Grupa Pracuj SA

WSE:GPP

Earnings Call Analysis

Revenue Growth and Strategic Expansion in Diverse Markets

In the first half of 2024, Grupa Pracuj's revenue grew by 5.4% to PLN 390 million, with an adjusted EBITDA of PLN 177 million, maintaining a 45% margin. Despite a slight net profit decline due to share revaluation, profits would have grown 5.5% otherwise. Notable achievements include strong market performance in Poland, Ukraine, and Germany, and significant growth in the SaaS segment, especially with a 25% rise in monthly recurring revenue. The company is optimistic about steady growth, targeting 2-8% recruitment project volume increases and 2-7% price growth in Poland over the next quarters.

Financial Growth and Operational Insights

In the first half of 2024, Grupa Pracuj reported a revenue growth of 5.4% year-on-year, reaching almost PLN 390 million. The adjusted EBITDA also increased at a similar rate to PLN 177 million, maintaining an impressive EBITDA margin of 45%. Despite these positive figures, net profit saw a slight decline, significantly impacted by the revaluation of their shares in Beamery; without this effect, the net profit would have shown a year-on-year increase of 5.5%.

Regional Performance Analysis

In Poland, the growth was driven by an increase in recruitment project prices and a growing customer base, albeit with only a 1.4% increase in the number of recruitment projects in Q2. Ukraine's performance was notably robust, with recruitment projects surging by 62% and project prices rising by nearly 25%. In Germany, adjusted EBITDA grew over 2%, indicating solid market performance despite challenges posed by currency fluctuations.

Progress in HR Technology and SaaS Division

The SaaS segment is blossoming, with an almost 10% increase in the number of clients for eRecruiter and softgarden, and a remarkable 25% growth in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) compared to last year. Their share of revenue from HR SaaS is now over 26%, with a goal to expand this to at least 30% in the next year. This sector remains resilient during economic fluctuations, providing a steady revenue backbone.

Strategic Marketing and Cost Management

Marketing expenses have increased by almost 47% year-on-year as the company launched extensive campaigns targeting both Poland and Ukraine. They plan to adjust these expenses flexibly in line with revenue forecasts, which they project to maintain stable growth moving forward. Salary costs exhibited a growth of 34%, demonstrating a rising headcount and related expenses due to inflation.

Outlook and Future Guidance

Looking ahead, the company anticipates year-on-year growth in recruitment projects in Poland to stabilize, projecting increases between 2%-8% in project growth and 2%-7% in average prices over the next few quarters. Meanwhile, Grupa Pracuj expects continued strong revenue growth in Ukraine despite circumstantial challenges, aiming for ongoing increases in client numbers and MRR in their SaaS business.

Investment in Technology and Product Development

Innovations in product offerings, such as Reach+ and Pracuj Booster—both enhanced by artificial intelligence—are expected to improve efficiency for customers by over 25%. The company also highlighted their commitment to developing mobile solutions to enhance user engagement, specifically focusing on the candidate experience through clear application processes.

Strategic Acquisitions and Geopolitical Considerations

Grupa Pracuj is eyeing potential acquisitions within Ukraine, viewing this as an 'option' despite the prevailing geopolitical risks. They remain cautious yet optimistic about the long-term benefits should market conditions improve post-conflict.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Operator]

Good morning, and warm greetings from sunny Warsaw. While we -- some are still enjoying the last day of summer, we are here to discuss the financial and operational results of Grupa Pracuj for the first half of 2024. Thank you for joining us today. Before we start, as usual, a few housekeeping notes. [Operator Instructions] Now I'd like to introduce host of our meeting, Chairman Gacek, CEO of Grupa Pracuj. So we have Przemek.

[Przemyslaw Gacek, executive]

Hello. Good morning, everyone.

[Operator]

Hello. Good morning, Gracjan Fiedorowicz, CFO and Board member.

[Gracjan Fiedorowicz, executive]

Good morning.

[Operator]

Good morning and Rafal Nachyna, Chief Operating Officer and Board member of Grupa Pracuj. Hello, Rafal.

[Rafal Nachyna, executive]

Good morning.

Przemek, now the floor is yours.

[Przemyslaw Gacek, executive]

All right. So once again, good morning, everyone. Let us -- 3 of us, the Board members guided to the results of Grupa Pracuj for the first half of 2024. Just a few, just enough reminding you about Grupa Pracuj on the next slide. And we operate within 2 areas. The first of them is -- next slide. The first of them is job classifieds with pracuj.pl and robota.ua, the 2 leading brands as well as the:protocol covering the dedicated to IT specials. And the second leg, which we are building is a technology SaaS with softgarden operating across DACH, and e-recruiter operating out of Poland. We also have the 2 smaller brands absence and HRlink. So how about the H1? So the revenues of the group grew by 5.4% year-on-year to PLN 390 million with adjusted EBITDA growing at a similar pace, a little bit slower of PLN 177 million.

We maintained the adjusted EBITDA margin at 45% and the net profit slightly declined. What -- how did this come to that? So when looking into Poland, we -- the growth in Poland will generate due to higher prices of recruitment projects and driving number of customers as well as the steadily increase of customers using the SaaS model. Ukraine was doing and was performing better in a row, keeping in my current market situation and the war in the East. So the revenues grow as well as the operating profit. We are also quite happy about the growth of revenues and operating profit in Germany, which grew quite a lot, resulting in adjusted EBITDA growth of over 2%. In terms of the net profit, it was impacted by the revaluation of shares in Beamery. If that was not the case, the net profit would rise by 5.5% year-on-year. I will pass you to Gracjan if you could just let everyone some more detailed financial and operational KPIs as well.

[Gracjan Fiedorowicz, executive]

Thank you, Przemek. Yes, let's start from our operating results. Regarding pracuj.pl, I have 2 good news. One is -- and the most important one is that in Q2, we observed after a few quarters of decreases an increase in number of recruitment projects. This is not a very significant growth just by 1.4%.

However, there is an increase, which is a very good information. Obviously, the other one, good information, is increased in average price of recruitment products. The dynamics this quarter is lower than in previous quarters, and this is a result of higher dynamics of job offers which are directed to blue-collar and Pink-collar candidates, and this job process are cheaper. So it had higher dynamics than white collar job offers, and it resulted in lower dynamics of average price. From half-yearly perspective, we are still -- we still have a decrease in number of equipment projects, but it's just 1.7%. In Ukraine, as Przemek mentioned, the situation is even better. Very good results in both terms, number of equipment projects and average price of equipment projects. And number of recruitment project grew by 62% and page recruitment project grew by almost 25%, really amazing results taking into consideration the situation.

And our HR tech subsystems, eRecruiter and softgarden, together, they grew in number of clients by almost 10% with slightly higher dynamics for softgarden. And MRR, so massive recurring revenue for both these businesses grew by 25% comparing to last -- first half year of last year. On the next slide, just a summary of our revenues. As Przemek mentioned, half year, they grew by 5.4%. We achieved almost PLN 400 million. We have just PLN 10 million below. And in quarterly terms, we grew also by 5%. Looking at the right-hand side of this slide, you can see that our share of revenue from HR SaaS due to 26.2%. And this is another quarter of growth of this share. Just to remind you, revenues from HR Texas are much more resilient to any macroeconomic turmoil like recession or slowdowns. So we are aiming at achieving at least 30% of share next year or another year after next year. Looking at our profitability, no significant changes. We still operate in areas of very high margins.

As Przemek mentioned, slight growth over 2% growth of adjusted EBITDA. Operating profit also grew slightly by 1% and profitability is slightly lower than last year, however, slightly higher than in Q1. In cash -- from a cash conversion perspective, which you can see in the middle of this slide, also no significant changes, slightly lower cash conversion due to higher CapEx. But generally, as you can see, free cash flows are almost at the same level as last year. And in a little bit more details regarding our results, maybe a lot more fetal, but obviously, we will not go through everything here. First thing is revenue. Just to remind you, it's all while analyze our revenues not only from perspective as it is presented in our financial statements, but also from the next sales perspective, so adjusting revenue for cost of job offer sold, this cost line relates to multiposting services offered by softgarden. And the multiposting adjusting service where we resell job offers to our clients, job offers provided by different job boards in Germany.

So from a net revenue perspective, as you can see, the growth is even higher than 8% from hard perspective and almost 8% from a quarterly perspective. Looking at more details into German revenue. As you can see on the right hand of this slide, over 26% year-on-year growth in MRR in euro terms.

Unfortunately, German revenues were affected by exchange rates. I mean, appreciation of Polish affected German revenue by over 6%. Also, revenue from Ukraine and cost from Ukraine also affected by negative exchange rates. However, our results in revenue are our results in Ukraine, sorry, are very good. As you can see, 27% growth in operating profit followed following 25% growth in revenue, adjusted already for currency exchange rates. In costs, what you can see that the most growing line is marketing expenses. This is something which we continue to grow this year as we assumed, and we also informed you about it that this year, we are going to spend more on marketing, especially in Poland in Poland and in Ukraine.

We deploy wide-range marketing campaign. Ad-important, we have some additional campaigns also which resulted in almost 47% growth year-on-year in this cost line. And one last thing here, Przemek mentioned about it already net profit was impacted by revaluation of serenity are financial assets, which we have to value every quarter to add value.

And this quarter, it was a negative revaluation. The impact was PLN 16.7 million on finance costs and PLN 13.5 million loss on net profit without debt. As Przemek said, net profit would grow 5.5% versus last year. So I think that's enough regarding the financial numbers, and I will pass the voice to Rafal, who will present our business activities in Q2.

[Rafal Nachyna, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Gracjan. So let me show you several positive information from the project perspective. So first thing, of course, I would like to share with you that, as always, we constantly try to figure out and we try to change our products because we would like to offer a better value proposition for our customers. Therefore, right now, customers, they have access to new different products [indicernible] Reach+ and Pracuj Booster, Right now, it's really important because we have more and more customers with high level of winningness because they suffer -- they are not able to find good enough talent. So this is really important because those products can increase efficiency over 25%. So we see really great results from this new product.

And what is really important, I would like to add that those 2 products are based on a new solution, artificial intelligence. And thanks to that, we are able to build and offer our candidate job seekers, much better adjustment. So the level of government of this product is really good because finally, they feel that they have what they were looking for. So this is very important. We constantly try to customize Brasil. Second quarter, it was the period when we focused on blue collar position and people who looking for a job in size. And right now, it's more and more really used for features in those 2 categories.

So this is really important. For sure, we know that you remember about our investment and right now, this is pracuj.pl and the:protocol. Thanks to that, we are able to enhance our position. And we are -- right now, we've got stronger ever than before in IT category, IT segment. This is really important because what we see from the market, the willingness to pay from customers when it comes to this kind of segment is the highest.

So we did like this category, even though that we know everyone that this year maybe is not the best one, maybe this is not a bad effect because IT suffered a lot after the COVID boom, but still, this is really crucial segment for us. We constantly try to develop our mobile solution. Last quarter, it was first introduction, and we are so happy right now that we have the testing period right now for 2 different platforms, of course, for the Android users and from the iOS users. This new mobile solution is based on features from the social network solutions.

So we know that job seekers, our candidates, there like this solution because it's really useful and friendly. And I think that we try to break this kind of magic barrier, and we know that it's always a successful process when candidates try to achieve the new position. So we do as much as possible to decrease this level of trust. And we know that mobile app, new mobile app, the format so mobile app is one of the best solutions.

We constantly check feedback from topics, and we try to figure out what is really crucial for our job seekers and they constantly ask about 2 different elements to different set of the information. One of them, of course, this is a salary rate. And topics there like job offer with this kind of specific data. But the second concern, they don't like this element of the recruitment process, when they don't know what's going to come, we take applications. Therefore, right now, on pracuj.pl, we have the new features for the job seekers. This is a set of different stages.

And they exactly know what's going on with specific -- with really specific each projects, where they send, when they apply. So this is really important. I saw the first question during -- from the chart. So this is one of the pets why the cost of marketing is higher than last year. Right now, we are aware of this that is more and more and more new candidates, and we try to attract new candidates. Right now, we try to take much younger people, and we try to convince that we feel is the must have. This is the best solution when it comes to the recruitment processes. Can I ask about the next slide? Okay. That now let me jump and share more interesting and specific data from Ukraine.

As Gracjan mentioned, this is really a good time for us. So market circumstances support our business really, really strong. So willingness from a customer perspective, I think it's right now one of the highest ever. So finally, you see that thanks to that, we are able to increase the price. So the first quarter was to through second quarter, it was the same. And finally, it doesn't matter what kind of currency we take into consideration because we know that the polls stronger compared to the even euro or dollar quite especially. But even though you'll see that the dynamic of growth is really significant. We see constantly that -- and we have a lot of conversation with our Ukrainian customers that they have right now really big problem with good enough talent. This is both quantity and quality. So as I mentioned, winning net is very high. They are really happy, and they are constantly asked about the new job offers. They ask about the new products about the new features. So we try to build the new value proposition.

At the same time, this is a great moment when we can think about really strong monetization projects. So especially, we can recognize this positive change when we compare our results in [indiscernible] year-to-year. We constantly try to support the customers because, of course, we know and we remember that it's still a really difficult time this is a war time. That is why we organize a lot of online virtual videos right now augmented strategy, and we try to connect and build this association and support in a daily job daily topics, our customers. So as you can see, it was one of the biggest online event, more than 1,000 participants.

And of course, because we listen what's going come and we try to support our customers, we feel that it's our duty, and we are obliged to organize online real big campaign because this is right now the biggest issue how to convince job seekers, they should be much more active. One thing is that this is a shortage of the labor right now. But on the other hand, the level of willingness and the openness from the Job seeker side is not so high.

So people -- they are rather with that because it's uncertain conditions. So we organized already a lot of marketing campaign, and we try to convince that even this is a work time, this is a good moment for the change and looking for the new position. We can jump right now to a SaaS business, okay? Let me summarize what's going to come. Right now, you see that it's a more and more important part of our business. As Przemek mentioned, this is a second leg of our business. And this really significant level of growth as according to our plan.

We thought -- we have -- we talked about this last quarter that we constantly try to be much more comprehensive. That is why we spend time and we developed this HR workflows because this is the best way how we can increase the level of engagement our customers within the system. And of course, higher level of engagement finally means that the cooperation with customers is much more stable. And thanks to that, we have much lower churn. Another part of this kind of single story is the marketplace because this is -- we can say this internal shop where our customers can use additional features, additional product from our partners.

Right now, what was interesting for us that we start cooperation not only with Polish provider, different providers. But right now, we have a partners from a brand. This is really important. And this is a really interesting part of the study because we address specific needs, our current customers. They asked about additional connections, and that's really work. It really works for us, and we are happy that customers feel that thanks to the eRecruiter marketplace, our -- the chain of our proposal is much more comprehensive.

We would like to underline really important facts, really important data. I would like to share with you information from the external comparison. This is to be really nice for us because according to this data, our systems right now, the rank of our system is higher than before. What does it mean for us? Of course, this is not only for us, but for other customers. This is external source of data, and they can check what is the position of decent solutions and the level of credibility is much higher.

So of course, the rank is important for us and is really significant element of our conversation with customers because thanks to this kind of external comparison right now, the conversation with customers from other perspective, will be easier. They can see -- and what is really important that these comparison check completely different dimensions.

So this is how useful is the system, how stabilizes the system. So this comparison and this data, this is part the proof that what we didn't, what we do constantly in our system, this is a good job. And because the German market is much more fragmented compared to the Polish market. We constantly try to find the partnerships. And right now, after the second quarter, we have the new partner. These are the HeyJobs. And this is the way how we would like to increase our size reach. And of course, thanks to this type of partnerships thanks to the HeyJobs, we have additional leads for our safety. We can jump to the next slide. And the last thing from the HR technology SaaS.

Second quarter was really important, but because we have 15 years in with recruiter, and I would like to remind you how the HR market looks like 5 years ago. So right now, SaaS business and application taking system looks quite normal, and it's quite obvious right now, and there's nothing amazing, but try to imagine what did 15 what was happened 15 years ago. So it was both decisions at time, and it was the way how we were able to address future really future needs our customers.

So we can say that we predict the market at that time. Right now, we have really great results more than 2,000 customers. I think this is the best proof that we have the trusted solution. We have more than 17 million application in our system. So we know that job seekers, they trust us. They know that this is a really good place, safe place as we take care about the privacy, we take care about the data. This is really sensitive topic right now. What is really interesting right now, we recruited this Polish either, but what is really worth to underline that we have right now presence in 32 different countries.

Our system is so good that sometimes customers from a drop, they decide to change their other system and because they have, for example, the part of the business in Poland and thanks to this kind of experience, they change and they jump to recruiter, and this is a common system for all parts of the businesses. And of course, we constantly try to increase partnerships because this is the best way how we can offer our customers more and more comprehensive portfolio. Okay. Thank you for this time, and I would like to ask Przemek for outlook for the upcoming months.

[Przemyslaw Gacek, executive]

Thank you, Rafal. So [indiscernible] what we are looking forward for the next couple of quarters. So we always strive to develop innovative products and services to serve our clients in a better way. There is quite a lot of innovation happening within the group, and we are going to drive it further, obviously. In terms of the recruitment projects in Poland, we would expect a stable growth year-on-year, and in terms of the number of recruitment projects supported by the single-digit growth in the average price of that.

And we believe there are 2 scenarios possible. So the conservative would be that the volume growth would be between 2% to 4%. As we mentioned before, we are already on plus at the current moment with the average price growth of between 2% to 3%. So this scenario assumes that there is no kind of further increase of the investments from larger companies, which are a big part of our clients and especially the revenues, especially within the white collar group.

The optimistic one, we would aim product growth to be in the range of 5% to 8% with every price of about 4% to 7%. So that will be our estimation for the probably like next 2, 3 quarters. We would expect to maintain the high growth of revenues on the Ukrainian market despite all the challenges, we believe that is still possible. And obviously, we are aiming at steady growth in terms of the number of active customers and MRR within HR technology, SaaS, softgarden and eRecruiter.

As you have seen before, this is a very predictable, I would say, boringly predictable market, which provides us opportunity to grow in the very kind of well forecasted way, both in terms of the number of clients and the revenues from the customers. And we also believe that all these activities will help us to be -- to gain some competitive position on the -- on our operating markets. We are strong. We have very engaged employees.

We have a very high organization as well, which usually helps in this kind of moment to gain the market against other players. So what are the competitive advantages we are going to capitalize on. So first of all, we believe we are a very flexible organization. We are very effectively adapting to different market conditions. And this is what you have been seeing in our all the numbers that the revenues can grow faster, can grow slower. But we can really adjust certain parts of our organization very quickly, and we really understand the business after running that for 24 years. We have very good relationships with our clients and the number of clients which we are super happy about this consistently growing.

So whether it's a large customer, a midsized customer or smart customer, we have all these ways of addressing them and building our brand among them. We discussed the portfolio of products and services. So there's lots of growth, lots of segmentation happening, and we understand the needs of the candidate, we understand the need of the customers,and we want them to be a part of the Grupa Pracuj ecosystem of our brands. We are quite in our work.

We are very say, well regarded and perceived by the customers. We have the power to save the labor markets from all best practices and build awareness among the employees and candidates, which we are using quite a lot. And last but not least, we have -- we believe we have a very unique culture, organizational culture. This is a culture which is focused on the engagement of the employees. And this is how we have always been in the history that we always also employees are super important for us. Let's have the gates because the more engage they are, the better results, they can achieve a different better results as we as a group apace.

While on the other hand, we are very, let's say, very much focused on the results. So only the combination of high engagement and delivering results is something which makes us unique. We did some, let's say, engagement surveys recently, and we are super happy that Grupa Pracuj on average, the engagements at a very high level, even higher than it was in the previous years. So I believe we are in quite an interesting moment. We cannot capitalize on that and move the business forward. I think that's it from our side. So I guess we are ready for questions.

[Operator]

Okay, gentlemen, thank you very much for sharing all the details about the first half of 2024. And indeed, we have some questions from our guests. First question from [ Yannick Akar, Alphastar ] Capital. And the question is average revenue per listing grew year-on-year, but decreased quarter-on-quarter. Can you put more color on this please?

[Gracjan Fiedorowicz, executive]

It's -- I'll try to repeat what I have said because it's actually connected to its color, yes. As you know, we sell and publish blue collar and pink collar job offers, which are cheaper and white collar offers, which are much more expensive. And what happened in Q2, the share, the dynamics of this blue- and pink collar job offers was higher than dynamics of white collar job offers, and it affected the average price. So we had more blue collar and pink collar job offers than in Q1.

[Operator]

Thank you very much, Gracjan. [ Yannick ] also asks about the cost mix and the marketing expense, Rafal mentioned a little bit about that. And the question is, in terms of cost mix, marketing expenses grew quite strongly. What is the main driver? Would you like to add anything to gas?

[Gracjan Fiedorowicz, executive]

I think Rafal covered it very well. Just to sum up, we continued wide range campaigns in Q2, which we started in Q1. I hope in Poland, people in Poland could see it. Additionally, we had a campaign to younger candidates, let's say. And also, we started to spend a mono-market in Ukraine. So we continue from Q1. And in Q2, we had some events which Rafal mentioned and also campaign in outdoor and online.

[Operator]

Again, another question from [ Yannick ]. Regarding the strong earnings growth in German segment, which means softgarden, can you please shed some light on this? Is this related to a favorable product mix in this segment? Or is it due to cost expense savings with this segment?

[Gracjan Fiedorowicz, executive]

I would say the main reason here is something I call operating leverage. I mean, the SaaS businesses has a very nice feature. And the revenues are growing much faster than the expenses. So we keep costs under control, growing obviously, but under control. And we're constantly growing revenues, we are able to improve our profitability and improve earnings.

[Przemyslaw Gacek, executive]

And I think this is pretty much what we have been saying before, what we saw quite in the past that, I mean, of course, we can leverage and we can decide how strong we want to invest because usually in this case, we can spend more money on the regeneration sales force in a product. So we saw hanger this margin. But at some point, basically, with all the steady growth, revenues are going at a certain pace and the costs remain much flatter as well.

So I think that's pretty much the dynamic of the SaaS business. And that's why the SaaS business I think because of its predictability, usually, there would be probably valued not really by the EBITDA, but it will be valued by the revenue multiple. So that's how we also look sometimes internal at our business or acquisitions and so on. And we just -- it just takes time in order to get to this leverage moments.

[Operator]

Thank you. Dominic [indiscernible] also noticed the impressive growth of MRR. So his question is, could you please provide further insight into the current HR tech market landscape in Germany, particularly within the SME segment.

[Przemyslaw Gacek, executive]

Yes. So I mean, in general, of course, has been done, as we know, June had its own issues. I think SMEs are also probably not in the most fantastic moment because they depend on the entire economy. However, we cannot do any comment on -- we don't have so many days of the other companies. We know that the market is growing and the market will be growing in the future, we pretty much focused on the simple things, not getting as many lease as possible, selling to those customers, retaining them and so on.

It's probably more challenging to do it right now because when you have the wind then you go faster when you have the headwinds, you really have to have much hard there and change the course and so on. So for sure, getting the clients right now is more challenging than it used to be 2 years ago when the market was growing. But we are still doing our best. I think the softgarden is a very long brand. Usually, when there is some tough market conditions, what we see in the HR technology is that or in the equipment of the company, they will stay with the biggest players, those whose brand is more popular and so on.

So we would -- I mean, idea would like to have the current rate of the client acquisition sustained. In terms of the pricing, they will probably very multiple on what kind of products we are providing inflation rates and so on. In terms of the sector, there is no one particular sector.

We are pretty much straight. It's no IT, It's not manufacturing, it's not government. I would say probably it's not much government, but this is more like private sector, but there's like plenty of different segments. So this is a good thing for us because if the one of them is suffering, the other is they can contribute to the growth.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Another question from Dominic [indiscernible]. What is the outlook forecast in Poland in the second half of the year, particularly regarding plant marketing expenses? Do you anticipate maintaining the salary cost growth at parent companion Grupa Pracuj at around 34%, similar to the first half of 2024.

[Gracjan Fiedorowicz, executive]

So regarding marketing expenses, you should kind of observe them in relation to revenue. as a set of revenue this year. And this is also the cost which are the most flexible ones. So depending on the development of the situation and revenue growth, we adjusted a proprietary. Regarding the salary cost growth in Grupa Pracuj, stand-alone. I do not expect it will be higher. The dynamics should be higher than in the first half of this year. There are no signs of that.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. [indiscernible] Question about the structure of employee benefits, which grew by 9% in the second quarter. And based on the report bonuses declined by 51%, whereas salaries grew by 34%. It's very detailed data. Can you please explain such please.

[Gracjan Fiedorowicz, executive]

Yes. The detailed data, I have now some details at hand. So I would have to check it in more details. Generally, bonuses are connect that are tight with our results, especially the some bonuses sometimes are delayed and the cost of them are recognized later on. So it can have some time effect, let's say.

So it can differ from quarter-to-quarter depend when we pay and based on what especially last year, it happened. Sandals, some salaries also includes some bonus, we call it internally bonuses, but it's actually a kind of a part of remuneration, which are placed as a bonuses together, we started not dependent on results. And there was a grow of headcount and the growth of also salaries, especially in Poland, in Ukraine because of inflation. So there is a double-digit growth in salaries, and it can be expected in the following quarters.

[Operator]

Thank you, Gracjan. Another question from [indiscernible] I believe it's about the announcement about your decision to increase the stake in some entities in Ukraine. Can you tell us more about the justification of this transaction in the eye of macro geopolitical risk in this country?

[Przemyslaw Gacek, executive]

Yes. So I would say we have been not trying for a long time. I mean it's I think 16 or 17 years. When we discuss upon, of course, there are high risk of being there in case the situation worsens. On the other hand, that's the opportunity which appeared where one of the shareholders of Work is basically leaving the company and offered to kind of to sell the shares for some really like a super, super let's say, price from our perspective. So we treat it kind of more as far as an option.

We believe that if we do it and the market doesn't go right, there is not much really we could probably use in case the war is somehow settled and Ukraine on completely on that contract victory stage, Ukraine becomes like a place to be as well. We would be pretty much covering the entire market and those final market would be robota.ua and [indiscernible].

So it's more like kind of like an option, which we think make such are lots of sense. So that's how we look into the rent direction. And it's also like from our perspective, it's not really like a significant amount of money.

[Operator]

Thank you. Another question from [indiscernible] about margin and acquisitions. Should we expect new takeovers within the next 12 months?

[Przemyslaw Gacek, executive]

I mean we would like to do, I would say, of course, in our part of Ukraine, which we are working on, we -- I mean, in the ideal study, we would like to do one other Acquisition or maybe at least, but that will be more like a bolt-on. It's not like anything huge and significant as it was the case of softgarden, but something that will be much more complementary with lots of synergies as well, supporting one of our businesses of the core on our core markets. And I think we will do one project that will be just, let's say, the minimum which you would be happy about.

[Operator]

Okay. Thank you very much. And any and other questions about the EU subsidy from the recovery and resilience facility funds. So can you give us an update on this, please? When we will start? And what impact do you expect?

[Rafal Nachyna, executive]

Yes, I can take this question. Of course, we constantly try to collect more data from our customers, what is their expectation? Do they feel this or not. So I think the topic is quite complicated because one thing, this is, of course, the additional support, financial support, and the second thing is, of course, strong connections with the EU economy, and this is what we see in Poland right now because this is a chain of the suppliers, China of the cooperations with bigger company, for example, from Germany.

So we can say that general, when we ask our customers at the beginning of this year, expectation was higher. But unfortunately, this is not like this that customers -- our customers, they feel extraordinary positive win from this financial support. So I think this is much more complicated, much more connected right now with the market circumstances, not only EU but even United States elections. So as you can see from the data. So for sure, second quarter, it was the quarter with a low digit growth. And we still wait for the stronger...

[Operator]

Thank you very much, Rafal. Another question from [indiscernible] Can you please explain how your market share in local change versus a year ago?

[Rafal Nachyna, executive]

I think that we will ask Monika for more specific data to be share data according to this topic because -- so I think we would like to be as much as possible specific, so we prepare this additional answer.

[Operator]

Okay. I mean, so we'll let you know and contact you via email Monika Banasiak who is listening this presentation, make some notes and definitely, we will get back to you. So I can see any new incoming questions. So this is the last chance for our participants to ask the questions to tie these questions right now. If there's no questions, No, no new incoming questions. So Przemek, maybe let's briefly summarize our presentation that will conclude our meeting.

[Przemyslaw Gacek, executive]

So thank you very much to everyone for your time today. I talk we were, let's say, explicit not to present all the information, address your questions as well. I think the market is interesting. I think as Grupa Pracuj, we understand it well. We know how to operate it. I think we have contributed in plans for the future as well.

And in case you have any questions, we are -- whether it's myself, Gracjan, Rafal or Monika, we are available for your questions for other meetings as well. And if we don't see each other soon that I guess will see each other or at least maybe not see but see each other at our next meeting summarizing the current quarter as well summarized into Q3. So thank you very much for your time today, and let's assume in the future.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Thank you, Gracjan, and thank you, Rafal. Thank you to all our participants and see you in the occasion of discussing the meetings for Q3. And now I wish you a pleasant day and the rest of the week. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

[Gracjan Fiedorowicz, executive]

Thank you.