SThree H1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
July 21, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: SThree reiterated full-year guidance and said it enters the second half with cautious optimism, supported by improving momentum in the U.S. and Japan and better new placement activity across the group.
  • Neutral Sentiment: First-half revenue was about GBP 600 million, with net fees down 7% year over year to GBP 148 million and reported operating profit falling to GBP 3.4 million after one-off cost optimization charges.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company said its contract order book returned to growth, rising 3% year over year, while contract extensions stayed resilient and new business activity improved quarter on quarter.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management highlighted that the TIP technology platform is now fully embedded and is already driving measurable benefits, including higher client meetings, better pipeline quality, faster time to placement, and a 6% increase in placements per consultant.
  • Neutral Sentiment: SThree maintained its interim dividend at GBP 0.051 per share and ended the half with GBP 43 million of net cash, signaling balance-sheet strength despite softer profitability.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
SThree H1 2026
00:00 / 00:00

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us today for our half-year results briefing. I would like to introduce you to Damian Fehrenberg, our interim CFO since 30th April. Damian has extensive experience working at SThree, most recently as a senior vice president of finance for our U.S. business, and it's great to have him here today presenting the results alongside me. Hello. Together, we will be walking you through the half-year numbers, our strategic progress, and discussing the outlook. This year marks SThree's 40th anniversary, so it feels like a fitting moment to reflect on how much the business has evolved and acknowledging that this evolution has been shaped by four decades of specialist networks, client relationships, and STEM expertise, which continue to underpin the business today.

Operator

From these foundations, we have grown into a STEM workforce consultancy that is deeply embedded in client operations across Europe, the USA, and the Middle East, and Asia. Despite turbulences in recent years, STEM skills have only become more important and sit at the heart of innovation, workforce change, and long-term client demand. Today, you will hear how the strategic decisions we have been making will position us well for the next 40 years. As most of you know, our well-established strategy sits at the heart of two long-term growth trends: STEM and flexible talent. At its simplest, we help clients access the specialist STEM skills they need through a contract-led technology-enabled model that gives us a clear proposition, attractive economics, and exposure to long-term structural growth trends. Our focus on these trends has never been more relevant.

Operator

From AI adoption and data center investment to the energy transition and healthcare innovation, specialist STEM skills remain critical to the markets we serve. At the same time, skills shortages remain a persistent challenge, with demands for expertise continuing to outpace supply in many areas of engineering, technology, and life sciences. All of these dynamics point to the same conclusion. Long-term demand for STEM capabilities remains strong, and we're well-positioned to support clients through this transition. The first half of FY 2026 has been an important one. TIP is now fully embedded. We saw improvement in trading momentum through the period, and we're building an organization that is future-ready. We saw strong performances in the USA and Japan, stable year-over-year new placement activity underpinned by productivity gains, and a return to growth in our contractor order book.

Operator

We're encouraged by the improving trends we're seeing in a growing number of countries and by the continued resilience of our contract business. H1 marked the first full reporting period in which the group operated entirely on a single standardized end-to-end platform, and we're now seeing more sustained and visible benefits across the business, supporting greater efficiency, higher quality execution, and a faster delivery for clients. Looking ahead, we're cautiously optimistic. As workforce needs become more complex, clients increasingly require partners that can combine specialist expertise, workforce solutions, and technology-enabled delivery. We believe SThree is well-positioned to meet those needs. We are at the forefront of change, and we intend to build on this position by continuing to develop and deploy new capabilities at pace. I will now pass over to Damian to talk us through the financials.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Timo. It's a pleasure to be here today and to be presenting my first set of results as interim CFO. Before I begin, I would like to thank my predecessor, Andy, for the smooth handover and all his hard work over the past five years. He has significantly strengthened both the finance and IR functions, which leaves us in a really strong position. Let's start with a summary of the half-year performance. Over the last six months, together with more than 2,000 colleagues around the world, we generated around GBP 600 million of revenue from our 6,000 clients. We captured around GBP 148 million of that in net fees, which was 7% lower than a year ago. Of this, we converted 2.3% into operating profit, which stands at GBP 3.4 million.

Speaker 1

Whilst this is 67% lower than last year, it is important to remember that H1 was not a normal period. In addition to lower net fees reflecting ongoing soft market conditions, particularly in Europe, the first half was impacted by non-recurring costs to deliver our cost optimisation Programme. Some of that pressure was offset through disciplined management of the cost base. This drop in OP, which we anticipated, is worth exploring further. A year ago, we made GBP 10 million OP. That was already an unusually low level of profit for SThree, reflecting the prolonged downturn. This year, on an underlying basis, we made GBP 9.8 million of OP. That was despite a further decline in net fees as the benefits of prior cost actions and disciplined cost management helped offset some of that pressure. We also paid for GBP 6.4 million of one-off costs.

Speaker 1

A core element of that funded the centralization of key operational activities into our Glasgow Center of Excellence. Our underlying profit is broadly in line with the prior year. These cost optimization actions will support a return towards more historic levels of profit. Reported profit still includes these one-off costs paid during the period. This gives us GBP 3.4 million of OP for the half year. You can see that the figure looks lower than it would have otherwise been. The benefits of those actions will start to come through in the second half of the year, providing additional support to meet our full year guidance. Let's come back to the key factors behind the 7% decline in net fees. While net fees remained below last year, the rate of decline moderated through the half, as strong growth in the USA increasingly offset ongoing softness in parts of Europe.

Speaker 1

Much of that performance can be explained by what we are seeing across our largest skills. Starting with technology, our largest skill set by net fees, which declined 14% year-on-year. In DACH, our largest region for tech, vacancies on software developers fell 22% this year. Client spending has increasingly shifted towards the AI value chain. A key phase is the migration to the public cloud, so they can access AI functionalities from the ERP providers. Far, just over half of German businesses are on paid cloud computing services. ERP is now a bigger part of our tech offering than software development. Engineering, our second-largest skill, was broadly stable in the half, declining just 1% year-on-year.

Speaker 1

In the U.S.A., our largest region for engineering, rising electricity consumption is generating growing demand for our services to help power utilities with multi-year CapEx projects around grid hardening, grid expansion, and power generation. Life sciences declined 8% year-on-year, but the rate of decline eased through the half. This was supported by the U.S.A., our largest life science business, returning to growth in Q2. That was its first quarter of growth in 4 years following the post-COVID boom. A growing niche is the construction of new life science facilities from companies reshoring production. Taken together, these dynamics help explain the performance we're seeing and highlight how client demand is shifting across our markets and skill sets. Demand is evolving. One of the most significant changes in our business has been the shift towards employed contractors. Back in 2019, most of our workforce augmentation for clients was delivered by independent contractors.

Speaker 1

Over the years, this has shifted decisively to employed contractors, who now generate 42% of group net fees. Employed contractor margins are higher because we assume additional risks and complexity on behalf of our clients. Our services are subject to a complex and constantly evolving regulatory environment. They require compliance expertise, efficient operational infrastructures, and a strong balance sheet. This creates a moat. The barriers to entry are high, and we continue to benefit from the ongoing trend towards flexible workforce models. This net fee mix sets us apart from larger industry peers and is further reinforced by our focus on STEM disciplines. Looking now at the future visibility of our contract business. The contractor order book represents the value of contracts written up to the contractual end date, assuming that all contracted hours are worked. The book returned to growth, increasing 3% year-on-year.

Speaker 1

This was our first period of growth in the contract book since Q1 of 2023. It reflects strong momentum in the U.S.A. alongside Japan and Spain, and a broader moderation in the rate of decline across the rest of the contract countries. The order book provides reliable forward visibility relative to more perm-focused staffing businesses with the equivalent of around five months' worth of future net fees already booked. In addition to the momentum in the order book, the underlying indicators across our contract businesses remain resilient. New business activity in the first half was stable year-over-year and improved quarter-on-quarter. Encouragingly, six out of 11 contract countries delivered growth year-on-year. This includes four in Europe, while the remaining European countries saw reductions in their rates of decline. Extension rates remained resilient over the half, supporting average contract lengths of 58 weeks.

Speaker 1

Contract margins increased slightly to 21.7%, reflecting disciplined pricing control, particularly on extensions. The group's historic measure on productivity increased 9% year-on-year as net fees declined less than average headcount, building on the improvement delivered in the second half of the last year, which was up 5%. In other words, we are generating more net fees per employee. Looking ahead, we continue to expect to deliver sustainable productivity gains over the midterm as the benefits of our strategic investment in digital infrastructure come through as anticipated. Six months after completing the global rollout of our new technology platform, we continue to see encouraging indicators of benefit realization, which Timo will expand on later in the presentation, supporting our confidence in the productivity opportunity ahead. Looking at our net cash. Despite mixed market conditions, we continue to maintain a robust net cash position.

Speaker 1

Consistent with historical trends, our half-year cash balance is typically lower than our year-end position. The reduction in net cash since the end of last year primarily reflects lower operating profit generated in the period and increased working capital investment. As shown in the bridge, we see our usual outflows, including tax, lease principal payments and CapEx, share purchases for the employee benefit trust, and dividend payments. Following the purchase of GBP 6 million worth of shares under the buyback program, we closed the half year with net cash of GBP 43 million. Moving on to look at dividends and our capital allocation policy. Our overarching intention is to always maximize value for our shareholders. We look to maintain a strong balance sheet to underpin our strategic ambition while also providing shareholders with a sustainable through-the-cycle dividend. We prioritize our deployment of capital in the order shown.

Speaker 1

Despite the reduction in near-term profitability, we continue to have strong confidence in the future of the business. I'm pleased to confirm that we will be paying an interim dividend of GBP 0.051 per share, in line with the last year. The board's decision to maintain the dividend represents another departure from our stated dividend policy. It reflects a considered assessment of the group's trading performance, future outlook, and the strength of the balance sheet. To sum up, the trend in net fees improved through the half, supported by continued growth in the USA. Contract extensions remained resilient and new business activity was stable year-over-year, with momentum improving across a growing number of countries. Profit reflects lower net fees and non-recurring costs, partly offset by disciplined cost management. Excluding these non-recurring items, underlying operating profit was broadly in line with the prior year reported profit.

Speaker 1

With the benefits of our first half cost optimization weighted towards H2, we remain confident in delivering our full year expectation. We also maintain a robust balance sheet, providing the flexibility to fund shareholder returns while positioning us well to support our future ambitions. Thank you. I'll now hand back to Timo.

Operator

Thank you, Damian. We will now turn to look at what we have achieved strategically throughout the period in more detail. We anticipated early on how our industry was set to evolve and over recent years implemented clear strategic initiatives that are now being seen across our operations. Looking at these initiatives in turn, let's start with our places. More than three years ago, we simplified the business actively reducing our footprint from 16 to 11 countries. This enabled us to focus on markets where we have the right balance of scale and opportunity. Our deliberate focus is delivering with 10 of our 11 contract markets seeing improvements in new business activity. More recently, we proactively increased our emphasis on the USA and Japan, two markets where the scale of STEM demand and structural growth trends present significant opportunity. We aligned ourselves to industries undergoing long-term transformations.

Operator

In the U.S., demand for energy is being supported by investments in grid hardening and electrification, with roles related to data center construction and AI-linked energy infrastructure. Additionally, we are seeing the demand for technology roles shifting towards the AI value chain, an area where we have strong expertise. In Japan, we continue to see an attractive permanent market across all skill verticals, particularly technology. We believe that the U.S. and Japan would be the first to rebound, this prediction has been proven right with both markets delivering strong growth in period. In Germany, we expect the stimulus announced last year to bid progressively and flow through more meaningfully from 2027 onwards as implementation gathers pace. The increased investment is expected to support activity across areas such as public sector, including defense, construction, and other STEM-intensive fields, areas where we're well-positioned to support.

Operator

Turning to our platform, we have a video to highlight how things are progressing now that TIP is fully embedded, the positive impact it's having across our organization, and how the foundations built over the last years are enabling us to continue deploying new digital and AI-enabled capabilities at pace. At our full-year results in January, we explained how TIP had been successfully deployed across the group and was beginning to deliver results. Six months on, TIP is now embedded and the operational benefits are becoming increasingly clear, particularly in contract. Importantly, TIP was never just a technology program. It was designed to transform how we operate, how we serve customers, how we scale, and how we create value across the business. Today, we will focus on three things. First, the operational benefits already being delivered. Second, the strategic advantage created by a single global platform and data model.

Operator

Thirdly, how TIP is changing day-to-day behavior across the organization. Ultimately, TIP was an essential investment in SThree's future. We recognized early that the industry would increasingly be shaped by data, automation, and AI. None of those capabilities can be fully realized without standardized processes, integrated systems, and high-quality data. TIP has delivered that foundation. As TIP has moved from rollout to being embedded in how we operate, we have been able to deliver annualized cost savings that already show a very strong ROI on our investment. Equally importantly is how we are seeing the benefits of giving our people best practices at their fingertips, freeing them up to spend more time on building relationships, applying judgment, and deepening their specialist market knowledge.

Operator

To demonstrate this, we will compare contract in H1 FY26 with H1 FY23, which provides a clean baseline as the last complete half-year period before the rollout. Looking at performance across the key steps of the contract life cycle. First, client engagement is increasing, reflecting the increased time consultants can spend on client-facing activities. Client meetings are up 69% per consultant, supporting stronger relationships and better access to job opportunities. Second, pipeline quality is improving, not just volume. A-grade jobs, which represents the highest quality mandates and where conversion probability is strongest, are up 41% per consultant. Third, delivery efficiency is improving. Time to placement across contract is now one day faster, equivalent to a 4% improvement within six months of the rollout completing, which when you consider that we are working with around 9,000 contractors at any point in time, represents a marked difference.

Operator

At an over-contract level, this means candidates are being deployed and revenue is being generated earlier. Finally, this is translating into higher consultant productivity, with placements per consultant up 6% across the group. Taken together, these KPIs demonstrate that TIP is delivering tangible operational benefits in contract. It's improving engagement, accelerating delivery, and driving consultant productivity. In turn, this has supported the stable new business performance in H1 despite lower headcount. To bring this to life, we will now hear directly from colleagues across the business on how TIP is embedded in their day-to-day work and the impact it's having.

Speaker 2

Hello, I'm Matt McManus. I've been at SThree for 30 years and was recently appointed chief commercial officer after leading our U.S. business as president. Over that time, I've seen firsthand how the organization has changed from how we operated before TIP to how we run the business today. For me, as a leader, the benefits are hugely strategic. TIP has given us one global platform, standardized processes, and crucially, one view of our clients and candidates. We've moved from multiple systems, fragmented data, and inconsistent workflows to a fully integrated technology environment. Today, our CRM, operational systems, and data platform work together as one connected ecosystem. One of the key benefits of the platform is the data that's embedded in the dashboards and the daily management routines. For me, the dashboard is how I start my day.

Speaker 2

It's the first thing I look at because it gives me an immediate view of the leading indicators we track, where the order book is, where jobs and interviews are coming from, where client growth is building, and where we need to act quickly. I'm not starting with assumptions or anecdotes. I'm starting with facts. That improves the quality of my decisions because I can see where I need to focus my time, where the team needs support, and where we have the opportunities to move faster. Technology only matters if it changes how people work every day, and that is where we're seeing real change. Let's hear from Daniel about the workflows they're using.

Speaker 3

Hello, I'm Daniel Goldhammer, I'm head of sales DACH. The biggest change for me is that TIP is now embedded in how we work every day together across the DACH region. It has enabled us to have better tools, deeper insights, and a more consistent way to manage activities across the sales process. In terms of business development, it has transformed how we research and develop customers. The result is not simply more activity. We are helping consultants identify better opportunities earlier, deepen client understanding, and build stronger relationships. This improves access to higher quality mandates, includes more exclusive assignments where conversion rates are typically strongest. On the candidate side, AI integration is making searches more accurate and efficient, while more tailored candidate summaries and sales pitches help us to deliver stronger matches faster. What I find particularly exciting is that the platform continues to evolve.

Speaker 3

New functionalities, automatization, and AI capability are being added regularly, allowing us to extract even greater value for the stronger foundation TIP has created. It has not changed what we are trying to achieve as a business, but it has significantly improved how we achieve it. The impact of TIP extends beyond the front office. Karen will explain next how it's transforming our operating model.

Speaker 4

Hello, I'm Karen Chalmers. I've been with SThree since 2018, and today I'm director of global operations, leading our global candidate operations function. As part of our transformation program, we established a global Center of Excellence in Glasgow, bringing together key operations activities into a single hub. This wasn't just a relocation. We mobilized around 90 roles across three core functions, placement support, ECM payroll, and service support. We built a diverse global capability from scratch while simultaneously addressing years of operational complexity, including data gaps, backlogs, and inconsistent processes. TIP gave us a systems foundation to consolidate regional operations into Glasgow. We documented and standardized global processes, including common service levels being rolled out, and established a consistent operating model supported by the new platform. That has improved both control and service quality, creating greater consistency across our global operations. The results speak for themselves.

Speaker 4

The new model has delivered meaningful efficiency benefits while creating greater operating leverage for future growth. At the same time, service levels have improved significantly. Since March 2026, we've reduced ServiceNow query SLA from 141 hours to 54, a 60% improvement. We've also supported 6,500 global placements And introduce new capabilities that didn't exist before, including a dedicated VIP concierge support for our highest-performing sales consultants, helping reduce administrative burden and protect revenue generation. This centralization was underpinned by the wider Microsoft ERP and technology integration delivered through TIP. Combined with ServiceNow, it gives us real-time visibility of service performance, operational trends, and customer issues, allowing us to move from retrospective reporting to active management. In short, TIP hasn't just modernized their systems, it has enabled an entirely new operating model.

Speaker 4

We've moved from fragmented regional operations to a more consistent, scalable, and data-driven global service model, capable of supporting future growth without proportional increases in cost.

Operator

The message from today is simple. TIP is delivering measurable benefits today while creating significant strategic advantages for tomorrow. Firstly, better performance, stronger client engagement, faster delivery, and higher consultant productivity. Secondly, better infrastructure, one global platform, one data lake, and standardized ways of working. Thirdly, better future readiness, a foundation for automation, digital innovation, and AI, which I will talk through now. By integrating our systems, standardizing processes, and creating a single data environment, we have built an operating platform that is simpler, more scalable, and capable of developing and evolving over time. As a result, we can deploy new digital capabilities faster and more consistently across the group. Looking ahead, we believe AI will fundamentally reshape workforce solutions. However, the biggest winners won't be those with the most AI tools.

Operator

They will be those with the best data, the most integrated platform, and the most scalable operating models. TIP redesigned our end-to-end processes to give SThree those foundations. That is already driving change in the operating model, as Karen mentioned. Put simply, we are breaking the old link between growth and back-office complexity. That creates a business with greater operational leverage. While the full benefit of the leverage will come through as market volumes recover, we are already seeing gains in efficiency, better decision-making, and the foundations for future automation and effective use of agentic AI-enabled capabilities. That is the strategic significance of the transformation we have delivered. The platform is in place, the benefits are coming through, and will create strategic value for many years to come.

Operator

Our customer pillar is focused on driving growth through deeper client relationships, stronger candidate networks, and greater exposure to larger enterprise accounts where demand has been more resilient. As we centralize and automate routine activity made possible through TIP, our consultants are increasingly freed to do what technology cannot: build trusted client relationships, understand workforce challenges, advise on solutions, and mobilize the right specialist talent at pace. The case study on the left side demonstrates how we help clients navigate regulatory change while maintaining operational performance. Our client, a leading U.S. natural gas transmission company, was undertaking a $4.6 billion asset modernization program to upgrade critical pipeline infrastructure across its networks and meet increasingly stringent safety and reliability requirements. The scale and pace of the program created significant workforce challenges, particularly given tight project windows and ongoing contractor attrition.

Operator

Leveraging our existing sector expertise and relationships, we partner closely with the client to source and deliver 26 highly skilled professionals, helping the client maintain project timelines and support the successful delivery of its asset modernization program. Importantly, energy infrastructure investment and regulatory-driven asset upgrades continue to generate sustained demand for specialist STEM talent, providing SThree with exposure to resilient and attractive long-term market. The right-hand side highlights our ability to deliver critical talent in one of the most challenging data center recruitment markets. The client needed a highly skilled team to support a major hyperscale data center program, where stringent compliance requirements, a difficult tax environment, and shortages of specialist electrical talent created significant challenges. By leveraging our specialist data center expertise and providing a fully compliant talent solution, we rapidly deployed project managers, construction managers, and senior electrical engineers, helping keep critical work on schedule.

Operator

The result was the successful delivery of a full team within weeks of initial engagement with full compliance achieved throughout. Demand for hyperscale data centers is high, driven by the need for cloud infrastructure and AI, providing SThree with exposure to a structurally attractive source of STEM demand. The full value of our transformation is realized through our people. This would not have been possible without the support and willingness of our teams across the globe to embrace change. The long-standing SThree sales blueprint is being brought to life through the TIP implementation being paired with investments in training and change management. We're continuing to push a high-performance culture across our sales function through our performance frameworks and unified people platform. As our colleagues explained in the video earlier, TIP enables us to have a truly common and defined way of operating across all our markets, leveraging best practice.

Operator

We're equipping our consultants with the tools, training, and expertise to deepen client relationships and strengthen their roles as trusted STEM workforce consultants. Underpinning these, as Grant mentioned with our shared service center in Glasgow, is a more fundamental reshaping of how our organization is structured to drive consistent, high-quality execution across the group. We have improved control, strengthened data quality, and importantly, have begun to decouple growth in net fees from growth in support costs. This creates a more scalable operating model in which higher volumes can be absorbed. Finally, our proposition pillar. At our full-year results, we talked about how we see ourselves as a workforce consultancy and the broad suite of our solutions. Today, I want to highlight the increasingly complex workforce challenges our clients face and the strategic advantages that position us to help solve them.

Operator

Those challenges include scarce STEM skills, the need for speed and scale without compromising quality, increasing regulatory complexity, ongoing cost and productivity pressure, and crucially, partner accountability. Our response is underpinned by a number of strategic advantages. It is built on deep STEM expertise, global workforce delivery capability, specialist talent networks, and workforce intelligence deployed over decades. Together, these strengths enable us to convert STEM workforce complexity into value for our customers, deepening client relationships and helping us to win more complex, higher-value opportunities, as we have seen in the USA, where this model is already well-established. To sum up, whilst mindful of our continued macro and geopolitical uncertainty, particularly in Europe, we enter this second half with cautious optimism, with our full-year guidance being reiterated. We are seeing improving momentum in selected markets, notably the U.S. and Japan, where our targeted initiatives are delivering.

Operator

Pleasingly, new placement activities have shown improving momentum across the group through the half, supported by stronger productivity and greater operational efficiency. The strategic and proactive initiatives we made years ago will support more scalable growth over time. These foundational changes were incredibly important, as whilst we believe that the future winners will be AI-enabled businesses, including agentic AI, having the technology is not enough. The data, the end-to-end processes, and the people that sit behind the technology are just as important. This supports our conviction that the end-to-end transformation we have undertaken across all aspects of our business positions us at the forefront in addressing these barriers and sets us up for the continued innovation and return to growth

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