Pagegroup PLC

LSE:PAGE

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q2

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the PageGroup Second Quarter and First Half 2020 Trading Update. My name is Kelly, and I'll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand you over to your host, Steve Ingham, to begin. Steve, please go ahead.

[Stephen J. Ingham]

Thank you, Kelly. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the PageGroup's Second Quarter and First Half 2020 Trading Update. I'm Steve Ingham, Chief Executive Officer; and I have with me Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer.I will now present an overview and an update on our COVID-19 operating strategy before handing over to Kelvin for a financial and regional review. I will then follow up with a summary.Although I will 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.Trading conditions were exceptionally tough in the quarter, with all of our regions impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the group delivered gross profit of GBP 118.3 million in the quarter, a decline of 47.6%, down significantly from the decline of 11.7% in Q1 2020. For the first half, group gross profit was GBP 300.6 million, a decline in constant currencies of 30.1% and reported rates of 30.7%. During the quarter, foreign exchange had a minimal impact on gross profit, with a decline in reported rates of 47.4%. For the quarter, Michael Page declined 46% and Page Personnel declined 51%.We ended the quarter in a strong financial position, with net cash of around GBP 156 million. We chose to reduce our headcount by 581 in the quarter, a reduction of 7.7% on Q1. These were primarily recent joiners, very inexperienced in recruitment, or those under performance reviews.Above all else, the health and the safety of our employees, candidates and clients was and remains our first priority. The group benefited greatly from the experience of our business in Greater China, which was first impacted by COVID-19 at the end of January. This experience meant that all our other offices had prepared for working from home prior to the inevitable government request for offices to be closed. Thus, we were able to ensure that all of our consultants across the rest of the group were able to work from home, with full access to the group's systems with almost no service interruption.The group's overarching strategy for COVID-19 has been to protect our operating platform, looking to secure as many roles as possible through the crisis, with the key aim of protecting the shape of the business, retaining our experienced employees and continuing to support our clients and candidates. We have retained our network of offices and broad and diverse platform of brands, disciplines and geographies. And we believe this strategy will give us the ability to react quickest as market conditions around the world recover to capitalize on market share opportunities.We utilized a range of tools to ensure our people remained informed and updated, such as Yammer, our internal social network. We rolled out Microsoft Teams to ensure all our people to continue to talk to candidates, clients and, most importantly, each other. We ran a poll survey to understand how we were performing as a leadership team and have used BOOST!, our blended learning platform, to provide training to people in what has been an uncertain and an unusual environment.To achieve our strategic goals, it was and remains critical to keep our people informed and engaged. We structured and delivered a comprehensive internal communication strategy that has allowed us to protect our most important success factor, our people.We planned our communications into 3 phases. Phase 1 was our immediate crisis response. Key to this approach was the global communications and technology infrastructure that we've put in place over the last 5 years. Our heavily active deployment of Yammer, our internal social network, has allowed us to reach and engage with all our people in a consistent and effective way. In March alone, there were over 15,000 posts with over 1 million read. We also rolled out Microsoft Teams in a matter of days. These 2 tools form the backbone of continuous conversations with our teams through global communication from the center and ongoing team-level collaboration. Both are hugely effective in the remote working environment that was forced on us in all markets everywhere.We had clear plan that we communicated to get people working at home and to minimize disruption by quickly connecting them to their teams and the systems they needed to continue business. In those first crucial weeks, we were able to learn and spread best practice to the rest of the world from our business in Mainland China. Ensuring people have frequent and transparent interaction with the management team reassured them and gave clear direction in how we could continue to work with our customers.At the end of this first phase, we ran a remote working survey of our people. Over 62% took part, contributing to over 7,500 comments. 91% said we had implemented effective systems for keeping remote employees connected. 89% said, "I'm proud to work at this company.", and 89% said we were able to support the needs of our customers, and 88% said they felt part of the team.In Phase 2, we focused on living with COVID. We encouraged people to stay connected, sharing post of their home setup and how teams undertook activities to motivate and work together in unique circumstances. From breakfast clubs to nationwide running clubs, from quizzes to beer o'clock, all were key parts of maintaining our team-based culture.We also increased communications from the center, with video updates from me to all our people globally, attracting more than 15,200 views. We also held a global open Q&A event that had over 5,200 attendees with me and the leadership team answering live questions from all our people around the world.We had huge success in Phase 1 in reaching and connecting with our customers. To continue that success into Phase 2, we enabled a strand of communication, Create Conversations, supplying our people with content covering remote working practice and market trends as the basis of discussions with clients who are keen to hear from us.We're now in Phase 3 of our plan. Our focus is on how we reinforce our platform to be ready to take advantage of opportunities as business activity returns.Building the lead is key, and each of our leaders around the world actively and frequently share customer successes. Seeing a return to normality helps reinforce confidence. In our survey, over 91% of our people expressed the preference to be back in the office, either full or part time. So we've been communicating globally as each of our offices reopened, ready for our people to work safely. Knowing about continued investments bolsters trust in the future of our business and the careers our people build with us. Throughout COVID-19, our commitment to long-term significant investment has not slowed. Our transition to a new Salesforce-based platform, Customer Connect, has been successful -- has seen successful deployment, carried out 100% remotely to Poland and Belgium. Our rollout plans across U.K. and Europe for this year remain in place. Additionally, we've rolled out a new global Intranet, enabling all our people to find the tools and teams that allow them to do their job.We also remain committed to our investment in our people and our culture. We've continually added courses to BOOST!, our online training platform, enabling people to deal with what are unfamiliar trading conditions.Reinforcing Page as a workplace for all is vital for our future success, and we illustrated our ongoing commitment with global campaigns supporting International Women's Day and Pride Month.We believe our clear and consistent and frequent communications through times of great difficulty and uncertainty for everyone has given us a workforce that is engaged, motivated and will be the foundation for building our future success.The group has a flexible and highly diversified business model that enables us to react quickly to changes in market conditions. With our overarching strategy being to maintain our business platform, in Q2, we focused on short-term cost reduction. As we outlined in the quarter 1 trading statement, we had a target to reduce our cost base by 20% to 25% compared to March, which we achieved with a cost reduction of around 21%. We did this through a number of actions. We unfortunately let go recent joiners who were, therefore, very unexperienced in recruitment. We also let go those on performance reviews. We asked all our 450 directors to take a voluntary 20% salary cut. We took advantage of all part- and full-time furlough schemes. We asked most our other staff to voluntarily work 4 out of 5 days a week, thereby also reducing their income by 20%. Finally, of course, there was an obvious saving from travel, candidate and client entertainment as well as staff incentive schemes. All these actions combined enabled us to make a significant step change in the group's cost base from March to April.With activity levels improving and visibility over the likely scale of gross profit reductions being clearer than at the end of Q1, we're now moving to bringing our people back to full-time working and off government furlough schemes. In addition, we have restored all our employees back to full pay from the 1st of July. Importantly, we want to maximize the engagement, motivation and loyalty of our people. As a leadership team, we will be judged on how we led this business through this difficult time, measured by the loyalty and commitment of our experienced people in future months and years.While this will obviously increase our cost base in Q3, we don't expect it to immediately return to Q1 levels due to our headcount being down by 7.7% and a continued reduction in spend on items such as bonuses, travel and entertaining. Overall, we anticipate our cost base in Q3 to remain down around 10% compared to March.We are thankful to all our people who volunteered to take salary reductions, work 4-day weeks or made other sacrifices for the long-term benefit of the group during Q2. They acted like the team they are.This chart shows how our cost savings progressed in Q2 compared to March. Initially, in April, our cost base reduced by around 20%, with the immediate impact of 20% salary cuts, 4-day working weeks and drops in travel, staff welfare and candidate and client entertaining spend. We also benefited from some government schemes that were introduced as the month progressed. However, we also had a small amount of redundancy costs for people leaving the group.In May, we saw the full benefit of the government's assistance schemes as well as a full-month savings from employees that left in April. Together, they increased the reduction in our cost base over March to 21%. In June, our cost base increased as we've reduced the furlough percentage in Continental Europe and pulled back staff to full-time working to match recovery activity levels. Looking forward into Q3, we expect our cost base to be down by, as I said before, 10% compared to March.Following the fall in total headcount of 132 in Q1, our headcount reduced by a further 255 in April, as forecasted in our Q1 statement. Our headcount then reduced by a further 326 in May and June combined. Fee earner headcount fell by 531 in Q2, a fall of 9%. And our operational support headcount decreased by 50, a fall of 3%. As I said earlier, these were largely either those that had recently joined who, therefore, had very limited experience in recruitment, typically less than 9 months, or those who were on performance management prior to the pandemic.As a result, our fee earner to operational support staff ratio was 77:23. At the end of June, the group had a total headcount of 6,985. This figure is inclusive of 406 full-time furloughed employees in the U.K. and the U.S. All of these staff have been informed of exactly when we'll be bringing them back to the business at various dates, the majority during Q3.Where our people are on partial furlough, as is the case in large parts of Continental Europe, they're still represented by 1 full-time equivalent, the majority of which are now back in the business.A number of sectors performed well in Q2, benefiting from increased demand due to the pandemic. Among these were health care and pharmaceuticals, as you'd expect. We also saw strong demand in e-commerce, media production, telecoms, consumer goods, packaging and generally in technology. Accordingly, our technology contracting recruitment business was one of our most resilient through the quarter.The pandemic significantly impacted many of the sectors in which the group operates, with the most impacted being travel and tourism, retail, hospitality and leisure, construction and aerospace.Our primary objective during these uncertain times is to maintain the business platform we've built to take advantage of business opportunities as markets recover. Also, as importantly, we want to ensure that the engagement, motivation and commitment of our people is as high as possible. As I said before, we will be judged as a leadership team on how we led the business, and it will define the loyalty and commitment of our experienced people in future months and years.To respond to economies recovering and make decisions about returning employees to full-time working, we've been actively monitoring our forward-looking KPIs through our real-time Power BI reporting. While we generally have very limited forward visibility, these KPIs tell us the levels of sales activity at different stages of the recruitment process, which should, in time, lead to future gross profit. There is normally a lag for this increased activity to turn into gross profit, particularly in permanent recruitment.These KPIs focus on 4 key metrics: firstly, new opportunities, being new jobs received or leads about future opportunities; secondly, we measure the number of candidates that we're sending out to potential clients. As the process continues, we then track the number of interviews, both first and second interviews where applicable. Then finally, the number of offers made. All of these metrics tell us about the activity levels in the business that, subject to further macro shocks or lockdowns, should deliver future gross profit. We can then manage our headcount accordingly to ensure we have adequate resources to take advantage of markets as they recover.In Asia Pacific, where lockdowns were eased earlier, we've seen an increase in Canada applications, new jobs and interviews. Towards the end of June, we also saw the beginning of a recovery in Europe, with an increase in the number of new jobs registered. In the U.K., the U.S. and Latin America, we saw little change in activity during the quarter.As Q2 progressed, we began to see improving forward activity levels in several of the group's markets. Accordingly, as local laws have allowed, we've been progressively reopening our offices around the world. At the end of June, 83 of our 142 offices were open. However, returning to the office remained entirely voluntary, and we have made arrangements to keep staff safe and comply with all social distancing and local regulatory requirements.With improving activity levels in 2 of our 4 regions, we have been progressively increasing our active headcount and will continue to do so during Q3. We're bringing back the remaining staff in the U.S. and the U.K. who are placed on furlough. These schemes have been extremely valuable in holding on to our people through Q2 who have started to be trained by us, that we can now restore to full-time employment and will be effective in their roles in H2.In Europe, we've already brought back to full time our people who are working 4-day working weeks or being supported by other government schemes. Again, this allows us to respond as activity levels improve.We've made a number of plans for strategic investments to ensure our strength and profile is best placed to take advantage of recovery as different sectors and disciplines recover at different speeds. In some cases, this will be the redeployment of existing resources into high-potential areas and in others by targeting experienced hires from the competition.I will now hand over to Kelvin.

[Kelvin Stagg]

Thank you, Steve. The group has a strong balance sheet, with net cash at the end of June of around GBP 156 million. This is up from GBP 73 million from the end of Q1 due primarily to the partial unwinding of our temp debt book, but alongside the reduced cost base as well as other measures we took to protect liquidity, such as deferred tax payments. Debtor days remain at pre-COVID level, and we are not currently experiencing increased levels of bad debt. We have strong banking relationships and facilities, including a GBP 30 million committed revolving credit facility, which expires in 2022. We've agreed a full covenant waiver for the next 12 months to ensure we maintain access to these funds should they be needed.As we stated in the Q1 trading update, discussions to access the Bank of England's Covid Corporate Finance Facility were at an advanced stage. Accordingly, during the second quarter, we received approval with a facility limit of GBP 300 million. While we do not envisage a scenario in which we would have to draw down against this facility, we welcome the liquidity assurance and security it provides. Nonetheless, we continue to model and are monitoring a range of different scenarios to ensure the group has sufficient liquidity when needed at all times.This fee earner headcount and gross profit chart shows very clearly the unprecedented scale of the decline in group gross profit in Q2 and also the comparison to the global financial crisis in 2008. Quarterly gross profits due to the pandemic has fallen 42% in just 2 quarters, from GBP 205.6 million in Q4 2019 to GBP 118.3 million in Q2 2020. The decline during GFC was similar in magnitude but over a longer period, down 45% over 4 quarters. During the GFC, our fee earner headcount fell by 40% over the period, while our fee earner headcount is currently down only 11%, with our strategy of maintaining our proven fee earner platform to ensure we are in a strong position to capitalize on opportunities and gain market share as the economies recover.In the second quarter, matching the exceptionally challenging conditions in many of our markets, permanent recruitment declined 54.7% in constant currencies, while temporary declined 24.4%. As a result, our ratio of permanent to temporary gross profit reduced to 66:34 compared to 73:27 at the end of Q1. In Michael Page, permanent recruitment represented 76% of gross profit, down from 82% in Q1; while in Page Personnel, at 41%, also down from 54% in Q1.The pandemic impacted the group's regions to differing extents and on different time frames. Initially, the impact was felt in our market-leading Greater China business, which impacted our results in Asia Pacific from January. Within the region, the impact spread in February into Southeast Asia, primarily to Singapore. Next, the impact was felt in Europe, hitting Southern Europe and France hard in early March. And finally, our other 2 regions of the U.K. and the Americas were impacted in late March. While they were the last 2 regions to be impacted, both the speed and magnitude of the gross profit decreases have been the largest.Since April, gross profit declines in both the U.K. and the Americas have remained relatively flat, down around 50% to 60% each month. However, in Asia Pacific and Europe, which exited lockdown some time ago, we've seen gradual improvements in active [indiscernible] that have started to convert into gross profit improvements.EMEA having troughed at minus 46% in April exited at minus 38% in June. And APAC, which troughed at minus 46% in May, exited at minus 42%.The group as a whole, April and May, were both down around 49%, while we saw a small improvement in June with a decline of 45%.At this point, I would always -- also emphasize that this is unpredictable. We are reacting to what we are seeing whilst retaining a strong platform. Therefore, the shape of any recovery is not known and cannot be predicted.Our largest region, EMEA, representing 53% of the group, declined 42.9% in the quarter. The impact was felt initially in the Southern Europe and France, with both declining 52% for the quarter.As lockdowns were eased, activity levels began to recover, which converted into small growth [indiscernible] towards the end of the quarter. As such, Southern Europe and France exited the quarter down 42% and 46%, respectively. This process of converting forward-looking activity into gross profit happens faster in temporary recruitment but takes more time in permanent, especially for more senior roles.The impact was less severe in Northern and Central Europe. So gross profit in both areas declined by over 25% in the quarter. Germany, the group's best-performing business, gross profit declined 20%, with our technology-focused contracting business proving particularly resilient and was flat overall for the quarter.In Northern Europe, Benelux declined 35%, with Belgium down 23% and the Netherlands down 40%. We are experiencing improving activity levels across Northern and Central Europe, and as a result, we brought all our [ employees ] back from partial furloughs and shorter working weeks.The Middle East and Africa declined 49%, with the UAE and Africa impacted to a similar extent. Total headcount at the end of June was 3,149, which was down from 3,309 at the end of March, as we let go a relatively small number of our least experienced staff.In Asia Pacific, the impact of the pandemic was felt in our market-leading Greater China business, which was down 41% for the quarter. Mainland China declined significantly in February as the country went into lockdown. However, all our offices in Mainland China have reopened by the end of February, and we have seen activity levels continue to improve. Mainland China exited the quarter down 17% in June, for a lower of around minus 40% in February. Overall, Mainland China was down 27% in Q2.Hong Kong has been impacted significantly throughout the first half, and the business slowed due to the lockdown but then subsequently by the return of social unrest. In addition, with a larger proportion of our clients in Hong Kong being multinationals, their confidence was also impacted by international sentiment. Overall, Hong Kong was down 62% for the quarter, 63% in June. Southeast Asia was impacted shortly after Mainland China, particularly in Singapore due to its role as a regional and global hub. Overall, Southeast Asia [ declined by ] 35%, with Singapore down 46%. Both exit rates in June were broadly in line with the quarter.Indonesia delivered a more resilient performance, down 20% for the quarter and only 14% in June. India and Japan were impacted later than the rest of the region, with gross profit holding up well until April local lockdowns were enforced. Subsequently, conditions have continued to deteriorate as the quarter progressed. [ India and Japan ] were down 31% and 36%, respectively, and both exited the quarter down 43% in June.Australia started the year with the devastating impact of the bush fires that affected trading in January and February. In March, they were then impacted by COVID-19 on a similar time line to Southeast Asia. Overall, Australia was down 53% for the quarter and down 48% in June.Total headcount at the end of June was 1,468, down 131 from the end of March. These reductions were mainly in Greater China and Australia.The Americas was the final region to be impacted and now has become the new epicenter of the pandemic. Overall, for the quarter, gross profit was down 55%. The U.S. was down 49% for the quarter. In Property & Construction, our largest discipline in the U.S., conditions were particularly tough, with the majority of construction sites closed for most of the quarter. We saw little improvement in activity levels as the quarter progressed. And as such, the U.S. exited the quarter down 52%. Conditions also deteriorated sharply in Latin America, with gross profit down 63% for the quarter. The impact of the pandemic was felt throughout the region with Brazil, where they now have a significant number of [indiscernible] down 60% and Mexico, 63%. [ Being the last ] region affected, we have not yet seen material improvements in activity levels as we have seen elsewhere. Total headcount at the end of June was 1,184, which included 76 furloughed employees in the U.S. This was down from 1,600 -- sorry, this was down from 1,362 at the end of March. Finally, in the U.K., representing 11% [ of the group ]. Gross profit declined by 61.5% in the quarter. With all our offices closed and 255 fee earners, full-time furloughs, gross profit was down 60% in April and remained broadly flat throughout the quarter. The impact of the pandemic had a similar impact on both Michael Page and Page Personnel, with declines of 60% and 65%, respectively. Overall, for the quarter, permanent recruitment was down 74%, with temporary more resilient, down 32%. The public sector was impacted to a lesser extent, 39%. Total headcount at the end of June was 1,184, which includes 324 furloughed employees. This was down from 1,296 at the end of March.I now hand you back to Steve for a summary of our results for the second quarter.

[Stephen J. Ingham]

As I said before, our priority remains to protect our employees, candidates and clients. We are progressively opening our offices, but returning them must be safe and remains voluntary. We have adapted them to comply with all social distancing and local legislation. We sought to balance tight cost management, achieving our target of 20% to 25% cost savings for Q2, with ensuring that we have retained our business platform while possible -- where possible. As we enter Q3, we've moved from focusing on liquidity and cost to increasing our active resources to respond rapidly to all opportunities as they arise. We are also selectively hiring experienced fee earners from the competition where we have seen an unprecedented level of applications during the period. We believe the group is well positioned to take market share as and when trading conditions improve.Kelvin and I will now be happy to take any questions you may have.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We do have a question from Hans Pluijgers from Kepler.

[Hans Pluijgers, Head of Research of Benelux]

Yes. The question, first of all, on your cost savings for Q3. I understand what you're looking for. You see some improvements in KPI. I think, first, can you a little bit more discuss, let's say, the KPIs' improvement compared, let's say, the exit rate? Are the KPIs at a significantly better level than what you see already in exit rate because it takes some time to convert it into real gross margin? And secondly, I hear -- would you say, with respect to -- that you expect a 10% reduction in cost. But how do you see, let's say, your headcount development through Q3? Do you still expect some decline there? Or do you expect them to remain stable or even increasing in Q3?

[Stephen J. Ingham]

Yes. Well, that's a headcount question and a good one. We've made the decisions, the proactive decisions that we want to make with regards to our headcount. However, of course, there will be some people who, having seen what they have seen and having had quite a long period in lockdown, will have been reflecting on recruitment as a career, and some will choose that it's not, particularly those, I suspect, that we -- typically within that first 2 years of being in recruitment where we've always found and we've often talked about this, because we're hiring from outside of our industry, we often find that, within the first 2 years, people either take to it and are very successful and enjoy it, or they don't. Now clearly, the last few months has been a pretty tough experience for everyone. Without a doubt, the experienced people in our industry, I suspect, will go and get when that happens, and maybe they have experience of the GFC or whatever, and they're prepared to pass it out and will be fine. But there will be, I'm sure, some less experienced consultants who will choose to leave. But from the proactive point of view, we're very happy with where the headcount is. As we've said, we are hiring a number of people into the business with experience. So again, we think proven enough to be successful, and we're hiring them at all levels in the business, not just consultant level. And we will get a few resignations of those people over the lockdown that reflected that recruitment is not their chosen career and will choose now to perhaps do something else. But we always have an underlying staff turnover. I don't see that suddenly disappearing in Q3. So if there is a headcount reduction in Q3, it will be just because we've lost some of those people choosing not to have recruitment as a future career, rather than just [indiscernible] that I have made.

[Hans Pluijgers, Head of Research of Benelux]

Okay. And on KPIs or -- last question. Do you see, let's say, your KPIs decline year-on-year if, let's say, at clearly better level than your exit rate on your fee income? Is there a difference between -- or is that just, let's say, giving like the exit rate some improvement but not clear upward trend?

[Kelvin Stagg]

Yes. Hans, I can talk to that. I think the KPIs are always going to be ahead of the revenue at the end of the day. We take a job brief. We then send various different candidates forward for it. We then track the interviews. And then finally, there's an offer made, and we book it. The answer is it depends on what level. So obviously, in Michael Page, that process is going to take longer than it does in Page Personnel. In perm, it's going to be longer than temp. But in all cases, the activity levels are going to be better than the revenue. On average, 4 to 6 weeks, something like that.

[Hans Pluijgers, Head of Research of Benelux]

Okay. But that -- again, coming back on my question. Will you see, let's say, the KPIs -- a little bit of a conclusion. I conclude that your KPIs are differently or clearly better level than your exit rates in June. That's a little bit what my feeling is. Is that correct? Or maybe...

[Kelvin Stagg]

So in Europe, that would be the case. So in Europe, where we've seen our revenues pick up, we saw the activity pick up sort of 4, 6 weeks ago. In the U.K., we've not really seen any improvement in KPIs yet. We're only just out of lockdown. So possibly, we'll start to see that very soon. In Asia, yes, we've seen improvements in activity levels, again, probably 6 weeks ago. And actually, some of that has started to come through into revenue. In the Americas, no, we haven't seen any improvement in activity. And hopefully, we'll start to see some coming through in the coming weeks. But -- so it is different in different markets.

[Stephen J. Ingham]

I think it's fair as well. Another barometer is the offices that we've opened. I mentioned that we've opened 83 out of 142 offices. I can tell you that 1 office is open in the whole of the Americas, and that's in Monterrey, which is Mexico. So none in the U.S. and none in the rest of Latin America, and none of our offices are open in the U.K., although we've had a dry run this week on the several offices in the U.K. And there are a few offices opening next week in the U.K. for the first time. Compare that to Europe, where all of our offices but 1, Istanbul, are open and have been open, take, for example, Germany, for some time. And of course, all of our offices in Asia Pac, except for Melbourne, which hadn't opened, even though they have now a lockdown, it hadn't actually opened prior to that, and India. But all of our other offices are open. And so business is not just us are getting back to more level of normal, whereas in the U.K., we've only just literally seen the lockdown starting to relax formally anyway. And so hopefully, as our office is open here, which certainly we expect them to over the next month or so, maybe the KPIs will also pick up at the same time. So office openings where we've been able to open also reflects where we're seeing improving KPIs.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley.

[Anvesh Agrawal, Equity Analyst]

I got 3 questions, if I may. The first, just because of divider furlough schemes, arguably, there has been sort of less restructuring across the corporate world. And so as the thing sort of starts to open up, probably the corporates will take the furloughed employees, then think about temp and then probably taking new perm employees. So does that mean that probably it could take a longer time to sort of inflect in terms of the growth rate? It will take probably longer than usually it would have because of the furlough schemes?And then the second is can you -- the exit rate improvements have you seen, has those been across like both perm and in temp recruitment? Or within then, the temp has sort of improved more than the perm?And then finally, just clarifying the U.K. exit rates, probably they're slightly lower than what we would have thought. Is that just a timing issue because U.K. went into the lockdown later than the rest of Europe? Or is there anything fundamentally sort of different in the U.K. versus rest of the Europe?

[Stephen J. Ingham]

No. Well, if I answer that last question, well, it's there. I think it's fairly straightforward. Yes. I mean we did go into lockdown, and we've been in lockdown longer than Europe. So if you take Italy and Spain, for example, it's probably fair to say their lockdown was a lot more rigorous, but they did come out of lockdown earlier than the U.K., where, clearly, offices have only just started to open in the U.K. So that's the reality. And we have to follow government legislation in each country, and we can only open when we can open and are permitted to do so in a safe way. That clearly has come earlier in Europe than it's come in the U.K. So there's nothing else I would say that reflects in our KPIs other than that. And hopefully -- and we'll hopefully be able to report that in 3 months' time. If our offices have opened in the U.K. and other businesses have gone back to some sort of form of activity, then our numbers will reflect that. But we like to say all our offices are open in Europe, except one. And accordingly, our clients are back more, and therefore, our KPIs have improved.Kelvin, on the other 2?

[Kelvin Stagg]

Yes. So I think the first one, and when we talk about the drop in being cushioned by the furlough, the actual scale of the fall in revenues for us has been very similar to that, that we saw in the GFC. It's just been much faster. And therefore, while I think that it's true that companies have cushioned the drop by using furlough schemes to put people out as the activity fell away so sharply, so quickly and have therefore brought those people back in, I do think that there would have been companies that either weren't able to furlough enough people, who actually have brought some people back from furlough that need more people. And therefore, does it really change the need for recruitment in the future? Probably not, the answer. I mean, obviously, you'd like to think that these people are going to bring the people that are on furlough back into the business before they actually go and hire externally, and I would expect that to happen. But I wouldn't necessarily expect that, that impacts recruitment sort of in the medium to longer term.On your other question, about perm and temp, I mean you can see it most exaggerated in the U.K. So our perm revenue in the U.K. was down 74%, while temporary was only down 32%. So certainly, in terms of when you go into a severe drop in activity that we've seen in all of our markets, hiring on permanent recruitment tends to stop pretty sharply, albeit that there were certain sectors that clearly benefited out of the pandemic, and Steve outlined some of those earlier. Whereas actually, certainly, when you come back out of it, hiring people on temporary contracts gives you the flexibility and a much smaller commitment while you're seeing if the activity is going to be sustainable to carry on into the future.So you're right about perm and temporary. But actually, I think in terms of the furlough scheme, no. I think the amount of people that was relatively low level, most of them on furlough schemes, probably doesn't make much difference to our Michael Page brand.

[Stephen J. Ingham]

I would answer that, if I may, if I can just add a few words. I mean, clearly, there is going to be large-scale unemployment around the world as a result of the virus, I'm sure, because there are some industries, as we all know, hit very hard. The majority of that unemployment will be blue collar rather than qualified professionals. And I think the war for talent will exist and continue to exist. A qualified accountant may reflect and feel they're in the wrong sector and may want to move to another sector. But at the end of the day, there will still be that same war for talent of good qualified people in different disciplines.I think the other thing I would add is that the increasing flow of candidates is an interesting one for us that we are tracking very carefully. Because during lockdown, it wasn't necessarily always the most logical thing to change jobs. A lot of people were glad to have a job, glad to have an income. Times were very uncertain, and I think a lot of people were feeling very nervous about the whole situation. The one thing that lockdown has definitely brought, and I'm sure we're all thinking this, when you're stuck at home in lockdown, it's definitely a period to reflect. And I think a lot of people will be making a lot of personal decisions of varying nature, including whether they change job or not. So I think that reflection will be, am I in the right sector? Am I in the right job? Am I paid the level I should be or rewarded in the way that I should be? So I respect the leadership team of the business that I'm in and in terms of how they've led us through this difficult and uncertain time. And if the answer to those questions is no, then I suspect, as we come out of lockdown and office is open, I suspect they'll vote with their feet and make decisions. And I think in the professional space, I think where they vote their feet and actually get another job and resigns from the one they're in, that's going to create opportunities as well. And as you know, it's often the churn that actually makes our business, so people moving. So people haven't been moving in lockdown. Hopefully, as lockdown goes away, then people will start moving jobs again, having reflected.

[Anvesh Agrawal, Equity Analyst]

So very clear. If I can just very quickly ask one more. Within your cost base guidance of reduction of 10% in Q3, have you sort of factored in the natural churn that you sort of discussed earlier in your consultant base?

[Stephen J. Ingham]

Yes. I mean we've always factored it -- no, so it's not factored into the 10%, no, sorry. No, but we always factor in as a -- when we manage our business, we always have to assume that we're going to get resignations. I mean I think any business leadership team factors that in. And so clearly, depending on what we're seeing and which market and so on, particularly in our high-potential markets that we have, then when somebody leaves and we have an anticipated expectation of typical staff turnover that I talked about earlier, which are people coming into recruitment for the first time who just don't get it or don't -- they're not successful or they're not enjoying it, they'll choose to leave, and we'll replace them. But in our case, because we are seeing this unprecedented level of applications, which I've not seen before. And as many of you know, I've been in this business for a long time, some 35 years. Even in the GFC, we didn't get as many applications from the competition as we have this time. And so somebody who's been in recruitment 18 months chooses that it's not the sector for them, having reflected on lockdown, I get it. They're choosing to go into another sector and do something different. We will possibly be replacing them with somebody who's got 5 years, 10 years or even 16 or 20 years, thinking to the people we've already hired. We'll be replacing them with more experienced people who come in and hopefully into the sectors, if we're doing it right, into the disciplines and sectors that we're seeing a faster recovery. So that's how we're managing it. And of course, we're always building that into the business strategy.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We don't have any further questions.

[Stephen J. Ingham]

Well, hopefully, that doesn't represent the lack of interest and it's just because of the comprehensive nature of the detail we gave in the trading update. As there are no more questions, that concludes the presentation for this morning. Our next update to the market will be our interim results on the 5th of August. Thank you, everyone, and stay safe.

[Kelvin Stagg]

Thank you.