Prepared remarks
Greetings, and welcome to the ASGN Incorporated First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Kimberly Esterkin, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.
Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for ASGN Incorporated's first quarter 2025 conference call. With me are Ted Hanson, Chief Executive Officer; Shiv Iyer, President; Marie Perry, Chief Financial Officer; and Rand Blazer, Executive Vice Chairman. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that our commentary contains forward-looking statements. Although we believe these statements are reasonable, they are subject to risks and uncertainties. As such, our actual results could differ materially from those statements. Certain of these risks and uncertainties are described in today's press release and in our SEC filings. We do not assume any obligation to update statements made on this call. For your convenience, our prepared remarks and supplemental materials can be found in the investor relations section of our website at investors.asgn.com. Please also note that on this call, we will be referencing certain non-GAAP measures, such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, and free cash flow. These non-GAAP measures are intended to supplement the comparable GAAP measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures are included in today's press release. I will now turn the call over to Ted Hanson, Chief Executive Officer.
Thank you, Kim. Thank you for joining ASGN Incorporated's first quarter 2025 earnings call. As Kim noted, I'm pleased to welcome our new President, Shiv Iyer, to his very first ASGN Incorporated earnings call. Shiv will make some brief remarks at the close and join us for the Q&A session. Despite macro uncertainty, revenues of $968.3 million and adjusted EBITDA margin of 9.7% were in line with our guidance expectations for the quarter. We continue to deliver solutions that cater to our clients' IT modernization, efficiency, and cost containment requirements, leading to strong quarterly bookings for both our commercial and government segments. Our IT consulting revenues also grew, reaching roughly 61% of total revenues for the first quarter, up from 57% in the prior year period. As I noted last quarter, we entered the year with a renewed sense of business optimism from our client base. This improvement in confidence faded as the quarter progressed, but clients remain cautious about increasing their IT spending.
Nonetheless, ASGN Incorporated's unique business model demonstrates resilience across economic cycles, primarily due to our business stabilizers that support our gross margin, along with our variable cost structure, which aids in safeguarding our operating leverage. Further, our business model also provides flexibility that helps reduce our clients' costs while maintaining a commitment to providing high-value IT services. Speaking of providing high-value services, in March, we successfully closed our acquisition of TopBloc, a preferred Workday services partner and recently named Workday Business Impact Partner of the Year. The integration of TopBloc is going well, and in the short period of time since the acquisition closed, our Apex and TopBloc teams have already partnered on a number of new consulting opportunities. Importantly, while market conditions remain volatile, we are confident that nurturing our long-standing client relationships, expanding our technology partnerships, and enhancing our solution capabilities organically and through strategic acquisitions like TopBloc will position ASGN Incorporated favorably for the future.
So let me provide some examples of our differentiation and discuss our segment performance for the first quarter, beginning with commercial. Our commercial segment services Fortune 1000 and large mid-market companies. Revenues for this segment were again driven by growth in our consulting business, which improved 4.7% year over year. Consulting bookings of $336.9 million improved 4.2% as compared to the first quarter of 2024, and put our book-to-bill at 1.2 times for the quarter and 1.1 times on a trailing twelve-month basis. From an industry perspective, we saw growth in our consumer and industrial verticals, which improved mid-single digits year over year. Improvement in this vertical was driven by double-digit growth in materials, utilities, and consumer discretionary accounts, along with mid-single-digit growth in industrial. While revenues for the remaining four commercial verticals were down year over year, within our healthcare vertical, pharmaceutical and biotech accounts were up low single digits as compared to the first quarter of 2024.
Within our TMT vertical, e-commerce accounts were up mid-teens year over year. Finally, within the financial services vertical, diversified financials saw mid-single-digit growth and regional banks saw slight growth as compared to the first quarter of 2024. Although the financial services industry is one of the highest spenders on IT, macroeconomic factors such as higher inflation and uncertainty regarding tariffs have driven cautiousness to spend on new projects across the banking sector. Despite these headwinds, our differentiated IT solutions remain in demand by our diverse U.S.-based Fortune 1000 clients. Consulting engagements for the quarter focused on AI and data solutions, Gen AI, cybersecurity, cloud, and digital engineering, with projects specifically aimed at promoting cost savings and efficiency. Let me provide a few examples. For a Fortune 200 consumer and industrial client in the process of modernizing their supply chain, our industry and technical leaders are helping develop and operationalize their data and AI strategy.
We are providing a nearshore team of consultants to support the implementation of our client's supply chain optimization solutions, using Informatica's cloud-native and AI-augmented platform to support data and machine learning operations. Although enterprise-wide applications of Gen AI are still to come, we continue to see AI initiatives like this that focus on high-impact use cases to improve efficiency, reduce cost, and provide deeper data insights. In another example, for a large health services company, we helped build a scalable, secure, and efficient identity and access management platform that supports our client's growth, compliance, and evolving business needs. By migrating to a new IAM platform, our client will be able to better manage data controls and provide appropriate access and governance across their organization. Our scope of work encompasses the application and integration phases of the new IAM platform, including integration across hundreds of different applications, while optimizing workloads and performing various testing and validation.
Through innovative optimization techniques, we will enhance automation, risk management, and user experience for our clients. Improving data processing, while at the same time driving efficiency and cost savings, remain top priorities across our client base. For a Fortune 100 oil and gas client, for example, we've successfully implemented the Databricks Unity Catalog unified governance solution, by optimizing compute resources and nightly processing times and significantly reducing our client's Databricks costs. Driving innovation and automation on cloud-based platforms is also in high demand. In the first quarter, we collaborated with a U.S. banking client to create a cloud-first automation framework, integrating APIs and modern engineering practices. By eliminating manual file handling, our client achieved end-to-end automation of their costing process by which they assign fees to their products and services, thereby enhancing their overall workflow efficiency.
Each of these consulting projects involves aspects of intelligent data management, and the usage of AI is increasingly becoming central to successfully managing enterprise data. Even as companies limit their IT spend, our clients continue to scale their investments in AI. Clients early in their AI journeys are investing in AI workshops and AI literacy training to prepare their organization for future AI usage. Clients further along in their journeys are partnering with us on thought leadership pieces and innovation studies to drive competitive advantages. The most common AI use cases we are currently seeing include the development of agent assistance or copilot, the implementation of Gen AI to accelerate the software development lifecycle, the usage of AI tools for code conversion and documentation, especially in banking, and leveraging AI for IT operations. With that, let's turn to discuss our federal government segment.
Our federal government segment provides advanced IT solutions for the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and other critical agencies in support of national security. Although the segment's quarterly revenues declined year over year, bookings were strong, with new contract awards totaling $343.1 million for the first quarter. This put our book-to-bill at 1.2 times on both a quarterly and trailing twelve-month basis. In addition, contract backlog was over $3.1 billion at quarter end, or a coverage ratio of 2.6 times the segment's trailing twelve-month revenues. We are not immune to DOGE's initiatives, and our first quarter federal government segment revenues and margins saw a slight impact from DOGE's cost-cutting efforts. That said, our solution capabilities and agency focus remain well aligned with the administration's priorities. The government will gain efficiency through IT modernization that leverages AI, automation, and a commercial delivery model.
ASGN Incorporated brings those exact services and delivery best practices to our customers with our core solution capabilities in AI, cybersecurity, and digital modernization, for mission-critical defense, national security, and law enforcement programs. Our government teams have consistently led the charge in IT innovation, and during the quarter, we won a new five-year firm fixed-price contract with the FBI's laboratory division to provide IT modernization services. As the prime awardee on this contract, our team will centralize and modernize information and operational technology, or IT and OT, by streamlining technology usage, powering the FBI services with AI tools, and automating key processes that enhance the FBI's ability to solve cases and prevent acts of crime and terror. Our services to the FBI include infrastructure support, cloud integration and modernization, enhanced cybersecurity protection, and improved data governance.
The FBI is a long-standing client of ASGN Incorporated, and this contract represents an additional opportunity to promote the agency's essential mission. We also support the essential missions of the Department of Defense, and during the first quarter, our defense and intel unit won additional work with the DoD's Chief Digital and AI Office to operate the department's premier AI development environment for innovation and speed and scale. As a mission-critical partner, we will collaborate with the DoD on AI innovation work streams that provide improved operational insight and decision-making capabilities, as well as enhanced value across global warfighting domains. Also during the quarter, we secured a large recompete contract with a strategic logistics customer. By providing technical expertise and solutions to our customers' engineering and technical support center, we will help them reduce their costs while at the same time drive quality and innovation across their operations.
As illustrated by these three examples, we continue to see a steady flow of work consistent with DoD's efficiency and IT modernization missions. Nonetheless, this is prudent. We are actively tracking those activities and identifying ways to support our customers with additional work or to move essential work onto contracts with available ceiling. Although we remain in a continuing resolution through certain customers are extending current projects. We expect defense and financial security programs along with essential citizen services, which together constitute the vast majority of our federal government support, will remain priorities in the new government fiscal year. With that, I'll turn the call over to Marie to discuss the first quarter results and our second quarter 2025 guidance. Thanks, Ted.
For the first quarter, revenues totaled $968.3 million, a decrease of 7.7% year over year, and in line with our guidance expectation. Given the timing of the acquisition close on March 4th, TopBloc contributed less than one month to our first quarter results. Revenues from our commercial segment were $672.2 million, a decrease of 8.1% as compared to the prior year. Assignment revenue totaled $382.1 million, a decrease of 16% year over year, reflecting continued softness in portions of our commercial segment that are more sensitive to changes in macroeconomic cycles. Revenues from commercial consulting, the highest of our high-margin revenue streams, totaled $290.1 million, an increase of 4.7% year over year. Revenues from our federal government segment were $296.1 million, a decrease of 6.7% year over year, mainly due to a few programs ending and a slight impact of DOGE as Ted previously noted.
Turning to margins, gross margin for the first quarter of 2025 was 28.4%, an increase of 20 basis points from the first quarter of last year. Gross margin for the commercial segment was 32.4%, up 40 basis points year over year, reflecting a higher mix of consulting revenues as well as margin expansion in each revenue stream. Gross margin for the federal government segment was 19.5%, a decline of 20 basis points year over year, primarily due to lower rates and leverage benefits. SG&A expense for the quarter was $214.5 million compared to $210.2 million in the first quarter of 2024. SG&A expenses included $3.3 million in acquisition, integration, and strategic planning expenses, and a $4.4 million one-time write-off related to previously capitalized costs for software enhancements that will no longer be placed into service. As a reminder, these types of costs are not included in our guidance estimate.
Excluding these one-time items as well as non-cash expenses, such as depreciation and stock-based compensation, SG&A declined by approximately $6 million year over year. For the first quarter, net income was $20.9 million, adjusted EBITDA was $93.6 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 9.7%. In the quarter, as discussed, we completed our acquisition of TopBloc for $340 million, consisting of 10% equity and 90% cash, of which approximately $56 million came from our cash balance and the rest was a drawdown on our revolver. In addition, we deployed $50.4 million to repurchase approximately 0.6 million shares at an average share price of $78.44. At quarter end, we had approximately $478.6 million remaining under our $750 million share repurchase authorization. Also at quarter end, cash and cash equivalents were $107 million, and we had $250 million available on our $500 million senior secured revolver.
This brings our net leverage ratio to 2.6 times at the end of the first quarter. Free cash flow totaled $6.6 million for the first quarter. Free cash flow was lower than we typically see in the quarter, primarily due to an increase in DSO driven by timing issues from certain enterprise accounts. We expect DSO to improve on a go-forward basis. Our financial estimates for the second quarter of 2025 are set forth in our earnings release and supplemental materials. These estimates are based on current market conditions and assume no further deterioration in the markets we serve. Guidance also assumes 63.25 billable days in the second quarter, which is 0.25 billable days fewer than a year ago period, and 1.25 days more than the first quarter. Given the overall macro uncertainty, we are widening our revenue guidance range for the quarter. Our revenue estimates incorporate less than a 2% impact from DOGE.
In terms of our second quarter margins, while we no longer have as large of an impact from our payroll tax reset that we did in the first quarter, we anticipate that margins will be negatively impacted by the loss of some of our higher gross margin federal work as a result of DOGE actions. With that, that's our guidance. For Q2 2025, we're estimating revenues of $985 million to $1.015 billion, net income of $29.3 million to $34.3 million, adjusted EBITDA of $101 million to $108 million, and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.3% to 10.6%. I'll now turn the call back over to Ted.
Thanks, Marie. Even in the face of macroeconomic uncertainty and factors beyond our control, ASGN Incorporated performed in line with our revenue and adjusted EBITDA expectations for the first quarter. Our unique operating model positions us for sustained progress in delivering higher-end, high-value IT services. Despite client IT spending hesitations, our commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction enabled us to deliver strong bookings. The appointment of Shiv as President and the acquisition of TopBloc are pivotal developments that underscore our adaptive and forward-thinking approach. As I noted previously, TopBloc is already exceeding our bookings, revenue, and adjusted EBITDA expectations. Looking ahead, the resiliency and versatility of our offerings in AI, data, and cybersecurity, in particular, continue to drive demand in a firm, agile market approach in these critical areas of client needs.
Our ability to maintain robust client relationships while expanding our technology partnerships provides us confidence that we are well-prepared to capture future opportunities and enhance shareholder value. We remain cautious but hopeful about the go-forward, knowing that our unique delivery model is the fastest and best way for our clients to accelerate their IT investment. It is precisely our innovative contingent labor model and the vast prospects it provides that inspired Shiv, among other reasons, to join the ASGN Incorporated team. So let me pass the call over to Shiv to share his insights and wrap up our prepared remarks.
Thanks, Ted. I'm excited to be part of my first ASGN Incorporated earnings call. It's a great time for me to join the team and immediately make a positive impact on our company. Over the past seven weeks, I hit the ground running, collaborating closely with our segment teams and engaging with our dynamic leadership. The pace of technological change is staggering, and our clients are constantly looking for the right talent with deep targeted skills. I'm confident that our model, which leverages a combination of internal capabilities and a highly skilled contingent labor force, is the optimal approach in this rapidly evolving technological landscape. Maintaining the right IT skill sets is exceedingly challenging for a permanent bench model. In my initial weeks at ASGN Incorporated, I've been immersing myself with our commercial consulting teams, rapidly climbing the learning curve while inserting my own expertise.
Having spent the past two decades in the health technology industry, I'm thrilled to bring my experience to ASGN Incorporated and help evolve our strategy and differentiation. Unfortunately, we are at a point in time where clients must exercise caution with their IT spend. Nonetheless, I've been through these economic cycles before, each time learning something new, growing my knowledge base, and emerging even stronger on the other end. While we may be experiencing increased market volatility at the present moment, there is no doubt in my mind that having access to a diverse pool of talent, continuing to focus on our strong account base, and providing the right solutions will allow our company to stay ahead of the competition. I look forward to seeing ASGN Incorporated continue to take market share. Thank you again for joining ASGN Incorporated's first quarter 2025 earnings call. We will now open up the call to your questions.
Questions and answers
Great. Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. One moment, please, while I prepare for questions. The first question is from Tobey Sommer from Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I want to ask about your bookings in the quarter across the different businesses. Could you characterize some from a new customer and new project perspective versus renewal of existing work? And then I'll have a follow-up. Thanks.
Sure. Tobey, thanks for the question. If you think about the commercial side of things, where we continue to see consistently good bookings, there is a mix of renewal work and new work, and renewal is still a larger percentage than the new, but the new is progressing. So the trend there hasn't really changed. On the federal side, our bookings this quarter, which were very strong, keep us moving up on book-to-bill now—1.2 on a trailing twelve-month basis. Same characterization applies. We had some recompete work that we won, we had some new work that we won, and some of that recompete work also had expansion support. So it varied, but I wouldn't say any different trends there, Tobey, than what we've seen in the latter quarters.
Okay. Thank you. And then if I could pivot based on that response and ask a question about DOGE and the impact in the federal business. Is there a way to characterize, I mean, you numerically put some numbers there, but from a type of work or type of customer perspective, is there a way to describe where you're seeing the impact and how?
Sure. Tobey, I don't think this will be inconsistent with what we're seeing across the industry. Where we've had small interruptions of work, it's been more on the civilian side, not so much on the defense intel side. It may have been discrete pieces of work where we were doing more traditional program oversight or program management consulting. If you look at the work where we're really doing hands-on technical work with a scope to get the customer to a certain outcome, which is the majority of our work, that's been steady and remains in place. That should give you a little bit of a flavor.
It does. With respect to that program management consultative work, how much does that represent in the business if maybe that describes a couple of points of impact? Is there much that remains, or does that sort of zero out category?
It's a small piece of what we do, Tobey. Most of our work is real technical work in AI, data, cybersecurity, and helping manage IT systems and operations. We did very little work on general management consulting and with regulatory-type federal civilian agencies.
Next question is from Mark Marcon from Baird. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon. Ted, Rand, Shiv, and Marie. You've done a really impressive job in terms of maintaining the margins here during the quarter. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you've been able to raise the gross margins through the mix. If we were to look at things from an apples-to-apples perspective in terms of project to project, would it also show that the consulting margins are holding steady in terms of like-for-like projects? And how should we think about SG&A going forward, particularly if things soften a little bit?
Great. Mark, if you think about the nature of commercial consulting work, as we do more, it becomes a bigger percentage of the business. That will lever up our gross margins and continue to contribute to expanding EBITDA margin. Adding capabilities like TopBloc and Workday, what we do in ServiceNow, and more work in AI and data are all areas where we can get expanded gross margin. So on a like-for-like basis, based on the nature of the work and the value proposition for the customer, you're seeing margin expand. Regarding SG&A, our model—bringing talent for this work on a contingent basis—will continue to support the business whether revenues move up or down. We have business stabilizers that help us at the gross profit and gross margin levels. Additionally, our highly variable SG&A cost structure is an important stabilizer. You may see some timing lag in a given month or quarter as business stabilizers flow through, but over multiple quarters you can see SG&A and the stabilizers working as intended.
It certainly is evident. Just for my follow-up real quickly, can you talk a little bit—maybe this is a question for Ted or Shiv or Rand—but what are you hearing from your commercial clients with regards to not the ongoing projects, but projects they may be starting up a month from now, six months from now? What's the level of certainty that some of those projects are going to go through versus a wait-and-see mode? How variable do you think that could be based on your cumulative experience through multiple cycles?
Mark, so far what we're seeing is clients continue to invest in areas of strategic importance like data, AI, and cybersecurity. I don't see evidence of a slowdown in strategic technology investment. With macro uncertainty, clients are waiting and watching across sectors, but in the strategic areas—cloud, data, AI, cybersecurity—we are not seeing a slowdown.
Mark, commercial customers by industry are all a little cautious and in a wait-and-see mode, which will make them cautious here and there. They will stick with certain areas, and they will play their cards before they dive in at higher spend levels. Third-party data suggests IT services are broadly flat given cautiousness. We think about our business the same way: some areas are critical and will continue, like data and Gen AI, and some areas are more discretionary where customers can hold back. Our clients manage this similarly.
Next question is from UBS. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you so much, and thanks for the detail. Could you drill down and help us understand how much TopBloc contributed to the first quarter in terms of revenue and how it impacts the Q2 guidance, in terms of revenue and EPS? I want to start there if I could.
Kevin, when we made the acquisition we provided our expectations for the year for TopBloc, so please refer back to that. We only had it for a few weeks during March, so its contribution was immaterial to the broader results. As it relates to Q2 or the rest of the year, it's straightforward to model based on what we previously laid out.
Okay. Then I guess, you talked about some initial DOGE impact, Ted, but do you think we're through the process at this point? Or could there be more potential adjustments? How are you thinking about that, and have conversations changed at the federal level at all?
We've been tracking this closely. DOGE will likely continue to have an effect in some client environments, but most discussions with clients are around technology and what they're spending money on. Clients are trying to control their own spend, which has been true for a while. We're focused on doing work that provides cost efficiency and modernization. On the federal side, we're heavily involved in enabling mission systems. We do relatively little general program management consulting; we are closer to mission systems and technical operations, including weapon systems, security, and connectivity.
Next question is from Trevor Romeo from William Blair. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking the questions. The first one I had was just on the guidance. Appreciate being a bit wider than normal in this environment. Thanks, Marie, for the comment on the DOGE impact. Could you speak more specifically to what's embedded in the guidance for each segment and where some of the upside or downside could be?
Hi, Trevor. From a guidance perspective, we provide consolidated information. We highlighted the potential impact of DOGE, which is less than 2% on total revenues, and provided the other factors to consider for the guidance.
Trevor, generally things are pretty steady. We've seen stable revenue per billable day coming out of the second half of last year into the first half of this year. There's a normal cadence of projects ending and ramping up, particularly in commercial, and our outlook is one of continued stability. Thinking about revenue per billable day is a useful way to frame it.
Thanks, Ted and Marie. For the follow-up, as clients may go further into cost-cutting mode, how are you thinking about the opportunity for your Mexico nearshoring capability? Is that an area where you're seeing or would expect to see more resilience in demand in this type of environment?
Yes. We've seen Mexico grow over the past year and a half to two years. It continues to be an area clients use for cost efficiency. The future is about weaving technology together—digital engineering across data and cloud domains—and Mexico will be a part of that.
Next question is from Jeff Silber from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much. Wanted to shift back to the federal government segment. Could you describe the mechanics if an agency wanted to cut a contract short before it expires? How much notice do they have to give you, and what are the implications?
A lot of this is new and we're seeing it in real time. There's been an initial wave of activity and then agency heads were edicted to find cost savings and report back. We've been engaged with customers on a one-by-one basis as they review contracts and delivery to determine value. Agencies can terminate contracts for convenience and will provide a certain time period for that to wind down, which gives us and other contractors time to react. As clients go through this process, it's a real-time and case-by-case exercise.
Okay. I understand. Since a lot has changed since you set your budget for 2025, I'm curious about your internal plans regarding investing, hiring, and capital allocation. Any changes being made for the rest of the year?
We're making real-time assessments about where to allocate investment. We're shifting investment toward areas with clear opportunity. Our longer-term capital allocation principles—strategic M&A and returning capital via repurchases—don't change on a one- or two-quarter basis. We have to be smart and ensure expenses are directed toward productive outcomes that drive EBITDA margin.
Next question is from Surinder Thind from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
One question: how should we be thinking about intra-quarter visibility at this point and the willingness of clients to change minds, start projects, or delay projects relative to how they've behaved over the last six months or so? Given you widened the range, I would have assumed intra-quarter visibility would have been very high—like 95 to 98 percent.
Surinder, it's just prudent to widen the range because new developments occur frequently and clients react to news—tariffs, DOGE, or other items. Widening the range provides appropriate caution.
On the government side, agencies have contracting provisions to stop work for convenience, which can occur quickly. On the commercial side, we've seen cautiousness over the last six months. Clients want to make sure they get value and cost savings. Behavior has been steady—prudent cost focus continues.
So is the caution coming more from the government side or the commercial side for the reason you widened the range?
I wouldn't interpret it as coming from only one side. There are macro issues in both market segments. We would report if projects were being broadly stopped in commercial because that would show up in bookings, and we're not seeing that. The range expansion was modest—about $10 million on the top end—so it's not a drastic change.
That's helpful. As a follow-up on Q2 margins, I view the quarter-over-quarter improvement as less significant than in the past. You referenced loss of some high-margin federal contracts and TopBloc offset. Can you help me understand the margin dynamics? Is Q2 the average run rate going forward?
Surinder, consider a couple of factors. We have a slightly higher mix of federal revenue in Q2, and federal tends to carry lower margins than commercial. Also, DOGE has a negative impact, particularly where the impacted work had higher margins. The incremental contribution from TopBloc offsets some of that, which is why our guidance range is what it is.
Got it. So Q2 should be kind of the starting point or average run rate going forward?
Yes.
Next question is from Joseph Vafi from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Hey, everyone. Good afternoon. Welcome on board, Shiv. Could we drill down on financial services? Last quarter it sounded like some of the bigger banks were starting to act a bit better. How do you see the cadence of momentum with those larger bank customers now versus what we saw in Q1?
Joe, we saw an uptick in recruitment flow from big banks previously, and some good pipeline in consulting. In Q1 it leveled off and stayed consistent from the first week to the last. Some big banks are waiting to see how macros play out. We haven't seen a major move back up from the big banks yet.
Got it. Thanks. One more on DOGE: are you seeing the DOGE effect ripple into slower decision-making on adjudications, or is it more in the existing book and backlog?
Good question. The velocity from DOGE to agency heads is less visible to us. What we've seen is agencies making sure they're aligned up and down the chain of command before deciding to curtail or continue work. Every piece of work that gets funded is getting checked off at more levels in the agency. So it's more an internal agency-level process than a direct DOGE-to-agency interaction that we observe.
This concludes the question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back to Ted Hanson, CEO, for any closing comments.
As we conclude, I'd like to express my gratitude to the entire ASGN Incorporated team for your dedication and hard work throughout the past quarter. We have an exceptional team, and together, we'll continue to advance our business. Thank you again for joining us today. We look forward to speaking in July on our second quarter call.
This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you again for your participation.