John B. Gibson
Thanks, Bob. Hello, everyone. I will cover this quarter's operational highlights, and Bob will come back and discuss our financial results and outlook, and then we will open it up for your questions. We delivered a strong quarter with revenue up 20% and adjusted operating income up 22% year over year, driven by effective execution and progress advancing our strategic priorities, most notably the Paycor integration and acceleration of our transformational AI initiatives. In this very dynamic environment, financial strength is important, and our free cash flow generation continues to be robust, as Bob will highlight later. Amid a dynamic macro backdrop, our clients’ workforce levels remained stable, supported by our solutions that help manage costs and source talent in a tight labor market. In a highly regulated industry, our compliance depth, advisory expertise, and award-winning platforms provide a clear competitive advantage in navigating a constantly changing and complex regulatory environment. As we embed AI into our expert-enabled technology, we are strengthening that advantage by leveraging our vast data to scale our expertise, enhance productivity, and elevate client outcomes. As you all know, we operate in HR, benefits, and payroll, some of the most mission-critical aspects of a business. And we are honored that 800,000 clients rely on us for trusted support and advice. For many of our clients, we effectively serve as their HR department, managing a foundational part of their business. Their people. Errors paying employees, withholding taxes, and administrating benefits carry significant regulatory and reputational risk, driving demand for trusted compliance solutions where accuracy matters most. Demand for our comprehensive advisory and benefit solutions remains strong, differentiating us from the tech-only providers. Clients are increasingly turning to our HR professionals for strategic advisory expertise and assistance over routine transactional support. Robust revenue growth in retirement, ASO, and PEO highlights the durability of our model and reinforces our expectations of a long secular growth runway for these businesses. Our ASO and PEO worksite employee growth continues to outpace the industry, reflecting our value in navigating regulatory complexity and ensuring compliance, often for clients with no or, as I said, limited HR support. Our PEO business remains strong with high-single-digit worksite employee growth, driven by robust demand and record retention rates. Our PEO solution empowers small businesses to offer competitive benefit packages on par with Fortune 500 companies, aiding talent attraction and retention in a tight labor market. January enrollment in our at-risk 40 MPP medical plan went well and in line with our expectations, helping drive sequential revenue growth. We received positive feedback on the new AI-driven benefits intelligence we embedded in the enrollment workflow this year. It leverages employee-specific data to recommend plan choices and streamline benefits selection. We continue extending our SMB benefit leadership with Paychex Perks, our award-winning digital marketplace offering affordable, transferable benefits to our clients’ employees. Perks is a compelling growth opportunity that empowers our clients to offer meaningful benefits with no added cost to the employer or administrative burden. In the first 18 months, Perks has grown to over 25 benefit offerings, with purchases from nearly 350,000 unique employees, creating a direct end-user relationship with portable benefits that they can keep if they change employers. By bringing enterprise-level benefits down market, we are enabling our clients to better compete for talent and addressing a historically underserved market. The Paycor integration continues to progress well. We remain on track to exceed our fiscal 2026 synergy targets we discussed last quarter. Leading indicators such as bookings and broker referrals have reaccelerated to pre-acquisition levels, and we are adding sales headcount to capture the demand we see. We are gaining momentum cross-selling Paychex, Inc. ASO, PEO, and Retirement Solutions to Paycor's clients, and we continue to win larger-than-expected ASO deals and broker-referred PEO opportunities. This momentum reflects the hard work and alignment of our teams and positions us well going into fiscal year 2027. Our Paychex Flex and Paycor platforms were recognized as industry-leading HCM solutions with two 2026 Lighthouse Tech Awards. This achievement underscores our commitment to empowering businesses with modern AI-powered solutions that simplify HR processes and drive business outcomes. Integral to our growth strategy, we continue to accelerate embedding AI into our workflows. This amplifies our expertise with human-in-the-loop oversight and strong governance. We now have over 500 AI-powered capabilities and agents that can drive higher productivity and smarter decisions and outcomes. Our generative AI-powered employment law and compliance platform processed tens of thousands of inquiries this quarter, helping clients and Paychex, Inc. HR experts navigate complex and always-changing wage and employment law. Internally, we are expanding AI use cases to enhance the client experience and sales effectiveness. Following successful pilots last quarter, we are scaling the use of our voice and email agents for payroll processing, enabling service teams to focus on proactive higher-value advisory support. We also expanded our agentic AI sales and service tools to the entire sales team with a goal to drive revenue growth and efficiency. AI agents orchestrated real-time information across service and product systems, equipping thousands of service personnel to support clients more effectively. This agent swarm architecture really removes prior friction and serves as a foundational capability to future agentic developments. Our strategic AI investments are bolstering our leadership in HCM innovation. We are moving from insight and efficiency tools to proactive agents that leverage our vast and growing dataset to complete work to drive business success. Payroll and HR, as we know, are mission critical and highly regulated functions where accuracy and compliance matter more than automation alone. We believe Paychex, Inc.'s proprietary payroll data, regulatory expertise, and advisory relationships create a sustainable advantage that will enable us to responsibly embed AI into our solutions while maintaining a durable competitive moat. In our business, trust is critical. It is not just what you do, but how you do it that matters to prospects, clients, partners, employees, and key stakeholders. That is why I am proud that Paychex, Inc. was once again named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere for the eighteenth time. This rare achievement highlights our unwavering commitment to ethical operations and corporate responsibility. Supporting communities is also integral to our identity, and I am pleased that Paychex, Inc. was recognized as a leading corporate partner by United Way Worldwide, reflecting our commitment to making a positive impact where we live and work. Lastly, I would like to thank our team for the exceptional hard work during this busy year-end season and through a very, very challenging year of integration. The work that they have done to support our clients to come together is truly exceptional and I think really is positioning us well as we move into fiscal year 2027. I will now turn the call over to Bob to discuss our financial results and outlook.