Earnings call transcript: PageGroup Q2 2025 reveals cautious outlook

PageGroup, a leading recruitment agency, reported a 10.5% decline in gross profit for Q2 2025, reflecting challenging market conditions. The company’s stock closed at 234.4, a decrease of 0.26% amid economic uncertainty. According to InvestingPro analysis, the stock is currently trading near its 52-week low of £2.90, with a price-to-earnings ratio of 62.35, suggesting a premium valuation despite recent challenges. The company maintains a notable dividend yield of 7.3%, offering some compensation to patient investors. Despite a strong performance in its Page Executive business, PageGroup remains cautious about future prospects, expecting a reduction in headcount and aiming for £60-70 million in net cash by year-end.

Key Takeaways

• Q2 gross profit fell by 10.5% in constant currencies.
• Page Executive showed strong growth, particularly in Asia.
• The company plans to reduce headcount by 120–150 per quarter.
• Targeting £60-70 million net cash by year-end.
• Economic uncertainty continues to impact recruitment sectors.

Company Performance

PageGroup’s performance in Q2 2025 was marked by a 10.5% decline in gross profit, amounting to £194.8 million. The first half of the year saw a gross profit of £389.3 million, down 9.7% in constant currencies. InvestingPro data reveals a broader trend of revenue decline, with a 12.54% decrease in the last twelve months. For investors seeking deeper insights, InvestingPro offers 8 additional key tips about PageGroup’s financial health and market position. The company is navigating varying market conditions, with improvements in the U.S. and Asia but deterioration in Continental Europe.

Financial Highlights

• Q2 gross profit: £194.8 million (10.5% decline)
• First half gross profit: £389.3 million (9.7% decline)
• Net cash at end of June: £10 million (down from £54 million in Q1)
• Full-year operating profit expected to align with consensus of £22 million

Outlook & Guidance

PageGroup projects a cautious outlook amid economic uncertainty, targeting a net cash position of £60-70 million by year-end. The company’s financial stability is supported by a moderate debt level, with a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.76 and a healthy current ratio of 1.43, as reported by InvestingPro. Discover comprehensive analysis and detailed metrics in the exclusive Pro Research Report, available to InvestingPro subscribers. The company plans to continue reducing headcount by 120-150 per quarter and is aiming for Page Executive to reach $200 million in gross profit by 2030.

Executive Commentary

• "We delivered a resilient performance despite ongoing market uncertainty," said CFO Kelvin Stagg, highlighting the company’s adaptability.
• CEO Nicholas Kirk noted, "June was the strongest month that we’ve seen in the history of the Page Executive business," underscoring the segment’s potential.
• Stagg emphasized, "Our focus remains to balance near-term productivity with ensuring we remain well placed to take advantage of opportunities."

Risks and Challenges

• Economic uncertainty continues to pose a challenge.
• The technology sector remains difficult for recruitment.
• Varying market conditions across regions require strategic adjustments.
• Temporary recruitment is outperforming permanent recruitment, indicating shifting market dynamics.
• Resource reallocation and HR transformation efforts are ongoing.

Q&A

Analysts inquired about the challenges in technology recruitment, salary offer trends, and restructuring costs. The company explained conversion rates of job offers and detailed cash flow expectations, reflecting a focus on strategic adjustments in response to market conditions.

Full transcript - Pagegroup PLC (PAGE) Q2 2025:

Operator: Hello and welcome everyone to the PageGroup Q2 trading update. My name is Becky and I’ll be your operator today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing STAR followed by one on your keypad. If you change your mind, please press STAR followed by two. I will now hand over to your host, Kelvin Stagg, CFO, to begin. Please go ahead.

Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer, PageGroup: Thank you and good morning everyone. Welcome to the PageGroup 2025 Second Quarter Trading Update. I’m Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer, and on the call with me is Nicholas Kirk, Chief Executive Officer. Although we’ll not read it through, I’d just like to make reference to the legal formalities that are covered in the cautionary statement in the appendix to this presentation and which will also be available on our website. Following the call, the group delivered gross profit of £194.8 million in the quarter, a decline of 10.5% in constant currencies. For the first half, we delivered gross profit of £389.3 million, a decline of 9.7% in constant currencies. We saw a slight deterioration in activity levels and trading in continental Europe, particularly in our two largest markets, France and Germany. However, we saw some improvement in activity, trading, and customer confidence in Asia and the United States.

We reduced fee earner headcount by 133 or 2.5% during Q2, mainly in Europe and the United Kingdom. Overall, the group ended the quarter with 5,163 fee earners and a total headcount of 7,034. Productivity measured as gross profit per fee earner remained high but declined 3% on Q2 2024. This reflected the reduction in gross profit, partially offset by the decrease in fee earner headcount. We had net cash at the end of June of around £10 million. This compares to £54 million at the end of Q1. Having purchased £7 million worth of shares for the Employee Benefit Trust in the quarter, as well as having paid out the 2024 final dividend of £37 million in June, I will now give a brief financial review. We reduced our fee earner headcount by 133 or 2.5% during Q2, mainly in Europe and the United Kingdom.

Operations headcount decreased by 61 in Q2 or 3.2%, including the end of some double running as we finalized the transition of our shared service centre from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Overall, the group had 5,163 fee earners and a total headcount of 7,034. We continued our strategy of reallocating resources into the areas of the business where we saw the most significant long-term structural opportunities as well as ensuring it remained in line with the activity levels we were seeing in each of our markets. Overall, our focus remains to balance near-term productivity with ensuring we remain well placed to take advantage of opportunities when market conditions improve. Gross profit per fee earner remained high but decreased 3% compared to Q2 2024. This reflected the reduction in gross profit, partially offset by the decrease in headcount.

We saw a slight deterioration in activity levels and trading in continental Europe, particularly in our two largest markets of France and Germany. However, we saw some improvement in activity, trading, and customer confidence in Asia and the U.S., although salary levels remained strong. Offers made to candidates were not as elevated as they were in 2022 and early 2023, and as a consequence, the conversion of accepted offers to placements remained the most significant challenge while our fee rates remained at high levels. As clients’ recruitment budgets have tightened, they’ve become more risk averse, which has continued to slow the recruitment process, impacting time to hire. In addition, the levels of offers from clients to candidates remain relatively low, raising the opportunity for the current employer to counteroffer. I will now present a regional review. Group gross profit declined 10.5% in constant currencies against Q2 2024.

Foreign exchange had a negative impact on our results, decreasing our reported gross profit growth rate by 2.6 percentage points or £5.9 million. We saw varying market conditions across the group, with a further worsening in continental Europe and continued challenging conditions in the UK. However, we saw some improvement in Asia and another quarter of growth in the U.S., reflecting the uncertain macroeconomic conditions. Temporary recruitment, down 8%, continued to outperform permanent, down 11%, as clients sought more flexible options. This was broadly in line with Q1 in our largest region, Europe, Middle East and Africa, which represented 53% of the group. We declined 17.1% on Q2 2024, with a worsening in market conditions reflecting this uncertainty. Temporary recruitment, down 13%, was more resilient than permanent, down 19%. France, the group’s largest market, which represented 13% of the group, declined 20% due to ongoing political and macroeconomic uncertainty.

We saw a more resilient performance in temporary recruitment, which is indicative of the current uncertainty in the market. Germany, our second largest market, declined by 21% in Q2, with declines across all brands and conditions particularly tough with permanent, with companies limiting and delaying hiring decisions due to macroeconomic and tariff-related uncertainty. Elsewhere in Europe, trading conditions remain challenging in all countries in line with the tougher trading conditions. In Q2 we reduced our headcount by 94, mainly in France. The Americas, which represented 19% of the group, grew 2.9%. North America was up 13% with the U.S. up 14%, a third consecutive quarter of growth and an improvement on the growth of 7% in Q1 2025. We continue to see good levels of activity and trading, with another quarter of strong results in engineering and a significantly improved performance in construction.

In Latin America, excluding Argentina due to the hyperinflation, gross profit was down 9%. Mexico, our largest country in the region, was down 18% due to ongoing political uncertainty and low levels of customer confidence. Brazil was down 5%, albeit against a tough comparator. Elsewhere in Latin America, our remaining countries declined 2%. Collectively across the region, headcount increased by 12. In Asia Pacific, which represented 16% of the group, Q2 gross profit grew 0.6% on 2024, its first quarter of growth since Q2 2022 and a significant improvement on the decline of 11.1% in Q1 2025. Within the region, 8 out of our 12 markets delivered growth in Q2. In Asia, which represented 14% of the group, we grew 4% and saw early signs of improvement in trading and customer confidence.

In Greater China, we declined 5% with mainland China down 17%, but Hong Kong up 16% in the quarter due partly to a weak comparator but also driven by improved trading, particularly in Page Executive. Southeast Asia grew by 10% against Q2 2024 with a notable performance in Singapore, up 14%, particularly in Page Executive. India delivered a second consecutive record quarter, up 13%. Japan was flat, an improvement on the decline of 7% in Q1. Australia declined 13% with ongoing challenging conditions across most states. Headcount increased by 5 in the quarter. Non-operations headcount decreased by 37, including the end of some double running as we finalized the transition of our shared service centre from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. In the United Kingdom, which represented 12% of the group, gross profit declined 14.3%.

The market remains tough but stable, having delivered a similar growth rate as the previous three quarters. The conversion of accepted offers to placements remained a significant area of challenge, with ongoing subdued levels of client and candidate confidence impacting decision making and increasing time to hire. Our headcount decreased by 56 in the quarter. I will now provide a summary of our results. We delivered a resilient performance despite ongoing market uncertainty with mixed results across the group. We saw a slight deterioration in activity levels and trading in continental Europe, particularly in our two largest markets, France and Germany. However, we saw some improvement in activity, trading, and customer confidence in the U.S. and Asia. The conversion of accepted offers to placements remained the most significant area of challenge as ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty continued to impact confidence, which extended time to hire.

In addition, the levels of offers from clients to candidates remained relatively low, raising the opportunity for the current employer to counteroffer. We continue to see the benefits of our investments in innovation and technology. Customer Connect is supporting productivity and enhancing customer experience. Page Insights is providing real-time data to inform business decisions for both PageGroup and our customers. We continue to work with our partners to deploy AI and automation tools into our working environment despite the uncertain outlook due to the unpredictable economic environment. We have a highly diversified and adaptable business model, a strong balance sheet, and our cost base is under continuous review. We continued with our strategy of reallocating resources into the areas of the business where we saw the most significant long-term structural opportunities as well as ensuring it remained aligned to the activity levels we were seeing in each of our markets.

Overall, our focus remains to balance near-term productivity with ensuring we remain well placed to take advantage of opportunities when market conditions improve. At this time, the Board expects full-year operating profit to be broadly in line with current consensus of £22 million. Nick and I will now be happy to take any questions you may have.

Operator: Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press STAR followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you want to remove your question from the queue, please press STAR followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Remy Grenny from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Good morning gentlemen, and thanks for the presentation. Just a few questions on my side. First, can you provide us more details on the phasing through the quarter? I’m particularly interested in how the slight deterioration you’ve seen in France and Germany has materialized. Is it something that you’ve seen happening through the quarter, or was it back end loaded? The same question for the steep improvements you’ve seen in the U.S.

Nicholas Kirk, Chief Executive Officer, PageGroup: That’s the first question.

The second one is, in the context of what one of your competitors was saying a few weeks back, have you seen any reduction in job flows, any significant one, or any other worrying indicators that could support another phase of volume deterioration? I’m particularly interested in what you’ve seen in June. The last one is probably more of a housekeeping question. Can you just update us on the cost savings and how much of the $15 million restructuring we should expect to be expensed and paid in H1 versus H2? If there is any other consideration that we need to have in mind, any additional restructuring costs you would have to incur going forward.

Sure, no problem. I’ll deal with the first few questions and leave cost savings to Kelvin. As regards activity, it’s been a bit of a strange quarter, hasn’t it? It was quite tricky to compare April this year to April last year because of when Easter fell. We then came into May, and we had a number of public holidays, particularly across Europe, that landed on a Thursday. We saw both contractors, but also our own employees and our customers taking bridge days, adding the Friday onto the Thursday to make for a long weekend. When you actually looked at the full five-day weeks, I wouldn’t suggest that necessarily there was a pattern particularly, but definitely the holidays and the impact of holidays showed a pattern year on year. That’s really what we called out in the statement, which is a bit of softening in activity in Europe.

Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer, PageGroup: Not.

Nicholas Kirk, Chief Executive Officer, PageGroup: Considerable, but notable across particularly areas like France and Germany in terms of new job acquisition. A little bit into interviews, but then probably offset with markets like Asia and the U.S. that actually we saw increases in activity both from new job acquisition and interviews. You talk then about, I guess, more broadly those two markets. I think it probably is worth adding though is that we’ve talked over the last two years about activity remaining high and this being unlike other slowdowns we’ve seen where the job count’s fallen away and it still does remain high. I think what’s also important to point out though is when we look at the performance, say of our U.S. business, what we can see there is a growth rate in Q4 last year that was 3%. In Q1, it was 7%. In Q2 it was 14%.

When you look back over those last nine months, you don’t see a material increase in the job numbers, you don’t see a material increase in the interview numbers. All that’s been happening in the U.S. is going back to something that again we consistently talked about over the last couple of years, which is this conversion of offers to accepted offers and therefore placements, which as we’ve said, in typical markets for us from for every five offers a consultant receives, they land four of them. Through the last couple of years in many of our markets where we struggled we’ve seen that acceptance rate dropping down to 3. All the same amount of work but for 25% less revenue. What’s happened in a market like the U.S. is gradually we’re seeing that move back towards 4. The recovery there isn’t an activity driven recovery.

It’s more confidence led because we’ve got customers on both sides of the equation, clients and candidates that when the first offer doesn’t land, they negotiate and get the deal over the line. I think what we saw in Q2, certainly in a market say like Germany, was actually that in some of our bigger teams, we actually saw that rate of acceptance getting slightly worse. We’ve got quite a big team that cover healthcare and life sciences in Germany and they had an acceptance rate that was closer to 50%. Again, all the same amount of work but for 50% of the revenue. It’s a challenge in that sense, but it’s not just an activity play. I wanted to give you that other piece of color because as I say, the recovery we saw in the U.S.

is not activity led, it’s slightly improving activity, but it’s more about the conversion at the back end going back to something far more recognizable from pre pandemic times.

Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer, PageGroup: Yeah, and I’ll take the last one. In terms of the restructuring costs that we announced at Q1, they fell into two buckets. There was £10 million that related to a delayering of our leadership, primarily within Europe. Elsewhere around the group in the United Kingdom and in Asia, we’d actually been having a tough time for a lot longer and therefore it has actually happened already in those two markets. In addition, it’s quite a lot cheaper to adjust your leadership numbers in those countries. In the Americas we didn’t really need to. The majority of this was in continental Europe. It was about 130 people and it’s largely been done. The £10 million that relates to that will be in the first half of cost.

There’s actually about a £5 million benefit that will come in the second half where we actually aren’t therefore paying those people, pardon me, as we go through this second half of the year. The other £5 million relates to a HR transformation program that we’re running, which is largely about implementing a HR information system, but then also moving people out of local countries and into our shared service centres. Part of it is system implementation costs and part of it is redundancy costs. The first part of it, around building the system, will largely be in the first half. The redundancy costs will likely be accrued into the second half, which means we probably spent about £2.5 million of the £5 million. I expect £12.5 million of that to be in the first half. That also was nearly all cash. That’s also hit the cash number.

You will see an unwind of £5 million offset by the £2.5 million in the second half.

Understood. Thanks very much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Rory McKenzie from UBS Investment Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Nicholas Kirk, Chief Executive Officer, PageGroup: Morning, guys. It’s Rory here.

Two questions, please. Firstly, you reintroduced your commentary on the outlook for FY25. Appreciate that doesn’t mean that all the uncertainty has gone away, but can you talk about your kind of planning assumptions for H2 in. In particular, maybe just kind of round off that comment on the H1 versus H2 cost base, given that phasing of savings and costs and everything else. Secondly, can you talk about any signs of changes in the salary offers that clients are willing to make? Given what you were saying, it feels that lots of the low conversion rates are probably driven by weak offers. Sort of the trends you’re seeing across regions and any willingness to pay a bit more to get jobs over the line.

Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer, PageGroup: Thank you.

Nicholas Kirk, Chief Executive Officer, PageGroup: Yeah, no worries. Thanks, Rory. Okay, I’ll take the second question first and then pass over to Kelvin. The commentary really around salary offers is mirroring of the commentary around performance. Because as I was saying just a moment ago, we’re not seeing huge changes in activity. There’s some subtle shifts which we thought was worth calling out. Maybe slight deterioration in Europe, slight improvement in markets like the Americas and Asia, but it isn’t that that’s driving the performance. In order for the performance to improve, we need to have more offers being turned into revenue. For that to happen, we need both sides of the equation, clients and candidates, to be engaging in a negotiation. It’s very simple.

When an offer is made to a candidate, probably like in most negotiations, the initial offer in most situations is rejected and the candidate’s looking for a little bit more or is looking for something in this area or that area, whatever it may be, it’s very normal. These moves that we handle are professional candidates. They plan their career very sensibly and carefully. They might move once every five years. Therefore, if they’re going to make a move, there’s risk involved and they want the reward to be right. They’re very thoughtful individuals, intelligent individuals, and they know their value. Therefore, that’s our role. The key part of the Recruiter’s role is to broker that deal and help make it happen and make sure both sides are happy and feel value in the process.

What we are seeing, Rory, is that in markets like the U.S., you are getting situations where the client might come back with an offer that we’ve been talking about throughout last year, which might be 5%, 6%, 7% increase. In many situations, if the candidate turns it down, the client says, what more do we need to do now? Will it suddenly shoot up to those numbers we were seeing in 2021, 2022, 15%, 20%? No, of course. Might it go towards 10%? Yeah, it would do. Early signs of that in Asia, but I think we want to be very cautious on Asia because it’s one quarter and it’s 4% growth. It’s great to see. I’m really pleased with the job the team are doing, but let’s have another quarter or two before we start talking about any kind of recovery in that market.

In the markets where we’re struggling, you’re not getting that engagement. We had a situation in the UK with a very, very well-known retailer that went through six rounds of interviews for a candidate that was earning £90,000, was looking for £95,000, and at the sixth round of interview, he was the final candidate and he was offered £91,000. Even though the management team had spent time doing six rounds of interviews, they offered him a £1,000 increase, which he then turned down. The budgets are definitely a lot tighter in markets like the UK and Europe, and there’s a lot less flexibility to negotiate. Where we’re seeing an improved performance is because the clients are willing to get the deal over the line, because they’re feeling a little bit more optimistic about the line of business they’re in and therefore the criticality of hiring increases.

Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer, PageGroup: Yeah. If I come back to you on the outlook number for 2025, as we said, we believe we’re going to be broadly in line with current consensus of 22. Our internal forecasts that we do quarterly align with that. As you mentioned, when we did Q1, we actually did our forecast, I think, two days before Liberation Day and announced the day after. Therefore, we didn’t feel that we could rely on it, which is why we chose at the time not to issue any guidance. I think at this point, outside of the law of small numbers, we’re today comfortable with where consensus sits. If I look at the phasing between the first and the second half, there are a few moving parts. The largest of which is that restructuring charge.

£12.5 million of that is in the first half and £2.5 million of that is in the second half. However, there should be a £5 million benefit from reduced wages and bonuses for those people that have left the group. We also every year always have a holiday pay accrual that we charge in the first half and release in the second. That’s about £5 million. If you add those together, it does mean you’ve got a charge of about £17.5 million in the first half, a credit of about £7.5 million in the second half. A swing of £25 million between first and second half of the year. We haven’t actually decided yet how we’re going to present that charge, whether it will be exceptional within the underlying numbers, but it obviously will have quite a sizable impact on our profit in the first half.

Great, thanks both, that’s very helpful.

Thanks, Rory.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Andrew Charles Grobler from BNP Paribas Exane. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning.

Andrew Charles Grobler, Analyst, BNP Paribas Exane: Just a couple from me, if I may. Firstly, just short-term guidance on headcount expectations into the second half, into Q3 particularly. Secondly, just what you’re seeing within your technology business that’s had a reasonably challenging time over the past few years. Has there been any change in that, and how does that vary across the major regions? Thank you.

Nicholas Kirk, Chief Executive Officer, PageGroup: No worries, I can take those. In terms of headcount expectations, I think firstly just to highlight that what we’ve been trying to do consistently over particularly the past probably 12, 18 months is reallocate resource. It isn’t a one size fits all and you’re starting to see that now in the mixed performance that we’ve highlighted. In areas like the U.S. where we’re seeing growth, clearly we will want to put some headcount in. In a business like Page Executive, where we’re seeing growth, we want to put some headcount in, and if we continue to see performances like we have done in places like Hong Kong or India or Singapore, then again there’ll be some additional headcount.

Clearly that’s going to be offset by markets like France and Germany where performance is tougher and therefore we’ll be wanting to balance near term productivity with looking to maintain the platform. It’s always a bit of a balancing act. If you look back through the last quarters, our headcount, Fiona, headcount has reduced in the quarter by somewhere between 120 and 150 per quarter. Unless there’s a huge change in market conditions, I would expect that that will continue over the next couple of quarters. As regards your question around technology, yes, you quite rightly point out it continues to be tough. I think we were down 18% in our technology business in Q2, down 22% in perm, 10% in non-perm. Our largest technology business is in Germany, which we’ve already highlighted. Had a tough quarter. We were down 22% in technology in Germany.

We had a better performance in India. They delivered a record against an overall record. We had a record performance in technology in Q2 in India. Also got relatively small business in the U.S., but that I think benefited from a bit of bounce and that grew quite considerably in Q2, but it’s quite a small business. Japan did reasonably well, but overall it remains difficult. What we’re seeing is that there’s just weak demand within areas like project and program management and just a lack of appetite for large scale investment into transformation projects. You’re still getting quite a lot of demand, as you’d expect, around cyber, AI, big data because of the supply issues.

Some of the bigger projects we’ve made quite a lot of money over the years, they’re just not in existence at the moment because companies don’t have the appetite or the willingness to invest in those things right now whilst there’s this uncertainty. It continues to be tough in technology.

Andrew Charles Grobler, Analyst, BNP Paribas Exane: Can I just ask on that tech business, is there any sense from your clients that some of them are looking to invest more of that budget into AI rather than people, and that’s kind of changing the demand cycle at this time?

Nicholas Kirk, Chief Executive Officer, PageGroup: I think what we’re seeing, Andy, is there’s a difference probably between C-suite rhetoric and then what we’re hearing from TA teams. I think there’s definitely some voiceovers that are coming from CEOs talking about the future and the opportunity to replace people with technology. What we’re also seeing at a ground level is that still recruitment goes on. The demand for a lot of these roles is as high as ever. I think as a result of that, that is going to be a challenge moving forward for a lot of organizations, how they integrate the desire to change the organization but retain culture, retain the essence of the organization moving forward. I think that story kind of goes across the board, not just in the technology sector, but more broadly.

Certainly we’ve seen it when we visited clients, when we’ve been traveling around speaking to organizations, and there’s a lot of talk about AI being something that replaces administrative, repetitive, low value tasks and actually allows individuals in the teams to do more interesting work. I think that was a quote I actually heard the other day from the CEO of Amazon. He was talking about that sense that you would have people doing more high touch, interesting work and the AI would actually take away the boring stuff. I guess we’re just going to have to see how it plays out.

Andrew Charles Grobler, Analyst, BNP Paribas Exane: Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Carl Green from RBC. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks very much. Good morning, Nick. Good morning, Kelvin. Just a couple of questions from me. The first one around Page Executive, where there’s been some really good examples of the strategy working, especially in Asia. Just thinking about your 2030 ambitions. Are you still comfortable with the idea that business can get to a $200 million gross profit scale? The second question, just around the rebuild of the cash position in the second half. You’ve obviously given us lots of building blocks around the P&L, but just in terms of some of the other building blocks, working capital, CapEx, etc. Just in terms of how confident you are you can get to the sort of target that you’ve laid out previously around net cash. Thank you.

Nicholas Kirk, Chief Executive Officer, PageGroup: Okay, I’ll talk briefly about Page Executive and then pass over to Kelvin. I mean, we are very pleased with the performance of the Page Executive business. It continues to deliver. June was the strongest month that we’ve seen in the history of the Page Executive business. That was great to see and we’ve got many, many highlights. Now, clearly it’s not perfect, but there’s markets where it’s been tougher than others. Generally speaking, we’re seeing good performance across Asia Pacific, UK, U.S., LATAM, parts of Europe. Parts of Northern Europe have been a bit more tricky in line with the overall performance. We’re going to be launching it in the Middle East in Q4. It’s going really, really well. We’re up to about 315 heads. I think the modeling that we did was to deliver.

The figure you mentioned was that we’d probably be thinking we need a business of around 700 now. Therefore, in effect, we’re going to have to more than double the business over the next four or five years, which is doable. I guess, though, I’m going to have to probably slightly kind of flat back this one and say it just depends completely on what the market conditions are like over the next five years. I mean, with supportive market conditions, because these haven’t been. I mean, our Page Executive business is over delivering in a really tough market. They’re doing a great job, which I’m really pleased with.

What excites me more is how quickly this business can move when the conditions are a little bit more supportive and actually they’re in a position where they’ve got a bit of a tailwind rather than the headwind that they have right now. I mean, every deal they land is hard-fought. It’s competitive out there. When we launched the strategy, we talked about a market gap. The market gap is bigger than we thought it was. We’re really pleased about that. We think there’s opportunities to scale it in all of our countries. It doesn’t need to be focused on the more mature markets. There’s opportunities everywhere and if you gave me five years of good market conditions, I think it’s definitely deliverable by 2030. You can’t promise me that. I’m not asking you to. I’d like to, but you can’t. We’ll see how things go.

To date, I think they’ve done a really, really good job in tough market conditions.

Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer, PageGroup: Yeah. Let me talk to cash for a second. I think the cash was slightly low at the end of June at £10 million. Actually, as of today or as of yesterday, we were slightly over £20 million, which is probably a more representative number. We did have some sizable outflows, as I mentioned, in the first half. £37 million on the final dividend, there was £9 million that went into shares that we put into the trust to hedge the share plan awards, and there was about £12.5 million I also mentioned to do with the restructuring provision. £58.5 million in total that went out in the first half. In the second half, the only real material outflow is the interim dividend between £16 million and £17 million that goes out in October. There’s a fair amount of time between now and then, other moving parts.

Our CapEx is materially lower nowadays, so most of our software is now software as a service and therefore we don’t and can’t capitalize it. Historically, during the teens years, I would have said it was probably £12 million on software and £12 million on leasehold fit outs, so £24 million in total. Today it is probably just below £10 million on leasehold fit outs. We’ve done a lot over the last few years. We didn’t do much post-pandemic in 2021 and 2022 as we were looking to see how ways of working was going to fall, really post the sort of hybrid working beginnings. During 2024 and the beginning of this year we did a little bit, a lot last year, but less so this year. I expect CapEx for the full year collectively to be between £12 million and £15 million.

Our tax rate is going to be about 35%. Big guess, but I would suspect that currently we’ll end the year somewhere between £60 million and £70 million of net cash. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from James Roland Clark from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Nicholas Kirk, Chief Executive Officer, PageGroup: Morning. Hi.

Thank you. Two questions for me. Q1, you’ve mentioned that in the German business, the lifting of the debt break to fund defense and infrastructure spending was a helpful tailwind to sort of drive a much better year-on-year performance in the quarter on the net fee line. I guess with the quarter deteriorating down 21%, what role is that sort of element playing? It perhaps wasn’t a tailwind in the second quarter. What happened to that? Also, when might it drive or be a tailwind to the German business, do you think, as you look out for the next 12 months? My second question is just on the conversion of offers into acceptances and how you described that it’s running at 60% and it used to be 80%.

I hear a lot about career catfishing and I just wanted to get a sense from you as to how confident you are that 80% can be reached again and that it’s not a structurally impaired element of the story, given that generations entering the workforce today appear to be a lot more discerning around job offers and acceptances. I’d love to get your thoughts on whether that’s structural or not.

Thank you.

Sure. Okay, I’ll deal with those. If we look at maybe Germany over the last six months, I think my reflections would be that Q1 was better than anticipated and Q2 was worse than anticipated. Therefore, overall as a balance across H1, it’s probably broadly in line with perhaps what we were expecting. You’re right. We did talk about the release of the debt break and the investment program in Germany as something that had improved sentiment in the country in Q1, and we were optimistic around the likelihood of that continuing into Q2 and the remainder of the year and beyond. I think what we now know is that the investment program really is clearly aimed at stimulating domestic demand, but we’re not going to see any impact of that probably until the end of the year, October, November time at the earliest.

What we’re left with therefore is probably a sense of concern about the tariffs, which is really dampening export expectations and leading to increased uncertainty. Yeah, I think Q3 could continue to be difficult in Germany would be my view. The hope being that the government stimulus starts to take effect by the back end of the year. As regards to your next question around conversion of offers to acceptances, I think that before we started to see the recovery in the U.S. that was probably quite a live question. I just don’t think that necessarily now I would be thinking that the market will be any different on the basis that when we talk about pre-pandemic it being four out of five and we talked about it dropping down to three, I think there was this natural sense, well, maybe, well that’s structural.

It’s to do with this or it’s to do with that. It’s Gen Z, it’s AI, it’s something else that’s happened. When you look at the shape of recovery in the U.S., it is absolutely down to, as I mentioned earlier, candidates and clients getting around a table with us broking the deal and making them happen. It’s not activity related, we’re not getting clients turning around saying, well, it’s something to do with AI or whatever else. It’s just simply good business, sensible business taking place for organizations that have a role that they need filling and understanding that they may need to go a little bit higher and candidates might need to come a little bit lower, as has always been the case for my 30 years in recruitment. I guess I’ll be able to report back to you.

If we continue to see another positive quarter in Asia, what I’ll be able to do in three months’ time is tell you if Asia has mirrored the U.S. I think if you’re seeing the multiple markets we have in Asia mirroring the U.S. and the U.S. itself moving back to that kind of a norm, as much as we might want to look at changes that are driven by new people coming into the workforce, et cetera, and maybe they’re still to come, I just don’t think it will be the topic for now, I really don’t. Not for white collar professional recruitment where you have individuals, as I said earlier, who spent time at university, in many cases got professional qualifications, they take their career very seriously, they move typically every four or five years. These aren’t individuals that move every one or two years.

That’s the area that we play in within Michael Page and certainly even more so within Page Executive.

Thank you. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Steve Wolf from Deutsche Bank. Steve, the line is now open. Please go ahead.

Morning, gents. Just to take that one stage further from Page Executive, Michael Page, what are the trends then you’re seeing in terms of Page personnel at the lower end? Has the activity in the conversion rate.

Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer, PageGroup: Picked up there, given that they’re on the lower salary?

Has there been more negotiation, meet in the middle kind of activity there as well? Is that consistent with the other two parts?

Nicholas Kirk, Chief Executive Officer, PageGroup: We don’t have Page Personnel in either the United States or Asia. Really, the improvement in the business that we’re seeing and the commentary I’ve given, I can’t give to Page Personnel because it doesn’t exist in those markets. Page Personnel does exist within Europe, and as we’ve said earlier in the call, they’re facing the same challenges in Europe as Michael Page are. No problem, no worries. Steve.

Operator: Thank you. We currently have no further questions, so I’ll hand back to Kelvin for closing remarks.

Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer, PageGroup: Thank you. As there are no further questions, thank you all for joining us this morning. Our next update to the market will be our 2025 interim results on 12 August 2025. Thank you all for your time this morning.

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