Korn/Ferry International (NYSE:KFY) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.
Environment by Region
Kevin McVeigh – Macquarie: Wanted to just get a sense – obv...
Korn/Ferry International (NYSE:KFY) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.
Environment by Region
Kevin McVeigh – Macquarie: Wanted to just get a sense – obviously it was a nice sequential uptick in new engagements we hadn’t seen that, in terms of strength it seems pretty encouraging. Just thoughts on the environment overall, and just if you could get specific by region, that would be helpful.
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Gary Burnison – CEO: Well, we were encouraged us as well. When we look at the flagship business we saw very good sequential growth in almost every region, except for Europe that continues to be obviously, continues to be a challenge but we were particularly hardened by what we saw in North America in the quarter. When we just think about the organization overall, certainly Financial Services, as you all know, has been deeply, deeply challenged over the last several years. But on the other hand, for us, Life Sciences and Healthcare where I believe we’ve just got an incredible opportunity across all the businesses showed real strength in the quarter. And also we saw strength in Financial Services in North America in the quarter.
Kevin McVeigh – Macquarie: Gary, has this been first sequential uptick in Financial Services since the downturn?
Gary Burnison – CEO: I can’t say that off the top of my head. I wouldn’t want to call that, but it was certainly encouraging. One quarter doesn’t make a trend, but it was encouraging.
Kevin McVeigh – Macquarie: Then just, if I could real quick, I mean, real nice job on the margins and that was obviously with some investment in Leadership & Talent Consulting and then, it looks like the corporate line was high too. As it normalizes, can we expect just continued margin expansion?
Gary Burnison – CEO: Well, we hope so. We’ve made a number of strategic investments and acquisitions over the past two or three years. What we really haven’t done is fully integrated the support areas. The front office, we’ve gone all out, but in terms of the support areas, there is opportunity there, and that’s what Bob is driving. We’re going to continue to work at that, putting in process and systems to be able to really drive scale in the Company, and hopefully efficiency as well…
Robert Rozek – EVP and CFO: One of the things, Kevin, during the quarter, this is Bob – that we, Gary and I talked about doing was putting that integration on an accelerated path. So that’s sort of the playing field that we’re going after right now.
Kevin McVeigh – Macquarie: Got it. My last question, obviously there has been some rumors out there, one of your competitors potentially being acquired. Does that change the competitive landscape in terms of how you folks think about the positioning of the organization? Just any thoughts around that would be helpful.
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Gary Burnison – CEO: No, not at all. We want to go in front of clients and broaden the conversation and really help accelerate their growth and that’s all we care about is our clients and our employees.
Global Novations
Frank Atkins – SunTrust: This is Frank in for Tobey. I wanted to ask about Global Novations. Can you give us any color there in terms of monthly revenue trends and kind of update how the integration and everything is going there?
Gary Burnison – CEO: Well, we do – no, we’re not going to give out any monthly trends, but I’ll tell you that overall this last fiscal year we made two strategic investments; two acquisitions overall and we feel stronger today about what those are going to do for this b