Korn Ferry (NYSE:KFY) reported fourth-quarter financial results on Tuesday. The transcript from the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
Korn Ferry reported its fifth consecutive quarter of top-line growth, with Q4 fee revenue up 7% year-over-year to $760 million, driven by growth across all solutions.
The company achieved a new fee revenue high for fiscal 2026, with full-year revenue at approximately $2.9 billion, marking a 7% increase.
Strategic initiatives included a shift to a regional reporting structure (Americas, EMEA, and APAC) and three solution categories: Search, Talent and Organizational Solutions, and Workforce Solutions.
Korn Ferry’s executive search grew 7% in Q4, marking eight consecutive quarters of growth, with professional search and interim fee revenue up 14%.
The company announced plans to continue its ‘We Are Korn Ferry’ go-to-market strategy, aiming to drive deeper client relationships and expand its service offerings.
Korn Ferry’s future outlook for Q1 fiscal 2027 includes fee revenue guidance of $725 to $745 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 17%.
The company returned $221 million to shareholders in fiscal 2026 through share repurchases and dividends, and invested $85 million in capex for platform development.
Management highlighted the importance of mindset and client-centricity in driving growth and operational changes, with a focus on deepening client penetration.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Korn Ferry fourth quarter fiscal year 2026 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 a copy of the financial presentation that we will be reviewing with you today.
Before I turn the call over to your host, Mr. Gary Bernison, 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 1995. 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 reports for fiscal year 2026.
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’ll turn the call over to Mr. Bernison. Please go ahead, Mr. Bernison.
Gary Bernison (CEO)
Okay, thank you, Sarah. And thank you, everybody, for joining us. I’m going to let our team walk through the numbers, but our quarterly performance was outstanding. It marks our fifth consecutive quarter of top-line growth, underscoring the strength of our strategy. But let me first reflect on a moment. You know, 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’s 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 hadn’t heard in years. It wasn’t 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, and 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’re at the intersection of a present that feels far different than our past and a future that will even be brighter than today. That’s why our foundational headmark is evolving from one Korn Ferry to We are Korn Ferry.
And We are Korn Ferry begins with deep client centricity and expanding the breadth of our solutions we deliver within every client relationship. And there are just a few examples during the quarter: a 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. 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 three regions.
And you know, 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’ve 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’s 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 three categories: Search comprised of executive and professional search, Talent and Organizational Solutions comprised of digital and consulting, and finally Workforce Solutions comprised of RPO 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 orients our services to the competitive landscape and the ways the clients buy these solutions. I’m 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’m 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’ll turn the call over to Bob. Bob, go ahead. Great. Thanks, Gary, and good afternoon and good morning everybody. You know, I would be remiss if I didn’t start by saying thank you to all the colleagues. Gary was just referring to as fiscal 26 was another outstanding year for Korn Ferry. You know, 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 data along with our consulting capabilities to drive enterprise-wide results for our clients.
We continue to demonstrate how we’re different and we are different, growing for the fifth consecutive quarter while others in the industry continue to contract or just perform 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’re not simply a monoline transactional business.
We’re 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’m going to provide you 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’s up by about 320 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 eight 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%, driven 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 fifth 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% to $130 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin remained very strong at 17% and adjusted diluted earnings per share grew 8 cents, 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 a billion dollars 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 the next four quarters. Looking at our regional results, fee revenue in the Americas up 8% with strength in Exec Search, Pro Search and Interim and RPO EMEA fee revenue also grew 8% with strong growth in consulting and professional Search and Interim. And our Asia PAC fee revenue is 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, when we talked in our last earnings call, we said we’re going to lean more heavily into buybacks. And that’s 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 Talent Suite 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 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 for 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 transition from global solution-based presentation to three regional reporting segments, the Americas, EMEA and APAC.
The region segment results will include fee revenue and profitability through adjusted EBITDA and then we’ll continue to provide solution level results for new business fee revenue and estimated remaining fees under existing contracts through the three solution groupings. 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 three reporting segments following the filing of our Q1FY2710Q in September.
In addition, our Q1FY27 press release will reflect the new reporting segments and 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 three solution groupings. Now in conclusion, we continue to be extremely encouraged by the strength of our business, the progress we’ve 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.
OPERATOR
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press Star one again. Our first question comes from Trevor Romeo with William Blair. Your line is open.
Trevor Romeo (Analyst at William Blair)
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. 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 Bernison (CEO)
Well, we’ve certainly, I’ll 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, you know, almost 10% just over the last couple years. And if I go further back than that, it would be very dramatic. So I think that we’ve proven that we can, you know, take the access that’s afforded us and surround it with a lot of adjacent solutions that not only diversifies the firm, but positions us. And, you know, I can think of, you know, six or seven big marquee consumer CEO changes this year in the United States that we were part of. So, yeah, we’ve definitely moved up brand now, whether we’re taking market share or not.
You know, I don’t look at, I look at the market opportunity as $300 billion. I think the search market is probably 14 or 15 billion. So we tend to, 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’ve proven that if we’re careful about it with high quality, we can monetize that access.
Trevor Romeo (Analyst at William Blair)
Thanks, Gary. That’s helpful. And maybe follow up on the search business again, just in terms of the volume side, I think that’s been a pretty good story the last few years with executive turnover being kind of elevated and the demographics and such. But I think 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 expect going forward? Is that kind of moderating or what would you see there?
Gary Bernison (CEO)
Well, it’s certainly been, you know, it’s certainly been, you know, it’s accelerated for sure over the last couple years. I’ll just tell you that. Trailing four months here and even so far this month, it’s looking very, very good. And so I, you know, again, I’m 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’s dealing at the very, very high end. And out of the 170 million working Americans, it’s certainly with the outliers of achievement, the 10 or 15 million that would be in the C suite or upper management.
So I can only tell you that the demographic trends are real and the last four months have continued on pace.
Trevor Romeo (Analyst at William Blair)
Okay, thanks again. And maybe one more, if you don’t mind, kind of similar theme, but 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, like the interim bill rate being up $20 versus last year. I think the pro search kind of fee per placement is also growing nicely. So maybe you could just speak to kind of what you’re 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’s kind of helping you outperform the peer set there? Well, I think the outperformance is, you know, 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, very, very synergistic with the rest of the firm. That is number one. And we have seen, you know, we just got into that solution, you know, five and a half years ago. And today, you know, for example, in interim, you know, that’s almost a 400 million annual solution where there’s a market opportunity of billions and billions of dollars.
And it’s 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 interim was like 100, was close to 100 bucks. Yeah. So it’s 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’re just getting started here on this. And so we’ve definitely seen a pickup over the last three months or so, four months around the interim solution.
And so some of that clearly some of that’s market. Right. The temp penetration level was going down forever, you know, 36, 37 months. And so you’ve seen that that stabilized. That, that’s definitely, that’s definitely helped. But I think it’s these other factors as well. And like I said, we’re just getting started with this.
Bob
Yeah, Travis, it’s Bob. The thing I would add to it is, you know, just being part of our ecosystem. So you heard Gary talk about the size of the interim business. North of 10% of that comes from referrals across the organization. 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, you know, the we are Korn Ferry’s go-to-market strategy in place at the beginning of this year and you’ve seen that ramp throughout the course of the year up to 29% now. So I think some of what you’re 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, if it all makes sense.
Travis
All right, thank you guys very much, appreciate it.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
George Tong (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
A little bit deeper into the new business trends. So XRPO new business was up 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 XRPO and what the implications are for revenue over the year?
Trevor Romeo (Analyst at William Blair)
Yeah, it’s a little thing called a war. So the Middle East, it definitely has had an impact in a big way on the levels of new business. And you know, it’s a little bit of a flywheel impact. So we’ve, you know, trailing four months, we’ve seen strong, strong new business in Americas. But it’s definitely impacted APAC, no question about it. And it’s obviously impacted EMEA in the Middle East. So that’s what I would point to.
George Tong (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
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?
Trevor Romeo (Analyst at William Blair)
Yeah, I’m glad you asked that, George. I saw your note, you mentioned that there’s really one reason why 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’d happily do to drive that type of revenue growth every quarter, to be honest with you.
George Tong (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Got it. Very helpful, thank you.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from Mark Martin, with Baird. Your line is open.
Mark Martin
Good morning or good afternoon depending on where you are. Really nice results. Gary, can you talk a little bit about like just from a leadership perspective internally to Korn Ferry, what you’re going to do in terms of reporting structures? Are you going to have like a head of search ahead of talent and organizational ahead of workforce solutions or are you going to have the head of Americas and EMEA and APAC? How’s that going to work? How does reporting structure go?
How’s it going to end up optimizing the performance on a go-forward basis for you?
Gary Bernison (CEO)
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’ve been very, very deliberate starting with leadership 15 actually 15 months ago around mindset and client centricity. Up to this point we don’t have five businesses. We have one business with up to this point five solutions. So you are going to be left with a matrix 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 at client centricity, you’ve got to get at it both top down through the enterprise accounts, but you also have to do it bottom up and the bottom up is on a regional basis. And so we have carefully over time here, over the last year shifted mindset. Now ultimately say in another year where that ends up to directly answer your question, I think that’s premature.
But for sure we’ve shifted the focus of the organization including the 1800 partners and principals that we have at the firm that are responsible for originating business. And you know, the we every single day now the leadership team looks at every piece of new business that’s opened over a certain level. And keep in mind you’re talking about 40 or 50 engagements a day where the team and it’s 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’s 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 14,000 clients around the world. 5,000 of those clients represent 90% of our revenue. When you look at those 5,000, you’re going to find that 60, 65% of those are only utilizing about one and a half of our solutions. And if you look at the logos there, you know, the opportunity just comes streaming off the page. So I think, you know, 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’re doing, including how you’re going to clients, how you’re representing yourself to Wall Street, you’re dividing before you are uniting.
We have one firm and what I want in three years is that when colleagues go to clients, they say we are from Korn Ferry, not I’m from this or I’m from that. And that’s really what we’re striving for. And a deeper penetration of that very, very rich client base.
Mark Martin
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 also reflective of the strong performance and then the bonuses that were associated there?
Gary Bernison (CEO)
You know, I think the reality is we had pretty broad-based growth across the firm, Mark, with the exception is George. You know, the exception is the Middle East. And I didn’t finish my answer to George. Hopefully, you know, what we’ve seen in every crisis is opportunity. But we’ve also seen in every crisis there’s pent-up demand. And so I do believe as the, hopefully as the skies clear here and oil starts to flow through the strait, I think you’re probably going to see some pent-up demand.
It may be six months out, but there’s no doubt that’s had an impact on the levels of new business for sure. But I would say, Mark, that it was pretty broad-based.
Mark Martin
Okay, that’s great. And are you, are you. I know it’s 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, looks like things are finally getting back to normal and we should see a decent burst.
Gary Bernison (CEO)
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, have we seen it? Not materially, but I do think that calmer minds will prevail here and there’s probably going to be some pent-up demand for sure.
Mark Martin
That’s great. Thanks, Gary.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from Toby Sommer with Truist. Your line is open.
Toby Sommer
Thank you. I wanted to ask about what initiatives or changes you have in place. Maybe it 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? What levers are you trying to pull?
Bob
Hey, Toby, it’s Bob. Yeah, you know, one of the things I’ve noticed, you know, if you go again, if you go back and you look at the program that we’ve had in place to drive that, you know, way back in, I think it’s 2018 or 2019, it was 14% and 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. And we kind of got stuck at 25% and we were there for whatever it was four or five quarters in a row.
And then, to use Gary’s phrase from one of his earlier responses, it really is about changing mindset now and what we’re 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 the prior two 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 it’s every two weeks.
And the collaboration that we’re getting and the mindset change that we’re getting from our folks, I think is actually what’s influenced us to go from the 25 to 27, because I made the program richer again. We 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’re putting in place at the organization.
Toby Sommer
In consulting, can you talk about the degree to which some of your services. Because I know it’s a broad array of things that you’re doing are priced on a value basis as opposed to time and materials and just average bill rates and hours billed to the client.
Gary Bernison (CEO)
Yeah, well, you’re transforming it off the. Yeah, I do. I actually do. I think even there’s a number of solutions that could actually transform, including search. You know, it’s pretty. It’s kind of archaic how we, how the industry does that. I think there’s now an opportunity, once you get to a scale that you can actually change the paradigm. So you know, could search be sold as a service? You know, could you sign up as a retainer? I do believe that there is the opportunity and we’re pushing the team, particularly on the consulting side, to look at value. Because up to this point it’s been pretty much the old method. I mean, not totally, but that’s probably truer than not. And I’m pretty convinced of the value that we bring. You know, you have to align strategy with an organization, with people, with compensation, how you develop people.
You know, I just know out of all my years as CEO, it’s about people, it’s about talent. You know, players. Players win games, coaches lose games. So we’re challenging the team. I can’t say that we have an answer today, but I would expect that to change quite, quite a bit actually over the next three years. I wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised by that.
Toby 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 Bernison (CEO)
Well, I’m not going to say what they see on invoices, but that’s a real rate. I mean, that’s a real economic rate per hour, for sure. Yeah, 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. But again, just to be clear so that I answer the question correctly, we may not engage with a client in that way. We will say for a project, phase one is this, phase two, is that so we don’t sit there and charge like a law firm would by the hour.
That’s not so. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, but I do believe in terms of the spirit of your question around value, I think there’s something there.
Toby Sommer
And if I sneak one last one 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, et cetera. So they’re kind of neither experiencing margin expansion from efficiencies normal, faster time to completion, or, you know, price erosion. What’s your experience in that?
Gary Bernison (CEO)
In that run, we have 17 work streams. Five are anchored around search. And you know, what we’re concerned about there? Clearly what the efforts are showing us is we can be way more efficient. No doubt about it. You know, that’s now been proven over the last year on these five work streams. Out of the 17 no doubt about it. But what we’re 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 don’t want that proprietary data to get outside. And so as we go down this path, for me, anybody can generate a name and it’s not what they’ve done, it’s who they are. And when you’re talking about the outliers of achievement here, I’m still going to put a very, very strong argument forward that it’s around Culture Fed and, you know, we’re not human doings, we’re 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’s what the 17 work streams are showing. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we protect our IP, particularly that we’re 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’s, we’re in the trust business. And so we, you know, I’m not that focused on the efficiency gain for the search process that we’re going to get from AI. Are we doing it? Yes, we’re absolutely doing it, but I’m focused on the customer experience. And so, you know, we have a lot of things in motion there. But I’m telling you, I’m going to be like, very conservative around who people are, what they tell us, what their assessments show.
We’ve 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. We’re using it in the learning and development solution in terms of coaching, you know, using, using agents. And we can all have different views on that. But clearly we’re 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 Josh Chen with UBS. Your line is open.
Karan Singhani
Hi, this is Karan Singhani on for Josh. Thanks for taking my questions. I want to ask on the North America executive storage business. It looks like margins in the business have been pretty strong. It was like 31% this quarter. So just wondering how should we think about margins for the segment for this year?
Gary Bernison (CEO)
I would say that, you know, the margin profile, again, I wouldn’t focus necessarily on search in North America. We get, it’s a pretty big company, we got a lot of levers to pull. I would just keep, keep you focused on the range that we’ve talked about from an overall Korn Ferry perspective. In the 16 to 18%, you know, we guided to Q1, right. You know, smack in the middle that 17% and that’s how we’re managing the business. So we don’t, you know, to Gary’s point earlier, when you think about the mindset change, right, we can’t look at clients and go to market one way and then manage internally a different way.
So as Gary said, we’re one firm, we got five offerings, but we’re managing the firm as one firm. So I’d suggest that you just focus on the 16 to 18%.
Karan Singhani
Okay, 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 more normalized levels this year?
Gary Bernison (CEO)
Oh, you know, we typically over time we’ve, we’ve, you know, deployed a pretty balanced approach, systematic approach to capital deployment. You know, 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, you know, clearly when you look at the firm over, you know, the last 10, 15 years, 20 years, you know, 60% of our growth has been organic and 40% has been inorganic. And, you know, the last investment that we made was in the interim solution, which was an organization in the UK and Ireland. And it’s been an absolute home run for us. And that was almost two years ago. So, you know, there’s been periods of time where we’ve, you know, leaned more into stock buybacks. We’ve been consistently raising our dividend for, I don’t know, six or seven years. And there’s times when we lean more into inorganic growth.
Karan Singhani
Got it. That sounds. Thank you.
OPERATOR
There are no further questions. Mr. Bernison.
Gary Bernison (CEO)
Okay, Sarah, thank you for hosting. Thank you for everybody for joining us and we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks, everybody.
OPERATOR
Ladies and gentlemen, this conference call will be available for replay for one week starting today, running through the day June 30, 2026, ending at midnight. You may access the Echo Replay Service by dialing 800-770-2030 and entering the access code 4218957, followed by the pound key. Additionally, the replay will be available for playback at the company’s website, www.kornferry.com, in the Investor Relations section. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.
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