PPHC Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Record EBITDA and Clean Balance Sheet Fuel M&A Agility

Operator: Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PPHC First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Please be advised that today’s call is being recorded. I would like to hand it over to our first speaker, Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead.

Matthew Mazzanti, Chief Administrative Officer, PPHC: Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. I’m here today with Stewart Hall, CEO of PPHC, Roel Smits, our CFO, and Thomas Gensemer, our Chief Strategy Officer. A press release detailing our first quarter 2026 results was issued a short while ago and is available on the investor relations section of our website. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that during this call, management will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

In addition, during this call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release, which can be found on the investor section of our website. I’ll now turn the call over to our CEO, Stewart Hall.

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: Thanks, Matthew. Good afternoon, everyone who’s joining us today. I’ll keep this setup brief. We covered a great deal of background on the company and its marketplace on the last call. For anyone looking for a deeper dive on PPHC, I’d encourage you to go ahead and listen back to that call or feel free to reach out to our investor relations team. They’re always available for you. Turning quickly to the first quarter, we had a strong start to 2026. Revenue grew 27.5% to $50.1 million, with organic growth of 5.1%. That was a step up from the 4.7% we saw in the first quarter of last year.

Our Adjusted EBITDA was a record first quarter result at $11.2 million, up nearly 29.7% with a margin of 22.3% while we reported a GAAP loss of $11.5 million. With the IPO proceeds on the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with net debt of just $1.8 million, down from $44.6 million a year ago. That’s a very different balance sheet picture than where we were. A few other notes from the quarter that I’d like to call out quickly. On M&A, we continue to execute in the same fashion we always have, using the same discipline playbook that you’ve heard about before. On April 1, we closed the acquisition of WPI Strategy.

WPI is a U.K.-based public affairs and economics consultancy that deepens our London presence through Pagefield Communications, but also has applications and cross-sell potential with a number of our companies across the worldwide platform. Alongside platform-level acquisitions that we are consistently evaluating and progressing to at various stages, we also pursue what I like to call common sense talent additions, or sometimes called acqui-hires. Smaller deals that bring experienced professionals with established client relationships into existing firms. They aren’t transformative in size by themselves, but they’re immediately accretive, and they compound over time. Last week’s addition of Lee Cowen and Nicholas Evans to MultiState Associates is a good example of this. We expanded the firm’s stakeholder engagement practice across federal, state, and local government relations.

Lastly, in March, we were added to the Russell 2000 and 3000 indices, a welcome milestone just a couple of months after the Nasdaq listing and one that will expand our shareholder base. On the operating environment, it remains favorable for our business. Federal lobbying spending continues at record level. State-level activity is intense. Legislatures have filed over 100,000 bills in the last year on issues that our clients care about most, things like data centers, AI, healthcare, energy, financial services. The policy agenda remains active at every level, and our clients are turning to PPHC companies to help them navigate it. That’s exactly the operating backdrop that we constructed the company for and we continue to take advantage of. I’m going to have Thomas at the end of the call cover some of the relevant ways we’re capitalizing on these tailwinds.

With that, I will hand it over to Roel for a closer look at the numbers. Roel?

Roel Smits, Chief Financial Officer, PPHC: Yes. Thank you, Stewart. I’ll take you through the key financial highlights for the quarter. Before I do so, I would like to point out that the comparables for Q1 of 2025, we had never released those before due to the semi-annual reporting schedule that we used to work under when we were only at the London AIM listing. Needless to say that these Q1 numbers for 2025 were produced in a way that is consistent with all our subsequent quarters and undergoing the same level of rigor and review by our auditors. Let’s do first a quick helicopter picture of what we believe was a really nicely strong quarter. Our revenue continued to trend upward year after year, every year with positive organic growth. As Stewart already alluded to, we reached revenue of $60 million in Q1, which represented year-over-year growth of 28%.

Operator: In this chart, the light blue part in the revenue bars represents M&A growth. In Q1, this M&A-driven growth stemmed primarily from TrailRunner, which we completed in Q2 of last year and which has now been for a full year within our portfolio.

Roel Smits, Chief Financial Officer, PPHC: As well as by Pine Cove Strategies, which joined us in Q3 of last year. The red segment in each bar represents organic growth. In 2026 Q1, this organic growth was equal to $2 million of 5%, which is really actually in line with the organic growth that we ended Q4 last year with. In terms of profit at the bottom, we realized Adjusted EBITDA of $11 million, which is a record for Q1 by itself, and it’s up $2 million versus prior year. In margin terms, it was approximately level with last year’s margin. I would like to point out that margins in Q1 typically tend to be slightly lower than the margins for the full year because of the slight seasonality in our top line that favors Q2 and Q3.

Overall, it’s worth re-emphasizing that in 2026, we anticipate a margin of somewhat below our 25% target. On the one hand, due to the ongoing shift in business mix, but primarily because of the increase in our public company costs we’re experiencing as a consequence of our new Nasdaq listing. We already anticipated those increased costs and then are now seeing them come through. Let’s look at the financial highlights on a consolidated basis. Thereafter, I’ll zoom in by segment. The first two boxes, revenue and Adjusted EBITDA, I already talked about. Let’s go to the third box, the adjusted net income. This measure nearly doubled from $3.7 million to $7.4 million.

That was of course, partly driven by the underlying increase in Adjusted EBITDA, but a meaningful part of the step-up also stemmed from a change in effective tax rate from 53% last year in Q1 to 27% this year. In either year, this effective tax rate is much higher than where our full year tax rate eventually ends up, which is typically in the 15%-16% range. However, the phasing of our tax provision across the quarters is heavily impacted by the actual GAAP results, which, as you know, in our case, are getting impacted by various non-cash items in our P&L. The most notable non-cash charge in our P&L is the share-based accounting charge, which relates to our 2021 London IPO, which by the way, will roll off at the end of 2026.

Also the M&A related payments that we extend through our P&L because of the continued employment conditions that we attach to our new terms. Now let’s move on to cash flow. Our free cash flow for the quarter was negative $10.3 million, compared to a positive $3.2 million in Q1 last year. That negative cash flow in Q1 is not atypical, as the company always pays its bonuses during the first quarter, resulting in a reduction of our pre-expense balances. This year, our cash flow generation was further suppressed by a $13 million increase in accounts receivable, resulting from the inclusion of the 2025 acquisitions, but also from slower collections. Now, a significant part of these accounts receivable investments is temporary, and we anticipate that this will get unwound in the upcoming quarters to a very large extent. Moving to our EPS results.

Our GAAP EPS is still negative due to the aforementioned non-cash GAAP charges that we take through our P&L. However, the adjusted fully diluted EPS was positive at $0.25 per share, which is up 75% from the prior year. In turn, that result is an outcome of having a very strong improvement in the adjusted net income that we just saw, offset by the dilutive impact of the 15% increase in the number of shares, which was impacted by our Nasdaq IPO. On the balance sheet, we are now at the right bottom of this chart. We ended the quarter with $43 million in cash and total debt of $45 million, and therefore a net debt position of just about $2 million.

That was a major improvement from the $27 million net debt that we had at year-end, and even more so from the $45 million net debt that we had at the same point last year. This improvement was driven by the IPO proceeds coming onto the balance sheet in January, in tandem with the customary debt repayments that we make throughout the year. Where does that leave us from a balance sheet perspective? Knowing that we’ve engaged in significant M&A activity over the past five years, and that even after those five years, we find ourselves in a situation with such a strong balance sheet with hardly any net debt, I cannot conclude otherwise than that we’re very ready for the next phase of growth with ample balance sheet flexibility for continued strategic M&A.

One final point on this chart, I would like to mention that our cash position in Q2 will be impacted by our customary final dividend over the prior book year, which in this case was $0.24 per share. That amounts to approximately $7 million in dividend payments upcoming in May. As promised, let’s look at the operating performance of each of our segments. First, here you’ll find a quick visual view of the organic growth by segment, which I really would like to describe as very robust. At the top of the page is your consolidated 5% organic growth. You’d also see that this was better than 2023, better than 2024, and slightly below 2025. In the bottom half by segment, we see that in the government relations segment, we saw stability and healthy growth at 5%.

In the Corporate Communications & Public Affairs segment, we saw a moderate growth of 3%, I should say that this was against a very strong 2025 post-election comparable. Finally, in compliance and insights on the right, we saw organic growth at 11%, excellent result, driven especially compliance continues to drive really good growth. Let’s double-click on these segments and look at their profitability. In the following slide, which is very informative, but at the same time, admittedly, also somewhat dense. The government relations segment, which remains our anchor at 57% of our total revenue, increased 8%, with margins moving up to 45% from 44%. Corporate Communications & Public Affairs was up 83% on a reported basis. That reflects the full benefits of the incorporation of Seven Letter.

The segment margin in CC&PA moved up nicely from 22%-26% as we see the operating leverage that we had expected from the acquisitions we made in this area. Finally, Compliance and Insight Services had another strong quarter. We already saw that with 11% growth of reported and organic. The margin remains around 50%. At the subtotal, you can see the total for these three segments, which has a blended margin that remained very stable around 39%. What follows after that 39% are two final items bridging us to the published Adjusted EBITDA. Those two bridging items are, on one hand, the bonus pool, which was up 24% versus prior year, in line with profit growth. Secondly, the corporate costs or the holding costs, which are up 19%. As mentioned before, that’s a consequence of our incremental public company cost and investments.

I’m going to skip the next three charts that portray the management P&L, the management cash flow statements, and the net debt position, because we already covered most of the key points in the highlights I just reviewed. I really want everybody to know that our deck contains these charts as well as a set of other charts and tables in the financial appendix. This gets me to the guidance statement. Since this practice at the end of deck, we’ve made our guidance slightly more specific than what we were used to doing. What’s not changed is that in general, PPHC expects to continue growing its revenues at an average organic rate of approximately 5%, and this will be supplemented by acquisitions. If there’s no further acquisitions for 2026, we would anticipate reported revenue to come in the range between $205 million-$209 million.

Going to profit. In general, we continue to aim for an Adjusted EBITDA margin around 25%. However, as communicated before and taking into account the dynamics of our changing business mix, in 2026 we will come out below that target number, also as we experience the impact from assuming U.S. public company costs and certain technology investments. Therefore, we anticipate our Adjusted EBITDA to come in at a range between $46 million and $48 million, reflecting an adjusted margin between 22% and 23%. More written here, but I would like to end by saying that we also expect strong free cash flow conversion in the balance of the year, which is typically weighted towards the second half of the year. With that, I’ll hand it over to Thomas.

Thomas Gensemer, Chief Strategy Officer, PPHC: Thanks, Roel. I’ll keep my comments focused on a handful of things that are significantly new or notable this quarter, rather than retrace the platform story we covered in great detail last time. As we’ve said before with this same slide setup, our growth strategy is fundamentally talent-focused, recruiting and retaining top-level talent. We got a strong start to the year by all measures. Just a quick recap of some of the news from the reporting quarter. Seven Letter, our leading public affairs brand, expanded in Los Angeles, bringing in a specialty media practice. We’re also expanding this fast-growing space and defense practice with some high-impact talent there too. Also out west in Sacramento, our firms KP and LP have just celebrated their 30th and 20th anniversaries respectively, as standout leaders in that and the larger state market.

Both have built strength and long-term succession plans into their leadership teams since joining us. TrailRunner Sports recently named Alden Mitchell, previously Stanford and Uber, as its new president. That practice continues to thrive amid rapid change across college, professional, and international sports. We also just announced new leadership at Forbes Tate Partners, one of our founding firms, now officially FTP, with fresh leadership across both the lobbying and public affairs practices there. This is a planned generational succession at one of Washington’s largest lobbying firms, and it’s exactly the kind of institutional continuity our model is designed to produce. Our growth strategy involves three more drivers: expanding service lines, capturing additional client wallet, and executing on a creative M&A agenda.

A great example of collaboration from the quarter, the launch of investor services offerings from Concordant Advisory, which brings together PPHC’s full depth of experience to deal teams, private equity, family offices, and corporates facing growing policy and regulatory risk to their investments. It’s a focused, repeatable product that aims to capture a different budget and is backed by the unique collection of expertise across our platform. You can learn more about it at the Concordant Advisory website. The growth of our issue-based practice groups and the simple but effective client referral incentives we offer are all tools to drive this collaboration. Still, we benefit from the multi-brand strategy that we’ve had from the start. As an aside, uniquely, and even with the measurably increasing growth via the collaboration, our key client concentration measures drifted further down.

Our top 10 clients are now just 8% of total revenue versus 9% a year ago, and no single client is more than 2% of the overall business. There is no significant client concentration risk in the business at all. A further update on our post M&A integrations. TrailRunner International is now full year in, and you’re seeing its big contribution in the communication segment, that 82.7% reported growth, and most importantly, the nearly four-point margin expansion as operating leverage shows up as a result in that segment. On the same front, Pine Cove Strategies is delivering similarly on the Texas-based growth thesis we laid out when we announced it last fall with George P. Bush. Lastly, on our future M&A pipeline, it’s still very active.

Dozens of firms at various stages with the same mix, selective U.S. specializations, key states, and international opportunities in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, guided where our clients tell us they need us most. Our sweet spot remains businesses in the $10 million-$30 million revenue range, profitably contributing to our premium margin profile and with a clear cross-sell into the existing portfolio based on geography and capability. As in our most recently announced deals, we work closely with our existing firms to identify opportunities to acquire specialization and scale into the portfolio. Both deals, while small in scale, will have outsized impacts on the firms they are being brought into, Pagefield and MultiState respectively, by way of the specialization and reputation. Big wins for both.

We continue to see a good level of deal flow, with private equity platforms still dominating the competitive set along with a few traditional players. Our uniqueness remains based on the market-leading scale of our government relations segment, state and federal, that policy expertise, and the public market status and how it shapes our M&A formula. With that, I’ll hand it back to Stewart.

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: Thanks, Thomas. Let me pull it together for you in the same framing that we used last quarter, because one quarter later, it holds up very well. First, stability. About 92.8% of our revenue is still retainer-based. Client retention remains in the mid-80s across the entire network, and no single client, as Thomas noted, is more than 2% of our books. That delivered our steady 5.1% organic growth against a busy macro backdrop. Secondly, profitability. It was a record first quarter on our Adjusted EBITDA of $11.2 million, with margins moving in the right direction in both CC&PA and government relations. As Roel noted, the largest non-cash charge on our P&L, the approximately $30 million a year in share-based comp charge from our London listing, fully amortizes after this fiscal year, putting us on a clear path to PAT profitability in 2027. Third, on growth.

Disciplined M&A continues. One acquisition closed in the quarter, another just recently, and a robust pipeline that remains under active consideration and process. Thomas walked you through the talent acquisitions and new practices across the portfolio, and each is an example of what we mean by compounding growth by investing in the people and capabilities we already have, not simply buying revenue. Fourth, our people, and most importantly, our people. The reason why any of this works at PPHC. Approximately 200 of our 450 employees have some form of equity instrument, and that includes more than 140 with outright stock ownership. The model is built around keeping our best talent and bringing in the next generation into ownership. As Thomas mentioned, two of our firms celebrate milestone anniversaries in this quarter, with new leadership teams in place or on the rise.

That’s what long-term retention and succession planning looks like in practice, and it’s what we work the hardest at every day. The short version, the quarter played out the way we told you we thought it would, with steady organic, disciplined M&A, meaningful margin progress in the segments where we’ve been investing, and a balance sheet that gives us room to keep executing on the agenda that Thomas laid out for you. We appreciate your time today, your continued interest in PPHC. Operator, I will hand it over, and we will open the floor for questions. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by. We’re compiling the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Rajiv Sharma from Texas Capital. Your line is open.

Rajiv Sharma, Analyst, Texas Capital: Thank you. Congratulations on the stellar results. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to just ask about your organic growth this quarter, especially in the CC&PA segment, there is 3% growth relative to much greater growth last year. I am wondering if you have any color on that, what contributed to the CC&PA growth last year that one shouldn’t expect to continue going forward? I have a follow-on question.

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: Thanks, Rajiv. Good to hear from you today. Appreciate the question. I think as we noted that frankly, we had a really strong first half of the year in CC&PA last year, and as a result, you just have a tougher print that you’re working against. We came out of election season last year like we traditionally did, with a whole new agenda based on those results, and there was momentum that carried into the first half, especially in project execution against those agenda items, coupled with lobbying, but especially in the comms segment where the project work naturally picks up. Really, I think, the carryover into this year has been from quarter to quarter, really positive in my opinion, and I’ve been really pleased with it. Roel, you got anything you’d like to add? Roel says I covered it. Thanks. Go ahead, Rajiv, what’s your other question?

Rajiv Sharma, Analyst, Texas Capital: The other question is any sort of commentary, any sort of color on contribution from acquisition that you just did, any contribution to the revenues this year? Also, can you comment on the size of the acquisition that you likely plan to do or intend to do every year? I know it’s tough to call. I know your pipeline is pretty robust. Any sort of sense on what do you plan to do this year?

Roel Smits, Chief Financial Officer, PPHC: Yeah. Well, you will have noted, Raj, this is Roel, that indeed the acquisitions that we’ve done so far this year are on the smaller side. The largest of them was WPI, and that was closed by April 1, so that’s not reflected in any of these numbers yet. Then we also announced Cowen as a small acquisition for May 1, but that was really more a hire of two people who have a bringing a book of business. I would say our acquisition volume up till now has been relatively small. We’ve been on records in the past that we expect to acquire, on average, somewhere between $30 million and $40 million of revenues each year.

Obviously, that always depends on the availability of the right targets and then the exact timing of those transactions, let alone, of course, then the profit contribution that they have and the price that we pay for it. These are all variables that are different for each acquisition, therefore makes it somewhat hard to predict.

Rajiv Sharma, Analyst, Texas Capital: Got it. Thank you for taking my questions. I’ll take it offline again. Thank you. Great quarter.

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: Thank you. Thanks, Raj.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Jason Tilton from Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.

Jason Tilton, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Wanted to start, last month you announced a new practice Concordant that really seems to leverage your complete portfolio of assets. I believe Thomas mentioned this trademarks. This should go after a different part of client budgets. Maybe can you talk a little bit about how meaningful the opportunity is, what sort of investment you may have to make to get this sort of launched and rolled out, and then sort of more broadly, how many other similar opportunities do you see in the pipeline to organically sort of expand the new services and areas?

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: Sure. I mean, this is one we’ve eyed for some time is so adjacent depending on where your clients are and who clients are calling. We do work in the financial services sector, obviously, and directly with private equity funds. There’s a category of 2 or 3 leading providers of this regulatory multi-issue diligence, we’ve eyed it for some time, made some inquiries from an inquisitive standpoint, realized we were just losing too much. It’s a light investment from headquarters, really, into the Concordant framework that was already set up a couple of years ago to really facilitate a one or best of practice. Some select hiring from the right people, we can talk about the people there. We’re being quite entrepreneurial about it, still flexing our scale, showing up in a competitive space.

Not only is it new client budget, in many cases, it’s just new clients. It’s getting into a different part of either a private equity fund from a deal-by-deal basis or a whole new type of buyer across the world. It’s an interesting frugal thing. Look, we look for opportunities, including WPI, to bolster that service. Some of the economic consultancy they do is again under adjacency, call it a product or a sort of service-enhanced product. It is a different kind of a thing for the arsenal.

Jason Tilton, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Great. That’s very helpful. Just curious maybe if you could talk to the conflict in the Middle East, either positively impacted in terms of benefiting defense practice or maybe negative in creating some sort of distraction in Washington. Just curious how that’s sort of netting out so far and any observations you’ve had?

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: Well, I think, Jason, this is Stewart. I think, we viewed the area and the region for quite a while as a really potential, a good place for us, especially in terms, again, of our Corporate Comms practices. There’s a lot of investment money that’s in the region in general that’s looking for connectivity in the U.S., for direct investment here, which is kind of the U.S. onshoring move, that we think is going to pay a lot of dividends for us in the future. Certainly, we’re leveraging heavily off of a really, really good practice that an office that TrailRunner International has in the U.A.E. We think as this sorts out, frankly, if anything, the acceleration of alignment to interest over there to U.S. markets is going to only accelerate.

Obviously, things are going to have to continue to sort themselves out and will at some point, I think, in the coming months. When that happens we really, really feel like we’ve got some great opportunities there, and we’ve really positioned our assets here in the U.S., and frankly, in London to really leverage off of those opportunities, and we’re going to actively work that axis.

Jason Tilton, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Great. That’s really helpful. If I could just toss in one quick one for Roel. EBITDA margin’s up 40 basis points year-over-year, despite the increased public company cost and tech investments. Just if you could talk to some of the sources of efficiency you’re seeing beyond just operating leverage at the portfolio companies.

Roel Smits, Chief Financial Officer, PPHC: Well, yes. There is some operating leverage that in years of good revenue growth, there’s always, well, we share margins expand. I’d say that helped us actually almost offset the higher holding costs that we’ve experienced in Q1 to a good extent. We hope to continue this.

Jason Tilton, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Scott Schneeberger from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Scott Schneeberger, Analyst, Oppenheimer: Thanks very much. Good afternoon, and congratulations. I’d like to start off, Stewart, you highlighted at the beginning, certainly we’ve seen an acceleration in the organic growth versus the past two years and the past few quarters here in the first quarter in the organic growth of Government Relations. Can you just speak to what that is? Is it just a very dynamic environment right now where there’s a lot of activity, or are you winning a few big contracts that are lifting that versus previous competitions?

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: Well, it’s a combination of factors, Scott. I think number one is that we put a lot of effort in really over the past 18 months to try to build even greater intercompany synergies between our complementary brands. I think it’s really starting to bubble up to the surface in the macro numbers that you’re starting to see. I think the interplay with CorpComms and investor and crisis with TrailRunner International, along with our traditionally more public affairs-oriented assets has been really, really strong. I think what you’re really seeing is a lot of production off of that. Obviously, macro environments, especially given our moat, remains, again, in kind of lobbying and public affairs. Certainly, macro dynamics of change, of evil, all those things lead our clients to have to obviously address, again, that interface with government on an ongoing basis.

There is a strong macro backdrop, and it’s not simply in D.C., it’s worldwide. I think that helps as well, and I think all of these factors are coming to confluence that again is uplifting and helping us with organic growth and so forth.

Scott Schneeberger, Analyst, Oppenheimer: Great. Thanks. Two more. One is just it’s kind of a two-parter. What is it that you’re looking for? What is topping your priority list in your M&A pipeline? Is it state government relations? Is it moving internationally? Just kind of curious. The part B of this question is there really nice margin profiles in your pipeline? I know that with this guidance of 25% in a normalized year with the public company costs, is there a lot in the pipeline that has very robust margins, or is that something where it’s really you have to pick and choose of what the profiles are in the pipeline? Thanks.

Thomas Gensemer, Chief Strategy Officer, PPHC: We tooled up in the comms, Corporate Comms via M&A over the past 18 months, TrailRunner, Pagefield, and we continue to say that we invest against capabilities and geography. I can say within the dozens of things that we’ve discussed in the pipeline, there are some really prime margin geographies that we want to still play in for that prime margin. The reason that they’re the core to business activities and some quite specialized things that may be smaller in scale but chunkier in margin. At the same time, when we look at the geographic play, we know that as we expand the base in Europe, it’s not going to be the most prime margin for us across the wallet. It’s still where our clients need us and where sort of expertise is needed in global policy considerations.

We do have to play in both as we do have a premium margin, and that’s sort of balanced by the lobbying practices in D.C., and then we have Strasbourg, London, and then we have Austin and sort of the things have slight different profiles but towards the premium across.

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: Just let me add, Scott, that we mentioned before that we look at several gating factors on M&A. One is what Thomas just said. Does it add geography? Does it add capability? Is it complementary to the rest of the portfolio? We obviously look at the people profile. All those terms, which is maybe as critical as any issue, but margin is right there as well. I’ve said before, and I think I’ll repeat it again, while we have desires to build our network out further, again, based on those three prime issues, we’re not interested in putting dots on the map to simply say we have an office somewhere. If the margin profile is not right or the people aren’t right, we’re not going to do it.

I think that’s what everyone should always be assured of, that we’re not looking to just have loss leaders or really things that fall well below our margin profile just for the sake of being somewhere.

Scott Schneeberger, Analyst, Oppenheimer: Great. Thanks, Thomas. That’s good color and insight. Last question, probably it’s going to get Roel involved as well, is with establishing annual guidance here, specifically to revenue, but also EBITDA, what are some of the things we should keep in mind that could put you to the top or above the high end of the range, or things that you might be concerned that could put you more down toward the lower end of the range? Thanks.

Roel Smits, Chief Financial Officer, PPHC: Yes. Well, Scott, two things that pop in my head primarily. First is our volume of project work. That is always somewhat unpredictable, and of course, we’ve got lots of statistics to go off from prior years. At the end of the day, it also depends on certain issues bubbling up. Last year’s, for instance, the whole issue around the expiration of the Obamacare subsidies in the healthcare, that created a huge, nice flow of projects that you never know to what extent such a flow will reoccur this year. That is factor number one. The other factor is very simply acquisitions. Any new acquisition will put us outside that range that I’ve mentioned for the call.

Scott Schneeberger, Analyst, Oppenheimer: Excellent. Thanks. Appreciate it. I’ll call you guys.

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: Sure.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes the line of Sam Dindol from Stifel. Your line is open.

Sam Dindol, Analyst, Stifel: Hi, guys. How are you? Welcome. Congratulations on the results. Just one question from me, please. Just on the acquire front, appreciate the hiring of Lee Cowen and Nicholas Evans some few weeks ago. Has that accelerated post-U.S. listing? Are you finding more people you sort of had conversations with after years are now more willing to join? Any insight on that would be great. Thanks.

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: What I would say to that, Sam, and thanks for the comment there. I really appreciate it. I think what I would say is it’s really been interesting, just like our pipeline, it feels more robust now post-U.S. listing than it’s been at any prior time. I think the other thing is we’re seeing more inbound talent coming to us, some that are much more willing to listen to us now, et cetera, post-U.S. listing. I would continue to anticipate that we’ll continue to make some really good talent acquisitions in the foreseeable future, because again, I think we’re really frankly getting noticed out there. I think we’re a differentiated platform because we’re public, and this is a space that has typically been dominated by private investment and private companies.

I think there are people that are starting to look at our public company status, our levels of employee ownership, et cetera, and it’s really, I think, in their prime years of their career, seeming like an attractive possible option for them if they fit with us. We’re really excited about that. It’s been one of the downstream benefits of being able to evaluate a lot of individual or small collectives of talent as opposed to simply looking at platform acquisitions.

Sam Dindol, Analyst, Stifel: Brilliant. Thanks for coming.

Operator: Thank you. I’m not showing any further questions in the queue at this time.

Stewart Hall, Chief Executive Officer, PPHC: Great. Well, thank you a lot, operator. Thanks for all of you for participating today. Again, as always, as I noted in my closing, investor relations is always open here. We are always happy to interface, take your questions. Please reach out after this call. If you’d like to follow up on anything, either related financially or strategically, and we’ll be glad to work with you and get you the answers that we can. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.