First-quarter revenue at ASGN Inc. (NYSE: ASGN) rose 20.3% year over year, and gross margin improved. Revenue was up 18.7% year over year when adjusting for one additional billable day in the first quarter of 2022.

“2022 is off to a very strong start, with revenues and adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter exceeding the high end of our guidance ranges,” CEO Ted Hanson said.

The company also announced that executive VP and CFO Ed Pierce will retire effective in August. ASGN’s board tapped Marie Perry, currently executive VP at ASGN, as Pierce’s successor.

ASGN also noted first quarter 2022 revenue includes approximately $40.2 million from businesses acquired after first quarter of 2021, accounting for 4.4 percentage points of the year-over-year growth.

The organic revenue growth rate for the first quarter was 14.4%.

The Richmond, Virginia-based firm provides IT, engineering, life sciences and marketing/creative staffing as well as government solutions.

“Our commercial segment accounted for 76.3% of consolidated revenues with strength across all business units driving the segment’s growth,” Hanson said. “Our federal government segment accounted for the remaining 23.7% of revenues and performed in line with our expectations for the quarter, achieving consistent revenues year-over-year despite the difficult quarterly comparison.”

Revenue by segment

In the CFO changeover, Perry came to ASGN from Brink’s Inc., where she had served as CFO. Prior to Brink’s, Perry had served as CFO, executive VP and chief administrative officer at Jamba Juice. She had also served as interim CFO for Brinker International and spent 14 years in financial roles in companies that included American Airlines and KPMG.

Hanson said he expects Perry’s transition into the CFO role to be seamless and lauded Pierce for his work with the company.

“Ed has been an invaluable partner to me since I assumed the role of chief executive officer,” Hanson said. “On behalf of our board of directors and our entire company, I cannot thank Ed enough for his outstanding contributions to ASGN. We will certainly miss his presence and wish him the best in his well-deserved retirement.”

Guidance

ASGN forecast second-quarter revenue of between $1.11 billion and $1.13 billion, a year-over-year increase of between 13.7% an 15.7%.

Share price and market cap

Shares in ASGN were up 4.00% to $115.21 as of 11:06 a.m. Eastern time; they were 12.65% below their 52-week high, according to FT.com. The company had a market cap of $5.69 billion.