Wise Group (WISE:SS), the Swedish staffing firm reported revenue today for the fourth quarter ending 31 December 2018 of SEK 265.9 million (€25.0 million), an increase of 14.6% compared with the same quarter last year. 

During the fourth quarter, Wise Group’s executive search subsidiary K2 Search Group announced that it appointed Jonas Konstantinov as new CEO with effect from 1 January 2019.

Lars Gundersen was appointed new acting CEO of subsidiary Brilliant Future AB and took office on 1 February 2019 and subsequently joined the Wise Group's management team.

Revenue by business segment was broken down during Q4 2018 as follows:

Wise Group has operations in Sweden and Finland. Geographically, revenue was broken down as follows. The previous operations in Denmark have been largely decommissioned though there are still some activities still being handled from Denmark which were reported below.

The group said its results in Sweden had been burdened with higher than normal costs at the parent company level, related to the implementation of GDPR and to technology and employee development. Swedish operations are also affected by the reduced profitability of the Swedish recruitment business.

In Finland, the established subsidiaries are developing according to plan and showing good growth with profitability, according to the company. However, Finland's earnings were initially negatively affected by the establishment costs for the subsidiary Wise IT, which started its operations in Finland in May 2018.

Wise Group also reported revenue for the full year of SEK 929.8 million (€87.6 million), up 13.8% compared with the corresponding period in the prior year.

As of last trade, Wise Group traded at SEK 53.80 (€5.07), up 12.08% on the day and 19.03% above the 52 week low of SEK 45.20 (€4.26) set on 23 November 2018. Based on its current share price the company has a market value of SEK 354.76 million (€33.4 million).