Wise Group (WISE:SS), the Swedish staffing firm reported revenue for the first quarter ending 31 March 2017 of SEK 195.6 million (€20.2 million), an increase of 15.7% compared with SEK 169.1 million (€18.2 million) during the same quarter last year.  

“2017 has begun well and Wise Group continues to grow,” Roland Gustavsson, CEO of Wise Group, said. “We entered the year with a lot of energy and good confidence after a strong end of 2016. Demand for our services remained strong and we succeeded in our sales and delivery.”

The group also announced that from the first quarter of 2017, its operations are divided into three new segments; Recruitment & Consultancy, HR Consultancy & Leadership Development, and Digital HR Services.

“Through this change, the board and management can more clearly follow the development of different businesses, providing better comparability with other listed companies in the same industry and visualizing the values ​​of our web-based business,” Gustavsson, said.

“All of our segments grew and increased their earnings, with the exception of Recruitment & Consultancy. The segment, which consists of Wise Professionals, Wise IT, K2 Search and SalesOnly, showed a good growth, but the margin and earnings weakened slightly. This was an effect of a temporary increase in costs in some of the companies, primarily linked to IT investments and system development,” Gustavsson said. “During the quarter, we also invested in a new brand in Wise Professionals - The Pace. The Pace business area works with recruitment and consultancy in qualified administration and has received a very positive start.”

“The HR Consultancy & Leadership segment, which consists of Wise Consulting and the leadership development business, ‘Capability’, showed good growth and strengthened earnings,” Gustavsson said. “Demand for these services has been very good for several years and I do not see anything indicating that it would decrease in the near future.”

“The Digital HR Services segment, which includes the Edge HR and Netsurvey companies, grew well and showed a very strong performance improvement. We have high ambitions with this segment and continuously work on developing new services that respond to customers' changing behaviors and the need for new digital services,” Gustavsson said.

“In summary, the quarter was strong and was characterised primarily by the focus on core businesses, with sales and delivery as top priority,” Gustavsson said. “I am therefore very pleased with the development of the quarter and that we continued to grow as well as to increase our margin and our result. Against this background, I estimate that we will be able to show continued positive development in the coming quarter.”

The group also announced that Nathalie Berthelius was appointed HR Director of Wise Group with effect from 1 February 2017.

Revenue by business segment was broken down during Q1 2017 as follows:

Geographically, revenue during the first quarter was broken down as follows:

As of last trade, Wise Group AB traded at SEK 65.75 (€6.79), down 3.66% on the day and 10.24% below its 52-week high of SEK 73.25 (€7.56), set on 24 January 2017. Based on its current share price the company has a market value of SEK 504.4 (€52.0 million).