Volt Information Sciences Inc. (NYSE MKT: VISI) reported net revenue fell 13.1% in its fiscal second quarter ended April 29. On a same-store and constant currency basis, net revenue fell 7.8% year over year, excluding net revenue contributed from businesses sold or exited during the past year.

Gross margin narrowed to 14.2% from 15.6%, and net loss increased.

Volt President and CEO Michael Dean on Wednesday left the company and its board of directors; Linda Perneau took over as interim CEO, in addition to her current role as president of Volt Workforce Solutions — a role the former Randstad exec took on last month. Nick Cyprus was appointed chairman of the board, and current director William Grubbs was appointed vice chairman. The company also formed an executive management committee, responsible for the day-to-day operational and corporate management, which will report directly to the board of directors.

In a conference call Thursday with investors to discuss the quarter’s earnings results, Perneau said the company has begun executing on a four-point improvement plan. “This plan is based on swift movement to set our teams up in an environment that allows them to more effectively deliver to our clients of all sizes and drive immediate improvement in gross margin,” she said. “There is a fundamental behavior change that must occur. Among many things we need to shift to a performance-driven and measured culture with both accountability and ownership at all levels of the organization.”

The personnel moves followed an announcement the previous day that the company is evaluating potential strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or a division, a strategic merger, a business combination, or continuing as a standalone company. No timetable has been set for completion of the review.

Quote

Senior VP and CFO Paul Tomkins said the company continued to make progress stabilizing and strategically positioning its smaller businesses — namely International Staffing, Volt Consulting Group and Volt Customer Care Solutions — in the second quarter.

“While these incremental improvements are encouraging, we still have work ahead to get Volt back on a trajectory to profitable growth,” Tomkins said. “A key to reaching this goal will be generating top-line growth through improving the performance of our largest business, Volt Workforce Solutions, or VWS. With new senior leadership in place at VWS and a team dedicated to executing a plan to drive revenue growth, I am confident we can achieve our objective.”

Segment revenue

North America staffing services revenue fell 6.7% from the year-ago quarter, driven by lower demand from customers in both professional and commercial job families, as well as a significant change in a large customer’s contingent labor strategy in the latter part of fiscal 2017.

International staffing services revenue — which includes the company’s contingent staffing, direct placement and managed programs business in Europe and Asia — rose 5.5%. However, second-quarter revenue fell 5.6% on a constant currency basis, primarily due to lower demand in the United Kingdom, offset by strong growth in Belgium and Singapore.

“Corporate and other revenue,” which primarily consists of the company’s North American managed service business and its call center business, fell 65.1%, primarily driven by the impact from the sale of its Maintech IT infrastructure services business and its quality assurance testing business, which occurred early in the second quarter of fiscal 2017 and at the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017, respectively. On a same-store basis, excluding businesses sold or exited, the decline was 26.9%, year-over-year, as a result of the winding down of certain programs in the company’s managed service business as well as normal fluctuations in call center activity.

Share price and market cap

Shares in Volt rose 1.72% to $2.95 as of 12:46 p.m. Eastern time. The company had a market cap of $62.03 million.