Hays H2 2026 Earnings Report

Hays EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -GBX 3.64
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Hays Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Hays Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2026
• Date: 8/20/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, August 20, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 4:00AM ET

We are leaders in white-collar Temporary, Contracting and Permanent recruitment. Our scale and expertise covers some of the most skill-short employment areas, including Technology, Accounting & Finance, Engineering, Life Sciences and Construction. We are predominantly Private sector-focused, but also serve Public sector clients in some markets. Within our portfolio of services, we work on high service, multi-year outsourcing contracts with many of the largest organisations in the world, all the way through to one-off placements for SMEs. In practical terms, this means that in FY24 globally we helped 282,700 people find their next Permanent job or Contract assignment, and worked with over 40,000 clients to grow their own businesses by finding the skilled talent they need. For further information, watch our video and read more at: Hays (LON:HAS)plc.com/investors

Hays H2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Pre-exceptional operating profit rose 3% to £48.6 million despite an 8% decline in net fees to £906 million, supported by 7% productivity growth, cost reductions, and strong cash conversion.
• Positive Sentiment: Hays launched its Momentum strategy to focus on 16 countries, six global specialisms, higher-value roles, and three product areas, with a medium-term ambition to increase consultant net fee productivity by more than 50% and restore conversion above 25%.
• Positive Sentiment: The company delivered £50 million of annualized structural savings in FY2026 and targets a further £50 million in FY2027, while technology investments—including AI-enabled search and matching tools—are being rolled out to improve consultant efficiency and fill rates.
• Negative Sentiment: Trading remains subdued, particularly in permanent recruitment, with perm fees down 12% and volumes down 14%; July and August activity was broadly unchanged from Q4, and management said September will be a key indicator of demand trends.
• Negative Sentiment: Hays expects significant further exceptional restructuring costs in FY2027 as it pursues additional savings and reshapes its country portfolio, including potential impacts from exiting or reviewing operations in several European countries.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Hays preliminary results for the year ended 30th of June 2026 conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Alternatively, you may also submit your questions on the webcast at any time by typing them in the question box and click submit. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker, Mark Dearnley, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Good morning and welcome everyone. I am Mark Dearnley, and I am excited to present my first set of results as the new CEO of Hays. Our agenda today is slightly different from usual format because we are announcing our new Momentum strategy. We will focus on this initially, and then I will hand over to James to run through our financials. This is my first opportunity to meet you after my appointment as CEO, so please allow me a moment to share a few initial thoughts as we introduce our new Momentum strategy to you today. Hays has a tremendous heritage, an excellent client portfolio, and deeply expert consultants. I have traveled extensively over the last few months to meet colleagues across the globe and many of our clients. I would like to thank our colleagues, candidates, and clients for openly sharing their views, from which I draw two main conclusions.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Firstly, a consultant-led approach enabled by advanced technology is an important element that clients wish to retain. Secondly, my colleagues at Hays are genuinely excited by our new Momentum strategy. I have four key messages for you to take away from our presentation today. To deliver improved market share and profitability, we will become a more focused specialist recruitment business, and we have already been taking decisive action to achieve this. We and our clients believe the consultant is key. A human in the loop supported by great technology is critical to the best hiring outcomes. Thirdly, Momentum is first and foremost a growth strategy. We have already made a good start returning to year-on-year profit growth in the second half of FY 2026.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Finally, over time, we will increase consultant net fee productivity by more than 50%, return Hays to a 25%+ conversion rate, and deliver superior returns for shareholders. Before we examine Momentum in more detail, let us initially examine why clients use recruitment agencies. Our clients need to secure the best talent to build successful businesses. Candidates need the best roles to build successful careers. In both instances, the cost of making a wrong decision is significant. The impact of exiting unsuccessful hires increases exponentially with seniority due to exit packages, organizational disruption, and the direct cost of finding a replacement. As a percentage of a salary, our data indicates that these costs for a director-level role can be more than twice as high as for an associate. Hays helps candidates and clients to improve the probability of success.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Our fee is a modest insurance premium versus the potentially high cost of failure. I mentioned earlier that our strategy has been shaped by what clients have told us. The feedback from a recent survey is clear. They universally want access to the highest quality candidates. They also want Hays consultants at the center of the process. A strong technology platform is necessary, but our clients are clear that our consultant-led approach is the critical element they wish to retain. Keeping the human in the loop remains key. Why is this? As you can see from the charts on this slide, price ranks well below the top two purchasing considerations for perm and temp and contracting recruitment processes. Instead, once baseline technical skill requirements have been achieved, then interpersonal skills are the key candidate attributes.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Hays consultants have deep domain knowledge of their clients, of their candidates, and of their specialisms, which they use to provide essential human insight when assessing these interpersonal skills such as leadership, communication, and motivation. This presents Hays with an opportunity to differentiate and grow in our markets by leveraging our database of more than 10 million candidates and over 40,000 weekly interactions between our consultants and their clients and candidates. By applying proprietary search and match algorithms that assess both hard and interpersonal skills. Through this, we can swiftly identify the highest quality candidates. If we move to the next slide, clients tell us that these interpersonal skills will be increasingly important over the next five years for managers and directors, which represent the sweet spot of our business. How do we at Hays help clients and candidates improve the probability of success?

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

We do it through our sources of competitive advantage with Hays expert consultants at the center. Our advantages include proprietary data and technology, our people, our brand, and our reputation, how we go to market, and our operational excellence. For example, Hays has proprietary data and tools which our consultants use to swiftly and precisely match candidate and client demand and supply. The Hays consultant sits at the center of this flywheel and is key. They have deep domain expertise. They provide essential human insight when assessing values and behavioral alignment. Momentum places Hays consultants at the center of a self-reinforcing flywheel and enables them with the best tools through investments in technology. It forges sustainable long-term relationships with our clients and candidates. Clients benefit by our speed of assessing the best candidates, reducing their recruitment costs, and the risk of an unsuccessful hire.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Candidates are offered the best roles, successful placement outcomes, and regular feedback. Our internal data confirms a strong link between financial returns and the rotational speed of this flywheel. Roles for which CVs have been sent on the same day achieve materially higher fill rates than responses over the next one or two days. Single CV submissions perform even better, clearly demonstrating that candidate quality and the judgment applied by Hays consultants are vital aspects of the matching process. By building an unbeatable matching engine, we will deliver faster and better matching, allowing consultants to fill even more vacancies and generating a self-reinforcing flywheel. This results in higher market share, productivity, and profitability for Hays and improved outcomes for both clients and candidates.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Five forces amplify this flywheel: growth to specialism leadership, being experts in all we do, building an unbeatable matching engine, powering productivity, and delivering this through The Hays Way. Let's explore some of these over the next few slides. Firstly, specialism leadership. We will grow to specialism leadership through five dimensions of focus. Firstly, by concentrating on 16 countries with a GBP 100 billion and growing addressable market where we can build or extend leadership positions. Secondly, focusing on six global specialisms where Hays has the strongest opportunity to extend or become a market leader. Plus, local specialisms where we already have profitable market leadership and expect continued growth. Thirdly, a focus on higher value roles where the cost of failure is higher and the potential impact from AI on these roles is lower. Fourthly, by targeting end market industries where demand for our products is greatest.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Finally, we will operate across three products, recruitment, solutions, and services. We have already taken important action to sharpen our focus in FY 2026, including decisive steps to reshape our country portfolio and define core specialisms. Focus and market leadership allow our consultants to provide deep domain expertise to clients. Focus and market leadership also drive superior returns with data in the chart indicating that regional specialists with a top two share of clearly defined markets consistently deliver stronger growth, higher margins, and more resilient performance. As our market share increases, we will secure these economic benefits through higher productivity. To achieve this, we will invest to grow and build leadership in six global specialisms, technology, finance, construction and property, engineering, life sciences, and human resources. Countries may offer an additional one or two existing specialisms beyond this.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

For example, office support or resources and mining to reflect the composition of their local market, but only where there is an attractive opportunity and a clear path to leadership. We are experts in specialist recruitment across a wide range of products. Recruitment is our existing temp and perm activity, including spot placements and preferred supplier lists. Solutions combines our existing MSP and RPO activities. Finally, Services addresses the growing statements of work market. Although this may be a new terminology for many of you, Services primarily includes our existing German contracting business, which has successfully provided project-based services to clients for many years. We are also experts in compliance and need to be because our clients care deeply about it. Around the world, regulations, largely designed to avoid mock employment, are becoming more complicated, particularly for non-perm recruitment services and solutions.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

As I mentioned earlier, after decades in specialist recruitment, Hays benefits from more than 10 million candidates in our database and over 40,000 weekly interactions between our consultants and their clients and candidates. These are proprietary inputs and are very difficult to recreate. To leverage this competitive position, we are developing a next generation Hays digital platform, including AI agents, which provide our consultants with best-in-class tools and powerful personalized data and insights for our customers. One example is our Smarter Meetings AI agent. With permission, this analyzes client and candidate conversations and captures structured actions, key CRM data, and actionable insights in real time. It is already materially improving the quality and depth of our candidate records, supporting better matching, analytics, and lead generation. We have a further pipeline of enterprise-level AI agent initiatives and are focused on generating returns from them at scale.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

In my previous position as Chief Technology Officer at Hays, I was delighted to discover that we own our own core proprietary systems, including our CRM, client and candidate databases, and vendor management system. These provide a powerful cost and flexibility advantage versus the off-the-shelf solutions and support the rapid training and development of the proprietary AI and analytics, which are essential to optimize staffing processes. To augment this technology, we are also establishing a people advantage. A Hays Academy will become our global center for learning, performance, reward, and career development, bringing together onboarding, leadership development, and career progression into one connected experience. We have also introduced a potential one-off share award for all our colleagues, satisfied by existing shares, which recognizes their contribution and reinforces alignment with shareholders. The scale of this award will be determined by pre-exceptional operating profit in FY 2027.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Through broader share employee ownership and top quartile reward, we will strengthen engagement, foster a long-term ownership mindset, and incentivize successful delivery of our Momentum strategy. I would like to thank our colleagues across the group for their professionalism, resilience, and commitment during the year. Their continued focus on supporting clients and candidates while simultaneously helping to reshape the business has been instrumental to our progress. As mentioned earlier, Momentum will deliver a positive structural shift in our profitability, net fee growth, cash flow, and return on capital employed. Through sharper focus, market leadership, radically improved search and match capability, and lower cost to serve, we can increase consultant net fee productivity by more than 50%, return Hays to a 25%+ conversion rate, and deliver superior return for shareholders. I will now hand over to James to run through our financials in more detail.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'll cover the financial and divisional operational reviews along with current trading before handing back to Mark for closing comments. Summarizing our financial performance on a like-for-like basis, net fees decreased by 8% to GBP 906 million, with pre-exceptional operating profit up 3% to GBP 48.6 million. Our strong cash conversion drove cash from operations of GBP 92 million, and we finished the year in a GBP 20.1 million net cash position. Turnover decreased by 4%, with fees down 8%. The higher decline in fees relative to turnover was due to the more resilient performances in temp and contracting versus perm and in our solutions businesses. Pre-exceptional earnings per share was GBP 0.0121, an 8% decrease versus prior year, driven by a higher effective tax rate, partially offset by higher operating profit.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Over the next few slides, we have summarized our FY 2026 actions and performances for each region. In Germany, significant actions were taken to restructure our operations, reduce non-consultant headcount, and secure further structural cost savings, which drove a sequentially stable pre-exceptional operating profit in the second half. Temp and contracting fees were resilient, while perm remained challenging due to lower demand and slower client decision-making. However, there were bright spots. Construction and property performed strongly again, with fees up 44%, driven by our focus on infrastructure and the energy sector. The U.K. & I recovered from losses in the prior year to deliver a GBP 4 million operating profit. We delivered further improvements in consultant productivity, up 14%, including actively managing our consultants to focus on higher value placements and stronger margins.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

We secured structural savings, which included 30 office closures. We also invested in growth with the launch of a statement of work services business in the second half. In ANZ, we saw stable temp and contracting volumes through the year, but perm became slightly more challenging through our fourth quarter. ANZ more than doubled its operating profit to GBP 8.5 million, driven by consultant productivity growth as we focused on higher skilled roles and delivered structural cost savings, including the closure of 11 offices. Finally, in Rest of World, although the division reported a slightly larger GBP 5.1 million operating loss for the year, it returned to profitability in the second half, following significant cost and country portfolio actions. In June, we disposed of our operations in six European countries and announced that we are exploring options relating to a further seven countries. EMEA ex Germany remained mixed overall.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

France remains tough, but our actions here to address productivity and cost drove improved profit performance in our fourth quarter. We reported all-time fee and record profit performances in Spain and Portugal. As previously disclosed, the U.S. was impacted by the loss of a material contract, although trading improved through our second half. Net fees in Asia grew by 3%, with Japan up 10%, driven by strong growth in contracting, where we see huge long-term potential. Temp and contracting fees were resilient and decreased by 5%. Volumes declined by 4%, with a further 1% or GBP 6 million fee impact from lower average hours worked in Germany. Temp and contracting remained sequentially stable through the second half in our major markets of Germany, U.K. & I, and ANZ, and included strong performances in Spain, Japan, and in our services businesses.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Perm fees decreased by 12% as weaker client and candidate confidence drove slower conversion of activity to placement. Volumes declined 14%, and our average fee was up 2% as we continued to target higher value roles. Over the next few slides, we have set out the decisive actions we have taken to manage costs and increase profitability and structurally improve our cost base for the long term. As explained, we saw a significant reduction in net fees and our pay rises in July 2025 increased payroll costs by circa GBP 8 million. Our response has been decisive, with our operating cost reduced by 8% or GBP 70 million. Payroll costs were reduced by GBP 68 million by actions taken to reduce consultants and non-fee earning headcount, down 12% and 13% respectively. Commission payments decreased in line with fees and profit, partially offset by higher bonus payments versus prior year.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

We delivered property savings of GBP 4.5 million, although the majority of exits were in June 2026. Therefore, we expect a more significant cost saving in FY 2027. Finally, we secured GBP 3.5 million overhead savings from close control of third-party spend. The next slide looks at our annualized cost savings delivered in the year. We delivered GBP 25 million from our finance and technology transformation programs and our restructurings of our back office functions in several regions. We delivered GBP 15 million through restructuring our sales operations in Germany, U.K. and Ireland, France and Asia. We delivered GBP 10 million through the closure or consolidation of 74 offices globally. Given the weighting of cost save activities to Q4, the in-year FY 2026 P&L benefit was around GBP 20 million, with the remaining GBP 30 million of P&L benefit to be realized in FY 2027.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

As Mark has set out, our investment in technology and people will further improve our efficiency in our back office and middle office functions, and we target a further GBP 50 million per annum saving in FY 2027. In addition, our actions to better align consulting capacity to market opportunities and improve productivity, together with the commission savings on lower fees, delivered a further GBP 33 million per annum of cost benefits. Our improved allocation of consultants resulted in 7% productivity growth, including the U.K. & I up a notable 14%. Adjusting for our seasonally quieter second quarter, productivity has now increased for 11 consecutive quarters. We have worked hard to balance cost reduction with maintaining consulting capacity, and we continue to carefully allocate consultants to business lines, targeting higher skilled candidate roles, and in investing in the best tools for our consultants.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

We secured GBP 50 million annualized savings in FY 2026, three years ahead of schedule, and have now delivered GBP 115 million of savings since the start of FY 2024. With our clear ambition for further savings in FY 2027, this will take us to over GBP 160 million per annum cumulative structural savings. The combined impact of our actions to improve productivity and structurally reduce costs drove a return to year-on-year profit growth in H2. Our exceptional cost of GBP 89.6 million comprised three parts. We incurred GBP 45.1 million costs related to sales and back office restructuring, which drove GBP 40 million in annualized savings. In addition, we incurred GBP 26.6 million charge from our global consolidation or exit of 74 offices, and which drove a GBP 10 million annualized saving. The sale of our operations in Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Luxembourg, Romania, and Sweden resulted in an GBP 8 million loss on disposal, including associated transaction costs.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

We also incurred a charge of GBP 6.9 million from the partial impairment of goodwill in Belgium and Netherlands, and GBP 3 million from the net impairment of intangible assets from the acceleration of our digital program. Due to the ongoing and multi-year nature of our restructuring and transformation programs, which are strategically reshaping our business in line with our Momentum strategy, we expect to incur significant further exceptional restructuring costs in FY 2027 as we drive towards our GBP 50 million annualized cost-saving target. The board is committed to materially reducing exceptional costs thereafter. Our net finance charge for the year was GBP 13.5 million, broadly unchanged. We expect the net finance charge for FY 2027 to be around GBP 12 million due to a lower non-cash lease interest charge.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Consistent with our half-year results, our pre-exceptional tax rate increased by 10 percentage points to 45%, driven by the concentration of profits in higher tax rates countries, coupled with the impact of losses arising in countries where no tax benefit has been recognized and the impact of disallowable items. We expect the group's tax rate to be slightly lower in FY 2027, and the tax rate remains highly sensitive to both the geographical mix of profits and losses, and we would expect to reduce materially to more normal levels as profits rebuild over time. We delivered a strong cash performance in the year with cash from operations of GBP 92 million, and this represented a 189% cash conversion. Our working capital inflow was GBP 24.9 million, driven by the reduction in temp fees and a one-day improvement in our DSO. We paid tax of GBP 19.8 million and net interest of GBP 8.2 million.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

The cash impact of exceptional restructuring charges was GBP 42 million. Overall, this led to free cash flow of GBP 22 million, and our uses of free cash flow were the payment of GBP 7 million of dividends, the purchase of our own shares for employee incentive awards of GBP 11.7 million, and CapEx of GBP 24.1 million. The cash flow benefited significantly following the full pension buy-in in FY 2025, that previously required annual deficit funding contributions of GBP 18 million per annum. We expect CapEx in the GBP 30 million-GBP 35 million range in FY 2027 to support our ongoing investments in technology, and at a similar run rate to our H2 CapEx of GBP 14 million. We ended the year with net cash of GBP 20.1 million. DSOs improved by one day, driven by good collection performance, and our aged debt profile remains strong. Bad debt write-offs were minimal and remained at historically low levels.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

The group continues to maintain a strong balance sheet. Provisions increased due to restructuring activity, including staff and property closures costs through the year, and net cash decreased after paying GBP 7 million of dividends in the year, GBP 11.7 million in respect of share purchases for employee share awards, and the GBP 42 million cash exceptional charges. Our business model remains highly cash generative with a strong balance sheet, and the group maintains a clear capital allocation framework. Our priorities for the use of free cash flow are to fund the group's investment and development requirements, to maintain a strong balance sheet, to fund a dividend that is affordable and appropriate, and return surplus cash to shareholders through a combination of special dividends and share buybacks.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

The final dividend of GBP 0.0029 per share is consistent with the revised capital allocation framework and dividend policy we announced at the FY 2025 results and brings the full-year dividend to GBP 0.0044, representing a dividend cover of 2.8x. We remain committed to maintaining balance sheet strength and a 2x-3x dividend cover while investing in the business. In summary, fees declined by 8% but excellent progress with structural cost savings together with 7% productivity growth drove 3% increase in our operating profits. Volumes declined in both temp and perm, although temp remains significantly more resilient. We saw improving trading conditions in several markets with around 30% of our business in year-on-year growth in Q4. We remain resolutely focused on repositioning the business in line with our Momentum strategy and delivering further significant structural cost savings of GBP 50 million in FY 2027.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

This will drive another material exceptional charge next year. We maintain the strong balance sheet underpinned by strong levels of cash conversion, and this will fund our transformation and long-term growth initiatives, generating attractive returns to our shareholders as our profitability rebuilds over time. Turning to current trading, July and August to date have been in line with our expectations, with no significant change to activity levels from Q4 in either contracting, temp, or perm. September is our largest trading month of the quarter, and it is currently too early to assess trends. At a group level, there are no material working day effects in Q1, and given our ongoing focus on driving consultant productivity, we expect overall group consultant headcount will remain broadly stable in Q1. We will also continue to deliver on our structural efficiency programs, which will further reduce our cost base for the period through FY 2027.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

I'd now like to hand back to Mark.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Thank you, James. To recap, Momentum is our strategy to accelerate profit growth and improve market share in our chosen markets by helping Hays solve specialist talent selection processes better than anyone else in the market. In addition, when market conditions allow, we will return to net fee growth. Our strategy anticipates changes in the world of work, shaped by our 60 years of experience and client feedback about what they need, responding to increasingly complex workforce challenges and the greater pressures they face to make the right hiring decisions. Getting it wrong can be costly. It also leverages our 40,000 weekly interactions between expert Hays consultants and their clients and candidates to provide deep insights into specialist recruitment markets. This is a powerful combination, a key point of differentiation, and one where we've only just started to capture its potential.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Momentum is a compelling strategy because it is shaped by colleagues, candidates, and clients. Compelling because it is a growth strategy delivered through superior and sharper focus and market leadership, and compelling because it will deliver significant increase in profitability, cash flow, and shareholder returns. Over time, we will increase consultant net fee productivity by more than 50%, return Hays to a 25%+ conversion rate, and deliver superior returns for shareholders. As you have heard, we are already delivering Momentum at pace after taking decisive action and executing strongly over the last few months. FY 2027 will be an exciting year. We will accelerate our execution and start to unlock Hays' full potential. I will now hand you back to the administrator, and we're very happy to take your questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question on the phone, please press star one one and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Once again, it's star one one to register a question. To withdraw the question, please press star one one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type them in the question box and click submit. We are now going to proceed with our first question. The questions come from the line of Andy Grobler from BNP Paribas. Please ask your question.

[Andy Grobler, Analyst at BNP Paribas]

Hi, good morning. Three from me, if I may. Firstly, just on the savings target for this fiscal year, so fiscal 2027, could you just talk about maybe the potential over a slightly longer period of time? This project's been going on for a while now. I kind of assume it doesn't come to an end in this fiscal year. So just what your expectations are over two, three years. Secondly, the trading kind of shorter term. On the trading statement back in July, you talked a little bit about slower perm, particularly in ANZ and Northern Europe. Is that still the case into July, August? I know it's summer and difficult to call, but have you seen any change in trends from that perspective? Then thirdly, you've talked about 50% productivity gains in the medium term.

[Andy Grobler, Analyst at BNP Paribas]

When you think about where those are going to come from, what are the key drivers between technology, increased focus, a market recovery, and moving up the wage scales? Thank you very much.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Thanks, Andy. I think I'm going to give James the first two, and then I'll come back on the third one.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Yeah. Thanks, Mark, and thanks, Andy. Clearly, the savings target we set out for FY 2027 is for another GBP 50 million of structural savings, which is similar to what we've just done this financial year. But we're looking hard across our back-office and mid-office functions, primarily there, and a combination of operating model and technology actually underpinning quite a lot of that. Regarding the longer duration, I guess, was the thrust of the question out beyond next financial year, is there more? Well, we want to do a lot next year. And we've been clear that we want to materially lower exceptional costs in the longer term. So we do expect a significant exceptional charge next year as we work towards that cost objective, but to materially reduce thereafter so that the lion's share of the big repositioning and structural savings will come through next financial year, Andy.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Should I pick up the second question, Mark?

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Yeah.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Around current trading and clearly in the Q4 IMS, I talked about a resilient temp and contracting business through the second half of the year. But we did see some modest slowing in activity in some markets in our fourth quarter. And really, Andy, just to reiterate what we put in the statement, and really, we've only had six weeks trading since then, and it's all summer months as well. We've seen no change in the Momentum or the shift in direction there at all. So activity levels through July and into August so far have been consistent with what we saw through Q4. Not seen any change in that, both in the temp and contracting and from a perm perspective and on a region-by-regional level. As we put in the statement, and as always, summer is a difficult time of the year to really understand where we are.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

September is a key month for us. It's about 40% of our quarterly fees, and that will be an important indication about where we've come out of the summer and if there have been any significant shift in activity levels in that period of time. So we'll talk about that more in October. Mark, shall I hand back for you for the rest?

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Yeah. It's a great question, Andy, on productivity. It isn't a single answer, because actually, as I've been going around the world meeting all the different markets, everyone is in a slightly different place of what's driving their current productivity. And so actually it's a very forensic exercise we're going through. Technology underpins everything and will help everywhere, and that's where getting the feedback from the early AI agents that we're putting out there and what difference they're making to the consultants, things like Copilot that we've given them, they're making a difference. But then it gets down to what is the specialism, what are the roles, which of our products are we selling into, and making sure we're forensic on all of those different lenses, almost down to the desk level in each market.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Yes, technology will help us all across, but everywhere else it is just going through every single dimension and making sure we are doing it in the best way possible. That is why it will be a journey over time, but it is a journey that never ends.

[Andy Grobler, Analyst at BNP Paribas]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. We are now going to proceed with our next question. The question has come from the line of Rory McKenzie from UBS. Please ask your question.

[Rory McKenzie, Analyst at UBS]

Morning, both. Yes, it is Rory here. First question again was about the 50% productivity uplift target. Is it right to take the FY 2026 net fees and average headcount as the starting point? I think that is around GBP 160,000 ahead. As you are in the middle of exiting a set of countries and you will be exiting some specialisms, can you help us think through the exit rate, I guess, or the run rate of net fees and headcount once you have completed that repositioning? My second question is about the new model you are building to drive that, so the digital platform, the next-level search and match functions, for example. When do you think we will see signs of that landing in the market, hopefully driving market share and so positive volume growth?

[Rory McKenzie, Analyst at UBS]

I guess we've heard some peers talk about contract wins or fill rate improvements when these things land in some markets. What stage are you at with your rollouts across the different markets you have today? Thank you.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Yeah, lovely. Thanks, Rory. I'm going to let James do the first one, then I'll come back on the second.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Yeah. Thanks, Rory. If I pick up the first question on effectively what's the baseline of that productivity improvement? Clearly we're just going through the disposal process of countries we've just exited and obviously the options on the other regions as well. But they don't materially shift the dynamic in terms of where the fees per consultant currently sit within the business. I think, Rory, taking that as the baseline is the right approach to move forward from there. The number you quoted is the correct one. There's not much of a distortion effect from the countries we're disposing. Just so that you're aware, that's about GBP 70 million of net fees per annum, around 530 consultants in those seven countries. If you do the maths on that, there's not much of a distortion effect to the underlying productivity of the business.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

I'll hand back to Mark for the-

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Yeah. On the technology one, we are making good progress already. If you take our core CRM platform, which many of you will know over the years as OneTouch, the modernization of that, and this is a key point, we are on a modernization agenda here because of the assets we already have rather than a replacement agenda. The OneTouch modernization has already rolled out now across our APAC region. And we are just in the final testing stages of going into Southern Europe, and then we will continue that around the rest of the world from there. So really good, strong progress there, and it makes it much easier to use for the consultants. And again, many of you will be aware of our VMS system, which is known as 3SS.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

That again is already in wide-scale adoption in some of our largest MSP clients. And again, in all markets, we have already got use of that. What we need to do there is accelerate the level of adoption. Then I will talk about search and match and come back to the Hays digital platform. So search and match, this is the rebuild. This is the one where we are step changing in the generations of technology we are using. We are partnering with Databricks on this to bring a really leading AI-enabled search and match engine together. We have the first alpha of it, and I deliberately say alpha because those are real trial versions rather than in production or in full production. That is out in our Australia business at the moment, and we will be going into a couple of other businesses this side of Christmas.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

We want to make sure we get that right before we do a large-scale rollout. But we are talking months here, not years, in terms of scaling that. And the lovely thing with this technology is that the beauty of AI is it does all the parsing for you so that when we know we have got it right, we can start to scale quite quickly. Then I bring it back to the overall picture of what we want to create is the Hays digital platform, which joins all of that up as a core underlying platform for our candidates, our clients, and our consultants. That is a big integration exercise because that is joining up what we have got in the CRM with what we have got in the VMS with all the data across those. That program is underway as well.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

We have picked a couple of markets where we are going to trial it. I will not use today to tell you those markets because I want to make sure they are working. But again, we are talking months to actually get these trials underway, not super long-term, typical IT implementation plans. We are well underway on doing these things and some of the testing has already started. So we are really pleased because we have inherited such great assets into here that we can take those forward and really leverage them.

[Rory McKenzie, Analyst at UBS]

Great. Thank you both. That's really interesting. I mean, it sounds like the Hays Momentum strategy has already been definitely at least soft-launched internally, given the things you're rolling out. Can you just talk about some of the reception from your internal colleagues and how that's gone down and what you plan to do next now it's kind of live and public?

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Yeah, no, great question. We've had a fabulous reaction from the colleagues, actually. I and a few of my colleagues, James and other of the ELT members, we've been on the road meeting colleagues. We've been to North America, we've been all around the U.K., we've been all around APAC. We've just got Europe to go after they come back from holiday. I guess it's three things that have really worked. One is the clarity it's giving people. When you explain which markets, which specialisms, which roles, which industries, everybody goes, "Oh, I get it. Let's go for it." The second, and this one might all make you smile, is they love the fact we've given them Copilot.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

As part of all the work we've been doing to upgrade the technology, I think we're the first in our industry to do what's known as the E7 deal with Microsoft. They love the fact that every single one of our consultants all around the world has full Copilot to use, and it's making their jobs easier on a day-to-day basis, and they feel they've got modern technology. The third one is they love the share scheme. The engagement we've had from having an all-colleague share scheme has been phenomenal. It's slightly nice that at the same time, the share price went up a little bit, but it's gone down really well, and they're all really engaged in the targets they've got to hit and the way we want that to work. Those have been the big three.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

I'm sure we'll get some more when we go around Europe, but it's been really encouraging to get their feedback.

[Rory McKenzie, Analyst at UBS]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

We are now going to proceed with our next question. The question comes from the line of Karl Green from RBC Capital Markets. Please ask your question.

[Karl Green, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Yeah, thanks very much. Good morning. Three questions from me. Firstly, just in terms of the net fee medium-term ambition, clearly north of GBP 1 billion net fees is a very open-ended number. But it's clearly not a huge amount more at the bottom end versus what you delivered last year. So is the interpretation of that, given that you could have picked any number, you could have picked GBP 1.2 billion, GBP 1.3 billion, whatever, that actually you don't need to see a material step-up in fees to drive that level of conversion ratio improvement? Am I interpreting that correctly is the first question. The second question, just on slide 13, where you've helpfully kind of recast the group fees by five new categories from Spot through to SoW. Clearly, there's going to be market forces that drive the relative proportions over the next few years.

[Karl Green, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

But could you just talk about which of those five areas you're going to be really trying to intentionally drive as a greater proportion of the group, MSP, more price sensitive/commoditized? Is that something you would prefer to see diminish as a proportion of the group? So a little bit of color there would be helpful. Then the final question, just on slide 12 above that, the regional specialist profitability jumps off the page. Just kind of any thoughts from your end as to why there's such an exceptional gap between them and yourselves and lots of your more global peers. One would guess that there's different cost structures, different gross margin profiles, maybe less investment in technology, but anything you can add there would be helpful. Thank you.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Okay. James, you pick the first one. I'll do the number two and threeca.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Yeah. Karl, I'll pick that first one up. In terms of what the net fee ambition means versus where we are currently today, we've just done a fraction over GBP 900 million of fees. If you put against that the countries that we have exited, it was around GBP 15 million of net fees.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

A further GBP 70 million of net fees will exit from the other remaining seven countries. I think the next thing, clearly that takes the overall number closer down to GBP 800 million on a like-for-like basis. The other area, which obviously we're mindful of, is that there are a number of our smaller specialisms which aren't within the global specialism. While we're not exiting those markets on day one, they are not investment markets either, and we may see some net fee decline over a period of time there because we will be investing heavily in the global specialisms that we've outlined today rather than some of the old legacy specialisms.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

That, as it stands today, is about GBP 60 million of fees, Karl, and while we'll retain a good proportion of that for a period of time, I will expect that to drift down as well. If I rebase the business at sort of GBP 800 million or slightly lower, clearly then we have to grow back up to GBP 1+ billion over a period of time, which is our inward organic investment into our focus markets within the countries and within the specialisms that we've outlined. Clearly, as Mark set out, Momentum is a growth strategy, but we have to go a little bit down from the GBP 900 million today with the rationalizations we set out in order to grow back up north of GBP 1 billion over a period of time.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Yeah, super. Karl, to the slide on products, of course, there's another layer below all of this, of the more detailed breakdown of the products that underpin these. The way I think I would look at it is, I think if you looked at one that we think will shrink over time, it's the RPO one. RPO is two products under there. One is the full outsourcing of companies' entire recruitment processes. We think that's probably a shrinking market. We think there's a very interesting segment in RPO about where we're helping project RPO. Someone who wants to build a global capability center in India, we are a great partner to work with them to hire the first 200 or 300 people they need to get them going whilst they're building their scale. Overall, I wouldn't expect growth in RPO.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

I think I would expect some growth in MSP, but the thing that's exciting for us in MSP is where we are also supplying into the MSP. Just the pure managed service, you're right, is not the highest margin business. What we want to be able to offer is yes, across a range of recruitment partners provide an overall service, but we want to be in the middle of that as a key provider, almost using our recruitment services on the left-hand side. So, these kind of interrelate some of these things. Spot is always nice. If the market picks up a bit there, we'll see business in Spot. PSL, what we just need to make sure as we do the PSL bit, is that we're maintaining the right margin structure in the roles we're doing in a PSL, and not being driven too far down on those.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

That's where I see that, but the really interesting one is the Services one. Our German business has done some amazing work in this space, almost defining that industry in Europe. That, I think, is what we want to look at how we leverage much more globally and how we're able to grow in a controlled way where we're not taking risk in the statements of work, but we want to see how we can grow that business now in the U.K. and in Australia and then see where we can take that more globally over time as well. I think that's probably how the proportions move there. To the regional specialists, yeah, this was a great piece of analysis, and this really, really made us think about what the Momentum strategy should be. This is one of the key bits we looked at.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

I think there's a couple of dimensions to it. Your comment on cost base is spot on, and that's clearly the work we're doing. We need to be able to match their cost base. Cost base alone and being generalist, we worked out, wasn't going to work. It's the specialism and the focus, and therefore the reputation they get. That means to the flywheel diagram, by being known to be the specialist in those areas, they attract the best candidates and the best clients, and therefore the best roles, and that's how you can create higher margins. That's the analysis we've done, and that's what showed us the direction we need to move in. Now, we then need to be able to do that in each defined market at scale globally, and hopefully our global scale will give us an even better cost advantage to that.

[Karl Green, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

That is very clear. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type them in the question box and click submit. We are now going to proceed with our next question. The question has come from the line of James Rowland Clark from Barclays. Please ask your question.

[James Rowland Clark, Analyst at Barclays]

Hi, good morning. My first one is just to follow up on that answer you have just provided. Is there a pricing difference with regional specialists, either the sort of fee rate or take rate? Secondly, just on your exceptional items that you are saying will be significant in 2027, should we expect that figure to be kind of similar to what we saw in 2026 as sort of GBP 90 million? I know there is a bunch of things in there, but is that the right ballpark, and is it all cash? Then also finally on your financial ambitions in the medium term, you sort of upgraded the conversion ratio to sort of 25%+. I think previously it was 22%-25%.

[James Rowland Clark, Analyst at Barclays]

Should we also be thinking that the old GBP 250 million operating profit, that you have not sort of provided a specific number today, but you just said a significant growth. Should that be up from that old target given the cost savings are an extra GBP 50 million today and a bunch of productivity gains in the medium term as well? Thank you.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Thanks, James. Let me do the first one and then James will pick up the second two. Undoubtedly they're pricing different and that's what we've really got to go after. Our pricing optimization in the whole of the Momentum strategy is a key area we're looking at. But yeah, different roles, slightly different ways of doing it. We'll be looking at all those dimensions as well. James.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Mark, if I pick up on the exceptional, James. I haven't specifically given guidance FY 2027 exceptional, largely because there's a likely wide range on that. Clearly we've given the structural cost saving target to GBP 50 million for next year, which will drive an exceptional cost. Now, if I looked at FY 2026, James, we had a GBP 45 million restructuring charge in this year, which drove a GBP 40 million annualized cost. So, we've talked previously at sort of GBP 0.80-GBP 0.90 in the pound on the operational restructures from the annual cost savings into exceptional charges. I'd expect that to be broadly similar going forward. Clearly there's a range around that depending on exactly where it takes place. Clearly some parts of the world are a lot more expensive than others in order to do restructuring. But that should follow a similar principle.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

That would be the cash side of things. I guess on the other hand, clearly we're going through the processes on the remaining seven countries, and there will be the financial effects of those transactions to consider similar to what we had this financial year. That is quite hard for me to gauge at this stage, looking at potential impact of goodwill and impairment on net assets and so on and so forth. So, likely there will be an exceptional cost coming through from those, but they sit outside of those core restructuring activities. So it's quite hard for me to give guidance at this stage. I think what I would say, James, as always, we'll be giving you very clear updates through the year on exactly where we are on the Save plan and where we are on that exceptional cost as we go through the year.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Obviously that will become fuller over time as I have more clarity on that. But you're going to have to bear with me slightly because it's a slightly tricky one for me to try and pull together at this stage. If I just pick up the final question, which is around the financial ambitions and you talked about the 22%-25% conversion rate guidance that we've done in the past. Clearly now we set our stall out slightly differently. We've given a medium-term net fee ambition of GBP 1+ billion and a 25%+ conversion rate. So, if I put the math together on that's a GBP 250+ million target for us to get to from a profitability perspective over the medium term.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Now, if I put that against where we have been historically, that would put us into a new space, actually. I do not think we ever quite hit GBP 250 million in the past. So that should put us into blue water beyond that. So look, it is a fair ambition for us. But we think it is absolutely a credible one. If I think about that 25% conversion rate from a technical perspective, we are in sort of mid-single digits presently. I look at the annualization of the cost saves we have already delivered next year plus the new target objectives, there is about a 10% conversion rate improvement to come through from the structural cost saves that we set out, either we delivered or we set out to deliver.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Then clearly we have talked extensively today around the opportunity to drive our productivity forward over time, and Mark has been very clear on our ambitions for that. That too will be an accelerator of our conversion rate over time.

[James Rowland Clark, Analyst at Barclays]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[James Hilton, CFO at Hays]

Thank you.

[Operator]

We have no further questions at this time, so I will now hand back to Mark Dearnley, Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks.

[Mark Dearnley, CEO at Hays]

Thank you. James and I would like to thank you again for joining us this morning. We look forward to speaking to you at our next Q1 results on the 12th of October. Should anyone have any follow-up questions, James, Kean, and Prash will be available for the rest of today. We look forward to seeing investors over the next couple of weeks. Thank you.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Mark Dearnley, CEO
• James Hilton, CFO

Analysts

• Andy Grobler, Analyst at BNP Paribas
• Rory McKenzie, Analyst at UBS
• Karl Green, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
• James Rowland Clark, Analyst at Barclays