Wise Group AB (WISE:SS), the Swedish staffing firm, reported revenue today for the third quarter ending 30 September 2023 of SEK 162.2 million (€14.1 million), a fall of 18% over the previous year.

Ingrid Höög, President and CEO, said, "During the third quarter of the year, the market for, above all, recruitment and staffing services continued to weaken at an increasingly rapid pace. As the quarter is also seasonally weak, we had difficulty meeting the drop in demand with proactive sales initiatives. Generally speaking, our customers are very restrained and many have introduced purchase freezes and are making savings."

Höög added that the operating loss was burdened with costs of SEK 4.4 million (€383,379) related to personnel departures and investments in a new IT environment.

"I am not satisfied with the result as such, but still see that we have now begun a stabilisation of profitability," Höög said. "Since the end of the second quarter, we have worked actively to adapt the organisation to declining demand and that work has continued during this quarter."

"With the market development we see ahead of us, we will have to continue the work also during the end of the year and during the beginning of 2024," Höög said. "The goal is to have implemented, or decided on, measures by the end of the year which, in total, should have reduced the group's costs by SEK 15 million (€1.3 million) compared to the situation at the beginning of this year."

"Despite a challenging market, we see continued demand for HR consulting services," she added.

"I do not expect that the result will be able to improve significantly in the short term, but I am convinced that Wise Group will be able to show significantly better profitability in the longer term, regardless of the market climate," Höög said.

The group's operations are divided into Recruitment & Consulting Hiring and HR Consulting & Leadership Development. During the third quarter, turnover decreased by 19% in Recruitment & Consulting Hiring to SEK 124.5 million (€10.8 million). Within HR Consulting & Leadership Development, revenue decreased by 11% during the third quarter to SEK 37.6 million (€3.2 million).

Wise Group has operations in Sweden and Finland. The previous operations in Denmark have mostly been discontinued, and the remaining operations are now reported in the Sweden segment.

During the third quarter, revenue in the Swedish operations decreased by 19% to SEK 149.4 million (€13.0 million). Revenue in the Finnish operations decreased by 14% to SEK 12.8 million (€1.1 million).

In addition, Sabina Lindström was hired as Chief Human Resource Officer effective 1 September 2023. She is part of the group's management team.

Revenue for the group for the nine months stood at SEK 607.2 million (€52.90 million), which is 8% lower than the previous year.

Wise Group shares last traded at SEK 25.90 (€2.26), down 2.26% on the day and 17.73% above the 52-week low of SEK 22.00 (€1.92) set on 11 October 2023. The company has a market cap of SEK 195.86 million (€17.06 million).