4285 days ago
On March 5th the international recruitment agency will serve up its results for calendar 2012 and given that there was a detailed trading statement on January 15th – which flagged up that Q1 2013 would be challenging – it is hard to see there being any great horrors. However, at 425p, on a 2013 price earnings ratio of 26 (or more) there is not a lot of scope for disappointment. There is a bull case as well as a bear case and the debate is an interesting one.
The Q4 trading statement reported fees of £126.5 million which was marginally ahead of consensus. The UK market seems to have stabilised, Asia is trading strongly and Europe (this will not surprise you) not very strongly. On the back of that pre-tax profits should come in at around £65 million (down from £86 million in 2011) which equates to earnings of 14p (down from 18.2p). Net cash at the year end was basically unchanged on 2011 at £58 million.
