Randstad, one of the world’s largest recruiting companies, has published its first quarter revenue numbers.

The Dutch firm closed the books on the first quarter with revenues of €6,518 billion. This is up 2.4% from last quarter but down about 4% on a year-over-year basis, which is the metric that investors generally pay more attention to.

Nevertheless, there were a few positive highlights in Randstad’s financial results.

The company’s enterprise business, which provides recruiting services and related solutions to large companies, clocked up a 5% year-over-year revenue growth. Randstad attributed the increased fee income to heightened demand for outplacement services.

Randstad helps companies recruit temporary employees, as well as permanent staff and executives. It also offers its 230,000 corporate clients related offerings, including software products designed to reduce paperwork for HR departments.

To help investors track how well it’s doing, Randstad publishes a metric called revenue per working day. The metric tracks the fee income that the firm generates from every working day completed by temporary workers it helps recruits.

During the first quarter, Randstad’s revenue per working day fell in the U.S., Canada and France. But sales ticked up in a number of other key markets including Germany, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Of the €6,518 billion in revenue Randstad generated, €1,368 million was left over as gross profit. This amounts to a gross margin of 21%, which represents an improvement of 50 basis points compared with the year-ago quarter.

“We have adapted well to this operating environment, and delivered growth in some markets,” remarked Randstad boss Sander van‘t Noordende. “The improvement in our gross margin reflects a sustained focus on pricing and the mix of our different services, while our EBITA margin demonstrates strong cost management across our business.

text

text