide 20 of our investor presentation provides further information on these synergies.

While we've made a great deal of progress on all fronts, key real estate decisions for some of our largest metro markets remain ahead of us. Therefore, we believe there is more opportunity here, and we will provide further updates as we take actions. Along with updating our synergy goal, we've updated our integration cost estimate for 2025. We've increased our estimated 2025 integration cost by $14 million to $89 million, which is primarily driven by additional severance costs related to streamlining our combined staffing levels. We do not currently estimate any change to our 2026 integration costs.

Second, we provided further modeling information on our operating expenses, including information on total compensation and benefits and our related incentive compensation programs. As you will see on Page 19, historically, incentive compensation programs represent approximately 16 to 17% of our total compensation and benefits. For 2025 performance, we've been very careful to ensure our high-performing teams will be appropriately recognized for their 2025 performance during this integration phase. And we believe our remaining incentive pools are adequate to recognize, retain, and motivate our teams. As we've highlighted previously, we have a variable pay-for-performance-based incentive program designed to reward our team for achieving and exceeding growth, profitability, and other operating goals.

When our performance meets or exceeds targets, there's meaningful incremental shared value. Conversely, if goals are not met, the funding and the related expense is adjusted accordingly. While the 2025 incentive pools reflect this reality, we have also preserved appropriate funding to recognize our team members for the many important and meaningful accomplishments that are setting us up for success going forward. With that, I'll turn the call back to Jerry for some closing remarks before we turn the call over for questions.

Jerry Grisko: Thank you, Brad. To reiterate a few key points, as we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Markham deal, we are extremely pleased with the foundation we have now built that positions us to accelerate long-term value creation. Looking ahead to 2026, we expect increased momentum as we transition to the next phase of growth and are seeing strong evidence that we now have what it takes to break away from our competitors. Our success will be rooted in our commitment to providing unmatched client experience and operational excellence by investing in our people and state-of-the-art tools, including investments in our industry groups, data, AI, and other technology capabilities, as well as offshoring capacity.

Together, these investments will deliver valuable client insights and impact and transform what's possible, unlocking shared value and driving sustainable long-term growth and profitability. With that, I will open the line to questions.

Operator: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time, your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Our first question comes from Christopher Moore with CJS Securities. Please go ahead.

Christopher Moore: Hey. Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking a couple. Maybe we could start with pricing. It sounds like you talked about mid-single digits in Q3. I think prior to this, we were talking about 4% in '25 versus, you know, 6% or 7% in '23 and '24. I'm just trying to figure out how to view, you know, '26 and moving forward. Is 4% the new normal? Do you have much visibility on that at this point in time?

Jerry Grisko: Yeah, Chris, we're really not giving guidance into '26. But I will say as it relates to pricing, we're really pleased, first of all, this year to be realizing mid-single digits. I think that's above what we're hearing some of our competitors to be receiving in this market. And it reflects the strong relationship we have with our clients. Second, as we look forward, you know, we've traditionally been able to get at least that kind of mid-single digits. And there's nothing structural in the industry that would prevent us from continuing to do that. So I would expect as we look into '26 and even beyond that, that mid-single-digit range is a pretty good target for us.

Christopher Moore: Got it. Helpful. I know you guys talked about some initial conflicts of interest with Markham. But just generally trying to get a sense, have you lost any significant clients as a result of the Marcom acquisition?

Jerry Grisko: Yes. Let me take that question in two ways. First of all, we expected to lose some clients. Right? We knew that the staff business, for example, was declining going into the transaction, as was some of the capital markets work they did. We sold off some business. We sold off some healthcare business, and then we had kind of the normal expected kind of conflicted clients, which candidly were below actually what we modeled there. So I'm pleased to see a lot of those things kind of in line with the model that we had. Put those things aside, really pleased with what we've seen as far as client retention rates to date and also staff retention rates.

Christopher Moore: Got it. This might be a more challenging one. But, just in terms of, you know, kinda thinking about rainmaking partners that, you know, are at CBIZ, Inc. or now with Mark being there, just trying to get a sense, you know, has there been much notable loss on that front?

Jerry Grisko: Yeah. I would say not notable. I mean, you know, we've had some people, of course, as you would expect, that were near retirement. But other than what you would normally expect, I wouldn't say significant notable losses in rainmakers. In fact, I think when I look at some of the wins, which we've been looking at here, there's a significant amount of energy about what we can now bring working together through our industry groups and through the relationships that each brings to the other, the breadth of services and depth of expertise. I have a couple of wins that I've been looking at over the past week that are quite exciting.

So I think there's really a lot of energy around the power of the combined entity or organization and what we can bring to the market.

Christopher Moore: Helpful. And maybe just the last one for me. So Brad talked about, I think, integration costs gonna be roughly $89 million this year. Understanding is that 26,000,000 will be a little bit less than that, but still very significant. Are there certain types of costs that are expected in '26 that are much different than the ones so far, you know, taken in '25 or just, you know, kinda trying to understand how we can kinda characterize those one-timers in '26 versus '25.

Brad Lakhia: Yeah. No. Overall, Chris, the nature and the overall mix of the integration costs will be overall pretty similar next year. Keep in mind, when you look at our integration costs, you know, we have some retention dollars. There are some, you know, kind of retention dollars that are flowing through ratably. And, you know, $25.26, we would expect some of the mix to change this year. We've already had more in the way of some personnel severance-based costs. Next year, we'll see some acceleration of real estate facilities-based costs. So there will be some mix there. But in general, the components are still the same.

Christopher Moore: Got it. I'll jump back in line. I appreciate it, guys.

Operator: And the next question comes from Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Andrew Nicholas: Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I'm going to start with a multi-parter. I hope you'll bear with me. But I just want to kind of ask about a few different kind of macro or end market dynamics. So I guess I think there's three or four here. I guess I'm wondering first if you've seen any benefit from the OBBBA in terms of your tax practice? Second, you know, we've seen some market pressures in the insurance brokerage space this earnings season thus far. Just wondering if there's any softness that you've experienced in that part of your business.

And then lastly, just from, like, an M&A market-sensitive project type work perspective, it sounds like things are getting a decent bit better to what you experienced in the first half, but any more color on what you saw in the period or in October to date would be great.

Jerry Grisko: Yes, Andrew, let me take this. OBBA, glad you asked that question. As we've said many times over the years, whenever there's change in any kind of tax or other regulatory environment, always good for us. Right? It gives us an opportunity to bring our collective thought leadership together and to bring that out into our offices and have our client-facing professionals bring those to the clients. And so we've done that. It gives us an opportunity to be in front of our clients. And so, yes, there has been a lot of discussions with our clients on that front. And some increased revenue for sure. I think more to come.

But we did see some lift in the third quarter as a result of kind of being in front of the clients and discussing things like OBBA. So that's been positive for us. Second, turning to the soft market in the insurance industry. You may have seen that our benefits and insurance revenues were a little soft this quarter. That's exactly what it's tied to. It's really tied to some trend, some lighter trend in this period. And some other factors within that P&C business as well as some softness in some of the more discretionary project work in that business. But largely, just a soft P&C market compared to what we've seen in prior periods.

And then as far as M&A, very pleased as we commented to see increased activity there compared to the first half of the year. And based on what we're seeing and hearing, we would expect that activity would continue kind of into the fourth quarter and hopefully into 2026. So all generally positive.

Andrew Nicholas: Great. Thank you. That's really helpful. In terms of the fourth-quarter outlook, a lot of what you just described seems supportive of good growth to end the year and ideally sets you up nicely for next year. But is there anything you could kind of quantify for us on the fourth quarter specifically in terms of what's embedded for pro forma growth? I know it's kind of hard from our vantage point to piece together, you know, the right base for Markham last year given it was only with you for a couple of months.

But any color on kind of what rate the pro forma business would need to grow in the fourth quarter or what you have line of sight into in the fourth quarter?

Brad Lakhia: Yes. Hi, Andrew. Brad here. Let me try to take the question. I guess I'll restate here a few things I highlighted in my earlier remarks, which is some of the kind of the underlying assumptions that we have for the fourth-quarter revenue outlook. But first, we expect the kind of that core recurring essential part of our business to continue to grow as we've seen thus far this year. Nothing's told us anything different one month into the quarter. Second, you know, Jerry just highlighted and commented on improved market conditions that are allowing our more nonrecurring discretionary parts of our business to, you know, get back to some growth rates that, you know, are more encouraging for us.

So we're seeing that still hold true thus far again in Q4, one month in. And then the third thing, we do have a kind of an operational excellence initiative underway where we should realize, upon successful execution, some improved utilization of our staff. So it's going to help us not only in terms of our overall staffing levels through the peaks and troughs of our business, whether seasonality, but it'll also allow us to hopefully drive some more improved revenue realization this year relative to last year.

But the last thing I'll say, which I didn't comment on earlier, is, and, again, I know it's hard for you to kind of look at this because we only had two months of Markham results in our fourth quarter of last year. But we would say that in some respects, the Markham business last year to this year provides a little bit of an easier comp for us, you know, for a multitude of reasons. So, you know, I think, you know, those factors give us confidence in the line of sight that we have.

Well, I would just say from a pro forma basis, we, you know, again, we're not going on a pro forma, adjusted pro forma out there. But I have commented on kind of the, you know, additional $75 million that we would take off the pro forma number that we published. So if you did some of that math and you tried to square it away, Andrew, probably gonna look like, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 to 8% growth year over year on our base Q4 revenue on a pro forma basis, adjusted for the things that we talked about previously, conflicted client revenue, the bleed-off in the SEC or capital markets business, those kind of things.

Andrew Nicholas: Perfect. No. That's in line with maybe what I would have guessed, but I appreciate that we're on the same page there. Maybe last one before wrapping it up is just on the margin puts and takes for next year. Obviously, appreciate the revised or upwardly revised synergy target. I guess one point of clarification, the $35 million or those numbers that you outlined that is realized synergies, correct, not actioned. And then second, as we think about kind of the normalization of incentive comp next year, incremental synergies that you're getting from Markham, kind of real estate, it sounds like, you know, offshore usage is ramping up pretty nicely.

Is there any other kind of things that we should keep in mind as we try to, you know, estimate the margin trajectory next year? Because I understand that this year is pretty unique for a variety of reasons.

Brad Lakhia: Yeah. So let me start with the synergy piece first. So, yeah, we have increased and pleased to have increased the, you know, synergy outlook for the acquisition from $25 million to more than $50 million. The $35 million that I mentioned in my remarks, Andrew, is the amount that we expect to fully realize in this year's, you know, operating income. Right? So that is not like a run rate number. It is what we expect to realize in 2025. So that's reflected in our outlook and our guidance. And then we'll have an incremental. We expect, you know, most of the majority of the other 50 to come next year.

And then I'll just also say, you know, listen. The real estate facility work is still ahead of us. There's a lot of great activities going on there. In particular, in some of our larger metro markets, we haven't made, you know, formed kind of decisions and actions there. So I do expect further updates on that. So, you know, we think we're pretty pleased with the $50 million plus number. And may be able to provide you some more updates on that as we move through 2026 and make some of those decisions.

In terms of, you know, kind of the, you know, obviously, we're not giving 2026 guidance at this point, but I'd point you to a couple of other things beyond synergies. One is, and you highlighted it, just other operational efficiency initiatives that we have underway not only include offshoring but also include other initiatives, like I said, around utilization of staff and how we're balancing that. And then also some investments that we're making that we think will drive other operational efficiencies around technology, and that includes in some respects, AI as well. Finally, I would just say, again, without, you know, giving guidance here, you know, we do expect our top line to grow next year.

And we'll provide more information, more outlook on that in February as we ordinarily would. But, you know, the drop-through effect of that top-line growth is something that we're certainly driving hard for. So, you know, that's another lever that we have. And one we'll be, you know, be focused on as we go through our planning cycle here for 2026.

Andrew Nicholas: That's great. Thanks so much, Brad.

Operator: Again, if you have a question, please press star and then 1. The next question comes from Marc Riddick with Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Marc Riddick: Thanks for all the detail that's been provided and appreciate there's a lot of work that goes into that. Wanted to sort of maybe shift gears a little bit toward maybe some of the big picture issues and questions. Maybe you can sort of bring us up to date on maybe what you're seeing with client feedback and activity related to potential for rate cuts, which might tie into the M&A conversation, also the shutdown so far this year, if there's anything that you've landmarked that you would sort of use in situations like this?

Jerry Grisko: Yeah. Marc, this is Jerry. I'll take them one by one. As far as the rate cuts, obviously, that's very recent news. Right? So we really wouldn't have heard much or seen much response to that. Although that's just positive. Right? I think as we've always said, 72% of our business, kind of the recurring essential, that work's gonna come in the door in more or less favorable times. Really doesn't matter. But it's the discretionary work that we do that the clients really step back and they need more clarity. There's positive signals in the market like rate cuts, that causes them to have more confidence and then therefore causes them to make investments.

And when they do that, they turn to us, and it frees up those discretionary projects for us. So all very positive. As far as government shutdown is concerned, we haven't seen a lot there. The only place we've seen a little bit of impact is in our government healthcare consulting business. As you know, those are long-term contracts with largely state agencies. But those state agencies do get federal funding. And when there is any kind of slowdown or cutbacks at the federal level, from time to time, that will delay contracts. Those contracts, that work has to get done. That work, that revenue comes back.

And the contracts stay in force, but it sometimes affects the timing of that revenue stream.

Marc Riddick: Okay. Great. And then shifting gears, maybe you could talk a little bit about any particular client initiative vertical activities during the quarter that stood out either positively or negatively. Or was it sort of across the board?

Jerry Grisko: Yeah. Nothing negative for sure. We had some really nice wins that we were pleased to see coming out of those industry groups. And, you know, I'd say those wins kind of fell into a couple of categories, but one that comes to mind was a very large win within our food industry. That was a relationship that one side had but didn't have the industry expertise to win the engagement. We brought together people from both sides of the organization, a very collective and collaborative effort, and won a very big engagement that was just announced. So very pleased with that.

Then we saw a couple of others, one within energy, one within our capital markets that are quite sizable. So the strength of the industry groups is early, but it's starting to come together, and you're already seeing some momentum there. So really encouraged by that.

Marc Riddick: Okay. Great. And then I think in your prepared remarks, there was commentary around some of the activities that you were engaged in, including colocation and things like that. Maybe you could shed a little bit more light on that and what the time frame on some of those activities might be. Thanks.

Brad Lakhia: Yeah. So hey, Marc. Brad here. So listen. On bringing our people together, obviously, it's a critically important thing as we think about the broader integration work that we're doing. But really most importantly, how we bring our cultures together. So we're really pleased with the progress we've made. But, you know, a lot of that work is still ahead of us in terms of getting our people in colocated offices. Where we've also, and this is probably a little bit more on a virtual basis, where we've also made a lot of progress is bringing from a national perspective our groups together. So think about our national tax group, for example.

They are now and have really been for a number of months working very seamlessly together. So Legacy Markham, legacy CBIZ, Inc. tax teams, working across the landscape and really seamlessly together. So when we refer to kind of colocating and bringing and sharing bringing our resources together, it's both at the physical location level and then on a virtual level as well.

Marc Riddick: Excellent. Thank you very much.

Operator: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jerry Grisko for any closing remarks.

Jerry Grisko: Yes. Thank you. To wrap up, I'd like to reiterate a few key points. First, we're very pleased with our third-quarter results, which were largely in line with our expectations. Next, our core recurring essential businesses continued to perform well, and improved market conditions resulted in increased growth within our nonrecurring businesses. And most important, we're seeing strong validation of the Markham acquisition, including better-than-expected synergies, and we're well-positioned to drive sustainable long-term growth as our teams come together and we bring our unique value proposition to our clients and others in the high-growth middle market. Thank you for your continued interest, partnership, and support. And please enjoy the upcoming holiday season.

We look forward to providing an update on our full-year results and 2026 outlook in February. Thank you so much. Take care.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

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