Recruit Holdings Co., one of the world’s largest staffing firms, reported net sales rose 3.7% to ¥406.9 billion (US$4.0 billion) in its fiscal second quarter ended Sept. 30.

The Tokyo-based staffing and publishing firm’s staffing brands in the US include Staffmark, Advantage Resourcing and Atterro. The company also owns Indeed.com, and in June acquired the assets of job search engine Simply Hired.

Recruit also in June invested in Chicago-based ShipBob Inc., a provider of fulfillment services to small and medium enterprises, and in Alignable, a Boston-based company that describes itself as a social network for local business. In September, Recruit invested in San Jose, Calif.-based Savioke Inc., a company that provides autonomous delivery service robots.

Recruit has operations in Europe under the Advantage Resourcing brand and Australian operations with its acquisition in 2015 of the Chandler Macleod Group Ltd. and Peoplebank. The company also struck a $1.55 billion deal late last year to acquire Dutch staffing firm USG People.

Recruit operates four business segments; Staffing, marketing media, HR media, and “other.”

Net sales by segment*

Recruit reported Indeed.com net sales jumped 68.5% to ¥56.4 billion (US$556.7 million) in the fiscal second quarter, and focused on strengthening client base outside the US, in addition to user acquisition enhancement.

In its HR media segment, Recruit reported favorable net sales reflected measures for user-acquisition and operating system enhancement. The effective ratio of job offers to job seekers was stable at a high level, and the number of recruitment ads continued to increase.

In the overseas staffing operations, net sales increased due to a positive impact from Peoplebank, Chandler, and Atterro consolidated from the beginning of this fiscal year.

Guidance

Looking forward, the company expects net sales of ¥1.83 trillion (US$18.06 billion) for the fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2017.