UK-based staffing firm Impellam Group (IPEL: LSE) has provided a trading update for the first quarter of the current financial year to 1 April 2016.

Overall net fee income increased by 27.2% compared with the same period in 2015 (7.5% organic growth following a strong performance in temporary staffing and managed services that was able to offset slight weakness in permanent placement fees. The latter represented only 11.2% of the net fee income in the quarter.

Earnings before interest and tax ("EBIT") was 22.6% in Q1, up from 16.4% in Q1 FY15. According to Impellam, this puts the company is a position to achieve a key strategic objective of conversion of net fee income into EBIT of 25% in FY17.

A statement from Impellam read: “Whilst the junior doctors' strikes in the UK have had an impact in Q1, our UK healthcare business has responded positively to the introduction of caps on doctors' and nurses' rates and this performance, combined with our growth internationally following the acquisition of Global Group, means that we are confident that our healthcare business will perform better than we originally expected in 2016.”

Recently, Impellam acquired US-based workforce solutions provider Bartech Group in December 2015. During that same year, Impellam also acquired Global Group, a healthcare business recruitment firm specialising in locum doctors.

The company stated that its acquisition of Bartech and the Global Group is proceeding as planned.

“We have recently implemented several new managed service wins including Airbus through Guidant and Daisy and Wonga through Lorien in the UK and are implementing a number of contracts in Australia through our Comensura business. The pipeline of opportunities across all our managed service businesses remains strong.”

“Overall, we remain on track to deliver results for the full year in line with management's expectations, with the strong Q1 performance underpinning the Board's confidence in the prospects for the Group.”

In trading today, Impellam Group traded at £806.00, up 2.03% on the day and 7.36% below its 52-week high of £870.00, set on 6 April 2016. Based on its current share price the company has a market value of £398.96 million.