Fourth-quarter revenue at Barrett Business Services Inc. (NASDAQ: BBSI) rose 6% to nearly $272.0 million. However, growth was in the company’s professional employer organization business, where revenue rose 8.8%. Temporary staffing revenue fell 13.0%.

Gross billings — which include PEO employee wages paid by clients — rose 8% to $1.95 billion in the fourth quarter at the Vancouver, Washington-based firm. And the average number of worksite employees rose 6%.

“We had a strong finish to a year that consistently exceeded expectations,” Barrett President and CEO Gary Kramer said. “We continued to see positive results from our sales efforts through Q4 with a larger portion of our [worksite employee] growth resulting from new clients in the quarter.”

Guidance

Barrett forecast gross billings growth of between 5% and 8% for full-year 2023. It estimates the average number of worksite employees will rise between 2% and 4% for the year.

Share price and market cap

Shares in Barrett were down 6.86% to $90.20 as of 12:24 p.m. Eastern time; they were 10.56% below their 52-week high set on Feb. 17, according to FT.com. The company had a market cap of $674.2 million.