Swedish staffing firm Dedicare (DEDI: SS) reported revenue for the third quarter ending 30 September 2017 of SEK 195.9 million (€20.3 million), an increase of 13.5% compared with the second quarter last year.

Dedicare announced that new CEO Krister Widström will be joining the group on 13 November 2017 with current CEO Stig Engcrantz remaining in his position until then.

The group also reported an operating margin of 8.4% for Q3, down from 12.6% in the same period last year. The group stated that the lower margin is partly due to the shortage of staff in the group’s service categories that forced wages and fees to their consultants, thus giving the group lower margins. Dedicare also attributed the decreased operating margin to one-off costs associated with the resignation of current CEO Engcrantz.

“Dedicare shows continued growth in the third quarter of 2017,” CEO Stig Engcrantz said. “Sales increase and profitability is good, but the operating margin is deteriorating compared to the same period last year.”

"Both Sweden and Norway showed good growth. The increase in revenue is mainly due to staffing in health and social work,” Engcrantz said. "The digitalisation work going on internally gives us continued opportunities to develop our way of finding new candidates for our assignments, which improves quality and service to our customers. In the third quarter, we continued our digitisation project that began in the second quarter of 2017. The project is expensed on a continuous basis, thus affecting the quarterly earnings.”

The group added that demand for its services is increasing in Norway and Sweden.

Dedicare also announced that it has appointed a new election committee which will have the task of proposing candidates to the Board. Dedicare's largest shareholders and Chairman of the Board Björn Örås has appointed the following owners representatives: Björn Örås, Chairman of the Board and Chief Owner of Dedicare AB;  Angelica Hanson, fund manager, AMF - Insurances and Funds; and Monica Åsmyr, Swedbank Robur Funds.

In trading today, Dedicare AB traded at SEK 112.75 (€11.70), down 12.7% on the day and 67.04% above the 52 week low of SEK 67.50 (€7.01) set on 9 November 2016. Based on its current share price the company has a market value of SEK 910.3 million (€94.4 million).