Persol Holdings Co Ltd

TSE:2181

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[和田 孝雄, executive]

Hello. I am Wada, CEO of PERSOL Holdings. Thank you very much for your time today. First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt condolences to those who were affected by the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria and to those who lost their lives. We would like to offer heartfelt support, and we would also like to solicit donations from our employees in our group.

Now I'd like to inform you about the contents today. We will be sharing the following 3 points. First, the summary of the third quarter of the fiscal year ending March 2023. Our business performance is trending very strongly, and we believe that we can report contents that will give everyone peace of mind. In addition, we would like to share the current business environment and the initiatives we are taking at our group. Finally, we will be sharing our accounting policy to comply with international accounting standards as well as the timing of the announcement of the next midterm management plan.

First of all, CFO Tokunaga will report on the financial results for the third quarter. Mr. Tokunaga, please.

[Junji Tokunaga, executive]

Hello. I am Tokunaga, CFO of PERSOL Holdings. Thank you very much for your time today. I will explain the summary of financial results for the first 9 months of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023.

As for the financial results for the third quarter, we were able to achieve significant growth in both net sales and operating profit. Specifically, net sales increased by 15% year-on-year to JPY 902 billion. Operating profit increased 11% to JPY 45.4 billion. And EBITDA, which is a key for management, we were able to achieve JPY 62.6 billion, an increase of 14% year-on-year.

This is net sales by SBU for the first 9 months of the fiscal year. The core Staffing SBU increased 8.2% to JPY 460 billion. In addition, Career SBU, which has contributed significantly to increase in profits this fiscal year, increased by about 40% to JPY 75 billion. Other SBUs were also able to achieve sales growth.

Next slide is on operating profit by SBU. Regarding the core Staffing SBU, operating profit achieved JPY 31.6 billion despite the decline by 2.4% due to the impact of changes in the social security system in October last year. In addition, Career SBU, which is the driving force behind our profits this fiscal year, increased 130% to JPY 11.9 billion.

Next is analysis of year-on-year increase/decrease in operating profit. Gross profit increased JPY 32.5 billion year-on-year and is continuing the pace of increase by about JPY 10 billion each quarter.

Next, for your reference, we have net sales by SBU for the first 9 months with year-on-year change and the progress rate against the full year forecast announced in November last year.

Next, we have operating profit and operating profit margin by SBU with year-on-year change and the progress rate against the full year forecast announced in November.

Towards the bottom of the slide, the progress rate of Asia Pacific stands low at 43.8%, but this SBU has seasonality, and profit is expected to increase significantly in the second half of the fiscal year. We, hence, expect to be able to achieve our full year forecast. Similarly, we have EBITDA and EBITDA margin by SBU with year-on-year change and progress rate against the full year forecast.

Next, I will explain the summary of the financial results by SBU for the first 9 months of the fiscal year ending March 2023 one by one.

Let me start with the core Staffing SBU. As you can see, temporary staffing sector accounts for 84%, and BPO sector accounts for 16% of sales. This breakdown has not changed much from the cumulative total in the second quarter.

For temporary staffing sector, both number of orders and number of confirmed contracts remained steady with increase by 10%, respectively. Net sales were also steady with 6.9% increase. BPO sales increased by 11% overall and 17%, excluding temporary public-related projects, indicating the needs for corporate customers continuing to be high.

Next is Career SBU. In this SBU, placement business accounts for 70%, and job recruitment media accounts for 22% of sales. So there is no significant change in the composition of this SBU either. Placement business sales increased by 50% in the third quarter, spanning October to December. And job recruitment media sales also increased by 40%. So the trend is extremely strong. In addition, recruitment of career adviser, which is the main KPI for this SBU, was also steady.

The third SBU is Professional Outsourcing SBU consisting of IT, electric and mechanical engineering and IT engineering temporary staffing. For this SBU, number of engineers and unit price per hour are the key KPIs. Number of engineers in IT area increased by 12% year-on-year to approximately 5,200. Engineering area increased by 9% year-on-year to approximately 3,500. And number of engineers in IT, engineering temporary staffing, increased by 5.8% year-on-year to approximately 6,200.

In terms of hiring of engineers, the achievement rate in the second quarter was 92%, but the cumulative total up to the third quarter recovered to 95%. Furthermore, compared to the year ago level, achievement rate increased to 134%. Although we do not disclose, hourly rate is also gradually improving.

The fourth SBU is Solution SBU. This SBU consists of 2 major services, Miidas job search application and POS+, a cloud POS. Both services are currently in the investment phase, but business is favorable.

The last SBU is Asia Pacific SBU. We announced the midterm management plan last August for APAC ahead of other SBUs. Specifically, we plan to achieve ROIC of 10%, operating profit of JPY 10 billion and EBITDA of JPY 15 billion in 3 years. Things are going very well.

Asia Pacific SBU consists of PERSOLKELLY and Programmed. The left side of the slide shows the results for the third quarter alone. Operating profit of PERSOLKELLY was JPY 580 million, and Programmed became profitable, achieving JPY 230 million. As corporate expenses were about JPY 300 million, operating profit in total was approximately JPY 500 million.

Finally, we published figures for others that do not belong to SBUs and consolidated adjustments. Others turned profitable at JPY 220 million. Consolidated adjustments are mainly due to changes in accounting policies introduced this fiscal year. So there are no major gaps from the plan at the beginning of the fiscal year.

I have explained the summary of financial results and the business situation for the third quarter. Thank you.

Please allow me to explain a little bit about the business environment surrounding PERSOL. As described here, labor shortage is expanding very much. Looking at the DI for judgment of labor surplus and shortage, it was 44% for regular employees and 9% for temporary workers. Number of companies with a sense of shortage of resources is increasing steadily. The depletion of human resources is truly overwhelming.

Next page shows Staffing SBU. In temporary staffing business, demand has recovered significantly compared to January 2020. At one point, demand decreased significantly due to the pandemic. But since then, it has exceeded the level of January 2020.

Demand for temporary staffs have decreased significantly due to the pandemic, but the active number of staffs have not fallen and is trending upward. Basically, the highest level of number of temporary staffs are working now.

Next is Career SBU, which is a full-time job placement market. As shown on the right, job openings to applicants ratio in December was 2.54x, a significant increase from 1.5x in January 2020. Number of jobs available has increased significantly as it continued to increase for 28 consecutive months since September 2020. On the other hand, as shown in gray bar in the table, number of job seekers themselves have not increased much, leading very much to a seller's market. As this gap widens, we recognize that we can expect growth from strong demand in the market and through talent acquisition.

Here, I'd like to talk about the content. There are extremely large number of job offers for IT engineers from IT companies and telecom carriers, and the job opening ratio is about to exceed 12x. The effective job openings to applicants ratio exceeds 3x, especially for consultants, planning and sales positions, which is a high-volume zone job type.

As shown here, there is brisk demand for full-time job placement market. Investors are very concerned about the environment. We are receiving many questions about the deterioration of the economy and the contraction of recruitment market. But as we are facing the market now, we are assuming that there will be no large decrease. That is the assumption we are putting in making various plans. I believe that this trend will most likely become clearer, especially in Japan.

I would like to share a little bit about our business topics. As I have been mentioning, talent acquisition is the key. In temporary staffing, we will further strengthen communication and relations with our temporary staffs. With the staff app at the core, we are promoting DX to increase touch points with staffs in various ways to increase retention and to turn them into our fans.

I think it is important to further improve convenience and increase number of touch points. For example, temporary staffs can open a bank account within the app since we have established a partnership with Minna Bank, or in the unlikely event when a temporary staff needs to consult a doctor, they can do so with peace of mind as we have collaboration with Fast Doctor. We believe that this will also lead to convenience and ease of work of temporary staffs.

Next is about doda X. When you are watching TV, you might have noticed that the exposure of our commercial has increased, and it has caught attention. We released doda X in October last year in order to provide a solid service for higher-class resources. We intend to increase market coverage of doda brand. We are, therefore, using both doda and doda X to expand our service lineup to include more high-class resources.

Next slide is probably easier to understand. Doda covers the volume zone with the highest number of workers. The highest volume of the job placement market is those with annual income of JPY 4 million to JPY 6 million. Doda X will offer services to higher-class zone with annual income of JPY 6 million to JPY 8 million. We are offering multilayered services, combining job placement, direct recruitment, individual applications, to support success in changing jobs. We released this business with such intention. We are seeing an increase in number of registrants, and doda X has made a solid start.

Next is Professional Outsourcing SBU. We established a new company this January and named it PERSOL CROSS TECHNOLOGY. We merged group companies in the SBU and are promoting this business with the aim to cater to a wide variety of needs of engineers. We have a capital and business tie up with Globe-ing, a strategy and DX consulting firm, to make sure to offer strong support to high-layer resources. We plan to offer end-to-end comprehensive services in the areas of digital technologies and manufacturing by providing engineers and solutions. As you can see on the right hand, we are using a famous actor, Nishijima, in the commercial to appeal to engineers to accelerate adoption.

Let me now share some information with you. I will touch on the total shareholder returns. This is the final year of the current midterm management plan. We are reviewing the shareholder returns, looking back on the past 3 years.

Looking at changes in share prices, our group outperforms the Nikkei average and TOPIX with 137% increase. Dividend yield is also at 5% level, and total shareholder return is 142.1% compared to 112.5% for Nikkei average and 111.4% for TOPIX. As such, we believe we have been able to live up to our shareholders' expectations.

And now we are developing the next midterm management plan. And ahead of that, we have resolved to introduce IFRS, International Financial Reporting Standards, from next fiscal year at today's Board of Directors meeting. This will be adopted starting the first quarter of fiscal year ending March 2024, enabling us to disclose data in a more comparable way.

We also recognize that cash allocation is a very important topic in the next midterm management plan. We, thus, intend to share our shareholder return policy with you. Please allow us some time since the next midterm management plan is planned to be announced in May this year.

As was mentioned at the beginning, we expect the market environment to be very strong, and we have high expectations. We will, thus, be making plans with such assumption. We will be sharing our plan with you and would like to ask for your support going forward. Thank you very much for your attention.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]