Hackett Group, Inc.: Form 10-K for the period ended Dec 27, 2024

GENERAL

In this Annual Report on Form 10-K, unless the context otherwise requires, “The Hackett Group,” “Hackett,” the “Company,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to The Hackett Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries and predecessors. We were originally incorporated on April 23, 1997.

Hackett (NASDAQ: HCKT) is a global IP platform-based Generative Artificial Intelligence ("Gen AI") strategic consulting and executive advisory digital transformation firm. The Hackett Group provides dedicated expertise in Gen AI enabled enterprise transformation services across front, mid and back office areas, including its highly recognized Oracle, SAP, OneStream and Coupa implementation offerings.

In early 2024, we launched our AI assessment platform, AI XPLR which helps clients identify, evaluate and design Gen AI enablement opportunities. Using AI XPLR, our experienced professionals guide organizations to harness the power of Gen AI solutions designed to digitally transform their operations to achieve quantifiable, breakthrough results, allowing us to be key architects of our clients' Gen AI journey.

We believe Gen AI will fundamentally change the way companies operate as well as the way consulting services are sold and delivered. We believe the Gen AI platform capabilities we have developed in AI XPLR which were expanded with ZBrain, which we acquired as part of the LeewayHertz acquisition, is highly differentiating and we expect will enable us to effectively compete in this emerging and important space.

The Hackett Group has completed over 27,500 benchmarking and performance studies with major organizations. These studies are executed utilizing our Quantum Leap platform which drives our Digital Transformation Platform (“DTP” or “Hackett DTP”). This includes the firm's benchmarking metrics, best practices repository, and best practice configuration and process flow accelerators, which enables our clients and partners to achieve digital world-class performance. We consider this, along with our recent innovations, our core Hackett Intellectual Property ("IP") which allows us to identify, design and evaluate transformation opportunities to be proprietary and key components of our Hackett solutioning IP.

Our transformation expertise is grounded in best practices insights from benchmarking the world’s leading businesses – including 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 90% of the Fortune 100, 70% of the DAX 40 and 51% of the FTSE 100, which inform and are delivered by our platforms.

The rapid development and move to cloud applications and infrastructure along with improving analytics, mobile functionality and enhanced user experience continues to dramatically influence the way businesses compete and deliver their services. This is redefining entire industries at an accelerated pace, forcing organizations to fundamentally change and adopt new capabilities in order to remain competitive. Traditional sequential and linear-based business models are changing to fully networked and dynamic automated workflows and events with enhanced analytics. The recent introduction of foundational models, such as Chat GPT, leverage fully integrated benefits of machine learning, deep learning neural networks further supported by natural language processing and other technologies supporting audio, video, text and motion technologies are now expected to redefine the most recent Digital World Class® performance standards.

Although demand for digital transformation remains strong in traditional areas, we expect it to be redefined by the rapid emergence of Gen AI technologies. As we head into 2025, we expect IT budgets to increase with significant attention and allocations to Gen AI solutions and the related opportunities and threats it brings. While in 2024, Gen AI budgets were primarily focused in developing awareness in AI, in 2025 we expect to see increasing amounts in IT budgets specifically allocated to Gen AI initiatives in high feasibility and impact areas. We also expect to see increasing investment in data quality and value initiatives which are critical to any Gen AI strategy.

We expect the potential of AI will define an entirely new level of Gen AI enabled world class performance standards, driving software and service providers to extend the value of their existing offerings. We believe this will result in unprecedented innovations which organizations will have to consider. This shift is consistent with the aggressive pivot we made in early 2024 to Gen AI enabled transformations which we believe creates a significant opportunity for our organization. This environment is very attractive to our sector since we believe our clients will increasingly require organizational and technology market intelligence and implementation insight on how to leverage emerging Gen AI technologies to help them digitize their businesses which requires organizational changes and significant investment to achieve operational breakthrough performance to remain competitive.

STRATEGY

We have repositioned our offerings to the emerging digital transformation opportunities driven by Gen AI, and we launched our AI XPLR version 2 offering and are integrating our benchmarking and best practices IP, as well as, our vast and increasing Hackett AI simulated Use Case Repository. These capabilities have allowed us to become key architects, advisors and, most recently, builders of our clients' Gen AI journey. We see this as an opportunity for our organization to provide an objective business perspective to what started as primarily a technology innovation story.

The following are the keys to our strategy:

• Launched AI XPLR - Our AI assessment platform allows us to measure and assess the impact of Gen AI technologies. We use our best practice process flows and benchmark database to inform our Gen AI assisted platform to simulate industry specific AI solutions to guide our detailed quantifiable assessment of the potential business benefits of Gen AI technologies, as well as an organization's readiness requirements. Further, we use our vendor market intelligence research to assist with the key selection considerations of Gen AI solution providers. This detailed business and technology perspective helps us guide our clients through the significant opportunities and critical considerations that they will have to evaluate and understand. We believe that this comprehensive perspective fully supported by our IP and our AI XPLR platform enables us to become valuable architects, advisors and consultants of our clients’ Gen AI journeys. We are also utilizing the AI XPLR platform as the vehicle to integrate the Gen AI impact and all Hackett IP across our offerings.
• Acquired LeewayHertz Technologies - A highly recognized Gen AI consulting and implementation firm focused on the design and deployment of AI agents and agentic enterprise workflows. Given the strategic access and platform expanding capabilities of AI XPLR, it was natural for us to extend our AI implementation capabilities to be able to fully develop and implement the Gen AI use cases we were identifying. The acquisition also included a sophisticated a Gen AI orchestration solution, ZBrain, which we agreed to contribute into a to be created joint venture, with the LeewayHertz founder (the "JV"). The JV, which will be named ZBrain, Inc., will bring together the AI XPLR and ZBrain software platforms and will focus on licensing the platforms and creating the first of its kind Gen AI ideation through implementation software as a service offering. We believe this JV creates an entirely new value-creation opportunity for our shareholders what could result from the growth of annual recurring revenues. It may also provide the JV with the opportunity to raise capital and achieve stand-alone valuations due to its unique Gen AI solutioning software focus.
• New Licensable Platform Innovations – We now see potential Gen AI platform opportunities from innovations envisioned to facilitate and accelerate the delivery of our Oracle, OneStream, SAP and Coupa technology implementation services. Our AIxelerator and Ask Hackett AI solutions may have greater value as licensable software as a service platform to external users. Ask Hackett AI is now intended to be a seed for the development and introduction of our own Small Language Model or SLM, which we call our Hackett Solutioning Language Model.
• Gen AI Executive Advisory and Market Intelligence Programs - We have expanded our Market Intelligence programs by integrating proprietary Gen AI solutioning content and added dedicated sales expertise in an effort to grow high margin annualized recurring revenues. IP based relationships have historically provided over 40% of Hackett’s business transformation and technology consulting revenue entry points.
• Transitioning IPaaS to AI XPLR Licensing – We are now offering the opportunity to licence AI XPLR to attract new alliance partners that can leverage our unique AI XPLR capabilities to position their downstream technology offerings.
• Quantum Leap® (“QL”) – Our next generation benchmarking and continuous improvement software as a service solution. This market-leading benchmark solution allows us to improve the client experience by delivering twice the insight and reducing the client effort by half, thus redefining our benchmarking leadership. It covers over 100 enterprise process areas, across 20 industry groups on an end-to-end, functional or individual process basis.
• Hackett DTP – We have digitized our IP and changed the way we share and deliver our IP with our clients across our benchmarking, executive advisory, IPaaS, market intelligence, business transformation and cloud enterprise application solutions. Hackett DTP accelerates the speed to value realization by helping organizations achieve their performance targets through a combination of benchmark metrics, best practices and software configuration and process flow accelerators delivered in a fully automated platform.
• Hackett Connect – Launched in October of 2023, is our Executive Advisory and Market Intelligence membership platform which allows our clients to avail themselves of our expert advisors, syndicated research, benchmarking and best practices IP. It also automates access to our inquiry support, webcasts, briefings and events.
• Expanded Cloud Capabilities - We expanded our Oracle Cloud applications addressable market from Enterprise Performance Management (“EPM”) to include Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) and the entire Oracle Cloud

application suite. We have also expanded our alliance partners to include Coupa and Ariba in Procurement, as well as OneStream in EPM and Corporate Performance Management (“CPM”). In regard to SAP, we were an early provider of S/4 HANA which allowed us to quickly transition our implementation skills and benefit from the SAP migration to the Cloud. We are now evaluating and will soon be able to provide the extended agentic AI capabilities these providers are expected to introduce throughout 2025.

• The Hackett Institute and Certified Global Business Services (“CGBS”) Program – We moved our training content to a state-of-the-art learning management platform. We have started to evaluate how to incorporate our Gen AI solutioning content from our proposed Hackett SLM to new training programs.

We expect AI XPLR along with the LeewayHertz acquisition and the rapidly emerging Gen AI services, to be the key drivers for our growth along with the historical leverage of our “wedge” or IP centric recurring revenue Executive Advisory and IPaaS offerings.

Our QL, DTP, and Hackett Connect platforms resulted in a new way to share and leverage our IP across our offerings. This required us to digitize our intellectual capital and the way we share it with our clients across our benchmarking, executive research advisory, business transformation and Cloud Enterprise application implementation solutions. Our ability to fully digitize our IP and align proven technology and organizational solutions to help clients drive transformational change allows us to highly differentiate our offerings. It also allows us to engage and support clients more efficiently, remotely, and where appropriate, continuously.

Hackett uses its proprietary benchmarking enterprise performance metrics and best practices repository intellectual capital to help clients accelerate the value realization from technology investments. Our benchmark offerings allow our clients to empirically quantify their performance improvement opportunity at an actionable level. It also provides us visibility into how leading global companies deploy technology or organizational strategies to optimize their performance. This insight results in a proprietary Best Practices Repository, as well as, best practice software configurations, process flows and organizational strategies. Utilizing the benchmarking metrics and repository of best practices, combined with the global strategy and implementation insight of our transformation and technology associates, Hackett has also created a series of organizational and technology accelerators that allow our clients to effect proven sustainable performance improvements. These offerings are supported by our QL, DTP and Hackett Connect platforms.

Our Hackett DTP leverages our inventory of Hackett-Certified best practices, observed through benchmark and other business transformation engagements, which correlate best practices with superior performance levels. We utilize Capability Maturity Models to better understand our clients’ capabilities and organizational maturity so that we can determine the level of performance that they can realistically pursue. In addition, we utilize Hackett’s intellectual capital in the form of best practice process flows and software configuration guides to integrate Hackett’s empirically proven best practices directly into business processes and workflows that are enabled by enterprise software applications. The repository of best practice processes and software configuration guides now reside in the new releases of our DTP. This allows us to utilize our IP on client engagements to ensure that best practices are identified and implemented, whenever possible. This coordinated approach addresses people, processes, information, and technology, all within the framework of our Hackett-Certified best practices.

Because our solutions are based on Hackett-Certified best practices, we believe that clients gain significant advantages. Clients can have confidence that their solutions are based on strategies from the world’s leading companies. More importantly, Hackett’s solutions deliver enhanced efficiency, improved effectiveness, reduced implementation risk and accelerated and optimized value realization.

Leveraging our AI XPLR, QL, Hackett DTP and Hackett Connect platforms, our engagements often begin with an assessment of a client’s performance, which is normally gained through benchmarking key processes and comparing the results to world-class levels and industry standards captured in the Hackett performance metrics database. We then help clients prioritize and select the appropriate best practices to implement through a coordinated workflow automation and organizational design improvement strategy. Without a coordinated strategy that addresses the seven key business components which include organization and governance, process design, process sourcing, service placement, information, enabling technology, skills and talent, we believe companies risk losing a significant portion of business case benefits with their investments. We have designed detailed best practice process flows based on Hackett’s deep knowledge of world-class business performance. This enables clients to streamline and automate key processes and generate performance improvements quickly and efficiently at both the functional and enterprise levels.

Similarly, we integrate Hackett-Certified, proven and emerging best practices directly into technology solutions. We believe it is imperative that companies simplify and automate workflows and processes to meet best practice standards before new technology implementations and upgrades are completed. The automation of inefficient processes only serves to continue to drive up costs, cycle times and error rates. We have completed detailed fit-gap analyses in most functional areas of major business application packages including Oracle, SAP and other leading enterprise applications to determine their ability to support best practices. Application-specific tools, implementation guides and process flows allow us to optimize the configuration of enterprise software applications. Hackett DTP enables the foundation for improved performance.

We believe the combination of market intelligence, optimized processes and agentic workflows, best practice-based business applications and enhanced business analytics environments allows our clients to achieve and sustain significant business performance improvement. The specific client circumstances normally dictate how they engage us. Our goal is to be responsive to client needs, and to establish a continuous and trusted relationship. We have developed a series of offerings that allow us to efficiently help our clients without regard to where they are in their respective performance improvement lifecycle.

Correspondingly, we remain focused on executing the following strategies:

• Expanding our IP and brand market permission to our offerings. We believe that our long-term growth prospects depend on our ability to extend our unique objective and actionable value realization market permission to help our clients and strategic partners leverage our IP and proprietary platforms to define and enable our clients to achieve Digital World Class performance. Our new platforms AI XPLR and Hackett Connect allow us to deliver objective and actionable insight in new and emerging areas, such as Gen AI, and expertise in a new efficient and powerful way.
• Continue to position and grow Hackett as an IP-centric strategic advisory organization. We believe that the Hackett brand is widely recognized for its benchmarking metrics and best practice strategies. By building a series of highly complementary market intelligence and implementation offerings that allow our clients access to our IP, which is based on our performance metrics, best practice process and technology value realization insight, we are able to build trusted strategic relationships with our clients. Depending upon where our clients are in their assessment or implementation of performance improvement initiatives, we provide them with a combination of actionable offerings that support their efforts.

We believe that clients that leverage our IP are more likely to allow us to serve them more broadly. IP-based services enhance our opportunities to serve clients remotely, continuously and more profitably. Our goal is to expand and accelerate the growth of our IPaaS, executive advisory and market intelligence offerings to establish strategic relationships with our clients directly or through strategic alliances and syndicated channels and to further use that entry point to introduce our business transformation and technology consulting capabilities.

The launch of AI XPLR and the acquisition of LeewayHertz and ZBrain expand and attract new clients and alliance partners that can leverage our unique expertise, benchmarking and best practices, software configuration and process flow IP to help them differentiate and sell their software or services solutions.

If our clients need access to our IP and advisors to help them either assess or execute transformation initiatives on their own, they can avail themselves of our Executive Advisory and Market Intelligence Programs or our new IP Platform offerings. The key is for our clients to know that we can support them strategically by leveraging our unique IP and insights so that we are able to build a strategic relationship which is appropriate for them. We also believe that our clients that value our IP will turn to us for other services when the need arises, allowing us over time to ascribe a larger amount of our total revenue to our existing client base, which will also improve the predictability of our results. We continue to explore ways to leverage our IP through new external strategic partners and channels.

• Introduce New licensable IP Platform Offerings. We are now seeing new opportunities through new strategic alliances and channels to use our IP, research and brand to help others sell and deliver their offerings. Our recently launched AI XPLR platform is an excellent example of this strategy. We have signed several multi-year relationships and continue to pursue and launch pilots with major software and services providers.
• Continue to expand our QL/DTP Content and Technology. DTP incorporates Hackett's intellectual capital into our implementation tools and techniques. For our clients, the end results are tangible cost, performance gains and improved returns on their organizational and technology investments. Many clients attribute their decision to employ us to our IP and accelerators. Our objective is to help our clients make smarter business process and software configuration decisions as a result of our methods and knowledge. We are continuously updating our content and tools through benchmarking, enterprise transformation and research activities. Additional updates are also driven by new software releases that drive innovation in business process automation. We continue to invest in the digitization and integration of our various metrics, best practices and best practice acceleration tools into our QL and DTP platforms.
• Recruit and develop talent. As we continue to grow and realize the potential of our business model, it is important to attract, retain, develop and motivate associates. We continue to invest in associate development programs that are specifically targeted to improve our go-to-market and delivery execution.
• Leverage our offshore capabilities. Leveraging an offshore resource capability to support the delivery of our offerings has been a key strategy for our organization. Our facilities in Hyderabad, India and Montevideo, Uruguay allow us to increase operational efficiencies and build targeted key capabilities that can appropriately support the delivery of our offerings and internal functional teams. We continue to see our offshore capabilities increase as a percentage of our total delivery resources. This increase has resulted in improved margins and competitiveness.
• Seek out strategic acquisitions. We will continue to pursue strategic acquisitions that strengthen our ability to compete and expand our IP. We believe that our unique Hackett access and our QL/DTP approach, coupled with our strong balance sheet and infrastructure, can be utilized to support a larger organization. We plan to pursue acquisitions that are accretive or have strong growth prospects, and most importantly, have strong synergies with our best practice intellectual capital leverage and focus.

COMPETITION

The strategic consulting, executive advisory, business transformation and technology consulting marketplace continues to be extremely competitive. The marketplace will remain competitive as companies continue to look for ways to improve their organizational effectiveness. Our competitors include leading research advisories, international accounting firms; international, national and regional strategic consulting and systems implementation firms; and the IT services divisions of application software firms. Mergers and acquisitions throughout our industry have resulted in higher levels of competition. We believe that the principal competitive factors in the industries in which we compete include: skills and capabilities of people, innovative services and product offerings, perceived ability to add value, reputation and client references, price, scope of services, service delivery approaches, technical and industry expertise, quality of services and solutions, ability to deliver results on a timely basis, availability of appropriate resources, and global reach and scale. We acknowledge that many of our competitors are larger, however, we believe very few, if any, of our competitors have proprietary intellectual capital similar to the benchmarking-based performance metrics QL delivers and the insight within the Hackett DTP that supports our Transformational Benchmark, Best Practices Advisory and Business Transformation and Technology offerings.

Despite our size relative to our competitor group, we believe our competitive position is distinct. With Hackett’s best practice intellectual capital and our AI XPLR, QL and DTP platforms, we believe we can empirically and digitally assist our clients. Our ability to apply best practices and benchmarking metrics to client operations via proven techniques is at the core of our competitive standing.

Similarly, we believe that Hackett is a definitive source for best practice performance metrics and strategies. Hackett has conducted over 27,500 benchmark and performance studies over 30 years at over 9,000 clients, generating proprietary data sets spanning multiple performance metrics and correlating best practices with superior performance. The combination of Hackett benchmark data, along with deep expertise and knowledge in evaluating, designing and implementing business transformation strategies leveraging our proprietary Best Practices Repository and other accelerators within DTP, delivers a powerful and distinct value proposition to our clients.

Our culture of client collaboration leverages the power of our cross-functional and service line teams to increase revenue and strengthen relationships. We believe that this culture, along with terrific talent and with our intellectual capital-centric approach, gives us a distinct competitive advantage.

OUR OFFERINGS

We offer a comprehensive range of services, including IPaaS, executive advisory and market intelligence programs, benchmarking, business transformation and technology consulting services. With strategic and functional knowledge in finance, human resources, information technology, procurement, supply chain management, corporate services, customer service, and sales and marketing, our expertise extends across the enterprise. We have completed successful engagements in a variety of industries, including automotive, consumer goods, financial services, technology, life sciences, manufacturing, media and entertainment, retail, telecommunications, transportation and utilities.

GLOBAL STRATEGY & BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION SEGMENT ("GLOBAL S&BT" SEGMENT)

• Gen AI Consulting, Executive Advisory, IPaaS and Market Intelligence Programs

Our Executive Advisory, IPaaS and Market Intelligence programs provide on-demand access to world-class performance metrics, peer-learning opportunities and best practice implementation advice including the rapidly emerging Gen AI use cases and related content from our AI XPLR platform. The scope of Hackett’s Advisory programs is defined by business function (Executive Advisory), end-to-end process coverage (Process Advisory) and Software and Services Intelligence (Market Intelligence). Our programs include a mix of the following deliverables:

• Hackett Connect: Online, searchable repository of best practices, performance metrics, conference presentations and associated research available to Executive Advisory, IPaaS and Market Intelligence Program Executives and their respective teams.
• Best Practice Accelerators: Dedicated web-based access to best practices, customized software configuration tools, best practice process flows used to support the sale, configuration and organizational implementation and post implementation support efforts of partner software.
• Advisor Inquiry: Hackett’s inquiry services are used by clients for quick access to fact-based advice on proven approaches and methods to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of selling, general and administrative, finance, human resources, information technology, procurement, enterprise performance management and shared services processes.
• Best Practice Research: Empirically based research and insight derived from our Hackett benchmark, performance and transformation studies. Our research provides detailed insights into the most significant proven approaches in use at world-class organizations that yield superior business results.
• Peer Interaction: Regular member-led webcasts, annual Best Practice Conferences, annual Member Forums, membership performance surveys and client-submitted content provide ongoing peer learning and networking opportunities.
• Introduction of New Gen AI Content and Vendor IP- centric Offerings: We are continuing to seek new opportunities through strategic alliances and channels to use our IP to help others sell and deliver their products, such as our IPaaS offerings and Hackett Institute programs. We continue to look for other potential programs through which to introduce new IP-centric offerings through our platforms and expand the power and reach of our brand. AI XPLR is an excellent example of this strategy.
• Benchmarking Services

Our benchmarking group has measured and evaluated the efficiency and effectiveness of enterprise functions for over 9,200 organizations globally. This includes 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 90% of the Fortune 100, 70% of the DAX 40 and 51% of the FTSE 100. Ongoing studies are conducted in a wide range of areas, including selling, general and administrative, finance, human resources, information technology, procurement, enterprise performance management and shared services. Hackett has identified approximately 2,200 best practices for over 550 processes in these key functional areas and uses proprietary performance measurement tools and data collection processes that enable companies to complete the performance measurement cycle and identify and quantify improvement opportunities in as little as four weeks. Benchmarks are used by our clients to objectively establish priorities, generate organizational consensus, align compensation to establish performance goals and develop the required business case for business and technology investments.

• Business Transformation Group

Our Business Transformation group helps our clients develop a coordinated digital transformation strategy that allows our clients to achieve meaningful performance improvements across the enterprise. Our experienced teams utilize the Hackett performance measurement data to link performance gains to industry best practices. Our strategic capabilities include operational assessments, process and organization design, change management and the effective application of technology. We combine best practices knowledge with business expertise and broad technology capabilities, which we believe enables our programs to optimize return on client investments in people, processes, technology and information. This group leads our AI XPLR efforts with a clear objective of establishing our capability of becoming key architects of our clients’ Gen AI journey. We also maintain our award-winning procurement (Coupa and Ariba) functionally led groups and our OneStream CPM teams within this group.

ORACLE SOLUTIONS SEGMENT

Our Oracle Solutions Segment helps clients choose and deploy Oracle applications that best meet their needs and objectives. In 2017, we acquired Oracle ERP and Cloud implementation capabilities. This allowed us to greatly increase the size of our Oracle addressable market and strongly positioned us to be a strategic provider of Oracle’s rapidly growing cloud software and services market. The software market is rapidly moving to cloud-based software, which led us to aggressively transition our Oracle Solutions segment from being primarily focused on the implementation of Oracle EPM on-premise software to the entire Oracle Cloud

Enterprise Suite. We believe the actions we took to expand our Oracle Cloud capabilities from EPM on-premise to the entire Oracle Cloud ERP Suite have strongly positioned us to take advantage of this secular cloud migration growth opportunity. Another significant investment we made was to digitize all of our IP and to build our proprietary Hackett DTP. By specifically building one of our first versions around the Oracle Cloud application functionality, we believe we can quickly demonstrate how to optimize the configuration of Oracle Cloud applications to drive to its fully intended transformative outcome. We believe these moves align our Oracle Solutions segment with the Oracle go-to-market strategy and will also allow us to use our unique best-practice implementation IP to demonstrate the value of Oracle Cloud apps for the Oracle sales channel. These improvements cover many aspects of service delivery, including process improvement, technology deployment, organizational alignment, information and data definition and skills and competency alignment. Solutions typically reside in three primary areas: Core Financial Close and Consolidation, Integrated Business Planning, and Reporting / Advanced Analytics. Solution innovations have taken the group into areas such as big data, cloud technology data management and governance, and industry-specific analytic templates. This will now extend to Oracle imbedded and extended AI solutions.

SAP SOLUTIONS SEGMENT

Our SAP Solutions segment helps clients choose and deploy S/4 HANA Cloud applications that best meet their needs and objectives. Our expertise is focused on SAP ERP, with primary focus on Life Sciences and Consumer Goods. The group offers comprehensive services from planning, architecture, and vendor evaluation and selection through implementation, customization, testing and integration. Comprehensive fit-gap analyses of all major packages against Hackett Best Practices, inclusive of imbedded Gen AI solutions, are utilized by our SAP Solutions teams. Our tools and templates help integrate best practices into business and analytical applications. The group also offers post-implementation support, change management, exception management, process transparency, system documentation and end-user training, all of which are designed to enhance return on investment. We also provide off-shore application development and Application Maintenance and Support (“AMS”) services. These services include post-implementation support for select business application and infrastructure platforms. Our SAP Solutions group also includes a division responsible for the sale of the SAP suite of applications. This will now extend to SAP imbedded and extended AI solutions.

CLIENTS

We focus on developing long-term client relationships with Global 2000 firms and other sophisticated buyers of business and IT consulting services. During 2024, 2023 and 2022, our ten most significant clients accounted for 31%, 23% and 24% of total revenue, respectively. In addition, during 2024, 2023 and 2022, our largest client generated 11%, 6% and 7% of total revenue, respectively. We have achieved a high level of satisfaction across our client base. We receive surveys from a significant number of our engagements which are utilized in a rigorous process to improve our delivery execution, sales processes, methodologies and training.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING

Our extensive client base and relationships with Global 2000 firms remain our most significant sources of new business. Our revenue generation strategy is formulated to ensure that we are addressing multiple facets of business development. Our primary goal is to continue to increase awareness of our brand which we have created around our Hackett empirical knowledge capital in the extended enterprise that we now serve. We have a regional sales and market development effort in both North America and Europe, so we can better coordinate the sales and marketing messages from our various offerings. Our compensation programs for our associates reflect an emphasis on optimizing our total revenue relationship with our clients. In our technology groups, we have continued to utilize our Hackett intellectual capital as a way to differentiate the relationships we have with the software providers and with our clients. The categories below define our business development resources.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT RESOURCES

Although virtually all of our advisors and consultants are expected to contribute to new revenue opportunities, our primary internal business development resources are comprised of the following:

• The Leadership Team, Principals and Senior Directors are comprised of our senior leaders who have a combination of executive, regional and anchor account responsibilities. In addition to their management responsibilities, this group of associates is responsible for growing the business by fostering executive-level relationships within accounts and leveraging their existing contacts in the marketplace.
• The Sales Organization is comprised of associates who are 100% dedicated to generating sales. They are deployed geographically in key markets, primarily focused on developing new relationships and they are aligned to our core group areas within their target accounts. They also handle opportunities in their geographic territories as they arise. We are

currently making incremental investments in dedicated sales resources for our Benchmarking, IPaaS, Executive Advisory and Market Intelligence offerings.

• The Business Development Associates are comprised of trained groups of telemarketing specialists who are conversant with their respective solution areas. Lead generation is coordinated with our marketing and sales groups to ensure that our inbound and outbound efforts are synchronized with targeted marketing and sales programs.
• The Delivery Organization is comprised of our billable associates. We encourage associates to pursue additional business development opportunities through their normal course of delivering existing projects thereby helping us expand our business within existing accounts.

In addition to our business development resources, we have a corporate marketing and communications organization responsible for overseeing our marketing programs, public relations and employee communications activities.

We have organized our market focus into the following categories:

• Strategic Accounts are comprised of large prospects and existing relationships which we believe will have a significant revenue opportunity within the next 18 months. Strategic account criteria include the size of the company, industry affiliation, propensity to buy external consulting services and contacts within the account. The sales representative working closely with regional leadership is primarily responsible for identifying business opportunities in the account, acting as the single point of coordination for the client, and performing the general duties of account manager.
• Regional Accounts are accounts within a specified geographic location. These accounts mostly include large prospects, past clients, existing medium-sized clients and mid-tier market accounts and are handled primarily on an opportunistic basis, except for active clients where delivery teams are focused on driving additional revenue.
• Strategic Alliance Accounts are accounts that allow us to partner with organizations of greater scale or different skill sets or with software developers enabling all parties to jointly market their products and services to prospective clients.

HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

We believe that our culture fosters intellectual creativity, collaboration and innovation. We believe in building relationships with both our associates and clients. We believe the best solutions come from teams of individuals from diverse backgrounds addressing problems collectively and from multiple dimensions, including the business, technological and human dimensions. We believe that the most effective working environment is one where everyone is encouraged to contribute and is rewarded for that contribution. Our core values are the strongest expression of our working style and represent what we stand for. These core values are:

• Continuous development of our associates, our unique content business model and our knowledge base;
• Diversity of backgrounds, skills and experiences;
• Knowledge capture, contribution and utilization; and
• Collaboration with one another, our partners and our clients

Our human resources staff includes seasoned professionals in North America, Europe, India and South America who support our groups by, among other things, administering our benefit programs, facilitating the hiring process and coordinating training activities. Our human resources staff also includes dedicated individuals who recruit consultants with both business and technology expertise. Our recruiting team supports our hiring process by focusing on the highest demand solution areas of our business to ensure an adequate pipeline of new associates. We also have an employee referral program, which rewards existing employees who source new hires.

As of December 27, 2024, we had 1,478 associates, excluding subcontractors, 82% of whom were billable professionals. We do not have any associates that are subject to collective bargaining arrangements, however, in France, our associates enjoy the benefit of certain government regulations based on industry classification. We have entered into nondisclosure and non-solicitation agreements with virtually all of our personnel. We also engage consultants as independent contractors pursuant to written agreements that contain non-disclosure and non-solicitation provisions.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

One important way we put our values into action is through our commitment to the communities where we work. We do so by encouraging and supporting our associate’s communities and personal volunteer and service programs and social gatherings.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

World Class Defined and Enabled, LeewayHertz, Quantum Leap, Digital Excelleration, Intellectual Property-As-A-Service, Digital World Class, Hackett Certified and Book of Numbers are registered trademarks of Hackett's and we own registrations for certain of our other trademarks in the United States and abroad that we use in our business and believe are important to protect. We believe that the protection of these marks is an important part of our strategy of increasing the brand recognition we have built around our empirical knowledge capital and the growing number of services we provide.

AVAILABLE INFORMATION

We make our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and all exhibits and amendments to these reports, available free of charge at our website www.thehackettgroup.com (http://www.thehackettgroup.com) as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC or at www.sec.gov (http://www.sec.gov).

Also available on our website, free of charge, are copies of our Code of Conduct and Ethics, Corporate Governance Guidelines, and the charters for the Audit Committee, Compensation Committee and Nominating and Governance Committee of our Board of Directors. We intend to disclose any amendment to, or waiver from, a provision of our Code of Conduct and Ethics and Corporate Governance Guidelines applicable to our senior financial officers, including our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Controller on our website within four business days following the date of the amendment or waiver.

Our business is subject to risks. The following important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K or our other publicly filed documents.

Business, Market and Strategy Risks

We may not be able to successfully execute on our strategy transition.

In executing our strategy to transition to a leading global IP platform-based Gen AI strategic consulting firm, we expect to create a new value-creation opportunity for us with potential for an increase in our annual recurring revenues and annual recurring licensing revenues. We cannot assure you that our Gen AI strategy will be beneficial to the extent, or within the time-frames expected. Market acceptance of Gen AI offerings is affected by a variety of factors, including technological advances, reliability, performance and information security. If we are unable to correctly respond to these issues, we may experience business disruptions, damage to our reputation, negative publicity, diminished client trust and relationships and other adverse effects on our business. Even if the anticipated benefits are substantially realized, there may be consequences or business impacts that were not expected. Our transition to focus on Gen AI may increase our risk of liability and cause us to incur significant technical, legal or other costs.

We may not be successful in our artificial intelligence initiatives, which could adversely affect our business, reputation, or financial results.

AI, presents new risks and challenges that may affect our business. We have made, and expect to continue to make investments to integrate AI into our products and solutions. Given the nature of AI technology, we face significant competition from other companies and an evolving regulatory landscape. Our AI efforts may not be successful and our competitors may incorporate AI into their products more successfully than us, which could impair our ability to compete effectively and adversely affect our financial results. The rapid evolution of AI combined with the uncertain and often inconsistent regulatory landscape may require significant additional resources and costs and could in some cases limit our ability to implement AI capabilities in our solutions or to use AI to support business operations. Despite our implementation of programs designed to support responsible AI use and development, we may not successfully address all issues that may arise. For example, privacy concerns, user consent, supply chain security, transparency and the accuracy, completeness and suitability of data sets are all potential issues that could adversely affect our business, reputation, or financial results.

Our results of operations could be negatively affected by global and regional economic conditions.

Global and regional economic conditions may affect our clients’ businesses and the markets they serve. A substantial or prolonged economic downturn, weak or uncertain economic conditions or similar factors could adversely affect our clients’financial condition which may reduce our clients’ demand for our services, force price reductions, cause project cancellations, or delay consulting services for which they have engaged us. For example, the geopolitical disruption resulting from the conflicts between Russian and Ukraine and in the Middle East has created uncertainty in the global economy and could result in a reduction in spending on our services. In addition, if we are unable to successfully anticipate the changing economic conditions, we may be unable to effectively plan for and respond to those changes, and our business could be negatively affected.

Our results of operations have been adversely affected and could in the future be materially impacted by macroeconomic conditions on our business.

The level of revenue we achieve is based on our ability to deliver market leading services and solutions and to deploy skilled teams of professionals quickly. Our results of operations are affected by economic conditions, including macroeconomic conditions and levels of business confidence. Any prolonged economic downturn as a result of weak or uncertain economic conditions or similar factors could adversely affect our clients' financial condition which may further reduce the clients' demand for our services. These include:

• general economic and business conditions;
• interest rate and inflation rate trends and fluctuations;
• overall demand for services; and
• currency exchange rate fluctuations.

Our results of operations have been adversely affected and could in the future be materially adversely impacted by pandemics.

Our clients, and therefore our business and revenues, are sensitive to negative changes in general economic conditions and business confidence arising from pandemics.

The extent to which a pandemic could impact our business, operations and financial results will depend on numerous evolving factors that we may not be able to accurately predict, including: the duration, severity and scope of the pandemic; governmental, business and individuals’ actions that are taken in response to a pandemic; the impact of the pandemic on economic activity and actions taken in response; the effect on our clients and client demand for our services and solutions; the ability of our clients to pay for our services and solutions; and any closures of our clients’ offices and facilities. Clients may also slow down decision making, delay planned work or seek to terminate existing agreements. Any of these events could cause or contribute to the risks and uncertainties enumerated in “Item 1A. Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report and could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and/or stock price.

Our quarterly operating results may vary.

Our financial results may fluctuate from quarter to quarter in any given year and should not be used to predict future performance. In future quarters, our operating results may not meet analysts’ and investors’ expectations. If that happens, the price of our common stock may fall. Many factors can cause fluctuations in our financial results, including:

• number, size, timing and scope of client engagements;
• customer concentration;
• long and unpredictable sales cycles;
• contract terms of client engagements;
• degrees of completion of client engagements;
• client engagement delays or cancellations;
• competition for and utilization of employees;
• how well we estimate the resources and effort we need to complete client engagements;
• the integration of acquired businesses;
• pricing changes in the industry;
• foreign currency changes;
• foreign laws and regulatory requirements;
• natural disasters, pandemics and other catastrophic events;
• economic conditions specific to business and information technology consulting; and
• global economic conditions.

A high percentage of our operating expenses, particularly personnel and rent, are fixed in advance of any particular quarter. As a result, if we experience unanticipated changes in client engagements or in consultant utilization rates, we could experience large variations in quarterly operating results and losses in any particular quarter. Due to these factors, we believe our quarter-to-quarter operating results should not be used to predict future performance.

If we are unable to maintain our reputation and expand our brand name recognition, we may have difficulty attracting new business and retaining current clients and employees.

We believe that establishing and maintaining a good reputation and name recognition are critical for attracting and retaining clients and employees in our industry. We also believe that the importance of reputation and name recognition will continue to increase due to the number of providers of business consulting and IT services. If our reputation is damaged or if potential clients are not familiar with us or with the solutions we provide, we may be unable to attract new, or retain existing, clients and employees. Promotion and enhancement of our name will depend largely on our success in continuing to provide effective solutions. If clients do not perceive our solutions to be effective or of high quality, our brand name and reputation will suffer. In addition, if solutions we provide have defects, critical business functions of our clients may fail, and we could suffer adverse publicity as well as economic liability.

We depend heavily on a limited number of clients.

We have derived, and believe that we will continue to derive, a significant portion of our revenue from a limited number of clients for which we perform large projects. In 2024, our ten largest clients accounted for 31% of our aggregate revenue. In addition, revenue from a large client may constitute a significant portion of our total revenue in any particular quarter. Our customer contracts generally can be cancelled for convenience by the customer upon 30 days’ notice. The loss of any of our large clients for any reason, including as a result of the acquisition of that client by another entity, our failure to meet that client’s expectations, the client’s decision to reduce spending on projects, or failure to collect amounts owed to us from our client could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our markets are highly competitive.

We may not be able to compete effectively with current or future competitors. The business consulting and IT services markets are highly competitive. We expect competition to further intensify as these markets continue to evolve. Some of our competitors have longer operating histories, larger client bases, longer relationships with their clients, greater brand or name recognition and significantly greater financial, technical and marketing resources than we do. As a result, our competitors may be in a stronger position to respond more quickly to new or emerging technologies, such as AI, and changes in client requirements and to devote greater resources than we can to the development, promotion and sale of their services. Competitors could lower their prices, potentially forcing us to lower our prices and suffer reduced operating margins. We face competition from international accounting firms; international, national and regional strategic consulting and systems implementation firms; and the IT services divisions of application software firms.

In addition, there are relatively low barriers for entry into the business consulting and IT services market. We do not own any patented technology that would stop competitors from entering this market and providing services similar to ours. As a result, the emergence of new competitors may pose a threat to our business. Existing or future competitors may develop and offer services that are superior to, or have greater market acceptance, than ours, which could significantly decrease our revenue and the value of your investment.

We could lose money on our contracts.

As part of our strategy, from time to time, we enter into capped or fixed-price contracts, in addition to contracts based on payment for time and materials. Because of the complexity of many of our client engagements, accurately estimating the cost, scope and duration of a particular engagement can be a difficult task. We maintain an Office of Risk Management (“ORM”) that evaluates and attempts to mitigate delivery risk associated with complex projects. In connection with their review, ORM analyzes the critical estimates associated with these projects. If we fail to make these estimates accurately, we could be forced to devote additional resources to these engagements for which we will not receive additional compensation. To the extent that an expenditure of additional resources is required on an engagement, this could reduce the profitability of, or result in a loss on, the engagement. We may be unsuccessful in negotiating with clients regarding changes to the cost, scope or duration of specific engagements. To the extent we do not sufficiently communicate to our clients, or our clients fail to adequately appreciate the nature and extent of any of these types of changes to an engagement, our reputation may be harmed, and we may suffer losses on an engagement.

Lack of detailed written contracts could impair our ability to recognize revenue for services performed, collect fees, protect our IP and protect ourselves from liability to others.

We protect ourselves by entering into detailed written contracts with our clients covering the terms and contingencies of the client engagement. In some cases, however, consistent with what we believe to be industry practice, work is performed for clients on the basis of a limited statement of work or verbal agreement before a detailed written contract can be finalized. To the extent that we fail to have detailed written contracts in place, our ability to collect fees, protect our IP and protect ourselves from liability to others may be impaired.

We may lose large clients or may not be able to secure targeted follow-on work or achieve expected client retention rates.

Our client engagements are generally short-term arrangements, and most clients can reduce or cancel their contracts for our services with a 30 days’ notice and without penalty. As a result, if we lose a major client or large client engagement, our revenue will be adversely affected. We perform varying amounts of work for specific clients from year to year. A major client in one year may not use our services in another year. In addition, we may derive revenue from a major client that constitutes a large portion of total revenue for particular quarters. If we lose any major clients or any of our clients cancel programs or significantly reduce the scope of a large engagement, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. Also, if we fail to collect a large accounts receivable balance, we could be subjected to significant financial exposure. Consequently, you should not predict or anticipate our future revenue based upon the number of clients we currently have or the number and size of our existing client engagements.

We also derive a portion of our revenue from annual memberships for our Executive Advisory Programs. Our growth prospects therefore depend on our ability to achieve and sustain renewal rates on programs and to successfully launch new programs. Failure to achieve expected renewal rate levels or to successfully launch new programs and services could have an adverse effect on our operating results.

The market price of our common stock may fluctuate widely.

The market price of our common stock could fluctuate substantially due to:

• future announcements concerning us or our competitors;
• quarterly fluctuations in operating results;
• announcements of acquisitions or technological innovations;
• changes in earnings estimates or recommendations by analysts; or
• current market volatility.

In addition, the stock prices of many business and technology services companies fluctuate widely for reasons which may be unrelated to operating results. Fluctuation in the market price of our common stock may impact our ability to finance our operations and retain personnel.

Operational Risks

We have risks associated with potential acquisitions or investments.

Since our inception, we have expanded through acquisitions. In the future, we plan to pursue additional acquisitions as opportunities arise. We may not be able to successfully integrate businesses which we may acquire in the future without substantial expense, delays or other operational or financial problems. We may not be able to identify, acquire or profitably manage additional businesses. Also, acquisitions may involve a number of risks, including:

• diversion of management’s attention;
• failure to retain key personnel;
• failure to retain existing clients;
• unanticipated events or circumstances;
• unknown claims or liabilities;
• amortization of certain acquired intangible assets; and
• operating in new or unfamiliar geographies.

Client dissatisfaction or performance problems at a single acquired business could have a material adverse impact on our reputation as a whole. Further, we cannot assure you that our future acquired businesses will generate anticipated revenue or earnings.

Difficulties in integrating businesses we acquire in the future may demand time and attention from our senior management.

Integrating businesses that we acquire in the future may involve unanticipated delays, costs and/or other operational and financial problems. In integrating acquired businesses, we may not achieve expected economies of scale or profitability or realize sufficient revenue to justify our investment. If we encounter unexpected problems as we try to integrate an acquired firm into our business, our management may be required to expend time and attention to address the problems, which would divert their time and attention from other aspects of our business.

We may not be able to hire, train, motivate, retain and manage professional staff.

To succeed, we must hire, train, motivate, retain and manage highly skilled employees. Competition for skilled employees who can perform the services we offer is intense. We might not be able to hire enough skilled employees or train, motivate, retain and manage the employees we hire. This could hinder our ability to complete existing client engagements and bid for new ones. Hiring, training, motivating, retaining and managing employees with the skills we need is time-consuming and expensive.

We rely on information technology and security systems and any damage, interruption or compromise of our information technology and security systems or data could disrupt and harm our business.

We use information technology and security systems to process, transmit, and store electronic information in connection with the operation of our business. We also use such systems to protect proprietary and confidential information, including that of our customers, suppliers and employees. We face risks associated with cybersecurity incidents and other significant disruptions of such systems, including denial of service or other similar attacks, to our facilities or systems; unauthorized access to or acquisition of personal information, confidential information or other data we process or maintain; or viruses, loggers, or other malfeasant code, including ransomware, in our data or software. These cybersecurity incidents or other significant disruptions could be caused by persons inside our organization, persons outside our organization with authorized access to systems inside our organization, or by individuals outside our organization. The risk of a cybersecurity incident or disruption, particularly through cyber-attack or cyber-intrusion, has generally increased as the number, intensity and sophistication of attempted attacks and intrusions from around the world have increased. Although the cybersecurity incidents that we have experienced to date, as well as those reported to us by our third-party partners, have not had a material effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations, such incidents could have a material adverse effect on us in the future.

We also rely on a number of third-party service providers to host, store or otherwise process information for us, or to provide other facilities or infrastructure that we make use of, including “cloud-based” providers of corporate infrastructure services relating to, among other things, human resources, communication services, financial functions, as well as proprietary digital technology platforms, and we are therefore dependent on the security systems of these providers. These third-party entities are subject to similar risks as it relates to cybersecurity, business interruption, and systems. Employee failures and a cybersecurity incident or other significant disruption affecting such third parties could have a material adverse effect on our business.

Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to or sabotage security systems change frequently and are often not recognized until after an attack, we and our third-party service providers may be unable to anticipate the techniques or implement adequate preventative measures, thereby exposing us to material adverse effects on our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects. In order to address risks to our information systems, we continue to make investments in personnel, technologies and training. Data protection laws and regulations around the world often require “reasonable,” “appropriate” or “adequate” technical and organizational security measures, and the interpretation and application of those laws and regulations are often uncertain and evolving; there can be no assurance that our security measures will be deemed adequate, appropriate or reasonable by a regulator or court. Moreover, even security measures that are deemed appropriate, reasonable, and/or in accordance with applicable legal requirements may not be able to protect the information we maintain. A cybersecurity incident or other significant disruption impacting us or our third-party service providers could require a substantial level of financial resources to rectify and otherwise respond to, may be difficult to identify or address in a timely manner, and may divert management’s attention and require the expenditure of significant time and resources. Such cybersecurity incidents or other significant disruptions could result in claims, increased regulatory scrutiny, or investigations, and may cause us to incur substantial fines, penalties, or other liability and related legal and other costs. Any actual or perceived cybersecurity incident or significant disruption may also interfere with our ability to comply with financial reporting requirements and harm our reputation and market position, especially given that we handle sensitive customer information. Any of the foregoing matters could harm our operating results and financial condition.

While we have purchased cybersecurity insurance, there are no assurances that the coverage would be adequate in relation to any incurred losses. Moreover, as cyber-attacks increase in frequency and magnitude, we may be unable to obtain cybersecurity insurance in amounts and on terms we view as adequate for our operations.

A breach of our information technology and security systems could materially adversely affect our business.

We use information technology and security systems to protect proprietary and confidential information, including that of our customers, suppliers and employees. Denial of service or other attacks on, or accidental or willful security breaches or other unauthorized access to our facilities or information systems, unauthorized access to or acquisition of personal information, confidential information or other data we process or maintain, or viruses, loggers, or other malfeasant code, including ransomware, in our data or software, could compromise this information and otherwise disrupt our operations. The consequences of such loss, possible misuse of our proprietary and confidential information, or operational disruptions could include, among other things, unfavorable publicity, damage to our reputation, difficulty marketing our products, customer allegations of breach-of-contract, claims and litigation by affected parties, investigations by and other proceedings involving governmental authorities and possible financial liabilities for damages, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, reputation and relationships with customers and partners. We also rely on a number of third-party service providers to host, store or otherwise process information for us, or to provide other facilities or infrastructure that we make use of, including "cloud-based" providers of corporate infrastructure services relating to, among other things, human resources, electronic communication services and some financial functions, and we are therefore dependent on the security systems of these providers. Any security breaches or incidents or other unauthorized access to, or disruptions of, our service-providers' systems or viruses, loggers, ransomware or other malfeasant code in their data or software, or unauthorized access to or acquisition of any data they process or otherwise maintain for us could expose us to information loss, corruption and unavailability, operational disruptions, and misappropriation of confidential information, and could have similar consequences to us as any incidents affecting our own systems or the data we process or maintain. We and our third parties face these threats from a variety of sources, including attacks from hackers, phishing and other forms of social engineering, and human error or employee or contractor malfeasance. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to or sabotage security systems change frequently and are often not recognized until after an attack, we and our third-party service providers may be unable to anticipate the techniques or implement adequate preventative measures, thereby exposing us to material adverse effects on our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects. A security breach or other security incident impacting us or our third-party service providers could require a substantial level of financial resources to rectify and otherwise respond to, may be difficult to identify or address in a timely manner, and could result in claims, investigations, and inquires by private parties or governmental entities that may divert management’s attention and require the expenditure of significant time and resources, and which may cause us to incur substantial fines, penalties, or other liability and related legal and other costs. Any actual or perceived security breach or other security incident may also harm our reputation and market position. Any of the foregoing matters could harm our operating results and financial condition.

Global Operational Risks

We earn revenue, incur costs and maintain cash balances in multiple currencies, and currency fluctuations could adversely affect our financial results.

We have international operations, where we earn revenue and incur costs in various foreign currencies, primarily the British Pound, and the Euro. Doing business in these foreign currencies exposes us to foreign currency risks in numerous areas, including revenue, purchases, payroll and investments. Certain foreign currency exposures are naturally offset within an international business unit, because revenue and costs are denominated in the same foreign currency, and certain cash balances are held in U.S. Dollar denominated accounts. Fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates could materially impact our results.

Our cash position includes amounts denominated in foreign currencies. We manage our worldwide cash requirements considering available funds from our subsidiaries and the cost effectiveness with which these funds can be accessed. The repatriation of cash balances from certain of our subsidiaries outside the U.S. could have adverse tax consequences and be limited by foreign currency exchange controls. However, those balances are generally available in the local jurisdiction without legal restrictions to fund ordinary business operations. Any fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates could materially impact the availability and amount of these funds available for transfer.

Legal, Regulatory and Compliance Risks

Our corporate governance provisions may deter a financially attractive takeover attempt.

Provisions of our charter and by-laws may discourage, delay or prevent a merger or acquisition which shareholders may consider favorable, including transactions in which shareholders would receive a premium for their shares. These provisions include the following:

• shareholders must comply with advance notice requirements before raising a matter at a meeting of shareholders or nominating a director for election;
• our Board of Directors is staggered into three classes and the members may be removed only for cause upon the affirmative vote of holders of at least two-thirds of the shares entitled to vote;
• we would not be required to hold a special meeting to consider a takeover proposal unless holders of more than a majority of the shares entitled to vote on the matter were to submit a written demand or demands for us to do so; and
• our Board of Directors may, without obtaining shareholder approval, classify and issue up to 1,250,000 shares of preferred stock with powers, preferences, designations and rights that may make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us.

If we are unable to protect our IP rights or infringe on the IP rights of third parties, our business may be harmed.

We rely upon a combination of nondisclosure and other contractual arrangements and trade secrets, copyright and trademark laws to protect our proprietary rights and the proprietary rights of third parties from whom we license IP. Although we enter into confidentiality agreements with our employees and limit distribution of proprietary information, there can be no assurance that the steps we have taken in this regard will be adequate to deter misappropriation of our IP, or that we will be able to detect unauthorized use and take appropriate steps to enforce our IP rights.

Although we believe that our services do not infringe on the IP rights of others and that we have all rights necessary to utilize the IP employed in our business, we are subject to the risk of claims alleging infringement of third-party IP rights. Any claims could require us to spend significant sums in litigation, pay damages, develop non-infringing IP or acquire licenses to the IP that is the subject of asserted infringement.

Data privacy and information security may require significant resources and presents certain risks.

We collect, store, have access to and otherwise process certain confidential or sensitive data, including proprietary business information, personal data or other information that is subject to privacy and security laws, regulations and/or customer-imposed controls. We operate in an environment in which data privacy regulatory and legal framework is evolving quickly and varies by jurisdiction. We cannot predict the cost of compliance with future data privacy laws, regulations and standards, or future interpretations of current laws, regulations and standards, related to privacy and cybersecurity or the potential effects on our business.

As a company doing business in Europe, we are also subject to European data protection laws and regulations. The European Union General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), imposes stringent requirements in how we collect and process personal data and provides for significantly greater penalties for noncompliance; and several other countries have passed laws that require personal data relating to their citizens to be maintained on local servers and impose additional data transfer restrictions. In addition, we are also subject to and affected by new state privacy and data security laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). The CCPA imposes additional data privacy requirements on many businesses operating in the state, including, potentially, with respect to employee data. Several states have enacted or introduced varying comprehensive privacy laws modeled to some degree on the CCPA and/or the GDPR. Compliance with multiple country and state laws containing varying requirements could be complicated and costly. Government enforcement actions can be costly and interrupt the regular operation of our business, and violations of data privacy laws can result in fines, reputational damage and civil lawsuits, any of which may adversely affect our business, reputation and financial statements.

Cybersecurity is critical to the delivery of our services to our clients. We face cybersecurity threats that are common to most industries. We have a cybersecurity risk management program in place that is designed to assess, identify, manage, and govern material risks from cybersecurity threats. This program is a key component of our enterprise risk management program. The Company’s Board is responsible for oversight of the Company’s information technology systems, including cybersecurity, and has delegated such oversight to the Audit Committee. The Audit Committee regularly reviews the status of the initiatives such as the seeking of certifications associated with our information technology systems and receives regular updates on matters relating to information technology and cybersecurity. Our corporate information security organization, led by our Senior Director of IT who reports to our Chief Financial Officer, is responsible for our overall information security strategy, policy, security, operations and cyber threat detection and response. Our current Senior Director of IT has an extensive background and experience in information technology management and design, and data security. An integral part of our cybersecurity framework is our Security Response Team which is responsible for the detection, review, and response to cybersecurity incidents. In the event of a security incident, we intend to follow our detailed incident response plan, which outlines the steps to be followed from incident detection to mitigation, recovery, and notification, including notifying functional areas as well as senior leadership and the Board, as appropriate.

We regularly review the effectiveness of our cybersecurity controls, promptly addressing any identified risk areas and subject our information technology systems to testing performed by external parties on an annual basis. Our employees are required to successfully complete training on topics relating to our cybersecurity, data privacy and information security policies and procedures. Training is administered and tracked through online training modules. In addition, we perform periodic testing to evaluate the effectiveness of our training programs and to help prevent loss associated with the disclosure of electronic information. We also leverage third-party service providers and solutions across our operations to review, test, and assess our security systems and controls, as well as assist in the mitigation of any potential cyber risks. We recently obtained our second ISO 27001 certification.

To further bolster our cybersecurity controls, we also have a third-party risk management program in place applicable to all of its contractors, vendors, and service providers which includes risk assessments, cybersecurity questionnaires, data privacy addendums, and contractual flow-downs of legal and regulatory requirements. We also require our contractors, subcontractors, vendors and service providers to report security incidents to us without undue delay.

To date, the Company has not identified any cybersecurity incidents that have materially affected or are reasonably likely to materially affect our business operations or financial condition. Despite the extensive approach we take to cybersecurity, prevention of a cybersecurity incident cannot be completely guaranteed. Please refer to “Item 1A. Risk Factors – We rely on information technology and security systems and any damage, interruption or compromise of our information technology and security systems or data could disrupt and harm our business” and “Item 1A. Risk Factors – A breach of our information technology and security systems could materially adversely affect our business” for further information.

Our principal executive office is currently located at 1001 Brickell Bay Drive, Floor 30, Miami, Florida 33131. As of December 27, 2024, we had operating leases that expire on various dates through July 2029.

We do not own real estate and do not intend to invest in real estate or real estate-related assets.

We are involved in legal proceedings, claims, and litigation arising in the ordinary course of business not specifically discussed herein. In the opinion of management, the final disposition of such matters will not have a material adverse effect on our consolidated financial position, cash flows or results of operations.

Overview

The following Management’s Discussion and Analysis (“MD&A”) is intended to help the reader understand the results of operations and financial condition of Hackett. MD&A is provided as a supplement to, and should be read in conjunction with, our consolidated financial statements and the accompanying Notes to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We have omitted discussion of fiscal 2022 items and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal years 2023 and 2022 where it would be redundant with the discussion previously included in Part II, Item 7 (MD&A) of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 29, 2023.

Hackett is a global IP platform-based GenAI strategic consulting and executive advisory digital transformation firm. strategic consulting and digital transformation firm. The Hackett Group provides dedicated expertise in Gen AI enabled enterprise transformation services across front, mid and back office areas, including its highly recognized Oracle, SAP, OneStream and Coupa implementation offerings.

In early 2024, we launched our AI assessment platform, AI XPLR which helps clients identify, evaluate and design Gen AI enablement opportunities. Using AI XPLR, our experienced professionals guide organizations to harness the power of Gen AI solutions designed to digitally transform their operations to achieve quantifiable, breakthrough results, allowing us to be key architects of our clients' Gen AI journey.

We believe Gen AI will fundamentally change the way companies operate as well as the way consulting services are sold and delivered. We believe the Gen AI platform capabilities we have developed in AI XPLR which were expanded with ZBrain, which we acquired as part of the LeewayHertz acquisition, is highly differentiating and we expect will enable us to effectively compete in this emerging and important space.

The Hackett Group has completed over 27,500 benchmarking and performance studies with major organizations. These studies are executed utilizing our Quantum Leap platform which drives our DTP. This includes the firm's benchmarking metrics, best practices repository, and best practice configuration and process flow accelerators, which enables our clients and partners to achieve digital world-class performance.

Our transformation expertise is grounded in best practices insights from benchmarking the world’s leading businesses – including 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 90% of the Fortune 100, 70% of the DAX 40 and 51% of the FTSE 100, which inform and are delivered utilizing our platforms.

Impact of Macroeconomic Conditions on Our Business

The level of revenue we achieve is based on our ability to deliver market leading services and solutions and to deploy skilled teams of professionals quickly. Our results of operations are affected by economic conditions, including macroeconomic conditions and levels of business confidence. Any deterioration in the current macroeconomic environment or economic downturn as a result of weak or uncertain economic conditions due to inflation, high interest rates, national or geopolitical events or other factors impacting economic activity or business confidence could adversely affect our clients' financial condition or outlook which may reduce the clients' demand for our services.

Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates

In the ordinary course of business, we make a number of estimates and assumptions relating to the reporting of results of operations and financial position in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (“GAAP”). Actual results could differ from those estimates under different assumptions and conditions. We believe the following discussion addresses our most critical accounting policies that have had or are reasonably likely to have a material impact on our financial condition or results of operations. These policies require management to exercise judgment on issues that are often difficult, subjective and complex due to the necessity of estimating the effect of matters that are inherently uncertain.

Revenue Recognition

Determining revenue recognition requires management to exercise judgment on the interpretation of service contracts which may include one or multiple performance obligations. The judgement management must make include determining whether the control of the goods and services provided are transferred to our customers at a point in time or over the course of the service period utilizing a proportionate performance approach.

In fixed-fee billing arrangements, which would also include contracts with capped fees, we set the fees based on our estimates of the costs and timing for completing the engagements. We generally recognize revenue under fixed-fee or capped fee arrangements using a proportionate performance approach, which is based on work completed to-date as compared to estimates of the total services to be provided under the engagement. Estimates of total engagement revenue and cost of services are monitored regularly during the term of the engagement based on the best available information. If our estimates indicate a potential loss, such loss is recognized in the period in which the loss first becomes probable and reasonably estimable.

Allowances for Doubtful Accounts

We review accounts receivable to assess our estimates of collectability regularly. When establishing allowances for doubtful accounts, management must base their judgment on the information available at that point in time, which may include historical experiences, current economic trends and client credit worthiness, to determine the likelihood of collectability.

Business Combinations

For transactions that are considered business combinations, we utilize fair values in determining the carrying values of the purchased assets and assumed liabilities, which are recorded at fair value at acquisition date, and identifiable intangible assets are recorded at fair value. Costs directly related to the business combinations are recorded as expenses as they are incurred. Fair values are subject to refinement for up to one year after the closing date of an acquisition as information relative to closing date fair values become available. A bargain purchase gain on an acquisition occurs when the net of the estimated fair value of the assets acquired and liabilities assumed exceeds the consideration paid.

On September 23, 2024, the Company acquired 100% of the equity of LeewayHertz Technologies Private Limited (“LeewayHertz”), a technology consulting company based in India, focused on AI technology solutions for a provisional purchase consideration of $7.8 million subject to a working capital achievement. LeewayHertz’s founder, one of LeewayHertz’s owners, was hired by the Company to serve as its executive vice president of the AI practice.

Since the acquisition was only recently completed, the allocation of the purchase price is preliminary and will likely change in future periods as fair value estimates of the assets acquired and liabilities assumed are finalized, including those primarily related to working capital, property and equipment, intangible assets, and taxes. The final determination of the fair values will be completed within the one-year measurement period.

The following table summarizes the provisional fair value of the assets acquired and liabilities assumed:

(in thousands)

As a result, the provisional excess of the purchase price over the assets acquired resulted in goodwill of $5.9 million. Additionally, the Company recognized provisional intangible assets of $2.5 million, with a remaining weighted average useful life of 4.6 years. The fair values of identifiable intangible assets acquired were prepared by a third-party valuation specialist and incorporate significant unobservable inputs, judgment, and estimates, including the amount and timing of future cash flows. The intangible assets will be amortized in accordance with the Company’s accounting policies. The following table summarizes the provisional value of the intangible assets acquired:

(in thousands)

23

Also, in connection with the acquisition, the Company and LeewayHertz’s founder are creating a joint venture whereby The Hackett Group will contribute its AI XPLR platform and LeewayHertz will contribute its ZBrain platform. The integration of AI XPLR and the ZBrain Gen AI orchestration solution will enable the joint venture to provide advanced and tailored Gen AI solutions to its clients. The joint venture is expected to be formed by the middle of the Company's 2025 fiscal year and we expect its results will be consolidated into our financial statements.

Goodwill

For acquisitions accounted for as a business combination, goodwill represents the excess of the cost over the fair value of the net assets acquired. The Company has organized its operating and internal reporting structure to align with its primary market solutions. In accordance with ASC 280, management made the determination to present three operating segments, three reportable segments and three reporting units as follows: (1) Global S&BT, (2) Oracle Solutions, and (3) SAP Solutions. A reporting unit is an operating segment or one level below an operating segment to which goodwill is assigned. The goodwill has been allocated to the reporting unit based on the reporting unit's relative fair value. The provisional goodwill related to LeewayHertz has been included in Global S&BT segment. The carrying amount of goodwill by reporting unit is as follows (in thousands):

Goodwill is tested at least annually for impairment at the reporting unit level utilizing the market approach. In assessing the recoverability of goodwill and intangible assets, the Company utilizes the market approach and makes estimates based on assumptions regarding various factors to determine if impairment tests are met. The market approach utilizes valuation multiples based on operating data from publicly traded companies within the same industry. Multiples derived from guideline companies provide an indication of how much a market participant would be willing to pay for a company. These multiples are then applied to the Company’s reporting units to arrive at an indication of value. This approach contains management’s judgment, using appropriate and customary assumptions available at the time.

We performed our annual impairment test of goodwill in the fourth quarter of fiscal years 2024, 2023 and 2022 and determined that goodwill was not impaired.

Stock Based Compensation

We recognize compensation expense for awards of equity and liability instruments, which have only a service condition, to employees based on the grant-date fair value of those awards, over the requisite service period, with limited exceptions.

In September 2024, a stock price award program was offered to certain leaders. These equity awards were granted with both a market condition (three tranches, each with varying market share price thresholds) and service conditions. The Company measured these equity awards using the Monte Carlo valuation model to determine the fair value as of the grant date. The Monte Carlo valuation model, using different share price paths, calculated a derived service period which is the median share price path on which the market condition is satisfied for each tranche. The assumptions utilized in the model are as of a point in time and may differ from the actual value of the equity awards. The requisite service period was determined to be service conditions as the service conditions are greater than the derived service period. For each of the three tranches, stock compensation expense is recognized on a straight-line basis over the requisite service period. The Company has elected to account for forfeitures as incurred. If an employee forfeits nonvested shares subsequent to meeting a service condition, the previously recognized expense is not reversed. See Note 10, "Stock Based Compensation," for additional information.

Please refer to Note 1, “Basis of Presentation and General Information,” to our consolidated financial statements included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the discussion of all of our critical accounting policies.

Results of Operations

Our fiscal year generally consists of a 52-week period and periodically consists of a 53-week period as each fiscal year ends on the Friday closest to December 31. Fiscal years 2024 and 2023 ended on December 27, 2024 and December 29, 2023, respectively, each consisted of a 52-week period. References to a year included in this document refer to a fiscal year rather than a calendar year.

The following table sets forth, for the periods indicated, our results of operations (in thousands):

Comparison of 2024 to 2023

Overview. For fiscal year 2024, total revenue increased to $313.9 million, as compared to $296.6 million in 2023, primarily driven by increased total revenue from our SAP Solutions segment of $10.2 million and our Oracle Solutions segment of $7.9 million, as compared to 2023.

Revenue. We are a global company with operations primarily in the United States and Western Europe. Our revenue is denominated in multiple currencies, primarily the U.S. Dollar, British Pound and Euro, and as a result is affected by currency exchange rate fluctuations. The impact of the currency fluctuation did not have a significant impact on comparisons between 2024 and 2023. Revenue is analyzed based on geographic location of engagement team personnel.

In 2024, one customer accounted for 11% of our total revenue and in 2023 one customer accounted for 6% of our total revenue.

Segment revenue. We have three reportable segments: Global S&BT, Oracle Solutions and SAP Solutions. Global S&BT includes S&BT Consulting, Benchmarking, Advisory Services, IPASS, Gen AI Consulting and Implementation, OneStream and our Coupa offerings. Oracle Solutions and SAP Solutions support the two fundamentally distinct ERP systems: Oracle and SAP.

The following table sets forth total revenue by reportable operating segment, which includes reimbursable expenses related to project travel-related expenses passed through to a client with no associated operating margin (in thousands):

Global S&BT total revenue decreased to $171.1 million in 2024, as compared to $171.9 million in 2023. The revenue decrease was primarily due to weakness in our eProcurement and OneStream implementation offerings. This was partially offset by growth in our Gen AI consulting and implementation offerings, driven by the capabilities of our AI XPLR platform and our recently acquired ZBrain platform and LeewayHertz consulting and implementation team.

Oracle Solutions total revenue increased to $85.7 million in 2024, as compared to $77.8 million in 2023. The segment has continued the momentum it has experienced since the second quarter of 2023, as we have continued to see strong overall EPM activity resulting from Oracle’s re-establishment of their dedicated EPM salesforce.

SAP Solutions total revenue increased to $57.1 million in 2024, from $46.9 million in 2023. The revenue growth in 2024 was due to the strong software-related sales resulting from the increased sales investments we made in late 2023.

Reimbursements as a percentage of total revenue were 2.2% in 2024 and 1.8% in 2023. Reimbursements are project travel-related expenses passed through to a client with no associated operating margin.

Cost of Service. Cost of service consists of personnel costs before reimbursable expenses, which includes salaries, benefits and incentive compensation for consultants and subcontractor fees, acquisition-related cash and stock compensation costs, non-cash stock compensation expense, and reimbursable expenses which are travel and other expenses passed through to a client and are associated with projects.

Personnel costs before reimbursable expenses, increased to $183.8 million in 2024, as compared to $174.9 million in 2023. The higher costs in 2024 were primarily a result of increased salaries relating to increased headcount, higher utilization of subcontractors and increases in non-cash stock compensation expense. Personnel costs as a percentage of total revenue were 59% in both 2024 and 2023.

Non-cash stock-based compensation expense, included in personnel costs before reimbursable expenses, was $10.5 million in 2024 and $6.2 million in 2023. This increase was primarily related to the stock price award program and the acquisition related non-cash stock compensation expense related to LeewayHertz. See Notes 1 and 10, "Basis of Presentation and General Information” and “Stock Based Compensation”, respectively, to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information.

Selling, General and Administrative Costs (“SG&A”). SG&A primarily consists of salaries, benefits and incentive compensation for the selling, marketing, administrative and executive employees, non-cash compensation expense, amortization of intangible assets, acquisition-related costs and various other overhead expenses.

SG&A costs increased 19%, to $78.5 million in 2024, as compared to $65.9 million in 2023. This increase in the costs during 2024 was primarily due to increased commissions and sales related expenses, increased incentive compensation commensurate with Company performance and increased non-cash stock based compensation related to the stock price award program. SG&A costs as a percentage of total revenue were 25% and 22% during 2024 and 2023, respectively.

Non-cash stock-based compensation expense, included in SG&A, was $9.0 million in 2024, as compared to $4.5 million in 2023. The increase in 2024 primarily related to the non-cash stock compensation expense from the stock price award program. See Note 10, “Stock Based Compensation,” to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information.

Amortization Expense. There was $148 thousand of amortization expense in 2024. There was no amortization expense included in SG&A in 2023. The amortization expense related to the amortization of the intangible asset acquired in our acquisition of Leeway Hertz in September 2024. See Note 1, “Basis of Presentation and General Information,” to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information.

Segment Profit. Segment profit consists of the revenue generated by the segment, less the direct costs of revenue and selling, general and administrative expenses that are incurred directly by the segment. Items not allocated to the segment level include corporate costs related to administrative functions that are performed in a centralized manner that are not attributable to a particular segment. These administrative function costs include corporate general and administrative expenses, non-cash compensation, depreciation and amortization expense and interest expense.

Global S&BT segment profit decreased to $51.6 million in 2024, as compared to $54.4 million in 2023 primarily due to the revenue growth in our Gen AI consulting and implementation offerings, which were offset by weakness in our eProcurement and OneStream implementation offerings.

Oracle Solutions segment profit increased to $19.1 million in 2024, as compared to $18.1 million in 2023, primarily due to higher revenue, partially offset by increased headcount and increased usage of subcontractors.

SAP Solutions segment profit increased to $18.7 million in 2024, as compared to $11.9 million in 2023, primarily due to the value-added reseller activity in the year, partially offset by higher commissions and sales related costs.

Legal Settlement and Related Costs. In May 2023, Gartner, Inc. ("Gartner") filed a lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction and damages against the Company and two ex-Gartner employees that were hired by us. On February 17, 2024, we, Gartner and the two ex-Gartner employees entered into a settlement agreement whereby we made a settlement payment of $985,000 to Gartner in exchange for a dismissal of the lawsuit and a release of all claims which is reflected in our Consolidated Statement of Operations for the year ended December 29, 2023. In addition, we incurred incremental legal costs related to the settlement which were recorded as expenses in the period incurred.

Income Taxes. During 2024, we recorded $13.4 million of income tax expense related to certain federal, state and foreign taxes which reflected an effective tax rate of 31.1%. During 2023, we recorded $11.9 million of income tax expense related to certain federal, state and foreign taxes which reflected an effective tax rate of 25.8%. The increase in the effective tax rate is primarily due to the limitation of executive compensation deductions related to executive compensation, primarily driven by the stock price award program. See Note 10, “Stock Based Compensation,” to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

As of December 27, 2024 and December 29, 2023, we had $16.4 million and $21.0 million, respectively, of cash, and $12.7 million and $32.7 million, respectively, outstanding under our Credit Facility, net of deferred debt costs. We currently believe that available funds, including the cash on hand and funds available for borrowing under our Credit Facility, and cash flows generated by operations will be enough to fund our cash requirements, including working capital, debt payments, lease obligations and capital expenditures for at least the next twelve months and beyond. We may decide to raise additional funds in order to fund expansion, to develop new or further enhance products and services, to respond to competitive pressures, or to acquire complementary businesses or technologies. There is no assurance that additional financing would be available when needed or desired.

The following table summarizes our cash flow activity (in thousands):

Cash Flows from Operating Activities

Net cash provided by operating activities was $47.7 million in 2024, as compared to $37.4 million in 2023. In 2024, the net cash provided by operating activities was primarily due to net income adjusted for non-cash items, partially offset by increases in accounts receivable and contract assets. In 2023, the net cash provided by operating activities was primarily due to net income adjusted for non-cash items, partially offset by increases in accounts receivable and contract assets and decreases in accrued liabilities, other accruals and income taxes payable.

Cash Flows from Investing Activities

Net cash used in investing activities was $10.6 million in 2024, as compared to $4.1 million in 2023. During the third quarter of 2024, the Company acquired LeewayHertz for $6.5 million, net of cash acquired. See Note 1 , “Basis of Presentation and General Information”, to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information. During both periods, cash flows used in investing activities primarily related to investments for the development of our Hackett Connect Executive Advisory member platform and continued development of our QL benchmark, DTP technologies and our Gen AI platform, AI XPLR.

Cash Flows from Financing Activities

Net cash used in financing activities was $41.7 million in 2024, as compared to $42.6 million in 2023. The usage of cash in 2024, primarily related to the repayment of borrowings of $20.0 million related to our Credit Facility, dividend payments of $12.1 million, employee net vesting related tax withholding requirements of $4.1 million and the repurchase of $6.4 million of the Company's common stock. The usage of cash in 2023 was primarily related to the net pay down of our Credit Facility $27.0 million, dividend payments of $12.0 million and employee net vesting related tax withholding requirements of $3.8 million.

Material Cash Requirements

Debt Payments and Lease Obligations

On November 7, 2022, we amended and restated our credit agreement in order to extend the maturity date of our Credit Facility and provide the Company with an additional $55.0 million in borrowing capacity, for an aggregate amount of up to $100 million. See Note 8, “Credit Facility,” to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information.

As of December 27, 2024, we had $13.0 million of outstanding borrowings, excluding deferred debt costs, under our revolving line of credit, leaving us with borrowing capacity of approximately $87.0 million. See Note 8, “Credit Facility,” to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information.

The following table summarizes our future principal payments under our future Credit Facility and lease commitments under our non-cancelable operating leases as of December 27, 2024 (in thousands):

(1) Excludes interest charges on borrowings, the fee on the amount of any unused commitment that we may be obligated to pay under our revolving Credit Facility as such amounts vary and the deferred debt costs. See Note 8, “Credit Facility”, to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information

Capital Expenditures

As part of the LeewayHertz acquisition, the Company has committed to fund up to $10.0 million of development costs related to ZBrain AI subject to the business plans approved by the JV Board of Directors. Our capital expenditures primarily consist of investments related to the continued development of our Hackett Connect Executive Advisory member platform, our QL benchmark, Digital Transformation technologies and our Gen AI platform, AI XPLR. During the years ended December 27, 2024, and December 29, 2023, our capital expenditures were $4.1 million for both years. We expect an increase in capital expenditures related to the continued development of the ZBrain AI orchestration platform and the integration of AI XPLR.

Taxes

Cash paid for income taxes was $11.6 million and $13.3 million for the years ended December 27, 2024, and December 29, 2023, respectively. See Note 9, "Income Taxes," to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.

Dividends and Share Repurchases

During the fiscal year 2024, our Board of Directors approved four quarterly dividends payments of $0.11 per share totaling $12.1 million. Subsequent to December 27, 2024, our Board of Directors approved a 9% increase in the dividend, increasing the annual dividend amount to $0.48 per share. We expect dividend payments in 2025 to be approximately $13.2 million.

We have an ongoing authorization from our Board of Directors to repurchase shares of our common stock. During 2024, we repurchased 43 thousand shares of common stock from members of our Board of Directors at an average price per share of $24.34, for a total cost of $1.1 million. In addition, we repurchased 182 thousand shares of common stock on the open market at an average price per share of $29.46, for a total cost of $5.4 million. As of December 27, 2024, we had $27.5 million share repurchase authorization remaining. Subsequent to fiscal year end, we repurchased 50 thousand shares of the Company’s common stock from our Chief Financial Officer and members of our Board of Directors for a total of $1.6 million, or $30.78 per share. Including these repurchases, we had approximately $26.0 million available for future repurchases under the plan.

Shares purchased under the repurchase plan do not include shares withheld to satisfy withholding tax obligations. These withheld shares are never issued and in lieu of issuing the shares, taxes were paid on our employee’s behalf. In 2024, 0.2 million shares were withheld and not issued for a cost of $4.1 million, bringing the total cumulative cash used to repurchase stock in 2024 to $10.5 million. In 2023, 0.2 million shares were withheld and not issued for a cost of $3.8 million, bringing the total cumulative cash used to repurchase stock in 2023 to $4.5 million.

Recently Issued Accounting Standards

For discussion of recently issued accounting standards, see Note 1, “Basis of Presentation and General Information”, to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information.

As of December 27, 2024, our exposure to market risk related primarily to changes in interest rates and foreign currency exchange rate risks.

Interest Rate Risk

Our exposure to market risk for changes in interest rates relates primarily to the Credit Facility, which is subject to variable interest rates. The interest rates per annum applicable to loans under the Credit Facility will be, at our option, equal to either a base rate or a Secured Overnight Financing Rate ("SOFR") rate for one-, two-, three- or nine-month interest periods chosen by us in each case, plus an applicable margin percentage. A 100-basis point increase in our interest rate under our Credit Facility would not have had a material impact on our 2024 results of operations.

Exchange Rate Sensitivity

We face exposure to adverse movements in foreign currency exchange rates, as a portion of our revenue, expenses, assets and liabilities are denominated in currencies other than the U.S. Dollar. We recognized losses related to foreign currency exchange of $19 thousand in 2024 and $0.4 million in 2023 and income of $1.4 million in 2022. These exposures may change over time as business practices evolve. Currently, we do not hold any derivative contracts that hedge our foreign currency risk, but we may adopt such strategies in the future.

For a discussion of the risks we face as a result of foreign currency fluctuations, see “Item 1A. Risk Factors” in Part I of this report.

Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures

The Company maintains disclosure controls and procedures that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in reports that we file or submit under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (“the Exchange Act”), is recorded, processed, summarized, and reported within the time periods specified in the SEC rules and forms, and that such information is accumulated and communicated to the Company’s management, including its Chief Executive Officer (principal executive officer) and Chief Financial Officer (principal financial officer), as appropriate, to allow for timely decisions regarding required disclosure.

The Company, under the supervision and with the participation of the Company’s management, including the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, evaluated the effectiveness of the design and operation of the Company’s disclosure controls and procedures as of the end of the period covered by this report. Based on this evaluation, the Chief Executive Officer and the Chief Financial Officer concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were effective as of the end of the period covered by the Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Changes in Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

There were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting identified in connection with the evaluation required by paragraph (d) of Exchange Act Rules 13a-15 or 15d-15 that occurred during the three months ended December 27, 2024 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

Management’s Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

Our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting, as such term is defined in Exchange Act Rule 13a-15(f). Under the supervision and with the participation of our management, including our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, we conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting based on the framework in “Internal Control – Integrated Framework (2013)” issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) as of and for the year ended December 27, 2024.

As permitted by SEC guidance for newly acquired businesses, management's assessment of the Company's disclosure controls and procedures did not include an assessment of those disclosure controls and procedures of LeewayHertz Technologies Private Limited that are subsumed by internal control over financial reporting. The LeewayHertz Technologies Private Limited operations represents 1% of the Company's consolidated total assets and 4% of the Company's consolidated total net income as of and for the year ended December 27, 2024.

Based on our evaluation, utilizing the criteria set forth in “Internal Control – Integrated Framework issued by COSO in 2013,” our management concluded that our internal control over financial reporting was effective as of the end of the period covered by this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

The Company’s independent registered public accounting firm has audited our internal control over financial reporting as of December 27, 2024, and has expressed an unqualified opinion thereon.

Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm

To the Shareholders and the Board of Directors of The Hackett Group, Inc.

Opinion on the Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

We have audited The Hackett Group, Inc.’s (the Company) internal control over financial reporting as of December 27, 2024, based on criteria established in Internal Control—Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission in 2013. In our opinion, the Company maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting as of December 27, 2024, based on criteria established in Internal Control—Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission in 2013.

We have also audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (PCAOB), the consolidated financial statements of the Company and our report dated February 28, 2025, expressed an unqualified opinion.

As described in Management’s Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting, management has excluded LeewayHertz Technologies Private Limited from its assessment of internal control over financial reporting as of December 27, 2024, because it was acquired by the Company in a purchase business combination in the third quarter of 2024. We have also excluded LeewayHertz Technologies Private Limited from our audit of internal control over financial reporting. LeewayHertz Technologies Private Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary whose total assets and net income represent approximately 1% and 4%, respectively, of the related consolidated financial statement amounts as of and for the year ended December 27, 2024.

Basis for Opinion

The Company’s management is responsible for maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting and for its assessment of the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting in the accompanying Management’s Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s internal control over financial reporting based on our audit. We are a public accounting firm registered with the PCAOB and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audit in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether effective internal control over financial reporting was maintained in all material respects. Our audit included obtaining an understanding of internal control over financial reporting, assessing the risk that a material weakness exists, and testing and evaluating the design and operating effectiveness of internal control based on the assessed risk. Our audit also included performing such other procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances. We believe that our audit provides a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Definition and Limitations of Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

A company’s internal control over financial reporting is a process designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A company’s internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that (1) pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the company; (2) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, and that receipts and expenditures of the company are being made only in accordance with authorizations of management and directors of the company; and (3) provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use or disposition of the company’s assets that could have a material effect on the financial statements.

Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect misstatements. Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate

/s/ RSM US LLP

Coral Gables, Florida

February 28, 2025