Japanese staffing giant Recruit Holdings Co. reported net sales of ¥1,139.4 billion (US$9.46 billion) for the nine months ended Dec. 31, an increase of 21.8% compared with ¥935.5 billion during the same period last year. However, much of the increase was due to a number of acquisitions made during the prior year; net revenue from continuing operations rose by 9.8%.

The company benefited from a weak Yen which lifted the results of its non-Japanese businesses, but did not disclose the results on a constant currency basis. Its non-Japanese business includes Advantage Resourcing and Staffmark Holdings in the US.

During 2015, the company acquired a number of businesses including two significant staffing firms, Peoplebank and Chandler MaCleod which gave it a prominent position in the Australian staffing market. The company is currently in the process of acquiring Dutch recruitment company USG People NV for €1.42 billion (US$1.55 billion).

Net staffing segment sales by geography

Recruit reports in four business lines; marketing media (life events/lifestyle), HR media (job boards and other online recruitment services), staffing and other. The staffing segment is the company’s largest responsible for 57% of Net Sales for the nine month period.

The HR media business grew net sales by 19.1% to ¥246.4 billion (US$2.1 billion) with EBITDA lifting 16.9%. The domestic HR media business grew by 6.7% while the overseas business (which includes international job board, Indeed) grew by 82.9% aided by favorable currency trends. The company highlighted improvements in the effective ratio of job offers to job seekers and increasing numbers of recruitment ads for its domestic business.

The staffing business grew net sales by 30.6% to ¥649.4 billion (US$5.7 billion) with EBITDA growing 18.9%. The domestic staffing business grew by 5.5% meaning that active agency workers (quarterly average) has increased in nine consecutive quarters. However, the company did caution that this growth rate has slowed down. The overseas staffing business grew by 65.6% aided by acquisitions and currency effects with moderate growth continued in North America, Europe and Australia.

The company described the Japanese economy as being on a “moderate recovery track amid factors such as continuing improvement in corporate business results and the employment situation against a backdrop of the government’s economic measures and monetary easing by the Bank of Japan, etc. At the same time, the outlook is uncertain due to factors including concerns about the risk of a downswing in the world economy resulting from the economic slowdown in China.”

Guidance

Looking forward, the company plans to continue with its “aggressive” acquisitive growth overseas and made no change to its full year Net Revenue forecast of ¥1,550.0 billion (US$13.5 billion).

Share price and market cap

Shares in Recruit fell 4.75% to ¥3,410.00. It had a market cap of ¥1.93 trillion, according to Google Finance.