International specialist recruitment firm PageGroup (MPI: LSE) provided a trading update for the third quarter ending 30 September 2017 with gross profit of £177.3 million, an increase of 8.8% in constant currency compared with last year.

Gross profit from permanent recruitment grew 11.8% in reported rates and 9.1% in constant currencies, to £133.4 million (Q3 2016: £ 119.3 million) and gross profit from temporary recruitment increased by 11.9% in reported rates and 7.8% in constant currencies, to £43.9 million (Q3 2016: £39.3 million). This resulted in a ratio of permanent to temporary recruitment of 75:25.

Gross Profit by geographical region was broken down as follows:

Within EMEA, both Page Personnel and Michael Page reported increases with 14% and 11% (CC), respectively. France reported the highest growth followed by Germany and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Belgium Germany and Poland also reported record performances.

In the APAC region, now the group’s second largest region, Greater China gross profit grew by 21% (CC), a record quarter. Mainland China grew 26%, Southeast Asia grew 20% and Japan saw 31% growth (all CC). In Australia, which declined by 2%, the group has increased fee earner headcount by 17% year to date to support previous management changes and PageGroup opened a new office in Canberra. The group stated they are confident this will improve their growth rate in the future.

The UK, which declined 7.6% (CC) in the quarter, saw Brexit and political uncertainty continuing to impact confidence.

The Americas was the group’s fastest growing region and grew 18.4% in constant currencies. North America grew 27% in the quarter, with the US up 29% and Canada up 3% (CC).

“Continental Europe, the Americas and Asia delivered strong performances,” Steve Ingham, PageGroup Chief Executive Officer, said. “However the UK, Singapore and Brazil continued to experience challenging market conditions. “We are pleased with the strong performances across the majority of our regions,” Ingham said. “However, there remain a number of challenges as we continue through 2017 and into 2018: the UK, where we will continue to focus on protecting margins and investing in structural opportunities; Australia, where we have invested in headcount and a new office; and Brazil, which remains challenging, despite results improving from negative to flat year-on-year growth.”

In trading today PageGroup traded at £497.70, down 5.29% on the day. Based on its current share price the company has a market value of £1.72 billion.