Korn/Ferry International Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
June 23, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Korn Ferry reported its fifth consecutive quarter of top-line growth, with Q4 fee revenue up 7% to $760 million and full-year fee revenue up 7% to about $2.9 billion.
  • Positive Sentiment: Profitability remained strong, with Q4 adjusted EBITDA up 7% to $130 million and margin at 17%, while full-year adjusted EBITDA reached nearly $500 million and adjusted EPS rose 8% to $5.28.
  • Positive Sentiment: Demand indicators improved across the business: ending estimated remaining fees grew 10% year over year to almost $1.9 billion, business referrals increased to 29.1% of revenue, and Marquee/Diamond account penetration stayed strong at 40%.
  • Positive Sentiment: Key solutions continued to perform well, including executive search growth of 7% for the quarter, professional search and interim up 14%, digital subscriptions up 10%, and consulting up 7%.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The company is changing its external reporting structure starting in Q1 FY2027 to three regions—Americas, EMEA, and APAC—while also reporting solution data by search, talent and organizational solutions, and workforce solutions to better match how clients buy its services.
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Earnings Conference Call
Korn/Ferry International Q4 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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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 Burnison, let me first read a cautionary statement to investors. Certain statements made in the call today, such as those relating to future performance, plans, and goals, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Operator

Although the company believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements. Actual results in future periods may differ materially from those currently expected or desired because of a number of risks and uncertainties which are beyond the company's control. Additional information concerning such risks and uncertainties can be found in the release relating to this presentation and in the periodic and other reports filed by the company with the SEC, including the company's soon-to-be-filed annual report for fiscal year 2026. Also, some of the comments today may reference non-GAAP financial measures such as constant currency amounts, EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA.

Operator

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. Burnison. Please go ahead, Mr. Burnison.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Okay. Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, everybody, for joining us. I'm going to let our team walk through the numbers, our quarterly performance was outstanding. It marks our fifth consecutive quarter of top-line growth, underscoring the strength of our strategy. Let me first reflect on a moment. On these calls, I used to talk about opportunities measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Today, I think in terms of opportunities measured in the billions, far beyond where we are today. In leadership, we spend a lot of time talking about the what, the how, and the when. Too often, though, the why and the who get overlooked. Despite all of Korn Ferry's success and evolution, our why has never changed: enabling people and organizations to be more than.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

I was reminded of that a few months ago while I was traveling in the Midwest. 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. That moment peeled back the years and made me reflect about the essence of who we are and what we do. 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 head mark is evolving from one Korn Ferry to We Are Korn Ferry.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

We Are Korn Ferry begins with deep client centricity and expanding the breadth of our solutions we deliver within every client relationship. There are just a few examples during the quarter of a Fortune 50 tech company that turned to us to accelerate their sales organization, or a global professional services firm to look to us as their sole source of interim technology talent. 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. 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.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

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. Starting in this quarter, Q1, our external reporting segments are going to be reflected through a regional lens of the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. 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 and interim. These categories serve our clients across the entire talent continuum. Search is about identifying talent, workforce solutions is about scaling talent, and talent and organizational solutions is about unlocking potential.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Grouping our solutions like this more accurately reflects how work gets done today and orients our services to the competitive landscape and the ways that 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.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

Great. Thanks, Gary, and good afternoon and good morning, everybody. I would be remiss if I didn't start by saying thank you to all the colleagues Gary was just referring to as fiscal 2026 was another outstanding year for Korn Ferry. Despite uneven market conditions, uncertain macro environment, we achieved a new fee revenue high and delivered very strong earnings. We continue to skillfully execute our We Are Korn Ferry go-to-market strategy, integrating our intellectual property 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.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

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. 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. 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. That's up by about 320 basis points. Our Marquee and Diamond account penetration remains strong at 40% of our consolidated fee revenue.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

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. Last, our consulting fee revenue grew 7%, driven by an increase in larger engagements and stronger bill rates. 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%.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

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%. Adjusted diluted earnings per share grew $0.08 or 6% to $1.40. Total company new business grew 2% when you exclude RPO, 4% when you include it. The RPO business itself won $137 million of new business in the fourth quarter, and 74% of that came from new logos. As I previously mentioned, estimated remaining fees under existing contracts at the end of the fourth quarter were almost $1.9 billion.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

57%, or about $1 billion of that is projected to be recognized within the next year, and the remaining 43%, or $800 million or so, is going to be recognized beyond the next four quarters. Looking at our regional results, fee rev 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. Our APAC 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. If you remember when we talked on our last earnings call, we said we're going to lean more heavily into buybacks, and that's exactly what we did.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

For all of FY 2026, 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 and the delivery of other productivity tools for other solutions. Turning to our outlook for the first quarter of FY 2027, assuming no further changes in worldwide geopolitical conditions, economic conditions, financial markets, foreign exchange rates, we expect fee revenue to range from $725 million-$745 million. Our adjusted EBITDA margin to be right around 17%, and our consolidated adjusted diluted earnings per share to range from $1.32-$1.38. 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.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

Through this initiative, we are orienting more towards regions or our integrators, as Gary said. This will also result in a change to the company's financial reporting segments. As Gary mentioned, beginning in the first quarter of FY 2027, 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. 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. Search, Executive Search and Professional Search, Talent and Organizational Solutions comprised of consulting and Digital, and Workforce Solutions comprised of RPO and interim.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

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. To assist folks 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 Q1 FY 2027 10-Q in September. Our Q1 FY 2027 press release will reflect the new reporting segments. 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. Search, Executive Search and Professional Search, Talent and Organizational Solutions comprised of consulting and Digital, and Workforce Solutions comprised of RPO and interim.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

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, 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
Trevor Romeo
Research 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 some kind of shift among the client base? Is that a sustainable trend that you would see continuing?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Well, I'll tell you that over the long run here, the brand around the executive search solution has certainly gone up market, you can just look at the climb in our average fees. The average fees are up almost 10% just over the last couple of years. If I go further back than that, it would be very dramatic. I think that we've proven that we can take the access that's afforded us

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Surround it with a lot of adjacent solutions that not only diversifies the firm, but positions us. I can think of six or seven big Marquee consumer CEO changes this year in the U.S. that we were part of. Yeah, we've definitely moved up brand. Whether we're taking market share or not, I look at the market opportunity as $300 billion. I think the search market is probably $14 billion or $15 billion. We tend to look at the $300 billion and what we can do to drive share there. Having said that, it is incredibly important to us. That gives us unparalleled access, and I think we've proven that if we're careful about it with high quality, we can monetize that access.

Trevor Romeo
Trevor Romeo
Research Analyst at William Blair

Thanks, Gary. That's helpful. 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. I think this quarter, the new engagements were more like flattish. 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'd expect going forward? Is that kind of moderating or what would you see there?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Well, it's certainly been accelerated for sure over the last couple of years. I'll just tell you that trailing four months here, even so far this month, it's looking very good. Again, like on the last quarterly earnings call, 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 high end. Out of the 170 million working Americans, it's certainly with the outliers of achievement, the $10 million or $15 million that would be, quote, "In the C-suite or upper management." I can only tell you that the demographic trends are real. The last four months have continued on pace.

Trevor Romeo
Trevor Romeo
Research Analyst at William Blair

Okay. Thanks again. Maybe one more, if you don't mind. Kind of similar theme, but on the ProSearch and Interim side, I think a lot of the growth there seems to be driven by maybe mix shift to higher skills, higher salaries, like the interim bill rate being up $20 versus last year. I think the ProSearch kind of fee per placement is also growing nicely. 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, where are you kind of seeing the candidates move up in the skill set curve and how that's kind of helping you outperform the peer set there?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Well, I think the outperformance is, I would point to the ability to have a client-centric approach and drive deeper relationships with our clients. What we've found is that solution is very synergistic with the rest of the firm. That is number one. We just got into that solution five and a half years ago. Today, for example, in Interim, that's almost a $400 million annual solution where there's a market opportunity of $ billions and billions, and it's the same for RPO. Both of those are massive markets. Clearly over time here, I think we started, Bob, with the rate per hour in Interim was like 100 and-

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

It was close to $100, yeah.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Yeah. It's gone from 100 to 150. Right now, the principal areas that we are in are technology, finance and accounting, HR, and supply chain. You can imagine that we're just getting started here on this. We've definitely seen a pickup over the last three months or so, four months, around the Interim solution. Some of that, clearly, some of that's market, right? The temp penetration level was going down forever, 36, 37 months. You've seen that. That's stabilized. That's definitely helped. I think it's these other factors as well. Like I said, we're just getting started with this.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

Yeah, Trevor Romeo, this is Bob. The thing I would add to it is, it's just being part of our ecosystem. You heard Gary talk about the size of the Interim business. North of 10% of that comes from referrals across the organization, right? 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. The referred work across the system is now up to a little bit north of 29%, right? If you go back prior to the beginning of this year, we were kind of stuck at 25 for a number of quarters. We put the We Are Korn Ferry go-to-market strategy in place at the beginning of this year, and you've seen that ramp throughout the course of the year up to 29% now.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

I think some of what you're seeing in these businesses is just being part of our ecosystem and engagements and deeper client penetration result in more business referrals across.

Trevor Romeo
Trevor Romeo
Research Analyst at William Blair

Yeah, it all makes sense. 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
George Tong
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

A little bit deeper into the new business trends. ex-RPO 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 ex-RPO and what the implications are for revenue over the next year?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Yeah. It's a little thing called a war. The Middle East. It definitely has had an impact, in a big way, on the levels of new business. It's a little bit of a flywheel impact. Trailing four months, we've seen strong new business in Americas, but it's definitely impacted APAC, no question about it. It's obviously impacted EMEA and the Middle East. That's what I would point to.

George Tong
George Tong
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Got it. With respect to margins, EBITDA margins in the quarter were flat year-over-year. Can you talk about some of the puts and takes on margin performance?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Yeah. I'm glad you asked that, George, because I saw 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. 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
George Tong
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

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

Mark Marcon
Mark Marcon
Analyst at Baird

Hey, good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you are. Really nice results. Gary, can you talk a little bit about, just from a leadership perspective internally to Korn Ferry, what you're gonna do in terms of reporting structures? Are you gonna have a head of search, a head of talent and organizational, a head of workforce solutions, or are you gonna have a head of Americas and EMEA and APAC? How's that gonna work? How's the reporting structure go? How's it gonna end up optimizing the performance on a go-forward basis for you?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

First of all, we started this a little bit over a year ago, Mark, the starting point is mindset. We've been 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. You are gonna be left with a matrixed organization for sure. The truth is that we have to pivot more towards geographies. We were, I think, a little bit over-indexed on solutions. We do have a head of APAC and the Americas and EMEA. 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. The bottom up is on a regional basis.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

We have carefully over time here, over the last year, shifted mindset. Ultimately, say in another year where that ends up, to directly answer your question, I think that's premature. For sure, we've shifted the focus of the organization, including the 1,800 partners and principals that we have at the firm that are responsible for originating business. Every single day now, the leadership team looks at every piece of new business that's opened over a certain level. 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.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

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. Every single day that's been happening now for about 13 or 14 months. My starting point, rather than org structure, has been on mindset. Mindset of our leaders and mindset of the organization. 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 gonna find that 60%, 65% of those are only utilizing about one and a half of our solutions If you look at the logos there, the opportunity just comes screaming off the page.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

I think we have to continue to evolve this organization. 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. 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." That's really what we're striving for in a deeper penetration of that very rich client base.

Mark Marcon
Mark Marcon
Analyst at Baird

Totally makes sense. 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 Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

I think the reality is we had pretty broad-based growth across the firm, Mark. With the exception is George. The exception is the Middle East. I didn't finish my answer to George. Hopefully, what we've seen in every crisis is opportunity, we've also seen in every crisis there's pent-up demand. 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. There's no doubt that that's had an impact on the levels of new business, for sure. I would say, Mark, that it was pretty broad-based.

Mark Marcon
Mark Marcon
Analyst at Baird

Okay. That's great. I know it's really early, Gary, but are you seeing any signs of, at least in APAC and EMEA, in terms of some increased optimism and saying, "Okay, looks like things are finally getting back to normal," we should see a decent burst?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

We just had a bunch of colleagues together from all over, actually all over the world, about 700 of our partners and principals. There is definite hope. Can I say, so far this month, have we seen it? Not materially. I do think that calmer minds will prevail here. There's probably going to be some pent-up demand, for sure.

Mark Marcon
Mark Marcon
Analyst at Baird

That's great. Thanks, Gary.

Operator

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

Tobey Sommer
Tobey Sommer
Analyst at Truist

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 in place on the phone?

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

Hey, Tobey. It's Bob. Yeah. One of the things I've noticed, again, if you go back and you look at the program that we've had in place to drive that way back in, I think it was 2018 or 2019, it was 14%, and we put the program in place. Every year, we continued to open it up for more people, make it a little bit richer, and we saw success up to a point, right? We kind of got stuck at 25%, and we were there for whatever it was, four or five quarters in a row. To use Gary's phrase from one of his earlier responses, it really is about changing mindset now. What we're doing, literally, we get together, we get those emails every day. We get together every other Monday.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

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 that's every two weeks. 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've 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.

Tobey Sommer
Tobey Sommer
Analyst at Truist

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 and-

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Yeah.

Tobey Sommer
Tobey Sommer
Analyst at Truist

Whether you see it transforming at all?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Yeah, I do. I actually do. I think even there's a number of solutions that could actually transform, including search. It's kind of archaic 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. Could search be sold as a service? 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. I'm pretty convinced of the value that we bring. You have to align strategy with an organization, with people, with compensation, how you develop people. I just know out of all my years as CEO, it's about people, it's about talent.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Players win games, coaches lose games. We're challenging the team. I can't say that we have an answer today, but I would expect that to change quite a bit actually over the next three years. I wouldn't be a bit surprised by that.

Tobey Sommer
Tobey Sommer
Analyst at Truist

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 Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

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.

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

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.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

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. We don't sit there and charge like a law firm would by the hour. I don't want to give you the wrong impression. I do believe in terms of the spirit of your question around value, I think there's something there.

Tobey Sommer
Tobey Sommer
Analyst at Truist

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 and deliveries along a search process more efficiently, but customers just ask for more, want to see more candidates, et cetera. They're kind of neither experiencing margin expansion from efficiencies nor faster time to completion or price erosion. What's your experience in that realm?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

We have 17 work streams. Five are anchored around search. What we're concerned about there. Clearly, what the efforts are showing us is we can be way more efficient. No doubt about it. That's now been proven over the last year on these five work streams out of the 17. No doubt about it. What we're 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 protective of is we don't want that proprietary data to get outside. As we go down this path, for me, anybody can generate a name. It's not what they've done, it's who they are.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

When you're talking about the outliers of achievement here, I'm still going to put a very strong argument forward that it's around culture fit. 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. At the same time, we want to make sure that we protect our IP, particularly that we're operating in 70 countries, 100 countries around the world with different privacy laws. We are very careful about letting that out. We're in the trust business. 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?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Yes, we're absolutely doing it. I'm focused on the customer experience. We have a lot of things in motion there, but I'm telling you, I'm going to be 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. That is a big differentiator for us. Yes, we are definitely using it. We're using it in the learning and development solution in terms of coaching, using agents. 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 imbalance of labor.

Operator

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

Karan Singhania
Karan Singhania
Analyst at UBS

Hi, this is Karan Singhania for Josh. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask on the North America executive search business. It looks like margins in the business have been pretty strong. It was like 21% this quarter. Just wondering, how should we think about margins for the segments for this year?

Robert Rozek
Robert Rozek
CFO, EVP, and Chief Corporate Officer at Korn Ferry

I would say that the margin profile, again, I wouldn't focus necessarily on search in North America, as it's a pretty big company, and we got a lot of levers to pull. I would just keep you focused on the range that we've talked about from an overall Korn Ferry perspective in the 16%-18%. We guided to Q1, right, smack in the middle at 17%, and that's how we're managing the business. To Gary's point earlier, when you think about the mindset change, we can't look at clients and go to market one way and then manage internally a different way. As Gary said, we're one firm, we got five offerings, but we're managing the firm as one firm. I'd suggest that you just focus on the 16%-18%.

Karan Singhania
Karan Singhania
Analyst at UBS

Okay, got it. As my follow-up, how should we think about the capital allocation priorities for this year? Would you continue to lean more heavily towards buybacks and also on CapEx? Do you expect it to come back to a more normalized levels this year?

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

We've typically, over time, we've deployed a pretty balanced approach, systematic approach to capital deployment. Clearly in this last quarter, as we said we were going to do on the last call, and as Bob mentioned earlier, we did what we said. Clearly when you look at the firm over the last 10, 15 years, 20 years, 60% of our growth has been organic and 40% has been inorganic. The last investment that we made was in the Interim solution, which was an organization in the U.K. and Ireland, and it's been an absolute home run for us. That was almost two years ago. There's been periods of time where we've 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 Singhania
Karan Singhania
Analyst at UBS

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

There are no further questions, Mr. Burnison.

Gary Burnison
Gary Burnison
CEO at Korn Ferry

Okay, Sarah, thank you for hosting. Thank you, everybody, for joining us, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks.

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