TrueBlue, Inc. (NYSE:TBI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript - Page 6 of 7 - InvestingChannel

TrueBlue, Inc. (NYSE:TBI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

When it comes to the margin profile, you can see even with this drop off, we turned in a 12% segment profit margin. And so out of all of our businesses, this is where it’s the most variable from the standpoint that we don’t have branch locations here that have to be staffed to keep running. We don’t have on-site operations. There are minimums there. Now there are certain minimums, too, when it comes to RPO clients, but there’s more flexibility there. So we still turned in a 12% margin. You’ve heard some of my statistics earlier about the number of folks that we’ve had to downsize from to protect those margins. And there’s more that we think we can do if we need to, both from a people perspective, a service celebrity perspective and a technology perspective, to try to keep that margin from flowing into single digits, at least on an annual basis, quarters can be lumpy, but on an annual basis, we think we got a good shot at keeping that at 10% plus.

Mark Marcon: Okay. And I mean, even during 2020 with COVID, you were able to, by the fourth quarter, get to like 11% margin. Obviously, there was a huge hit in Q2 and Q3 of 2020. But is that kind of a — when we think about like the fourth quarter of 2020, when you were running at $41 million, does that seem like — kind of like — that’s as about as low as the margins would go? Or could we go into the single digits, do you think?

Derrek Gafford: Well, I guess we’ll have to see what happens from an operating environment perspective. If things were to get in another bona fide recession on top of where we’re at right now, we could see single-digits. I think what we’re looking at right now, with the run rate that we’ve got, and with a little slippage in place, we feel like we can make some adjustments with — still positive GDP out there, to do what we’ve just talked about, keeping it out of the single-digit realm.

Mark Marcon: Okay. Great. And then with regards to PeopleReady, in terms of the digitization efforts, can you give us an update in terms of JobStack and some of the statistics?

Taryn Owen: Sure. Happy to do that. JobStack certainly has continued to be a critical component of our PeopleReady business. We have about 90% of our associates utilizing the app and 300 — our 30,000 customers that engage at any given time. As Derrek mentioned, we are focusing — continuing to focus investment in JobStack with all of the development really centered around improving the usability and experience for our customers, our associates and our internal staff. So I’ll give you a couple of examples. On the client side, our clients are now able to approve time directly in the app, which has saved them time and allows our associates to be paid more quickly once their assignment ends. On the associate side, we’ve been improving upon the job searching capabilities, including — kind of filtering for location proximity, which was a desire by our associates.

And for our internal staff, they now have improved visibility through the platform into orders and available associates that can be matched to jobs, increasing their efficiency level. So we continue to make those improvements, again, really focused on improving upon the usability.

Mark Marcon: Okay. Great. And then on the gross margins, you mentioned that the workers’ comp — we basically — the accruals weren’t quite as favorable. Anything to point out there in terms of anything unusual?

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