Recruitment firm Michael Page International Plc (LON:MPI) reported a strong first half benefiting from geographic and discipline diversification. Asia Pacific, Latin America and newer developing countries grew at 43% year-on-year. All regions are growing sequentially in first half of 2010. 71% of gross profit generated from outside the UK. with 53% of gross profit generated from non Finance and Accounting disciplines. Gross profit from permanent placements grew 31%. The group made share repurchases of £61.8m during the first half of 2010. The balance sheet showed net cash at end-June 2010 of £65.7m (2009: £99.2m). Interim dividend was maintained at 2.88p. The Group's revenue for the six months to end-June increased by 7.9% to £393.5m (2009: £364.7m) and gross profit increased by 17.2% to £209.6m (2009: £178.8m). At constant exchange rates, the Group's revenue increased by 6.3% and gross profit by 15.1%.
In the first half, the mix of the Group's revenue and gross profit between permanent and temporary placements was 43:57 (2009: 36:64) and 78:22 (2009: 70:30) respectively. As expected when economic conditions improve, permanent recruitment is recovering faster, with temporary recruitment only starting to grow sequentially in the second quarter of 2010. This movement in the mix towards permanent is compounded by the faster growing regions being predominantly permanent rather than temporary recruitment in the specialist sectors.
The gross margin on temporary placements in the first half of 2010 has decreased to 20.7% (2009: 23.2%), largely as a consequence of pressure on pricing, but gross profit is seen to stabilise in the first half of 2010, and the group has also seen gross margin on temporary placements stabilise. An additional 311 staff were added in the first half of 2010. Headcount at end-June was 3,860 operating from 135 offices in 28 countries. New investments in the first half of 2010 included the launch of Page Personnel in Hong Kong, Mexico, Russia, Singapore and the USA. Steve Ingham, CEO, said:
"We delivered a strong performance in the first half of 2010, driven largely by greater permanent recruitment activity as confidence levels improved, leading to higher rates of job churn. While we are now entering the seasonally quieter holiday period, we have seen a continuation of these trends in the Group's performance during July.
"We are benefiting from our investment in diversifying the Group internationally, with over 70% of our gross profit in…
