Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to Korn Ferry Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 26 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Following the prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. We have also made available in the Investor Relations section of our website at kornferry.com copy of the financial presentation that we will be reviewing with you today. Before I turn the call over to your host, Mr. Gary D. Burnison, let me first read a cautionary statement to investors. Certain statements made in the call today, such as those relating to future performance, plans and goals, constitute forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 2000. Although the company believes the expectations reflected in such forward looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements. Actual results in future periods may differ materially from those currently expected or desired because of a number of risks and uncertainties, which are beyond the company's control. Additional information concerning such risks and uncertainties can be found in the release relating to this presentation and in the periodic and other reports filed by the company with the SEC including the company's soon to be filed annual report for fiscal year 26. Also, some of the comments today may reference non GAAP financial measures, such as constant currency amounts, EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, additional information concerning these measures, including reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, is contained in the financial presentation and earnings release relating to this call. Both of which are posted in the Investor Relations section of the company's website at kornferry.com With that, I will turn the call over to Mr. Burnison. Please go ahead, Mr. Burnison.

Gary D. Burnison: Okay. Thank you, sir. I thank you, everybody, for joining us. So I am going to let our team walk through the numbers, but our quarterly performance was outstanding. It marks our 5th consecutive quarter of top line growth underscoring the strength of our strategy. But let me first reflect for a moment. On these calls, I used to talk about opportunities measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Today, I think in terms of opportunities measured in the billions, far beyond where we are today. In leadership, we spend a lot of time talking about the what, the how, and the when. Too often, though, the why and the who get overlooked. Despite all of Korn Ferry success and evolution, our why has never changed. Enabling people and organizations to be more than And I was reminded of that a few months ago while I was traveling in the Midwest. And out of nowhere, I heard the sound of a train horn. Which I had not heard in years. It was not the sound that struck me It was that feeling. In an instant, I was taken back to where I was raised. Where trains ran next to our house. In that moment, peeled back the years and made me reflect about the essence of who we are and what we do. And as I think about the Korn Ferry of today, this image feels particularly relevant. We are at the intersection of a present that feels far different than our past and a future that will even be brighter than today. that is why our foundational hallmark is evolving from 1 Korn Ferry to We Are Korn Ferry. And We Are Korn Ferry begins with a deep client centricity and expanding the breadth of our solutions that we deliver within every client relationship. And there are just a few examples during the quarter of Fortune 50 tech company. That turned to us to accelerate their sales organization or a global professional services firm that looked to us as their sole source of interim technology. talent. I mean, I could go on and on and on, including in the quarter we won a number of substantial RPO engagements spanning multiple industries across all 3 regions. And when we take a client centric approach and we leverage our relationships across geographies, and deliver impact with the totality of the firm, we build sustainable relationships of scale. Over the last several months, I have looked in the mirror. And realized that what got us here by itself is not what will get us there. To reach our destination, we need to shift our mindset. that is when our whole becomes bigger than the sum of our parts. As such, I want our industries to be accelerators. Our solutions to be innovators and enablers and our geographies to be the integrators. And so starting in this quarter, Q1, our external reporting segments are going to be reflected through a regional lens. Of The Americas, EMEA and APAC. And our solution level detail will be provided in 3 categories. Search, comprised of executive and professional search talent and organizational solutions comprised of digital and consulting and finally, workforce solutions comprised of RPO and Interim. These categories serve our clients across the entire talent continuum. Search is about identifying talent, Workforce Solutions is about scaling talent. And talent and organizational solutions is about unlocking potential. Grouping our solutions like this more accurately reflects how work gets done today and orient our services to the competitive landscape and the way the clients buy these solutions. I am confident that amid all the changes in the world today, it can also be the best environment where good companies become even greater. Aligning to opportunities ahead. I am also incredibly proud enormously proud of our colleagues around the world. Their expertise and passion are the catalyst as we change people's lives unlock the potential in people and unleash transformation across organizations. With that, I will turn the call over to Bob. Bob, go ahead.

Robert Rozek: Thanks, Gary, and good afternoon and good morning, everybody. I would be remiss if I did not start by saying thank you to all the colleagues Gary was just referring to, to as fiscal 26 was another outstanding year for Korn Ferry. Despite uneven market conditions, uncertain macro environment, we achieved a new fee revenue high and delivered very strong earnings. We continue to skillfully execute our We Are Korn Ferry go to market strategy integrating our intellectual property and data, along with our consulting capabilities to drive enterprise wide results for our clients. We continue to demonstrate how we are different. And we are different. Growing for the 5th consecutive quarter while others in the industry continue to contract or just performing less worse. Our results demonstrate the resilience and effectiveness of our strategy and the benefits of our diversified business model. We continue to evolve into a comprehensive organizational and talent solution partner for all of our clients. We perform differently because we are not simply a monoline transactional business. We are a diversified data and IP driven talent advisory with multiple synergistic revenue streams and growing earnings power. Now let me turn to our Q4 performance. This will be in addition to the detailed results in the earnings presentation that we posted. I am going to provide you with a couple of company wide and solution specific highlights for the quarter. So For Q4, our ending estimated remaining fees under existing contracts grew 10% year-over-year to almost $1.9 billion with growth in every solution. Our business referral rate increased to 29.1% of consolidated fee revenue in the fourth quarter it is up by about 23 basis points and our marquee and diamond account penetration remains strong. At 40% of our consolidated fee revenue. Now both these metrics really demonstrate the effectiveness of our We Are Korn Ferry go to market strategy. Executive search grew 7% in the fourth quarter and has now grown for 8 consecutive quarters. Professional search and interim fee revenue was up 14%, with 17% growth in professional search and 12% growth in interim. Our interim solution continues to perform better than other industry players driven by both strong business referrals and expanding bill rates. Digital subscription and license fee revenue was up 10% year-over-year, And last, our consulting fee revenue grew 7%, by an increase in larger engagements and stronger bill rates. Now let me turn to overall company results. For the full year, fee revenue was about $2.9 billion, up 7%. We delivered close to $500 million in adjusted EBITDA also up 7%. Adjusted EPS of $5.28, which was also up 8%. Focusing on the fourth quarter, we grew for the 5th consecutive quarter, as Gary mentioned, with consolidated fee revenue up 7% reaching $760 million. Earnings and profitability also remained strong Adjusted EBITDA grew $8 million or 7% $130 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin remained very strong at 17% and adjusted diluted earnings per share grew $0.08 or 6% to $1.40. Total company new business grew 2% when you exclude RPO, 4% when you include it. The RPO business itself won $137 million of new business in the fourth quarter, and 74% of that came from new logos. As I previously mentioned, estimated remaining fees under existing contracts at the end of the fourth quarter were almost $1.9 billion. 57% or about $1 billion of that is projected to be recognized within the next year. And the remaining 43% or $800 million or so is going to be recognized beyond next 4 quarters. Looking at our regional results, fee revenue in the Americas was up 8%, with strength in Executive Search, Professional Search and Interim, and RPO. EMEA fee revenue also grew 8%, strong growth in consulting and professional search and interim, and our Asia-Pac fee revenue was kind of flat year over year. Finally, we continue to maintain a disciplined approach to capital allocation In the fourth quarter, we purchased 1.24 million shares using approximately $78 million. Now if you remember, we talked in our last earnings call, we said we were going to lean more heavily on buybacks and that is exactly what we did. For all of fiscal 26, we returned $221 million to shareholders through the combination of share repurchases and dividends invested $85 million into CapEx for the development of TalentSuite in the delivery of other productivity tools for other solutions. Now turning to our outlook for the first quarter of fiscal 27, assuming no further changes in worldwide geopolitical conditions, economic conditions, financial markets, foreign exchange rates, We expect fee revenue to range from $725 million to $745 million our adjusted EBITDA margin to be right around 17% and our consolidated adjusted diluted earnings per share to range from $1.32 to $1.38. Now before I conclude, as Gary mentioned earlier, the company will continue to build on our We Are Korn Ferry go to market strategy. We expect this initiative to continue to drive deeper client penetration and industry leading growth. Through this initiative, we are orienting more towards regions, or our integrators, as Gary said. This will also result in a change to the company's financial reporting segments As Gary mentioned, beginning in the first quarter of fiscal 27, our external reporting segments will be transitioning from global solution based presentation to 3 regional reporting segments: the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. The region segment results will include fee revenue and profitability through adjusted EBITDA and then we will continue to provide solution level results for new business fee revenue and estimated remaining fees under existing contracts through the 3 solution groupings of, again, Search, Executive Search and Professional Search; Talent and organizational Solutions, comprised of consulting and digital; and Workforce Solutions, comprised of RPO and Interim. We really believe this reporting structure better reflects how work is delivered across the firm aligns much more closely with how our clients are actually buying our services and better enables our We Are Korn Ferry operating model. Now to assist folks, excuse me, in understanding the impact of these changes, the company will be providing recast supplemental unaudited information containing historical financial information for the 3 reporting segments following the filing of our Q1 FY 30 Q in September. In addition, our Q1 FY 2027 press release will reflect the new reporting segments in the investor presentation that we will post to our website will reflect both the new reporting segments and the selected financial data previously mentioned for our 3 solution groupings. Now in conclusion, continue to be extremely encouraged by the strength of our business the progress we have made executing our strategy and the continued trust our clients place in Korn Ferry. Our diversified portfolio of global scale and integrated solutions position us well to navigate through any business environment. We are going to continue to invest in our people, our platforms, and drive our long term growth opportunities. We remain focused on driving performance, delivering value to our clients and shareholders and we look forward to continuing with industry leading differentiated success in the year ahead. With that, we would be glad to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Operator: If you would like to ask a question, Our first question comes from Trevor Romeo with William Blair. Your line is open.

Trevor Romeo: Hi, thanks so much for taking the questions. I had a couple on the executive search business. I think, first of all, I think in the press release you mentioned kind of winning more work at the higher levels of the organization. I wanted to dig in there. So when you talk about the higher levels of the organization, is that primarily Korn Ferry gaining market share in those areas? Or is it some kind of shift among the client base? And is that a sustainable trend that you would see continuing?

Gary D. Burnison: Well, we certainly I will tell you that over you know, the long run here, the brand around the executive search solution has certainly gone up market and you can just look at the climb in our average fees. And the average fees are up almost 10% just over the last couple of years. And if I go further back than that, it would be very dramatic. So I think that we have proven that we can take the access that is afforded us and surround it with a lot of adjacent solutions that not only diversifies the firm, but positions us. And I can think of 6 or 7 big marquee consumer PEO changes this year, in The United States that we were part of. So yes, we definitely we have definitely moved up brand. Now whether we are taking market share or not, I do not look at I look at the market opportunity as $300 billion. I think the search market is probably $14 billion or $15 billion. So we tend to look at the $300 billion and what we can do to drive share there. Having said that, it is incredibly important to us. That gives us unparalleled access and I think we have proven that if we are careful about it with high quality, we can monetize that access.

Trevor Romeo: Thanks, Gary. Helpful. And maybe follow-up on the search business again. Just in terms of the volume side, I think that is been a pretty good story the last few years with executive turnover being kind of elevated and the demographics and such. But this quarter, the new engagements were more like flattish. So from what you can see kind of in the pipeline, I guess, what would you say about kind of the volume trends that you see now and you would expect going forward?

Gary D. Burnison: Is that kind of moderating, or what would you see there? Well, it is certainly been you know, it is certainly been-- it is accelerated for sure. Over the last couple of years. I will just tell you that trailing 4 months here and even so far this month, it is looking very, very good. And so I again, I am going to like on the last quarterly earnings call, I mean, our business essentially deals with the outliers of achievement. And whether that is in workforce solutions or talent and organizational solutions, it is dealing at the very, very high end And out of the 170 million working Americans, it is certainly with the outliers of achievement, the 10 million or 15 million that would be, quote, in the C suite or upper management. So I can only tell you that the demographic trends are real. And, you know, the last 4 months have continued, on pace.

Trevor Romeo: Okay. Thanks again. And maybe 1 more, if I may. Kind of similar theme, on the Pro Search and interim side, I think a lot of the growth there seems to be driven by you know, maybe mix shift to higher skills, higher salaries, the interim bill rate is up $20 versus last year. I think the Professional Search kind of fee per placement is also growing nicely. So maybe you could just speak to kind of what you are seeing across the different verticals in that business and maybe in the context of the skill sets you know, where are you kind of seeing the candidates move up you know, in the skill set curve and how that is kind of helping you outperform the peer set there?

Gary D. Burnison: Well, I think the outperformance is I would point to the ability to have a client centric approach and drive deeper relationships with our clients. So what we found is that solution is very synergistic with the rest of the firm. That is number 1. And we have seen we just got into that solution 5.5 years ago. And today, for example, in interim, that is almost a $400 million annual solution. Where there is a market opportunity of billions and billions of dollars and it is the same for RPO. Both of those are massive markets. And clearly, over time here, I mean, I think we started, Bob, with the rate per hour in the interim was like, $100. and It was close to a $100.

Robert Rozek: Yeah.

Gary D. Burnison: And so it is gone from $100 to $150. And right now, the principal areas that we are in are technology, finance and accounting, HR and supply chain. But you can imagine that we are just getting started here, on this. And so we have definitely seen a pickup over the last 3 months or so, 4 months, around the interim solution. And so some of that clearly, some of that is market, right? The temp penetration level was going down forever, 36, 37 months. And so you have seen that. that is stabilized. that is definitely helped. But I think it is these other factors as well. And like I said, we are just getting started with this.

Trevor Romeo: Yes.

Robert Rozek: Trevor, this is Bob. The thing I would add to it is you know, the features being part of our ecosystem. So you heard Gary talk about the size of the inner business. North of 10% of that comes from referrals across the organization. Right? So those are engagements that never would have existed had they not been part of the Korn Ferry family. The other stat I mentioned in my remarks are business referrals. So the referred work across the system is now up to a little bit north of 29%. Right? If you go back prior to the beginning of this year, we were kind of stuck at 25% for a number of quarters. We put the We Are Korn Ferry go to market strategy in place at the beginning of this year. And you have seen that ramp up throughout the course of the year up to 29% now. So I think some of what you are seeing in these businesses is just being part of our ecosystem and you know, engagements and deeper client penetration result in more business referrals across. That all makes sense.

Trevor Romeo: Thank you guys very much. Appreciate it.

Operator: Your next question comes from George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

George Tong: A little bit deeper into the new business trends. So 2% year-over-year or relatively flat on a constant currency basis and that moderated a bit from the prior quarter. Can you talk about what contributed to the deceleration in new business ex RPO? And what the implications are for revenue over the next year?

Gary D. Burnison: Yeah. it is a little thing called the war. So, the Middle East. It definitely had an impact In a big way on the levels of new business. And it is a little bit of a flywheel impact. So we have, trailing 4 months, we have seen strong, strong new business in Americas, but it is definitely impacted APAC. No question about it. And it is obviously impacted EMEA and The Middle East. So that is that is what I would point to.

George Tong: Got it. And then with respect to margins, EBITDA margins in the quarter were flat year over year. Can you talk about some of the puts and takes on margin performance?

Gary D. Burnison: Yes. Yes. I am glad you asked it, George. Because I saw your note. You mentioned that the there is really 1 reason why. I mean if you look at the revenue overperformance, in the quarter, you have to pay people for that. And so we ended up having to book more bonus expense in the quarter which is something I would happily do to drive that type of revenue growth. Every quarter, to be honest with you.

George Tong: Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from Mark Marcon with Baird. Your line is open.

Mark Marcon: Hey, good morning. Really nice results. Gary, can you talk a little bit about like, just from a leadership perspective internally to Korn Ferry, what you are going to do in terms of reporting structures. Are you going to have, like, a head of search, a head of Talent and Organizational, a head of Workforce solutions, or are you going to have the Head of Americas and EMEA and APAC? How is that going to work? How's the reporting structure go? How is it going to end up optimizing the performance on a go forward basis for you?

Gary D. Burnison: Well, I so first of all, we started this, a little bit over a year ago, Mark. And the starting point is mindset. And so we have been very, very deliberate starting with leadership 15 actually, months ago. Around mindset and client centricity. Up to this point, we have not we do not have 5 businesses. We have 1 business with, up to this point, 5 solutions. So you are going to be left with a matrixed organization for sure. And the truth is that we have to pivot more towards geographies. We were, I think, a little bit over indexed on solutions. And so we do have a head of APAC, in the Americas and EMEA. And we have to if you want to get a client centricity, you have gotta get out in both top down through the enterprise accounts, but you also have to do it bottom up. And the bottom up is on a on a regional basis.

Mark Marcon: And so we have carefully over time here over the last year shifted mindset.

Operator: Now ultimately say in another year where that ends up to directly answer your question, I think that is premature.

Gary D. Burnison: But for sure, we have shifted the focus of the organization, including the 1.8 thousand partners and principals that we have at the firm that are responsible for originating business. And we every single day now, the leadership team looks at every piece of new business that is open. Over a certain level. And keep in mind, you are talking about 40 or 50 engagements a day where the team and it is very programmatic with the regional leaders with the solution leaders, with the industry leaders about who does what and we are looking at each of those engagements to making sure that we have a good team on it, what the opportunity is, and whether we can not only land something, but expand it. So every single day that is been happening now, for about 13 or 14 months, And so my starting point rather than org structure has been on mindset. Mindset of our leaders and mindset of the organization. Because the fact is when you look at the data we do business with almost 14 thousand clients around the world. 5 thousand of those clients represent 90% of our revenue. When you look at those 5 thousand you are going to find that 60-65% of those are only utilizing about 1.5 of our solutions. And if you look at the logos there, the opportunity just comes streaming off the page. So I think we have to continue to evolve this organization And I just looked in the mirror a year ago, Mark, and I said, wow, what you are doing, including how you are going to clients, you are representing yourself to Wall Street, you are dividing before you are uniting. We have 1 firm and what I want in 3 years is that when colleagues go to clients, they say we are from Korn Ferry. Not I am from this or I am from that. And that is really what we are striving for in a deeper penetration of that very, very rich client base.

Mark Marcon: Totally makes sense. And so I hate to ask a segment question after that. But how should we think about the margins on digital and consulting, was that? Was that also reflective of the strong performance and then the bonuses that were associated there?

Gary D. Burnison: You know, I think the reality is we had pretty broad based growth across the firm, Mark. With the exception, as George, the exception is the Middle East. And I did not finish my answer to George. Hopefully, what we have seen in every crisis is opportunity, but we have also seen in every crisis, there is pent up demand. And so I do believe as the hopefully as the skies clear here, and oil starts to flow through the straight, I think you are probably going to see some pent up demand. It may be 6 months out. But there is no doubt that has had an impact on the levels of new business for sure. But I would say, Mark, that it was pretty broad based.

Mark Marcon: Okay. that is great. And are you are you I know it is really early, Gary, but are you seeing any signs of you know, at least in APAC and EMEA in terms of you know, some increased optimism in saying, okay. Like things are finally getting back to normal, and, and we should see a decent burst.

Gary D. Burnison: We just, you know, we just had a bunch of colleagues together from, you know, all over, actually, all over the world. About 700 of our partners and principals. And there is definite hope Can I say so far this month that we have seen it, Not materially, But I do think that calmer minds will prevail here? And there is probably going to be some pent up demand for sure.

Mark Marcon: that is great. Thanks, Gary.

Operator: Your next question comes from Tobey Sommer with Truist. Your line is open.

Tobey Sommer: Thank you. I wanted to ask about what initiatives or changes you have in place maybe dovetails into the new segment reporting? To drive that 29% of reference sales to a higher level. Is there an accompanying sort of change in incentive comps in addition to reporting structure?

Robert Rozek: What levers are you trying to pull? Tobey, it is Bob. Yes. 1 of the things I have noticed if you go again, if you go back and you look at the program that we have had in place to drive that, way back in 2018 or 2019, it was 14%. We put the program in place. And every year, we continue to open it up for more people, make it a little bit richer. And we saw success up to a point Right? And we kinda got stuck at 25%, and we were there for whatever it was, 4 or 5 quarters in a row. And then to use Gary's phrase in 1 of his earlier responses, it really is about changing mindset now And what we are doing, literally, we get together We get those emails every day. We get together every other Monday We go through the opportunities that arose over prior 2 weeks we go through all of our, what we call, must wins. Those are engagements over a certain threshold. We go through all of our marquee and diamond accounts, and that is every 2 weeks. And the collaboration that we are getting and the mindset change that we are getting from our folks I think, is actually what is influenced us to go from 25% to 27% because I have I made the program richer. Again, we have broadened it out, and we were kind of stuck. I think this next level of achievement is really driven by the behaviors and practices that we are putting in place at the organization.

Tobey Sommer: In consulting, can you talk about the degree to which, some of your services because I know it is a it is a broader array of things that you are doing, are priced on value basis as opposed to time and materials and just average bill rates and hours billed to the client. Yeah.

Gary D. Burnison: Well, we are transforming it. Yes, I do. I actually do. I think even there is a number of solutions that could actually transform, including search. You know, it is it is pretty-- it is kind of archaic how we how the industry does that. I think there is now an opportunity once you get to a scale that you can actually change the paradigm So it could Search be sold as a service? Could you sign up on a retainer? I do believe that there is the opportunity and we are pushing the team particularly on the consulting side to look at value because up to this point it is been pretty much the old method. I mean, not totally, but that is probably truer than not. And I am pretty convinced of the value that we bring. You have to align strategy with an organization with people, with compensation, how you develop people. I just know out of all my years as CEO, it is about people, it is about talent. Players win games, coaches lose games. So we are challenging the team I cannot say that we have an answer today, but I would expect that to change quite a bit actually over the next 3 years. I be a bit surprised by that.

Tobey Sommer: The bill rates in consulting that you report currently, are they an imputed bill rate? Or is that literally the average rate that clients are seeing on invoices?

Gary D. Burnison: Well, I am not going to say what they see on invoices. But that is a real rain. Mean, that is a real economic rate per hour. For sure.

Robert Rozek: Yes. Totally. You basically take our fee revenues and divide the hours worked into it to come up with what the average billing rate would be.

Tobey Sommer: But again, just to be clear, so that I answered the question correctly, we may not engage with a client in that way.

Gary D. Burnison: We will say for a project phase 1 is this. Phase 2 is that. So we do not sit there and charge like a law firm would by the hour. that is-- that is not-- so I do not wanna give you the wrong impression.

Operator: But I do believe in terms of the spirit of your question, around value I think there is something there.

Tobey Sommer: If I can sneak 1 last 1 in, with respect to the Executive Search business, and AI, private companies say that they can do some of the intermediate steps in delivery along a search process more efficiently, but customers just ask for more, want to see more candidates, etcetera. So they are kind of neither experiencing margin expansion from efficiencies faster time to completion or you know, price erosion. what is your experience in that in that realm?

Gary D. Burnison: We have 17 workstreams, 5 are anchored around search. And, you know, what we are concerned about there, clearly, what, you know, the efforts are showing us is we can be way more efficient. No doubt about it. that is now been proven. Over the last year on these 5 work streams out of the 17. No doubt about it. But what we are very, very mindful of where we operate is that we have tremendous IP, and we use that IP when assessing candidates when we do it in our consulting solution. We use the same IP throughout the entire firm. We use it in our RPO solution as well. What we are very, very protective of is we do not want that proprietary data to get outside. And so as we go down this path, for me, anybody can generate a name. And it is not what they have done it is who they are. And when you are talking about the outliers of a achievement here, I am still going to put a very, very strong argument forward that it is around culture fit. And, you know, we are not human doings. We are human beings. AI is not going to disintermediate humanity. Will technology make us more efficient? Yes. Will it solve the supply and demand imbalance of labor? Absent immigration? Yes. Will it make our firm more efficient? For sure. that is what the 17 workstreams are showing. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we protect our IP particularly that we are operating in, you know, 70 countries, 100 countries around the world with different privacy laws. Like, we are very, very careful about letting that out. You know? that is we are in the trust business. And so we you know, I am not that focused on the efficiency gain for the search process that we are going to get from AI. Are we doing it? Yes. We are absolutely doing it. But I am focused on the customer experience. And so you know, we have a lot of things in motion there but I am telling you, I am going to be very conservative around who people are, what they tell us, what their assessments show, We have done 113 million assessments of executives We have to guard that data. And that is a big, big differentiator for us. So, yes, we are definitely using it. Using it as a in the learning and development solution in terms of coaching. Using agents. And we can all have different views on that. But clearly, we are headed in a direction where technology is going to have to fill the gap between supply and demand and balance of labor.

Operator: Your final question will come from the line of Joshua Chan with UBS. Your line is open.

Josh Chan: Hi, this is Karan Nagy on for Joshua. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask on the North America executive search business. It looks like margins in the business have been, like, pretty strong at, like, 31% this quarter. So just wondering how should we think about margins for the segments of this year?

Robert Rozek: I would say that the margin profile again I would not focus necessarily on Search in North America as we get it is a pretty big company, and we have got a lot of levers to pull. I would just keep you focused on the range that we have talked about from an overall Korn Ferry perspective in the 16% to 18% We guided for Q1 right smack in the middle of that 17%. And that is how we are managing the business. So we do not to Gary's point earlier, when you think about the mindset change, right, we cannot look at clients and go to market 1 way and then manage internally a different way. So as Gary said, we are 1 firm, We have got 5 offerings, but we are managing the firm as 1 firm. So I would suggest that you just focus on the 16% to 18% Okay.

Josh Chan: Got it. And as my follow-up, how should we think about the capital allocation priorities for this year? Would you continue to lean more heavily towards buybacks and also on CapEx do you expect it to come back to a more normalized levels this year?

Gary D. Burnison: So we typically, over time, we have deployed a pretty balanced approach, systematic approach to capital deployment clearly in this last quarter. As we said we were going to do on the last call, and as Bob mentioned earlier, we did what we said. Clearly, you look at the firm, over the last 10, 15 years, 20 years, 60% of our growth has been organic and 40% has been inorganic. And the last investment that we made was in the interim solution which was an organization in The UK and Ireland and it is been an absolute home run for us. And that was almost 2 years ago. So there is been periods of time where we have lean more into stock buybacks. We have been consistently raising our dividend for, I do not know, 6 or 7 years, and there is times when we lean more into inorganic growth.

Josh Chan: Got it. that is helpful. Thank you.

Operator: There are no further questions, Mr. Burnison.

Gary D. Burnison: Okay, Sarah. Thank you for hosting. Thank you for everybody for joining us. And, we will talk to you soon. Everybody.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this conference call will be available for replay for 1 week starting today running through the day June 30, 26 ending at midnight. You may access the Echo replay service by dialing 800-770-2030 and entering the access code 4.22 million. Followed by the pound key. Additionally, the replay will be available for playback at the company's website www.cornferry.com, in the Investor Relations section. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.