ASGN Inc
For the period ended Dec 31, 2024. Filed Feb 24, 2025.
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FY2024 · Filed Feb 24, 2025
Contents
Item 1. Business
Overview and History
ASGN Incorporated ("ASGN," "we," or "us") is a leading provider of information technology (IT) services and solutions to the commercial and government sectors. We operate through two segments, Commercial and Federal Government, and across six industry verticals, which together promote balance, strength, and resiliency throughout economic cycles.
From a revenue and margin perspective, ASGN has grown through a combination of organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Over the last five years, we completed nine "tuck-in" acquisitions. Each of these acquisitions align with our strategy to expand our IT consulting services and solutions capabilities, offer higher-value technical solutions, and become a leading provider of these high-end services to the commercial and federal government markets.
From a client perspective, ASGN has grown by effectively understanding our clients’ IT needs and supporting their long-term, strategic IT roadmaps. We do so by providing our clients with qualified IT and creative marketing professionals who maintain a unique combination of skills, experience, and expertise to meet those needs. Our clients set rigorous requirements for talent, technological proficiency, and solutions capabilities, which have only increased as we’ve evolved our business to offer higher-end, higher-value IT consulting solutions. To meet these talent requirements, we leverage our deep talent pool that is carefully maintained in our extensive databases that have been expertly built over decades to quickly identify and pre-screen candidates, whether for a shorter-term assignment or longer-term consulting contract. This enables ASGN to differentiate itself in the marketplace by building tailored, just-in-time teams for our clients. We are responsible for recruiting, verifying credentials upon request, hiring, administering pay and benefits, compliance, and training, as applicable. As we support clients across a diverse set of industry verticals, no client, other than the U.S. federal government, represented more than 10 percent of consolidated revenues in 2024. Revenues from contracts directly with several U.S. federal government agencies in which our Federal Government Segment is a prime contractor combined were 24 percent of consolidated revenues in 2024.
From a business advancement perspective, ASGN invests in six core areas, including leadership, recruitment of in-demand skillsets, training and skill development, technology partnerships, internal efficiency, and data management capabilities including artificial intelligence ("AI") and cybersecurity tools, and client AI roadmaps.
ASGN was incorporated in 1992. Our principal office is located at 4400 Cox Road, Suite 110, Glen Allen, Virginia 23060, and our telephone number is (888) 482-8068.
Commercial Segment
Our Commercial Segment (70 percent of 2024 consolidated revenues) provides a broad spectrum of IT services and solutions to Fortune 1000 and large mid-market clients. Growth in this segment is being driven by digital transformation and innovation requirements, including, but not limited to, that of AI, workforce mobilization, and modern enterprise needs across five industry verticals: (i) Financial Services, (ii) Consumer and Industrial, (iii) Technology, Media, and Telecom ("TMT"), (iv) Healthcare, and (v) Business and Government Services.
Our robust commercial talent pool, which includes onshore, nearshore, and offshore professionals, can be deployed in short duration, solution-specific engagements, or on long-term consultative roles. Our roots in IT staffing offer a strong account base and foothold in our clients’ businesses, while our consulting offerings enable us to offer higher-end, high value solutions. Our subject matter experts deliver solutions that are customer focused and value driven across a continuum of cloud, data and analytics, cyber/information security, artificial intelligence/machine learning ("AI/ML"), including generative AI (“GenAI”), and digital transformation to support our clients’ modern enterprise and digital needs. Our clients are looking to meet their business challenges at greater speed and with more accuracy and precision. We are therefore harnessing technologies, such as Microsoft’s Copilot, Azure OpenAI, ServiceNow and Salesforce to increase the efficiency of our own teams, while at the same time developing AI roadmaps for our clients that leverage new generative technologies.
Corporate support activities for this segment are primarily based in Richmond, Virginia. We also have a network of 81 branch offices across the United States, and four branch offices across Canada and Europe. In addition, we have two near-shore delivery centers in Mexico, and we maintain a small delivery center in India.
Consulting— Our business focus and growth strategy of today lies in providing our clients with higher value IT consulting services. A byproduct of our decades-long, trusted client relationships over the years, our customers have engaged us in longer-term consulting contracts. Consulting contracts leverage the same talent pool as our assignment work but offer higher margin opportunities and increased revenue visibility. The average duration of commercial consulting projects is one year.
Assignment — Our business heritage is in providing our clients with experienced IT and creative digital marketing billable professionals for temporary assignments and project engagements. Our billable professionals have knowledge and experience in specialized technical and creative digital marketing services that make them qualified to fill a given assignment or project. Assignment contracts may vary in length but typically range between three and six months in duration.
Federal Government Segment
Our Federal Government Segment (30 percent of 2024 consolidated revenues), our sixth industry vertical, delivers advanced solutions in cloud and enterprise IT, cybersecurity, AI/ML, application, and digital transformation to some of the world's leading agencies in both the public and private sectors. These solutions capabilities are geared towards IT modernization of the federal government as well as promote efficiency for our federal customer base. Our team of skilled experts tackles highly complex challenges for customers in the U.S. defense and intelligence agencies along with key federal civilian agencies, namely the Department of Homeland Security. We maintain relationships with leading cloud, cybersecurity, and AI/ML providers and hold specialized certifications in these technologies. We have over 1,000 combined certifications, accreditations, and awards in AI/ML alone, and continue to invest in our traditional and generative AI skillsets through our Data and AI Center of Excellence, our hub for training and innovation that empowers federal agencies to harness the full potential of AI technology.
The segment provides services under time-and-materials, cost reimbursable, and firm-fixed-price contracts. Contracts range from approximately three to five years in length, providing longer-term revenue visibility and countercyclical support throughout market cycles. We have contract backlog of $3.1 billion as of December 31, 2024, which represents the estimated amount of future revenues to be recognized under awarded contracts including task orders and options.
Corporate support activities for this segment are based in Fairfax, Virginia, and there are 16 branch offices located across the United States.
Industry and Market Dynamics
ASGN is a leading provider of IT services and solutions to the commercial and government sectors. ASGN helps leading corporate enterprises and government organizations develop, implement, and operate critical IT and business solutions through its integrated offering of IT consulting and professional staffing. Our total addressable market is approximately $580 billion, which includes $410 billion in commercial IT consulting, $121 billion in government IT consulting, and $49 billion in professional staffing. Our total addressable market has significantly expanded as clients have actively pulled us into higher-value consulting work for the commercial and government end markets.
Our business model continues to evolve in line with client needs and expectations to focus on higher-end, high value IT consulting services and solutions capabilities that provide enhanced margin opportunities in key areas of technological advancement such as digital transformation, data analytics, AI/ML, process automation, and information security. By employing a unique go-to-market strategy that leverages a single talent pool for both shorter-term assignments and long-term consulting contracts, our clients benefit from cost structure advantages, flexibility to address fluctuating demand in business, and access to greater expertise. We intend to continue to grow our diverse client base by focusing on large, stable enterprises that are quick adopters of new technologies. We will invest in our organic growth while simultaneously look to execute acquisitions of IT consulting companies that provide us with new solution capabilities, industry expertise, or government contract awards.
Candidates
We recruit candidates with backgrounds in IT and creative digital marketing who seek contract or permanent work opportunities. When we place these candidates on projects with clients, they become our employees. Many of these professionals, and those we place via subcontractors, are paid hourly wage or contract rates based on their specific skills. We pay the related costs of employment, including social security taxes, federal and state unemployment taxes, workers’ compensation insurance, and other similar costs for our employees. After achieving minimum service periods and/or hours worked, our professionals are offered access to medical and other voluntary benefit programs (e.g., dental, vision, disability) and the right to participate in our 401(k) retirement savings plan. Each professional’s employment relationship with us is terminable at will. In 2024, we employed approximately 21,300 billable professionals on a full-time-equivalent basis.
Strategy
ASGN's strategy is to be a leading provider of IT services and professional solutions to the commercial and federal government sectors. We are focused on high-value, scalable IT work for large commercial enterprise accounts and federal government customers. We have built a sizable consulting platform, with 58 percent of our 2024 consolidated revenues in a combination of commercial and federal government IT consulting work. We have grown our IT consulting revenues both organically and through acquisitions, and our goal is to continue this top line growth while also enhancing our margins. To achieve this goal, our acquisition strategy specifically focuses on IT consulting companies that add new services, contracts, and technical capabilities that support our commercial and federal government customer needs and are in high demand by our customer base.
Our strategic innovation efforts and technology investments focus on putting the best productivity tools in the hands of our recruiters, our candidates, and our clients, so that it is seamless for clients and billable professionals to work with ASGN. We position our teams to stay at the forefront of emerging trends in digitization and candidate sourcing, including GenAI technologies that assist teams in creating robust models around candidate search and match, to best position our businesses and continuously improve how we serve clients and candidates.
Competition
We compete with other large publicly-held and privately-owned providers of human capital in the IT consulting and professional services segments on a local, regional, national, and international basis across the commercial and government end markets. With an industry focus that is supported by our solutions, our unique deployment model allows us to provide the right services at the right time. Our experienced engagement leaders and methodologies help our clients solve critical problems and create incremental value for their organizations.
From a talent perspective, we offer more opportunities for the billable professional and are viewed as a better partner for their career objectives. In addition, competitive factors that attract qualified candidates include salaries and benefits; availability and variety of opportunities; quality, duration and location of assignments; and responsiveness to requests for placement. Many people seeking contract employment through us may also be pursuing employment through other means. Therefore, the speed at which we assign prospective professionals, and the availability of attractive and appropriate projects, are important factors in our ability to fill open positions.
From a client perspective, the principal competitive factors in obtaining and retaining clients are properly assessing the clients’ specific job and project requirements, the appropriateness of the professionals assigned to the client, the price of services, and monitoring our clients’ satisfaction. Although we believe we compete favorably with respect to these factors and maintain an intimacy and institutional knowledge with our clients that enables us to successfully compete in the market, we expect competition to continue to increase particularly as we grow our IT consulting footprint. Nevertheless, our larger total addressable market in IT consulting offers us a greater revenue and margin opportunity. In addition, unlike our competitors in the traditional consulting space, for the majority of our IT consulting business we do not rely upon a bench to support us; rather, we use our extensive databases containing our deep labor pool of highly-skilled technical talent to provide and build teams that offer our clients a full suite of services tailored to their individual needs. This sophisticated project delivery model offers us a cost advantage over the competition that has previously enabled us to grow above industry averages.
Human Capital
Our workforce is and will always be the core of our business. Our diverse talent pool strengthens our position as a leading IT consulting and professional services firm, and we aim to recruit exceptional leaders in their respective areas of expertise that support ASGN’s high-performance, innovative, and collaborative culture. In 2024, we employed approximately 3,200 internal employees, including sales directors, account managers, recruiters, and corporate office employees. We support our internal employees in a number of ways including, but not limited to, the following initiatives:
Engagement and Professional Development – Our team is the driving force behind our success, and continuing to support career development and advancement across our Company remains one of ASGN’s top organizational priorities. We prioritize career growth through ongoing education, professional development, and comprehensive training. To supplement in-person and virtual training, ASGN maintains a mentorship program where mentors are provided opportunities to enhance their management and communication skills, while mentees are given the ability to foster relationships with experienced professionals who can support their career development.
Performance Management & Retention – With regards to career development, we encourage our employees to seek opportunities that align with their long-term career goals. Communicating career interests and employee development is therefore at the heart of our performance management process. This is a collaborative process that focuses on developing clear goals at the start of each calendar or employment year and providing constructive feedback and support throughout the year to position our employees for success. Furthermore, to guide our efforts on a go-forward basis and drive long-term employee retention, we conduct annual employee engagement surveys. In 2024, we achieved an 85 percent overall participation rate in our employee engagement survey.
Health, Safety, and Well-being – Core to employee retention, we also remain focused on the health and well-being of each of our employees and consultants. Our employees enjoy competitive compensation and benefits packages, which include medical, dental, and vision plans; flexible spending accounts; and savings plans. Guided by our Company-wide Employee Wellness and Workplace Health and Safety policies, we support our employees' emotional well-being and physical health with wellness programming and personal growth workshops.
For more detailed information on our workforce programs and initiatives, please visit the Sustainability section of our website: ASGN.com/Sustainability. Nothing on our website shall be deemed incorporated by reference into this 2024 10-K.
Government Regulation
We take reasonable steps to ensure that our billable professionals possess all current licenses and certifications required for each placement. We provide workers’ compensation insurance, unemployment insurance, and professional liability insurance for our employees. For a further discussion of government regulation associated with our business, see Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors.
Available Information and Access to Reports
We electronically file our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, Proxy Statements, and all amendments to those reports and statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). The SEC maintains an internet sitesec.gov that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC. You may also read and copy any of our reports that are filed with the SEC by visiting:
Our website, asgn.com; or
By contacting our Investor Relations Department at info@asgn.com.
Our reports are available through any of the foregoing means and are available free of charge on our website as soon as practicable after such material is electronically filed with or furnished to the SEC. Also available on our website are copies of our Code of Ethics for the Principal Executive Officer and Senior Financial Officers, Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, Corporate Governance Guidelines, and the charters for the committees of our Board. We intend to disclose any amendment to, or waiver from, a provision of our Code of Ethics for our Principal Executive Officer and Senior Financial Officers on our website promptly after the amendment or waiver has been granted.
The text of this filing, as the company filed it with the SEC, without its images or exhibits. This is not investment advice.