Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the trading update for the quarter ending 30th of June 2023 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to speaker today, Head of Investor Relations at Hays, David Phillips. Ple ase go ahead. Thank you, Katie. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Hays' quarterly update call for the three months ended 30th June 2023, the fourth quarter of our FY 2023 year. I'm David Phillips, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm here with James Hilton, Group Finance Director. Before we begin, please be aware that this call is being recorded, with the recording accessible using the number and the code provided in the release. Please be aware that our discussions may contain forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations or beliefs, as well as assumptions on future events. There are risk factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from these expressed in or implied by such statements. Hays disclaims any intention or obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements that have been made during this call, regardless of whether these statements are affected as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I'll now hand you over to James. Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, thanks for joining us. I'll present the highlights and key themes of today's update and discuss regional performances before taking questions. As usual, all net fees growth percentages are on a like-to-like basis versus prior year, unless stated otherwise. We delivered a resilient Q4 performance, with group net fees down 2% versus the prior year, despite tougher market conditions and versus a strong prior year comparator. This included another strong quarter of growth in Germany and a record performance in our global Enterprise business. Despite tougher markets, through our focus on driving productivity and managing overhead costs, we expect to deliver FY 2023 operating profits in line with current market consensus and our previous guidance. Our largest business, Temp & Contracting, which represented 58% of group fees, delivered solid growth, up 4%. Perm fees decreased by 9% as clients and candidate confidence reduced. There was no overall currency translation impact, with actual fee performance in line with like-for-like. I'd like to highlight the following. Our temp fee performance was solid overall, with fee growth of 4%. Temp volumes were 4% down versus prior year, sequentially stable through the quarter. Our fee growth was again driven by our actions to increase fee margins and our focus on higher value markets together with the positive effects of wage inflation. Perm was tougher in the vast majority of our markets, fees were down 9% in the quarter. Overall, perm volumes declined 19% as job flow decreased and time to hire increased, reflecting lower client and candidate confidence. This was partially offset by good growth in our average perm fee, up 10%. We delivered strong growth in our largest business of Germany, up 11% or 13% on a working-day adjusted basis, with APAC up 5%. Fees in our largest global specialism of Technology, which is 25% of group, declined by 3% versus a record prior year performance, with Temp outperforming Perm. We also saw a record performance in our Engineering business, up 15%, and now our third largest specialism at 11% of group fees. Group consultant headcount decreased by 3% in the quarter and by 5% year-on-year, as we continue to align our consultant capacity to market conditions. We remain firmly focused on productivity, which is at good levels overall, despite more difficult markets. Our cash performance was strong, with debtor days unchanged at low levels. Our 30th of June net cash position was circa GBP 135 million, in line with our expectations. During the quarter, Hays purchased a majority stake in Vercida Consulting, a U.K.-based Diversity, Equity & Inclusion consulting business, which provides organizations with advisory services to improve their ability to attract, retain, and progress talent from diverse backgrounds. Our initial investment was around GBP 1 million, with further amounts payable based on achieving our ambitious growth plans. I'll now comment on our performance by each division in more detail. Our largest market of Germany delivered strong fee growth of 11% or 13% on a working-day adjusted basis. Contracting, our largest German business, delivered another strong quarter of 12%. This was driven by 3% growth in contractor volumes, together with a 9% benefit from the mix of improved fee margins and higher contractor rates. Temp increased by 11% and Perm by 10%, which was a record performance. At the specialism level, our three largest specialisms, Technology, Engineering, and Accountancy & Finance, increased by 4%, 21%, and 16% respectively. Consultant headcount was down 3% in the quarter, although increased 1% year- on- year. In our U.K. and Ireland business, fees decreased by 7%. Temp was flat year-on-year, with Temp volumes down 6%, offset by increased margin and mix. Perm fees decreased by 15%, with volumes down 29%, as Perm markets became more difficult through the quarter, partially offset by positive pricing and mix. The private sector, roughly two-thirds of the U.K. and Ireland business, declined by 12%, with the public sector clearly stronger and up 8%. At the specialism level, Accountancy & Finance and Technology decreased by 4% and 10% respectively. Direct outsource fees in enterprise clients delivered strong growth of 15%, although Construction & Property decreased by 7%. Fees in Ireland decreased by 4%. Consultant headcount decreased by 5% in the quarter and by 11% year-on-year. In our ANZ division, fees decreased by 15%. Perm declined by 22%, with volumes down 28%, partially offset by pricing and mix. Temp fees decreased by 9%, with volumes down 15%, again, partially offset by improved margin and mix. The private sector, 2/3 of fees, decreased by 16%, with the public sector down 12%, where we continue to see challenging temp markets, particularly at the federal government level. At the specialism level, Construction & Property decreased by 12%, while Accountancy & Finance and Technology decreased by 8% and 13% respectively. New Zealand decreased by 6%. Our consultant headcount decreased by 2% in the quarter and by 6% year-on-year. In our Rest of World division, comprising 28 countries, fees decreased by 4%. EMEA ex Germany delivered good growth, up 5%. France, our largest Rest of World country, grew by 10%, with the UAE, Italy, and Spain each delivering record performances, up 47%, 17%, and 5% respectively. Belgium increased by 6% and Switzerland grew by 3%, while fees in Poland declined by 9%. The Americas decreased by 21%, with conditions difficult through the quarter, particularly in perm. Canada and the U.S. continued to be tough, each down 25%, while LATAM was flat. Asia declined by 8%. Japan delivered a record performance and grew by 7%, with Malaysia down 4%. China decreased by 21%, with mainland China not yet showing any post-pandemic recovery and underperforming Hong Kong, which grew by 2%. Overall, Rest of World consultant headcount was down 4% in the quarter and down 5% year-on-year. Cash flow and balance sheet. Strong cash generation drove year-end cash of circa GBP 135 million, in line with our expectations, and after purchasing 6 million of shares in the quarter, which completed our initial GBP 93 million share buyback program. Current trading and guidance, I'd like to highlight the following: volumes remain stable overall in Temp & Contracting on a sequential basis, with modestly lower numbers of new assignments offset by greater contract extensions. We continue to benefit from the positive effects of mix and margin. In Perm, incoming job flow is down year-on-year, but was broadly stable through the quarter on a sequential basis, although we continue to see lengthening of time to hire. June's net fee growth exit rate was -2%, which was in line with the overall quarter. Consistent with our previous guidance, and despite tougher market conditions, we expect group second half profits will be modestly above H1, with H2 conversion rate also above H1, as we focused on managing our consultant capacity, driving average productivity, and managing our costs. Given that we enter FY 2024 with group fees modestly down versus prior year, our focus is on driving productivity, protecting our investments in key strategic areas, and managing our overhead costs against the backdrop of inflation. In conclusion, we delivered a resilient quarter, and FY 2023 operating profit is expected to be in line with market expectations. Although we remain vigilant of macroeconomic uncertainties, our balance sheet strength, flexible business model, and experienced management teams around the world mean we are well positioned to adapt to market conditions while remaining firmly focused on our clear long-term growth strategy. I'll now hand you back to the administrator, and we're happy to take your questions. Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. The first question comes from Rory McKenzie, from UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning, it's Rory here. three questions, please. The first two are about the makeup of growth in temp and contractor. You're still benefiting from about an 8% fee contribution of price mix this quarter in temp, I think that reduced a bit from kind of +11%-13% over the previous three quarters. Is that kind of slowing contribution just an annualizing effect? How should we think about that kind of sequential price mix tailwind into the next year from here? Secondly, on the volumes in temp and contractor, you said they were stable overall in the quarter, I think they maybe stepped down slightly from Q1 to Q2. What are you watching at the moment? What can you read from the trends into July in terms of extensions or, or new job flow, maybe? Then just finally on profits. You've delivered or you expect to deliver that small increase in sequential profits, H1 to H2. Can you just say what that implies for your kind of periodic cost base, and how we should think about that into the start of the next financial year? Thank you. Thanks, Rory. I'll cover each of those off. Please let me know if I miss one. The first question was around the price mix impact, we highlighted 8% was the benefit that we had in this quarter, which was, you're right, it was down a little bit versus the previous quarter. I think really the trend I would say on a sequential basis on the pricing and mix is now fairly consistent month-over-month, i.e., we're still getting a year-over-year benefit, but I think it's over the last three or four months, it's probably been pretty flat on a sequential basis. If we go forward into the next financial year, I expect we'll continue to have year-on-year growth and a benefit from pricing and mix. I expect that to diminish as we go through the next financial year. Because as I say, on a sequential basis, at least, that's pretty static now. I think that's consistent really with the market actually, and I think with the market coming off and not being quite as resilient as we were six, nine months ago, I think that's, you know, probably the normal forces of supply and demand in the market. I think the one I would highlight is in Germany, where we've continued to get good pricing dynamics, good margin uplift on our temp and contractors. It's important to remember that those deals get locked in for eight, 10 months because we have a longer average duration of placement. Even if we didn't get any more sequential uplift in margin in Germany, that would take some time to unwind as those placements take a longer duration. On the Temp & Contracting volumes and the trends we've seen there, it's been pretty consistent through the quarter in terms of overall volumes, Rory. Hence why we said stable on a sequential basis. Clearly, it was down 4% versus prior year. I guess we normally do see a little bit of an uplift in Germany as we go through the quarter, and we've seen that modestly, but perhaps not quite at the level we were seeing in the previous years, where we saw a pretty strong sequential growth in volumes going into June in that market. I think this year, it's not been quite at that level, and hence why we've. Our year-on-year volume growth in Germany is has come off. On a sequential basis, it's been pretty flat through the quarter, which at least gives us some resilience in that market. Clearly, we get into the summer and take Germany as a good example. We have a natural break in some of the contracts in summer, similar to what we have in Christmas. We watch very carefully how many of those contracts get re-extended back into the new year. We'll be watching that like a hawk, as you can imagine, but it's a little bit too early to get full visibility on that. We'll update on trends through the summer in August. So far, I think it's a pretty steady trend in Temp & Contracting. On the periodic cost base question, as we guided at the interims, we had a cost base of around GBP 88 million a period at that point. That's come down, as you can expect through the second half of the year, because we've managed our headcount and capacity in the business, obviously, all through natural attrition and in each market. We got on the pitch quite early with that, and we started to move that actively down from about October time through our second quarter of our financial year, and then more through the third and fourth quarter. That cost base has come down. We're probably at about GBP 86 million or so in this final quarter, which is a couple of million down from where we were in February. Combination of managing the headcount, as I mentioned, and also managing the cost base carefully as well, as overhead costs have been managed to get to the performance we have. Where we go next year, clearly, we've got some pay increases and things coming in from the first of July, we'll, you know, we'll manage that carefully, as you can imagine. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Rory. Thank you. We will now go to our next question. Bear with me. The next question comes from Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning. I got two questions. First, can you comment a bit more in detail around the Australia public sector, and when do you sort of expect to tough out, and what's the outlook, given it looks like the cut from the federal governments are more structural in nature? Number two, I mean, you said that you sort of got some pay increases to come, and then you get into a situation in FY 2024, where the price makes benefits start to come down. What's the risk to the conversion rate as you sort of get into FY 2024, or there is enough in your cost base to sort of manage that, you know, unwind of the pricing? At the same time, there is sort of probably wage inflation in your own cost base. I'll pick up the A and Z question first and around public sector. Yes, it has been. It's been a tough market there in public sector. That's specifically in temp, and it's at the federal level, which is the national state government, and that all came about from the change of government just over 12 months ago with the Labour government coming in. Just to put some context to that, our public sector temp business in Australia was down 16% year-on-year in the quarter. If you compare that to the U.K. as an example, where we continue to see good growth in public sector, and Germany, where you can see in our results, we had very good growth in public sector. It's very different dynamic over there. We are not alone, and there's some market statistics have come out in Australia around agency supply into the federal government contracts, and they're all heavily down year-on-year, and we are in, you know, part of that, with the largest supplier into that market. It's clearly had an impact. The business is working very, very hard, as you can imagine, to replace that, and to win business elsewhere. And that's, you know, a necessity that we need to drive, and business is getting on and doing that, and doing a good job with it as well. But it's a clear headwind that we're having to manage. Secondly, the question on pay increases and impacts on conversion rate. As you know, as of 30th of June year end, we'll have our annual pay increases effective July, but I don't expect to see as much increase as we saw last year. Clearly it is a headwind for us to manage, but I think we'll continue to manage that well. In terms of where does the conversion rate go, that's a very difficult question for me to answer, to be honest. It largely depends on the state of the world and where Perm and Temp com markets go over the next six months. Clearly, we were down 2% this quarter, so we're exiting the year, slightly negative year-on-year. Clearly, if our fee growth trending down from this point, it creates that downward pressure on the conversion rate because you can only defend the bottom line so much with headcount reductions. I think we've done a pretty decent job this financial year at managing conversion rate. Our second half conversion rate is up versus the first half, which is what we said we would do, and that's despite the market getting tougher. I think we've done a pretty decent job this half of managing that. Clearly if we face significantly more headwinds in the next 6 months, it's going to be difficult to maintain that. We're on it. We're looking at that carefully, and we'll continue to drive productivity in the business as hard as we can in the market. Cool. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. Again, if you need to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. We are ready to take our next question. The question comes from Andy Grobler from BNP Paribas. The floor is yours. Hi, good morning. Just a couple from me, if I may. Firstly, just on headcount, down sequentially in the quarter and year-on-year, what are your expectations for the next quarter and for the full year? I know that's a difficult one to answer, but as of now, where do you expect that to get to? Secondly, there's kind of lots of moving parts in end markets and labor markets more generally. Where do you see them from a kind of client-led or a candidate-led market? How do you expect that to change in the coming months? Thank you. Great. I'll pick the headcount question up first, Andy. As you highlighted, we were down 3% in the quarter, and we're down about 5% both year-on-year and through the half as well. We've been fairly on the front foot, actually, in terms of managing capacity over the last nine months and keeping that pretty much in line. Actually, this quarter, productivity was up slightly year-on-year, which I think is, given the market and the world we're in, was a pretty decent performance actually, and the guys have done a really good job around the world of managing that. Looking forward to the next quarter, I don't expect to be adding any headcount at this stage. Certainly there's nothing out there which would suggest to me that things are picking up and improving. Obviously, we watch the activity really, really carefully, as you can imagine, in terms of, you know, the job flow coming into the business, the interviews on those and the temp starters and the temp job flow. There's nothing in the indicators at present which would suggest we'd want to increase it. Would I expect it to come off slightly in the next quarter? It could do. Naturally, we have summer to manage, and usually get a few leavers through the summer. Typically, we have a graduate intake in September, and we've been much more cautious this year, as you can imagine, in the number of new starters coming into the business in September. We do have some around the world, and I think it's important that we do that, and certainly to replace people that are leaving, but we're not having the levels of new starters in September that we would have in more stronger markets. I think it will be relatively modest. I guess as I stand here today, flattish to slightly down, Andy, what I would expect our consultant headcount to do over the next quarter. Over the next full year, that's pretty hard to call. I think we'll continue to be pretty cautious on headcount with the focus on driving productivity. Back to the question that Anvesh asked earlier around conversion rate, we're looking to manage that carefully. If in a world where, you know, fees, if fees continue to be negative year- on- year, then clearly we're going to have to manage that headcount selectively as well and make sure that we push that as hard as we can. Yeah, but what's important is that we've put a lot of long-term investment into the business in a lot of strategic growth areas, and those have actually stood us in really good stead, I think. We've continued to perform well. Down 2% is a decent quarter, I think, in the market that we're in, and definitely those investments are coming through within that. I think it's important to make sure that we maintain that capacity, maintain and protect those investments because they'll stand us in good stead as we go forward. I think that's the right thing to do. It's getting that right balance between driving productivity in the market we're in and aligning to the conditions, which I think we've done reasonably well, but making sure that we protect and commit to those longer-term investments, which are part of our strategy. I think that's, you know, striking the right balance between the two. Just on end markets, the second question, that's, I think you can see in our numbers this quarter, our global Enterprise business was up 2% and actually at a record level. I think that's indicative of a world where in the bigger end of town is more resilient than in the SME and spot market. I think that's certainly a trend that I would highlight. You can see that coming through to a certain extent in our business in Germany, where we have a really strong business in the enterprise market. We have relationships with all the DAX 100, with really strong market position in that space. That really has come through there, and I think there's more resilience in larger businesses who are more confident to make hiring decisions. I think there's generally more nervousness in the client base in the SME land right now. I think that flows into candidates actually as well, and I think candidates are more likely to want to move to a big name, to a well-known company. Who've got a resilient market position, resilient balance sheet, et cetera. I think we've talked a lot, quite a bit about candidate confidence, and I know there's a lot of commentary about candidate confidence in the market. I think there is certainly more appetite to move to a well-known brand name around the world. That sort of whole client and candidate, you know, where's the balance of power between the two? I think it's very difficult to say actually, in the market. I think it's relatively evenly positioned between the two. I think there's certainly reduced confidence at the client level and reduced confidence at the candidate level, particularly in the Perm space. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Andy. Thank you. There are no further questions. I will now hand the call back to James for closing remarks. Thanks, everyone. If that's all for the questions today, we'd like to thank you all again for joining the call. I look forward to speaking to you next with our prelim results on the 24th of August. Should anyone have any follow-up questions, David, Rob, and myself will be available to take calls for the rest of the day. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.