Hays plc (HAS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Hays Trading Update for the 6 months ending 31st December 2025 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, James Hilton, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome, everyone. You will have seen from our separate announcement this morning that Dirk Hahn has stepped down as our CEO for personal reasons. I'd like to acknowledge Dirk's significant contribution to Hays over the last 28 years as one of our very first sales consultants in Germany right through to successfully growing our German business to the powerhouse it is today and then for the last 2.5 years as our CEO. Dirk has made an enormous contribution to our business, and we wish him well in the future. And on a personal level and having worked with Dirk closely for many years, I wish him the very best of luck. Mark Dearnley, our Chief Digital and Technology Officer, who joined Hays back in the summer, will step in as Interim CEO, while the Board conduct their process to appoint Hays' next CEO. Mark has already made a significant contribution to the business in the time he's been with us, including our technology program, which I'll cover later in the presentation, and I very much look forward to working closer with Mark going forward. But for today, I'll take you through our operational, financial and strategic review of our first half results before as normal, opening up to questions. Let me start with the market context. Global recruitment markets remain challenging, notably in Perm through the first half against the backdrop of continued macroeconomic and political uncertainty. However, we have executed our strategy well and remain resolutely focused on delivering against our five levers, which are designed to increase our exposure to attractive, high-potential markets and scale back where market forces are less supportive. Our decisive actions delivered strong sector-leading growth in net fee productivity, a structurally improved cost base and improved profit in the UK&I and ANZ, two of our major markets. The proportion of our business delivering year-on-year net fee growth increased from 15% in Q1 to 20% in Q2 as we saw improving performances across ANZ, Asia and parts of Europe. Let me briefly run through a high-level overview of the half. Group net fees decreased by 9%. Temp & Contracting down 7% was more resilient than Perm, down 14%. And as guided at our January trading update, pre-exceptional operating profit decreased 25% on a like-for-like basis to GBP 20.1 million. We're not satisfied with our current level of profitability, but we are pleased with how we have remained highly disciplined. We limited the profit impact of the group's GBP 47 million net fee reduction to GBP 5 million. And as we'll explore later, drove improved profit performances in several regions, including the U.K. and Ireland and ANZ. We also made strong strategic progress during the half, driven by improved resource allocation, consultant net fee productivity increased by a sector-leading 7%. Secondly, we delivered net resilient net fees in Enterprise Solutions. And thirdly, we have improved our business mix through resilience in Temp & Contracting and by reshaping our country portfolio. Later in the presentation, I'll provide examples outlining how we've achieved this. But first, let me examine our divisional performance. And I won't provide a detailed narrative because many of these figures have been previously disclosed and discussed. In Germany, fees declined by 11%. We took decisive action to protect profitability, and the division has remained resilient in a challenging market, contributing GBP 20.6 million operating profit. Contracting net fees were resilient, with Temp more challenging, primarily due to greater exposure in the automotive sector and lower demand and slower client decision-making impacting Perm. However, there were bright spots. Construction & Property performed strongly again and increased by 40%, driven by our focus on infrastructure and the energy sector and has increased from 4% of net fees in FY '24 to 8% in the half. Despite this, headwinds from economic conditions and fewer working hours, predominantly in our enterprise clients in the construction, infrastructure and public sectors more than offset cost efficiency initiatives and disciplined pricing. We've taken significant cost actions in Q2, which will benefit our second half, including restructurings of operations and back-office functions. In the U.K. and Ireland, fees declined by 9%, and the division recovered from losses in the prior year to deliver a GBP 2 million operating profit. Markets remain challenging in the public sector, but the private sector was more resilient and technology, our largest specialism, moved back into positive year-on-year growth for the first time in 3 years. Our Enterprise Solutions business also recorded good levels of growth. We delivered strong productivity growth and maintained good cost control, and we will examine the actions we have taken to return the U.K. and Ireland to profitability in a case study later on. In ANZ, fees declined by 3% and the division tripled its operating profit to GBP 4.2 million. Temp & Contracting reduced slightly, but trading improved modestly through the half, and we returned to growth in Perm in Q2 for the first time in 3 years. We saw 5% growth in Enterprise Solutions. Resources & Mining was up 4% and Construction & Property was flat. We'll also examine the actions we've taken to deliver this profit improvement in a case study later. And finally, in Rest of the World, fees declined by 10%, and the division moved to a -- sorry, 6.7 million operating loss from a small profit last year. EMEA ex Germany was particularly challenging with fees down 12%, driven by France down 20% and loss-making in the half. But we reported all-time record fee and profit performances in Spain and Portugal, where we executed our strategy well. The U.S. was impacted by the loss of a material RPO contract, which was taken back in-house. And Asia was mixed, but with China and Hong Kong back in growth and Japan solid and up 1%, but Malaysia more challenging and down 18%. We took decisive action in the half to return the Rest of the World division to profitability, notably in France, where we are delivering on plan, and so we expect an improved performance in the second half. We exited Thailand in December and in January, closed our recruitment operations in Mexico. Overall, I expect an improved financial performance in H2. Moving on to our Financial Performance in the half. Summarizing our financial performance on a like-for-like basis, net fees decreased by 9% to GBP 453 million, with pre-exceptional operating profit down 25% to GBP 20.1 million. Our strong cash conversion drove cash from operations of GBP 43.7 million, and we finished the half in a GBP 40 million net cash position. Turnover decreased by 3% and with fees down 9%. The higher decline in fees relative to turnover was due to the more resilient performance in Temp & Contracting versus Perm, in part due to the resilient performance in our MSP business. Pre-exceptional earnings per share was 0.46p, 43% decrease versus prior year, driven by the lower operating profit and higher effective tax rate. Perm fees decreased by 14% as low client and candidate confidence drove reduced levels of activity and longer time to hire. Volumes declined by 14% and our average perm fee was flat. Temp & Contracting fees were more resilient and decreased by 7%. Volumes declined by 7% with a further 1% or circa GBP 3 million fee impact from lower average hours worked in Germany. This was offset by a 1% increase in our average placement fee driven by improved mix with a 20 basis point reduction in underlying margin. Temp & Contracting fee growth was positive in five of our focus countries, driven by good volume growth as we continue to build scale in structurally attractive long-term markets. Over the next few slides, we set out the decisive actions we have taken to manage costs and protect profitability and structurally improve our cost base for the longer term. As explained, we saw a significant reduction in net fees and our pay rises in July '25 increased payroll costs by GBP 4 million. Our response has been decisive with our operating costs reduced by 8% or GBP 40 million year-on-year. Payroll costs were reduced by GBP 33 million by actions taken to reduce consultant and non-fee-earning headcount, down 15% and 16%, respectively, year-on-year. Commission and bonus payments decreased in line with fees and profits, and we delivered property savings of GBP 2.2 million from the closure of 27 offices over the last 12 months, and we secured GBP 2.6 million of overhead savings, primarily from travel and entertainment and marketing spend. The next slide looks at our annualized cost savings delivered in the half. We secured GBP 9 million from our finance and technology transformation programs and restructuring our back-office functions in Germany, U.K. and Ireland, ANZ and in Asia. We also delivered GBP 6 million through restructuring sales operations in the U.K. and Ireland and Germany and our global enterprise business. Our improved allocation of consultants once again resulted in a sector-leading productivity growth up 7% year-on-year. And adjusting for our seasonally quiet second quarter, productivity has now increased for 9 consecutive quarters. We've worked hard to balance cost reductions with maintaining consulting capacity, and we continue to allocate consultants to markets with the most attractive growth opportunities. U.K. and Ireland productivity growth accelerated to 15% and ANZ grew by 7%. And despite the market backdrop, we delivered 3% productivity growth in Germany. As we examined on the previous slide, we've also continued to take decisive action to structurally improve the group's cost base. We delivered a further -- sorry, GBP 15 million per annum savings in H1 and therefore, made strong progress against the FY '29 target of GBP 45 million we set ourselves in August. We've now delivered GBP 80 million per annum over the last 2.5 years and expect to make substantial further progress in H2. As we'll explore later, our new Hays digitized program will further improve our efficiency in our back office and middle office functional areas. Our exceptional costs of GBP 8.8 million comprised two parts. We incurred GBP 7.3 million costs related to senior management and back-office employee redundancies, and we incurred a GBP 1.5 million exceptional charge in relation to the multiyear technology transformation and finance transformation programs. Due to the ongoing nature of our restructuring and transformation programs, we expect to incur further exceptional restructuring costs in the second half. Our net finance charge for the half increased slightly to GBP 6.7 million due to the modestly higher average drawings on the group's revolving credit facility. We expect the net finance charge for FY '26 to be GBP 13 million, slightly below FY '25 due to the positive impact of the defined benefit pension buy-in and improving working capital. Our pre-exceptional tax rate increased by 13 percentage points to 44.8%, driven primarily by the impact of tax losses in some countries in H1, together with the impact of disallowable items. We expect the group's ETR for FY '26 to be circa 45%, consistent with the first half. The ETR remains highly sensitive to the geographic mix of profits and losses and to disallowable items. We would expect the ETR to reduce materially to more normal levels as profits rebuild over time. We delivered a strong cash performance in the half with cash from operations of GBP 43.7 million, and this represented a 217% cash conversion. Our working capital inflow was GBP 14.5 million, driven by the reduction in Temp fees and a 1-day improvement in DSO. We paid tax of GBP 10.6 million and net interest of GBP 4.1 million. The cash impact of exceptional restructuring charges was GBP 12.1 million. And overall, this led to a free cash flow of GBP 16.9 million. Our uses of free cash flow were the payment of GBP 4.6 million of dividends, CapEx of GBP 10.1 million and purchase of own shares for PSP issuance of GBP 1.2 million. The cash flow benefited significantly year-on-year following the full pension buy-in that previously required deficit funding contributions of circa GBP 18 million per annum. And in addition, the cost of our technology investment has been lower than initially expected, and we now anticipate GBP 30 million CapEx in FY '26 versus our previous guidance of GBP 35 million. We ended the half with net cash of GBP 40 million. DSOs improved by 1 day and remain below pre-pandemic levels. And our aged debt profile remains strong. Bad debt write-offs are in line with FY '25 and remain at historically low levels. Our balance sheet strength was maintained with minimal movements over the last 6 months. 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. The interim dividend of 0.15p per share is consistent with the revised capital allocation framework and dividend policy we announced at the FY '25 results. We remain committed to maintaining balance sheet strength and a 2 to 3x dividend cover while investing in the business. In summary, fees declined by 9%, but we saw clear progress in strategic delivery during the half, which together with our cost actions drove improved profit performances in the U.K. and Ireland and in Australia and New Zealand. Volumes declined in both Temp and Perm, although Temp remained significantly more resilient. We maintained a strong balance sheet underpinned by strong levels of cash conversion, further supported by lower-than-anticipated CapEx and our full pension buy-in has eliminated deficit funding commitments. This will fund our long-term growth initiatives and generate attractive returns to shareholders. Moving to Current Trading. Our Temp & Contracting New Year return to work has been solid overall and in line with the prior year and our expectations. In U.K. and Ireland and ANZ, Temp volumes have returned modestly ahead of the prior year and are now back at pre-Christmas levels. In Germany, Contract is in line with prior year and Temp slightly behind, with working hours in Germany consistent with trends from our Q2. Perm activity levels are in line with pre-Christmas. Our group consultant headcount capacity is appropriate for current market conditions, and we expect it to remain broadly stable in Q3 as we balance focused investments with improving productivity in more challenging areas. We'll also continue to deliver on our structural efficiency programs, which will further reduce our cost base in the second half. Our strategy will build a structurally more resilient, profitable and growing business underpinned by our culture and talented colleagues worldwide. We are increasing our exposure to the most in-demand job categories, growing industries and end markets, higher skilled and higher paid roles, Temp and contracting in our large enterprise clients. Our strategy is not one size fits all, and we will tailor each region and country to its market and customer needs. The next three slides present case studies to demonstrate our strategic progress and improve financial performance. In the U.K. and Ireland, we've made good progress towards building a higher-quality focused business. Under our new management team, we have focused our consultants on higher-value placements and stronger margins. Growth in our average candidate salary accelerated from 5% in Q1 to 8% in Q2. We have invested in a new STEM leadership team and launched a project services business to provide statement of workspace solutions. We've also formed stronger relationship with clients with enterprise solution fees up 4% in the half. These have driven an acceleration in consultant productivity growth to 15%. We also delivered structural savings by delayering management and optimizing our office portfolio. Together, these actions returned the division to profitability in the half. There are similar themes in ANZ, where we delivered a threefold improvement in profit. We delivered 7% productivity growth, including 10% increase in Q2 and maintained strong cost control. Our Q2 average Perm and Temp & Contracting fee increased by 5% as we focused on higher skilled roles. We've grown our proportion of fees from technology with good Temp & Contracting momentum through H1, and we are building scale in statement of work. We returned our Perm business to growth in Q2 and delivered forward momentum in Temp & Contracting through the half, underpinned by good performances in Enterprise Solutions, where net fees were up 5%. And in Spain, we delivered 12% fee growth and a record fee and profit performance in H1. Temp & Contracting was up 32%, driven by client wins and continued expansion in new specialisms and now contributes almost 1/4 of Spain's net fees. Construction & Property doubled year-on-year and Technology was up 14%, driven by excellent growth in our contracting business. We've also launched an engineering contracting business where we see significant long-term growth potential. We delivered 8% productivity growth and maintained good cost discipline, which drove record profits. Our performance in Spain demonstrates the long-term growth potential in our markets when the economic backdrop is stable, aligned with strong management execution. We believe we have the right strategy in place and executed well against our five levers, which will reposition and reshape our business. Firstly, we'll continue to invest in high potential and high-performing business lines, and we'll scale back or exit business lines with low performance and potential. We have exited four countries in the recent months, and we'll continue to review our country portfolio. Secondly, we will remain focused on delivering a lower cost and scalable business, driving stronger profit leverage in the recovery. Which brings me to our final area of focus. We are developing a next-generation Hays digital platform to reinforce our strong competitive position, improve our productivity and drive further structural cost savings. Building on many years of investment, Hays owns its core proprietary technology systems, which include our CRM system, global client and candidate databases and vendor management system. These provide a powerful cost and flexibility advantage versus off-the-shelf solutions and allows the rapid training and development of proprietary AI and analytics, essential to optimize staffing processes. We've rolled out AI agents to provide our consultants with best-in-class tools, reduce administrative burden, improve back and middle office efficiency, improve our structured data and provide powerful and personal insights to our clients. Two live examples include, firstly, our Smarter Meetings AI agent, which analyzes clients and candidate conversations, capturing structured actions, key CRM data and actionable insights in real time. This reduces manual administration and consistently records high-quality and structured information and data. We are already seeing a material improvement in the volume of structured data captured per conversation, improving the quality and depth of our candidate records, which in turn drives better matching, stronger pipeline visibility and more sophisticated and analytics. Secondly, our AI curated market intelligence agents create bespoke daily market reports for our consultants. This enables them to engage clients with more informed and timely insights, demand trends and opportunities, improving our business development and engagement. Our business development focus and returns are improving. Our focus with AI is to -- our approach with AI is to focus on rapid deployment and high ROI use cases. We are already seeing improved consultant capacity and productivity, improved speed and quality of execution and the ability to scale revenue at low cost. Our investments will provide our consultants with the best tools and drive a superior client and candidate experience. As we've mentioned before, we believe our actions will support a substantial recovery in profits over the longer term. Delivering productivity growth above inflation remains a key focus for our management, driven by our actions to reallocate consultants, reshape our business to focus on higher skilled, higher paid roles and provide our consultants with the best tools through the next-generation Hays digital platform. These factors will increase net fees with a high drop-through to operating profit. In addition, we continue to make strong progress against our structural cost saving ambitions, which will be accelerated by our Hays digital platform investment. The performance of ANZ and Spain in the first half is evidence that when macroeconomic headwinds are stable, Hays can deliver material growth and profitability. So to close, markets remain challenging in the first half, and the Board and I would like to thank our colleagues for their deep commitment, hard work and resilience. We're not satisfied with current levels of profitability, and we'll relentlessly focus on execution of our strategy. Our first half results provide evidence that we are making significant strategic and operational progress. I'll now hand you back to the administrator, and we're happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] and now we're going to take our first question for today, and it comes from the line of Rory McKenzie from UBS.

Firstly, of course, I wanted to add all of our best wishes to Dirk and recognize his big impact on Hays over the years and obviously wish him well for the future. The first question I want to ask was about the current level of profitability. GBP 20 million in H1 was steady on the GBP 20 million in H2 for the first time in a while. And although it doesn't sound like there's much aggregate help for markets, there's a lot of work that you've done on cost and productivity to get to that kind of point of stability. If nothing changes in markets, what should that mean for profits over the next 6 months? Can you maybe just remind us where you are on the kind of the ramp-up or annualization of the cost savings and productivity improvements and how that should flow through in markets if we assume that they're sideways for now? And then secondly, thanks for laying out the ambition on the digital platform. And I'm sure we'll hear more about this from Mark in particular in the months ahead. But can you summarize kind of where you are today in different regions perhaps with the development or the future rollout, particularly talking about some of the Agentic AI programs that you're pushing out?

Thanks, Rory. I'll kick off with the first question on the profit performance and the profit outlook for the second half. For [indiscernible], you're absolutely right. We're in some respects, pleased that we defended a GBP 47 million decline in net fees to a GBP 5 million reduction in operating profit. But it's not where we want to be, and our ambition is to move that profit forward. So whilst it's been stable against the H2 from last year, which you point out, we have an expectation to improve that in the second half of the year. So we have a full year consensus of GBP 46 million, which means we need to deliver GBP 26 million in the second half to do that. If you think about the phasing of our year, we typically in a relatively flat world where things, as you mentioned, are necessarily improving from a market perspective, just through the phasing of the working day pattern, we generally have a slightly better second half than first half. So logically, we would expect to be slightly better in the second half than the first half just on the working pattern. But as you quite rightly point out, we've made good progress through the first half of the year building on the work we've done previously on managing our cost base. And we've given guidance on consultant headcount in the second half certainly for the next quarter, we expect that to be pretty flat. So we expect to see the cost base come down in that world. But we continue to make progress in our structural prog, we do expect the cost base to come down over the next 6 months as we crack on those. I mean to be honest, as you know, it's always hard to give guidance out there beyond a few weeks. I mean we've been through a relatively critical period on our return to [indiscernible]. We're quite pleased with that. As you've seen, we're in line with where we were last year overall and where we expected to be, but activity has come back at levels that we were expecting as well. So we had a decent 6 weeks or so, but there's still quite a bit of work to do. And as you know, March is an important month for us, and this is the big month in our Q3. So putting all that together, we're fine with where the market is today. We made a decent start to the second half. Cost base is in good shape. I expect it to come down a little bit through the half as we crack on with our programs. And overall, we're comfortable with where the market position is, which is the GBP 26 million for the second half. Second question was around the Hays digital platform where we've made some substantial progress actually over the last 6 months. And Mark -- I'm sure Mark will take the opportunity to talk you through our ambitions, and they are considerable in that area. But we have made really good progress, which has been quite pleasing. But we are building our own technology, and that's core and fundamental to our strategy in the world of technology. We have invested over many years in our CRM system, which is our own, our candidate database, which is our own and our VMS system, which is our own. We acquired a business called 3SS many, many years ago, which is one of our -- we feel a differentiator as well. So we're building our own technology, and that's helpful because we can manage the rollout of that. It's less expensive and also upgrading it is a low risk. We have updated our CRM system and are rolling out globally. So it's live across the whole of Asia Pacific, and we'll be rolling a new instance of CRM system in the second half of the year. That gives more flexibility to embed AI agents into our workflows, and we are live across many parts of the business now with a number of those agents, which is really quite encouraging. We're seeing quite a lot of reduction in admin burden, as you would expect. So for example, the meetings application that I mentioned in the script, save about 20, 30 minutes of admin time for each individual candidate or client interview. That in itself is clearly helpful. But actually, the bigger win is the quality of structured data that we're starting to see and how we improve that data in our own arch and match algorithms. I think it's a really exciting part of the journey we're on. And I think that over time will be a key competitive advantage of how we can manage that. So really exciting stuff going on. I think there's a real opportunity to how we invest and use AI in the business, and we're really starting to bring that life and I'm really quite encouraged about it. But I know Mark will have a really good opportunity to talk about that hopefully later in the year, and we can really bring it to life with some really good examples.

Yes that makes sense I think we'll kind of to about candidates using AI to write CVs and then companies using AI to read and project CVs. You're trying to take a slightly more kind of thoughtful and data approach, which makes sense.

I think that's right, Rory. I mean we see in the world of AI is evolving quickly. But we see many opportunities to see how we can help our consultants be even more productive in how they go about their daily tasks and how we can improve data in the organization, but not just for ourselves but also for our clients as well. But at the heart of it, we still believe the human being is a really, really important part of the equation. That's ultimately why people will come to recruitment agencies to have that human contact. But it means also that we have to be ambitious in how we use AI to help our people become even better at how they do their jobs and provide even better service to our clients.

Now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Andy Grobler from BNP Paribas.

Just a couple for me, if I may. Firstly, on Temp fees, which were down year-on-year in the first half and quite a way below, I guess, where they were in fiscal '23. Can you just talk through the changes there and the extent to which that is like-for-like or whether it is driven by mix? And then secondly, in Germany, where not much seems to have changed at the beginning of the year, are you seeing any signs of activity improving as a result of the fiscal stimulus starting to work its way through into labor markets?

Thanks, Andy. I'll pick up the question first on Temp, and are we seeing any -- what are we seeing there? And are we seeing any sort of structural changes, I guess, was the key question. You can see that Temp & Contracting has continued to be more resilient across the business than Perm, as you would expect. And I think that's both the cyclical pressure is less and clients continue to want to engage and to hire on a temporary and contracting basis. But we also think it's supported by long-term megatrends in the world of work. And I think that's for us, a key part of our strategy to become greater exposed to Temp & Contracting over time as that demand continues. So you can see that in a number of our countries around the world where we're continuing today to grow strongly in Temp & Contracting. And I highlighted Spain as a really good example where we're up 32% in the first half. That is because there's a huge opportunity in that market to build a structurally bigger business in Temp & Contracting. In terms of the market forces, we're seeing relative stability from a Temp margin perspective. I think we were down about 20 basis points year-on-year. And if I look at that over maybe a 5- or 6-year period, it's been pretty stable market by market. So any real reduction we've seen in the Temp margin over time has largely been a mix effect around the group. But we've been in the sort of 14%, 15% range now for -- if I go back to 2018, 2019, we've not seen a material shift in that at all. Clearly, one of our focuses in Temp & Contracting as it is in Perm is to move up the value chain. And we continue to look at that and to drive that and to focus on higher skilled, more specialist roles, and that's a key part of our strategy. And we're getting on and executing that. And you can see the benefits of that coming through in the business as well. So whilst volumes were down in Temp & Contracting year-on-year, they were pretty stable through the half. We have some encouraging trends in Australia. Parts of the U.K. business has started to move forward on a Temp basis. And clearly, then we've added Germany with some headwinds there. But I think overall, I'll come back to Germany in your second question. Our return to work, as I mentioned on the call, was pretty solid overall with Australia and New Zealand, U.K. and Ireland slightly ahead of where we were expecting to be, Germany a little bit behind. So I'll pick up the question on Germany and are we seeing any improving trends and any evidence, I guess, of the fiscal stimulus and whether that's starting to flow through into our client behaviors. I think we've -- as I mentioned, we've had an in-line return to work in contracting. Temp is a little bit behind. Why is that? We're still seeing a soft market in Automotive, and that's the reason why our Temp business return to work is a little bit behind where we would normally expect it to be. Contracting volumes are in line. And we're still seeing the hours issue that we saw in Q2 in our January numbers and so far in February. It's a consistent theme for Q2. So we've not seen any reverse of that trend yet. When we've looked into the detail of where we see that hours weakness, it's very much concentrated in our clients in the public sector and in the construction infrastructure and energy sectors. And I look at the concentration of that, it is very much in those pockets of business, which are quite significant ones for us. We have some material clients there. It's been part of our successful pivot over time to focus on those areas because there's a lot of job creation. But it's clear that clients in that sector are holding on to capacity. And logically, that should hopefully benefit us over the longer term. I think I've said it before, I'm much more comfortable having made the placements themselves, and I'd be more concerned if the volumes were significantly lower than they are. But for now, the hours trend hasn't started to change.

[Operator Instructions] We're going to take our next question. And it comes from the line of Karl Green from RBC Capital Markets.

Two questions from me. Firstly, just on France profitability, which I think you said was still loss-making in the first half. Can you indicate roughly what level of incremental fees would get you back to breakeven in that market with the current kind of run rate cost base? That would be helpful. And then secondly, just in terms of the four country exits in recent months, I appreciate they're going to be pretty small, but can you indicate roughly what the combined fees of those countries were? And is it fair to assume that collectively, they were loss-making?

Thanks, Karl. I'll pick up the question on France first. So in the first half, we lost about GBP 3.5 million in France, and that was before any allocation of central overhead. So it gives you a sort of a feel for where we are. Now the cost base has come down through the first half, as you would expect, as we've cracked on and done plenty of work in bringing the cost base down both in the front office areas and in the back office areas. And we still got stuff going on there, and we've still got actions on the ground now, which will benefit us further through the second half of the year. So it gives you a feel for what the gap is from a P&L perspective. I'd like to say that gap is slightly lower than GBP 3.5 million now because of the cost save measures that we've done. But it's relatively -- it's been a disappointing first half. I do think we're going to have a better second half of the year, and our ambition is to be back into a breakeven position in our Q4. Hopefully, that gives you a feel for what's going on in France. I think your second question was around our businesses that we closed. And the businesses that we closed in the last few months were in Chile and in Colombia, they closed back in July. And then we closed our businesses in Mexico in January and in Thailand was in December. I think if you look at those overall, they're relatively small businesses, as you mentioned, Karl, in aggregate, they are around about GBP 7 million or so of net fees per annum, so pretty small. So not huge businesses, but they're still part of the broader perimeter. And I think we've done an awful lot of work trying to understand the market dynamics and 95% of the world's specialist recruitment market is addressable in around 20 to 21 countries. So -- and we are in those. And so the smaller perimeter, where certainly we don't see a huge long-term opportunity, each of those businesses was loss-making and not contributing overall. So we felt it was the right thing to do to refocus the business on the core, and we'll continue to review that portfolio going forward.

Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to James Hilton for any closing remarks.

I'd like to thank you all again for joining us this morning. We look forward to speaking to you next at our Q3 results on the 16th of April. Should anyone have any follow-up questions, myself, Kean and Prash will be available for the rest of today, and we look forward to seeing our investors over the next couple of weeks. Thank you.

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