Britain’s biggest publicly traded recruitment firms will be hoping to reverse their fortunes in the upcoming earnings season, though they might have an uphill struggle in front of them.
FTSE 250 constituent PageGroup PLC (LSE:PAGE) warned that full-year profits will be below previous guidance of £120 million to £125 million during its third-quarter shareholder call in January
The firm anticipates reported gross profit to be down 8.9% to £237.3 million from the year before.
Robert Walters PLC (LSE:RWA) has kept guidance comparatively strong, tell the market in January that profits should be in line with expectations.
Nonetheless, Robert Walters didn’t spark optimism when net fee income fell 10% in the last quarter, “reflecting the continued challenging macroeconomic conditions across many of the group's markets”.
Both recruiters face the same issue.
According to Morgan McKinley’s London Employment Monitor, the number of jobs available in the City’s financial district collapsed nearly 40% year on year in 2023, while the number of job seekers fell 16%.
Some 60,000 financial services jobs were slashed in 2023, effectively undoing the post-Covid employment drive and making 2023 one of the worst years for cuts since the global financial crisis.
Shares in PageGroup and Robert Walters, whose full-year results are due on 7 March, are down 4.6% and 2.5% year to date, respectively.