Persol Holdings Co Ltd

TSE:2181

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q2

[和田 孝雄, executive]

Hello. I'm Wada. Thank you for your time today, and we appreciate your support to extended the PERSOL Group. Here are the highlights for today.

Financial results of first half of FY 2022 its full year forecast and dividends. We saw significant growth across PERSOL Group in the first half of this fiscal year, as net sales increased by 14% year-on-year to JPY 586.7 billion, and operating profit increased by 16% to JPY 30.7 billion. Especially in this fiscal year, Career SBU has been a driving force for the huge increase in profit.

The full year financial forecast for FY 2022 contain many serious concerns such as weak Yen, strong U.S. dollar, inflation in U.S. and China market. However, given the Japanese market specifically is not harshly damage at this point, our business is expected to remain risk.

In addition, in the second half, we'll enhance investment, including marketing and hiring for a better service, structure implies in an attempt to solidify our competitiveness for the next year and beyond. Based on those, we revised out the full year forecast on operating profit by JPY 1 billion to JPY 53 billion from JPY 52 billion.

The last item is the forecast of the interim and year-end dividends for FY 2022. As already announced, the interim dividend is JPY 21. The year-end dividend forecast is JPY 21 and the annual dividend forecast is JPY 42.

The details will be shared by Mr. Tokunaga our CFO. The floor is yours, Mr. Tokunaga.

[Junji Tokunaga, executive]

I am Tokunaga in charge of Finance. I will explain the results of the first half of FY 2022.

Let me start with consolidated financial results for the first half of FY 2022. We saw significant growth in both net sales and operating profit. To be specific, net sales was up by 14% year-over-year to JPY 586.7 billion. Operating profit was up by 16% to JPY 30.7 billion, and EBITDA was up by 17% to JPY 41.9 billion. Also, adjusted net profit, which is the source of dividends, increased by 16% year-over-year to JPY 22.7 billion.

This slide shows net sales by SBU. We have 5 SBUs and all 5 have achieved net sales increase. This is the slide on operating profit by SBU. At the center of the top row is Career SBU, would attain 166% growth year-over-year to JPY 8.4 billion, driving group line increase on profit.

This slide shows analysis of change in operating profit year-over-year. In the first half, Career SBU significant growth contributed to gross profit of JPY 21.3 billion. Despite increase in the personnel and advertising expenses, we achieved JPY 4.3 billion of a profit increase.

This slide shows net sales by SBU in comparison to previous fiscal year for your reference. This is the reference slide on operating profit and OP margin by SBU with year-over-year change.

This slide shows EBITDA and EBITDA margin by SBU. The third row from the bottom is Asia Pacific SBU, which achieved a JPY 3.9 billion of EBITDA, up by 7.4% year-over-year, while its operating profit was slightly over JPY 200 million.

Next is financial results and related status by SBU. Let me start with our mainstay SBU, Staffing SBU. The pie chart on the right shows its sales composition. Temporary staffing accounts for 84% and BPO accounts for 16%.

A Net sales increased by 8.4% year-over-year to JPY 302.8 billion. All operating profit remained almost flat. As for the latest quarter from July to September, both the number of orders and number of confirmed contracts and temporary staffing increased by about 15% year-over-year, marking steady progress.

Here are the KPIs, which directly contribute to net sales. The number of active staffs were up by 8.1% and the billing rates also increased by 1.1%. Operating hours per staff went down by 2.8% year-over-year since more staff to paid leave as COVID-related behavioral restrictions have been eased. BPO also achieved a 4.1% increase in sales. If it excludes onetime public project, sales grew approximately 15%, marking very strong growth for the SBU as a whole.

Next is Career SBU, major contributor to profit in the first half of FY 2022. As shown in the pie chart to the right, placement business accounts for 71%, job recruitment media accounts for 21% and other accounts were 8%.

The next remain almost the same as the previous fiscal year. Net sales increased by 40% year-over-year and operating profit significantly grew 166% to JPY 8.4 billion. We properly deployed a Career Advisers and others in the right place to seize the movement in the market, also life has gradually come back to normal from pandemic.

As for the quarter from July to September, placement business continued to achieve 50% increase in net sales and job recruitment and media increased by over 40% in net sales. Career change market has been facing a growing labor shortage of IT engineers for both on manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries. We also see recovery in service industries such as travel and restaurant due to ease of restrictions posed under pandemic.

Next is the third SBU, Professional Outsourcing SBU. 41% of its sales comes from IT, 26% is from engineering and 33% is from IT/engineering temporary staffing. There were no major changes in the composition.

Demands for the market were extremely brisk. Net sales was up by 11% and operating profit was up by 31% to JPY 3.6 billion. As previously announced, the number of engineers in operating REIT or the KPIs in this SBU, which directly contribute to net sales.

Firstly, the number of engineers for IT business was up by 11% year-over-year to 5,200 engineers and the operating rate were 95%. The Engineering business also added more engineers to make it 3,400 in total, up by 7.9% year-over-year and the operating rate was 95%. The last is IT/engineering temporary staffing was the number of active engineers of 6,000, up by 3.8%.

Progress on hiring and Professional SBU as a whole was 122% year-over-year. However, it was 92% against the full year guidance. We'll continue to accelerate hiring in the second half.

Next is a solution SBU. It is comprised of mainly 2 services, MIIDAS job search application and POS+ cloud POS. Both MIIDAS and POS+ are still in the investment phase, which means we will make appropriate investment in the customer acquisition.

MIIDAS expanded its customer base by 120,000 companies to 420,000 companies year-over-year. We do not disclose a number of the POS+ implemented stores, but the number increased about 1.2x year-over-year.

The last is Asia Pacific SBU. We have already shared its net term management plan ended in March 2026, ahead of the other SBUs during the financial briefing on this August 10. To recap, we are targeting to achieve EBITDA of JPY 15 billion and ROIC of 10% by the end of FY 2025. The pie chart on the slide shows the sales composition of Asia Pacific SBU. This is the net sales in APAC SBU from January to June in 2022. We attained net sales increased by about 20% to JPY 171.1 billion, attributed to an equal contribution of organic growth and ForEx impact. Operating profit remained almost flat. As for the quarter from April to June, the impact on APAC SBU due to lockdowns in China was quite limited. PERSOLKELLY achieved a 24.7% increase in net sales, which include a ForEx impact. Programmed was focused on Australian market increased net sales by 26.7%. This is a reference slide on net sales, operating profit, EBITDA breakdown of PERSOLKELLY and Programmed in the second quarter from April to June.

Last of all, this slide shows others an adjustment on a consolidated basis, primarily the special subsidiaries dealing with disabled persons hiring business falls under others category, and they are overall on track with the guidance.

Adjustment and consolidated basis increased in cost year-over-year due to outsourcing of corporate measures and changes in accounting process. Its spending has progressed in line with the guidance.

That concludes the brief overview of FY '22 first half financial results. From here on, Mr. Wada will explain full year forecast and dividend.

[和田 孝雄, executive]

Hello. This is Wada, again. Taking a successful performance in the first half into account, we set the full year forecast of net sales at JPY 1,210 billion. We are targeting to achieve operating profit of JPY 53 billion, EBITDA of JPY 75.2 billion, net profit after adjustment of JPY 39.1 billion and adjusted EPS of JPY 169.95.

Our assumption in the second half remain positive in terms of the market condition. As demand grows, we are committed to enhancement of supply capacity on our end-to-end talent acquisition, which should be backed by steady growth of a gross profit in FY '22 and FY '23. Specifically, we strive to proactively invest in ourselves and maintain and strengthen our competitive edge in the market.

Next slide and onwards show full year forecast of each SBU for your reference. The last slide that I'll share with you is the dividend forecast. The forecast and adjusted EPS for FY '22 is JPY 169.95. Based on our dividend policy of adjusted EPS of around 25%, we set the full year forecast on dividend at JPY 42. Both interim and year-end dividend forecast or JPY 21, which makes the full year dividend JPY 42.

That is the briefing on the financial and year-end dividend forecast. Thank you for your attention.