Earnings call transcript: Randstad Q2 2025 sees revenues dip amid market uncertainty

Randstad NV reported its second-quarter 2025 earnings, revealing a revenue of 5.8 billion euros, alongside an EBITDA of 171 million euros, marking a 3.0% margin. Organic revenue saw a decline of 2.3%, and adjusted net income stood at 84 million euros. Currently trading at $14.48, the stock has declined 22.5% year-to-date, with a slight dip of 0.91% following the announcement, reflecting investor concerns over ongoing economic uncertainties and a modest decline in revenue. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company maintains a strong financial health score of 3.18, rated as GREAT.

Key Takeaways

• Randstad’s Q2 revenue fell by 2.3% organically, highlighting challenges in the current economic climate.
• The company maintained a positive free cash flow of 82 million euros.
• Structural cost savings are on track to deliver over 100 million euros by 2025.
• Temporary work shows resilience compared to permanent hiring, with large clients experiencing high single-digit growth.
• Randstad continues to invest in digital marketplaces and AI recruitment.

Company Performance

Randstad’s overall performance in Q2 2025 reflects the broader challenges faced by the recruitment industry amid geopolitical and economic uncertainties. The company’s focus on digital transformation and specialization in AI-related roles shows a strategic pivot to adapt to changing market demands. Despite a decline in organic revenue, Randstad’s strong performance in specialized sectors like Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) with an 8% growth indicates a robust competitive position.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 5.8 billion euros, down 2.3% organically
• EBITDA: 171 million euros, 3.0% margin
• Adjusted net income: 84 million euros
• Free cash flow: Positive 82 million euros
• Leverage ratio: 1.8

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Randstad anticipates continued economic uncertainty and challenges in permanent hiring. The company expects the Q3 gross margin to decline similarly to Q2. Despite market challenges, the company maintains an attractive dividend yield of 8.16%, demonstrating commitment to shareholder returns. It remains focused on profitable growth in structural growth segments, leveraging digital platforms and AI advancements. For deeper insights into Randstad’s valuation and growth potential, explore the detailed analysis available on InvestingPro.

Executive Commentary

CEO Sander van ’t Noordende emphasized the importance of specialization and digital adoption, stating, "Specialization at scale is now a fact at Randstad." CFO George highlighted the company’s growth trajectory, noting, "We continue to progress in our growth algorithm." Van ’t Noordende also addressed market uncertainties, saying, "Clients are still experiencing uncertainty... they take it one step at a time."

Risks and Challenges

• Economic and geopolitical uncertainties could impact market stability and client confidence.
• Continued decline in permanent hiring may affect revenue growth.
• Competitive pressures in the recruitment industry necessitate ongoing innovation and adaptation.
• Dependence on large clients for growth could pose risks if market conditions shift.
• Implementation of new service models requires significant investment and operational adjustments.

Randstad’s Q2 2025 earnings reflect the company’s efforts to navigate a challenging economic landscape while investing in future-ready technologies and services. As the company continues to adapt, its strategic focus on digital transformation and specialization is expected to play a crucial role in its long-term success. Access Randstad’s comprehensive Pro Research Report, part of InvestingPro’s coverage of 1,400+ top stocks, for expert analysis and actionable investment insights.

Full transcript - Randstad NV (RAND) Q2 2025:

Elba, Conference Call Moderator, Randstad: Hello. Welcome to the Randstad Q2 2025 results conference call and audio webcast. For the first part of the call, the participants will be in listen only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press key five on your telephone keypad. Please note that you are limited to one question and one follow up question. I will now hand over the word to Mr. Sander van ’t Noordende, the CEO, Mr. van ’t Noordende. Please go ahead.

Sander van ’t Noordende, CEO, Randstad: Thank you very much, Elba, for that kind introduction and good morning everybody. I’m here with George and our investor relations team to share our Q2 results. The market environment in the second quarter was again influenced by geopolitical and economic uncertainty, which frankly we and many of our clients see as the new normal. Against this backdrop, I’m pleased with the performance we delivered and the strategic progress we made. We achieved revenues of €5.8 billion, an EBITDA of €171 million, with a margin of 3.0%. We continue to benefit from our focus on operational excellence and, most importantly, we are seeing the benefits of our strategy coming through in our performance. We’ve seen a mixed picture across our markets with different trends and dynamics at play. We continue to deliver good profitable growth in Italy and Spain.

We had growth returning in Asia-Pacific where India and Japan are doing particularly well. We saw sequential improvement in North America with year-over-year growth in our operational and digital business. Northwest Europe continues to face weakness in hiring confidence, affecting permanent recruiting and our professional businesses the most. Looking ahead, we expect economic uncertainty to stay at current levels. In that context, client confidence will still be a challenge and we might see more demand for temporary work and soft activity on the permanent hiring side. Of course, we are managing the business with the operational discipline you expect from us and we are staying extremely close to our clients and talent. In the meantime, we are building a better and stronger Randstad for the future. As said in our capital markets event, we’ve been focused on executing our partner for talent strategy.

Specialization at scale is now a fact at Randstad and this is important because specialization is key for our differentiation and our competitiveness in the marketplace. Clients want to talk to someone who understands their business. Talent wants to talk to someone who knows about their field. Our people get the opportunity to focus their career on a specialization and do an even better job than they did before. We know that this works. In recruitment process outsourcing, for example, we see strong demand across our markets as more clients turn to us to be their dedicated partner for talent. We continue to win new clients, but equally important, we see more interest in recruiters on demand at existing clients. In digital, we see increased demand for AI skills, especially for gen AI and agentic AI capabilities. In the U.S.

we are ramping up AI-related projects in financial services, healthcare, consumer goods, and technology, and we provide these AI roles from our global delivery center in India. Think about machine learning engineers, data scientists, and cloud engineers. We’re also becoming more and more digital. In Q2, more than 700,000 shifts were directly selected by the talent on our digital marketplaces, a double-digit increase over Q1. We continue to build scale and specialization in our talent and delivery centers, resulting in higher productivity and fulfillment focus works. In summary, great progress and exciting work to be done. We’re becoming more specialized and more digital with a better experience for clients and talent. All in all, we’re absolutely on the right track. George, over to you.

George, CFO, Randstad: Thank you, Sander, and good morning, everyone. To bring back a little bit of last year, around this time we talked about, let’s say, from Q1 to Q2, the return of seasonality, and this year we even see a step up. From Q1 to Q2, we saw a more pronounced return in seasonality, more employees working, more people at work compared to last year and at the group level. Therefore, our organic revenue declined by 2.3%. Not an inflection yet, but still an improvement of 2% versus Q1, even against slightly tougher comparables. We will go through the results in more detail, but importantly, at the consolidated level, once again, like in Q1, our gross profit and OpEx were aligned, allowing us to protect relative profitability despite the lower top line. Like we discussed in the last call, we see the impact of our strategic progress.

We see it in specialization and growth segments. We see it in Q2 with a step up in productivity in GPP fields, basically being able to increase our productivity in the field and how we do it. Lastly, we see the impact of structural cost savings with a strong focus on indirect costs. Let’s see how this all pans out in our results. Starting with page eight, with North America, we saw good progress this quarter, like Sander just highlighted. In the U.S. in particular, our operational business grew 1% and continues to perform ahead of the market. We are becoming more efficient, like we discussed before, and we are having fewer FTEs serving more employees working again this quarter. Digital, also building on Q1, grew 2% this quarter as we see client wins and demand increasing.

Like Sander just highlighted, the professional solutions and permanent hiring do remain subdued as hiring confidence somehow still remains low, declining by 16% and 24% respectively. In Canada, we also saw good underlying improvement and, as you can see in the chart, a return to growth already in this quarter. The EBITDA margin for North America therefore came in at 4.1%, up 70 basis points year over year, showcasing productivity gains. Now, moving on to Northern Europe on slide 9. In Northern Europe, we do continue to see mixed trends. Temp proves to be more resilient as agility is sought by our clients, with sentiment on the perm side still more uncertain. From a sector perspective, we see sequential improvement in industrial pockets supporting our operational business, but at the same time automotive continues to be subdued in the Netherlands.

Zooming in now, in the Netherlands growth sequentially improved from -5% to -5% from the previous -7%. In Q1, adaptability was good despite, let’s say, the adverse, and we’ve discussed it before, it’s a quarter impacted heavily by holidays, working days, and long weekends, but adaptability by and large was good. Operational was minus 3% for the quarter, improving again versus Q1 as we see the impact already of several client wins over the last few months. Professional, though, is facing a challenging environment as the broader market is slowing down. We see this also reflecting obviously in the subdued permanent hiring. On the other hand, remember our healthcare acquisition software helped to a certain extent or to a large extent to offset a large part of the headwinds we face in the broader professional talent solutions specialization.

Moving on to East Germany, so Germany saw a modest sequential improvement as decline rates eased to minus 7%, but still mostly on easy comparables as here the labor market environment remains unchanged. Digital at minus 5% while operational still down 8% where automotive obviously remains challenging this quarter. Again, remember working days and holidays significantly impacted profitability due to the nature of the contracts. In Belgium, we see a slightly tame still, but still very good adaptability. Operational is growing 1%, reflecting underlying industrial improvement in Belgium, but like other European countries, professional remains challenging. Remember, we are number one and quite exposed to all the different specializations. As we mentioned during our capital markets event, we saw this quarter the first self-service shifts through the digital marketplace, and we are quite excited and pleased to see the initial adoption of our digital marketplace.

Moving on to the broader northern European subregions, we are back to growth. Poland 17% already on top of strong growth last year, and Switzerland 9% leading the pack, while Nordics, as I mentioned, remain subdued. Growth is also profitable as we expanded margin by 40 basis points year over year. Moving on now to the segments Southern Europe, UK, and LATAM on slide 10, let me start with France. In France, we can almost say that we see similar trends. As we saw and just discussed in Northwest Europe, somehow an easing of decline rates, a better Q2 than Q1 after a slow start of the year. This improvement was mostly notable in the operational business, now down 3% versus 6% in Q1. Our on-site business is growth and is doing particularly well here. Professional, though, slow to minus 8%, and also perm again 20% down.

Still, year over year, digital, while still slightly negative, has sequentially improved mainly on the back of our strong aerospace and airspace industry. The EBITDA margin was 4.1%, and France did a good job and showed control, solid control, and adaptability. Now Italy again now on top of growth, Q2, Q2 last year was a very strong growth quarter for Italy, continues to see good growth and is still doing well for many quarters in a row. Operation was up 2%, and our investments in growth segments such as IT and healthcare are paying off as professionals also grew 3%. Profitability remains strong, and we continue to invest in our business and excited for the times to come. Iberia also grew 4% here, primarily driven by Spain as we continue to see good momentum, growing at 6%.

This is mainly driven by strong performance in its operational and enterprise talent solutions. Again, here we remain investing in growth segments with many opportunities to grow further. Furthermore, in the broader region, revenue and profit performance were mixed across other Southern European countries, UK, and Latin. The UK labor market continues to soften, and we were down 15%. On the other hand, in Latin America, again on top of solid growth last year, we continue to grow 7% with all our countries showing growth. Moving on to Asia-Pacific. The Asia-Pacific region continues to do well and is now as a region back to growth with good profitability. Japan demonstrated solid growth, 6%, combined with strong profitability. A good example of the impact of leaning in on specialization.

Remember, Japan, as we discussed before, is one of the countries that operates talent centers at scale, already well embedded in our ways of working, our talent service models, supporting solid growth in our operational business. Digital continues also to do well, we continue to invest, and we are ideally positioned to support clients and talent in a very candidate-scarce market. Moving south, Australia, New Zealand also improved, another market that is accelerating the rollout of our digital marketplace with over 200,000 shifts in this quarter alone rolling through the marketplace already. India grew double digit and we continue to invest in the right growth segments here. Overall, the EBITDA margin for the region was 4.3% in the second quarter, showing strong operational discipline while, remember, continuing to invest in growth. That concludes the performance for our key geographies.

Let me now walk you through our financial performance on slide 13. First, let me start from a specialization point of view. Sander alluded to it in the beginning and concluded that, with the exception of professional, all specializations made a significant step up, with operational typically early cyclical and enterprise close already to last year levels this quarter. Once again, this quarter our gross profit and you can see and OpEx were aligned. We’ll talk more about it later. That way, the quarter EBITDA margin was 3%. Similar profitability margins last year despite low revenue and adverse FX impact. Underlying EBITDA was €471 million. Let me unpack a little bit items until net income, starting with integration costs and one offs. In this quarter, these amounted to €35 million, mainly related to reorganizations in Germany, the Netherlands, and France.

In the line amortization and impairment of intangible assets, nothing really relevant, it’s just a regular accounting treatment of the purchase price allocation of our acquisition of Zorwark. Net finance costs, though, include this quarter the write off of all the remaining value of the seller notes of our loans towards CareerBuilder and Monster joint venture to the extent of €32 million. The effective tax rate for the first six months was 30%, impacted in general by the low taxable income following a change in profit mix and lower earnings. Our 2025 guidance is a notch higher, therefore, to somewhere between 29% and 31%, mainly reflecting this current country mix. Adjusted net income was €84 million. With that, let’s continue and look now in more detail at our gross margin bridge on slide 14.

Gross margin came in line with our expectations, albeit at the lower end, driven by FX in particular and subdued firm. First of all, remember like for like we need to remove 60 basis points of the impact from the divestment of Monster in HR Solutions. Year on year and starting with the left, our temp margin is down 40 basis points. Here, geographic and client mix continue to have a very large impact. This is where the market is today. Penetration rates are stable in many markets. Seasonality is returning, and large clients are up high single digits. We expect this trend to continue. In addition, idle time linked to light quarter and holidays impacted especially, as I mentioned before, Northern Europe. Sander mentioned, I also mentioned it before, uncertainty continues to weigh on perm, and agility solutions are doing better, but the permanent side is not.

To the extent that today, even compared to Q1, we lost sequentially €5 million in fees alone. This weighs on a margin, and it had an impact of approximately 10 basis points versus original expectations. Contrary though to the subdued transactional firm, RPO, so companies again outsourcing their recruitment processes, continues to do well, and we are actually growing 8%. We’re finding new ways to revenue in RPO, either it’s being in mid market, in new clients, and new activities. Therefore, HRS, the overall HRS excluding Monster, has a positive 30 basis points impact. This now brings me to the OpEx bridge on slide 15. Remember, this one is sequential; it is how we compare versus Q1. Our underlying operating expenses came in at €923 million, broadly stable sequentially as FX offset seasonality and timing.

In the year of strategic investments, total cost decreased 4% year over year, or €35 million less, and directly aligning with the 4% organic gross profit decline. As discussed at the CME, we’re making strides in building a stronger, more resilient, and profitable Randstad this quarter. We’ve seen both a 1% increase in field productivity compared to last year as we continue to implement new service models, and our indirect costs have continued to decrease structurally year over year while still protecting our strategic investments. Similar to Q1, we have successfully maintained our EBITDA margin year over year, resulting in an organic recovery ratio of over 60%. We also incurred one-offs, primarily in Northern Europe and France. We discussed it before; we continue to roll out structural optimization cost savings.

This will either ensure we have a minimum level of profitability in every market we operate or will continue to free up resources simply from better ways of working and rolling out. Our strategy now, leading it back to our CME and Q1 publication. With these additional efforts in one-offs and restructures in the first half of the year, we are now on track to deliver north of €100 million net structural savings for 2025. With that in mind, let’s move on to slide 16, which contains our cash flow and balance sheet remarks. Our free cash flow for the quarter was positive €82 million, reflecting good working capital management. DSO was 55.7 days, still up sequentially. Here again, the very same client mix that we discussed before on margin puts also upward pressure, with most of the impact accounted by a few large clients.

Our leverage ratio is 1.8, and remember it typically peaks in Q2 according to seasonality of earnings, cash flow, and dividend payments. That brings me to the outlook on slide 17. Let me start with the current momentum. Volumes in early July, so in these first two weeks, are in line with June. If we then look at our gross margin in Q1 and Q2, we saw our gross margin down approximately 90 basis points year over year. Remember this includes 60 basis points from Monster deconsolidation. Therefore, looking ahead to Q3, we expect broadly a similar decline with minor puts and takes, as Monster was also deconsolidated as of mid-September last year, and FX will continue to play a role.

If we look at operating expenses, we expect them to be modestly lower on the back of the continued cost savings and the typical seasonal dip in all CACs we have from Q2 to Q3 from the treatment of holidays. Balancing this, we expect a step up in profitability in the second half of the year, broadly in line with the regular intra-year pattern. To summarize, let me wrap it up. Q2, we see a step up, not an inflection, and you keep doing what we do. We will continue to, one, focus on profitable growth by having better propositions and focusing on structural growth segments; two, continue to be laser focused in delivering better, more scalable talent service models, and with that focus, free up productivity and scalability on the field; and three, we’ll strive to keep improving and reduce our indirect costs.

In short, we continue to progress in our growth algorithm by rolling out our agenda to deliver experience at scale in line with our partner for talent strategy. That concludes our prepared remarks, and we look forward to taking our questions. Elba, please.

Elba, Conference Call Moderator, Randstad: Ladies and gentlemen, we are now ready to take your questions. Please introduce yourself. Before asking your question, I want to remind you if you wish to ask a question, please press key five on your telephone keypad. We kindly remind you that you are limited to one question and one follow up. First analyst can go ahead. Your line is now open.

Andy Grobler, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Hi, good morning, this is Andy Grobler from BNP Paribas. Just to start on the US if I may. Good progress in the business. Can you just talk through how the trends in terms of large clients and SME have gone through the quarter, and what you’re hearing back from those clients in terms of their confidence at this point.

Sander van ’t Noordende, CEO, Randstad: Yeah, let’s say Andy, thank you very much for that question. I think as I said there’s still uncertainty in the market, but that’s as we also say is the new normal. Clients are still experiencing that. I don’t think they’re ready for big decisions, whether it’s investments in infrastructure, technology, or people. They take it one step at a time. Having said that, we’ve made some very good progress, especially in our digital business with some of the big banks and the retailers, where we have had nice upticks in activity. We have had some good new wins in our RPO business, which is primarily focused on North America, of course with some of the tech companies, with some of the banks as well. All in all, I would say the mood music is ticking up slightly, but I wouldn’t go a whole lot further than that, Andy.

Andy Grobler, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Thanks. Just a follow up again on North America. If you look at the number of placements per member of corporate staff, it grew very sharply during the quarter, up 18%. The rest of the world was a bit more modest. Is that level of growth kind of the shape of things to come as you continue to roll out your digital?

George, CFO, Randstad: Platform, and you’re breaking up what grew through the quarter? Sorry, just to make sure we address your questions. Sorry.

Andy Grobler, Analyst, BNP Paribas: The number of placements per member of corporate staff.

George, CFO, Randstad: Absolutely. Yeah, I alluded to that. As we continue to roll out, in the case of the U.S. already the digital marketplace, that’s the only way we operate in operational. Combined with talent centers and delivery centers, we continue to see the benefits of that not only from a better proposition, but also given to self service, given everything we can do to accelerate and have immediate propositions, an increase in productivity from the field. On the back already of a few quarters, this quarter more pronounced, we see indeed the ability to generate more placements with less FTE. That will basically continue to be how we monitor the productivity and the gains we have in our field.

Andy Grobler, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Great, thank you very much.

Sander van ’t Noordende, CEO, Randstad: Thank you, Andy.

Elba, Conference Call Moderator, Randstad: We are ready for our next question. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning Simon, speaking from Jefferies. Could you comment on the June exit rate at the group level, and if you could flag any countries benefiting from a particularly good exit rate? Thank you.

George, CFO, Randstad: Yeah, so normally. Simon, we don’t necessarily disclose the exit rates per country, but let me just help you a little bit. One, if you look at most of the numbers we publish as well in detail, the step up from Q1 to Q2 is broad based. Practically in every country we have return of seasonality and a step up, let’s say, number of employees at work. The growth rates are broad based and improvements on average around 2%. If we look at, let’s say, at exit rates of the quarter, obviously we left Q1 with approximately minus 4%. We said on average April was in line with March and Q1, so things have improved throughout the quarter. It’s a very difficult quarter to have an exact number because you have a lot of public holidays and long weekends. It’s very difficult to say.

We are quite comfortable when we say July started in the same fashion as we exit June and the quarter.

Okay, a quick follow up to this. Assuming this improving trend continues, do you expect at some point in Q3 to return to flat organic growth on a year-on-year basis?

Let’s say country by country, but that’s one or two things. Indeed, we see a step up. I also started by saying seasonality was more pronounced this year, even than it was last year. The only other point that we have to offset is, of course, we are now starting to face more difficult comparables. Give or take, between Q2 last year to Q3 last year, we were 1% to 1.5% improve. Yes, on one hand you have an improving trend, and we’ve been seeing that throughout the last six months. That will face, on the other hand, a slight headwind from comparables as the net impact. I’ll leave it to you, but indeed that’s the two things combined.

Thank you.

Elba, Conference Call Moderator, Randstad: We are ready for our next question. Please go ahead.

Suhasini Varanasi, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi, good morning.

Elba, Conference Call Moderator, Randstad: Suhasini Varanasi.

Sander van ’t Noordende, CEO, Randstad: Your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.

Suhasini Varanasi, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi, can you hear me? This is Suhasini from Goldman Sachs.

George, CFO, Randstad: Hi Suhasini, good morning.

Suhasini Varanasi, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hey, good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. I just wanted to get some more color on the US, please. The temp staffing data obviously tells you one thing, but your top line trends say something else. Can you maybe help us unpick what was maybe self help, maybe the digital aspect that has helped you versus what the underlying market conditions are? Thank you.

George, CFO, Randstad: Yeah, so we, I mentioned as well, Sander, if you didn’t want to say more about specific client trends or something. If we look at the largest segments, Racine, I think it’s probably easy to start there. What we see is primarily with, let’s say, penetration rates stabilizing. Overall, we see clearly an uptick on large clients. A lot of the agility needs and the entry, let’s say, the seasonality agility demands from our clients, and that is particularly expressed in our large client segments. We’re doing particularly well there. It is clear, also supported by the rolling out of our digital marketplaces. In many clients, large clients in the United States, we share from a procurement perspective as it leads to suppliers. If we have a better proposition, if we are able to have immediate talent availability, we can do well in terms of fulfillment rate.

We can do well to basically be the first one to have talent available for our clients overall. That segment in particular is enabling us to support growth above markets.

Sander van ’t Noordende, CEO, Randstad: You can add our digital North America digital business. U.S. Digital has shown some nice growth in the quarter as well. Suhasini, it’s a story of operational and digital, I would say.

Suhasini Varanasi, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Thank you, that’s very clear. Just a quick one on the outlook on gross margins in SG&A. When you say slightly lower gross margins and modestly lower SG&A, can you just help us quantify that impact? Thank you.

George, CFO, Randstad: Yeah. On both, if you typically look at normal years, let’s forget Covid and all that ups and downs. If you look at normal years, we typically have a seasonal dip in terms of margin. Let me start with the margin. If you look from Q2 to Q3, there’s a few reasons. You remember we have more student business, we have certain more hospitality business. There’s also bench in some countries. Typically, our margin goes down from Q2 to Q3, normally around 20, 30 basis points.

At the same time, we had, let’s say, this quarter and we expect still to face it in Q3, given how things are entering, an unfavorable FX impact on the gross margin. So, by and large, the current trend over the year we expect to continue, also because these larger clients I mentioned before, they have a lower margin, they are growing high single digits. That has an impact in our margin. It’s the market as it is today, larger clients, seasonality returning, and we’re able to grow in them. Now, the opposite, almost a mirroring effect of this, is in OpEx. Normally as well, our OpEx from Q2 to Q3 takes a step down, typically because of holidays and the treatment of that. We’ve been continuing to do cost savings, so this will continue to materialize throughout the year.

Remember, when we talk about large clients increasing in the mix, we find growth in large clients more than we find growth in SME. That also comes at different, let’s say, cost-effective talent service models. We are also able, in the mix of our operating expenses, to do it more efficiently. Last but not least, again, the mirroring effect, FX will be supportive. Less OpEx in Q3 is to be expected just because of FX. Now, you put all of this together. I think probably the best way to look at this is and set the tone for Q1 and Q2. Normally, we see an uptick. Last year, if I’m not mistaken, it was $10 to $15 million in profitability. We have, on one hand, gross margin going down. On the other hand, OpEx also going down. The net impact from that perspective is $10 to $15 million.

We’ve been striving to lose ground in profitability versus last year. We’ll do everything we can to, again, in the second half of the year, have an uptick in profitability and profit in line with what we did last year.

Suhasini Varanasi, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Understand? Thank you very much.

Elba, Conference Call Moderator, Randstad: We are ready for our next question. Please go ahead.

Morning, this is Remi Grenu.

Sander van ’t Noordende, CEO, Randstad: Remi Grenu, your line is now unmuted.

George, CFO, Randstad: Please go ahead. Hello, Remi, go ahead. Good morning.

Hello. Good morning. Just a question on the professional weakness that you’re calling, which seems to be the only specialization which has deteriorated a bit sequentially. Can you give us a little bit more flavor there? You’re flagging the uncertainty, but keen to understand if this is something that you’ve seen in previous cycles as well. Is it something that you would consider normal, even given the context and your experience and historical precedent? If there is any other potential impact, I’m thinking they are more structural versus the cyclicality that we’ve discussed so far on the call.

Sander van ’t Noordende, CEO, Randstad: Good question. I think it’s fairly straightforward in times of uncertainty. If you need people to run your business or to deliver packages or whatever, because you have business, you take them. If you’re looking to hire that marketing expert, that HR person, and things are not so certain, you say maybe I’ll give it a quarter or two until we hire that person, until we have a bit more certainty under our belt for where this market is going to. I think that is the challenge in professional, with a notable exception, by the way, for digital, because our digital business, specifically in North America, has seen a nice uptick, especially in retail and financial services. I think it’s as simple as that.

Understood. One additional question, if I may. Just making sure I got that right on the gross margin guide for Q3. You’re saying that you expect a similar decline year on year, about the -90 bps versus Q3 last year, which I’m just making sure I’m using the right base. That was 19.5%, right?

George, CFO, Randstad: Yeah. So indeed we’ve been having 19. Now remember, this includes the 60 from the deconsolidation of Monster. Now we deconsolidated around half 14 or 15 September last year. There is a slight, let’s say, improvement in that respect. You also have to take puts and takes. We need to see how the mix evolves in terms of FX, in terms of perm, the impact of FX, but in general the same delta year over year with a slight benefit from having the consolidated Monster already at the end of the half of September underlying.

Okay, understood. Thanks.

Elba, Conference Call Moderator, Randstad: We are now ready for our next question. Please go ahead.

Andy Grobler, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Hi, good morning, it’s Hugo from.

This is Hugh from Kepler Cheuvreux. I have a question on operating working capital improvements compared to last year. Can you please give me a bit of color on what drove the reduction this quarter compared to last year, and what we can expect for the rest of the year?

George, CFO, Randstad: Yeah, first of all, when we look at the operating working capital, and I mentioned it, when it’s a surprise, it’s good. When it’s less good in terms of what expectations are being, I’m not a fan. Looking at it on a quarter specifically, ideally zooming out helps a few things. We mentioned it. Our DSO remains impacted by a larger development on the larger clients. At the same time, we’re doing a lot of work on our own improvements in terms of time to invoice and overdues. Our overdues are the lowest historically ever. There’s a lot of good work in our teams in that respect this quarter in particular. I suggest we look at the first six months. You have an impact from liabilities, and that’s just basically a reflection on timing and proactive working capital management.

Just making sure that we manage as well as we can our working capital. I suggest we look at the first half and not just a quarter in particular. Okay, thank you.

Elba, Conference Call Moderator, Randstad: As a reminder, you can ask a question by pressing pound five on your telephone keypad. Please introduce yourself when asking a question. Thank you very much. We will now take our next question. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Sander van ’t Noordende, CEO, Randstad: Thank you very much, Elba. If there are no further questions at this time, I think we’re going to wrap up the call by saying a big, big thank you once again to our moderator, the 600,000 talent, and of course the Randstad team members for all the hard work for executing our strategy and running the business with rigor and discipline. We appreciate it a lot and see you all next quarter.

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