Staffing and consulting firm latest quarter reports

Date: Oct 7, 2024

Author: Handzalah

Robert Half

The first company to look at is Robert Half which have 2 separate segment for staffing. They are permanent and contract. Their other business is the Protiviti, their consulting business. This article will focus on Robert Half’s second quarter ended June 30, 2024. They mention how client and candidate still have caution and this impacts hiring activity and new projects. They attribute this caution to macroeconomic and interest rate uncertainty. This article is written on October 7, 2024, after the 50 basis-points of interest rate cut. Protiviti on the other hand managed show strong results which they attribute to U.S. growth in revenues and segment income. Their largest segment is contract talent solutions then permanent placement talent solutions then Protiviti. For their contract talent solution, they receive the most significant revenue from finance and accounting. This is followed by administrative and customer support then by technology. Operating income margin for contract decreased the most year-over-year. For six months ended they repurchased 1,660,000 shares. For most of 2023, their administrative and customer support segment faced large declines. This may be attributed to the focus of businesses to integrate AI into these fields. For Q1 and Q2 of 2024 finance and accounting revenue has been declining at a greater magnitude. Protiviti has the least decline from 2023. In their earnings call they say that today’s subdued demand is the future demand. They are confident in saying that they expect this is the bottom. They are seeing pent-up demand. In the Q&A portion of the call they mentioned how this has been 8 quarters of declining revenue, they don’t expect much longer before revenue increases. They said the longest declining period was 10 quarters which begun during the dotcom bubble. The longer term question for the company and at large for the industry is that if it’s able to grow even through the expected job replacement from the AI advancements?