PageGroup plc (PAGE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's PageGroup Full Year 2020 Preliminary Announcement Call. My name is Jordan, and I'll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I'm now going to hand over to Steve Ingham, CEO, to begin. Steve, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PageGroup's 2020 Full Year Results Presentation. I'm Steve Ingham, Chief Executive Officer. And on the call with me is Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get into the main part of the presentation, I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank all our staff again for their significant sacrifices during 2020, and the resilience and loyalty they showed throughout a very challenging year. Kelvin will now present the headline numbers and a financial review before handing back to me for an update on our strategic progress and a summary and outlook.

Thank you, Steve. Although I will not read it through, I'd just like to make reference to the legal formalities that are covered in the cautionary statements in the appendix of this presentation and which will also be available on our website following the call. 2020 was an exceptionally challenging year, with all of our regions impacted significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the group delivered gross profit of GBP 610.2 million in the year, a decline in constant currencies of 28.1% and 28.7% in reported rates. Our operating profit for the year fell to GBP 17 million, down from GBP 146.7 million in 2019. This represented a decline of 90.1% in constant currencies. Our conversion rate was 2.8%, a reduction from 17.1% in the prior year. This was due to the challenging conditions seen across all of our markets as well as our strategy of investing in and protecting our trading platform. Earnings per share decreased to minus 1.8% -- 1.8p per share, sorry, as a result of the reduction in profit due to the pandemic as well as an increase in the effective tax rate to 136.9%, which I will expand on later in the presentation. We ended the year with a strong financial position with net cash of GBP 166 million, an increase of GBP 68.2 million compared to the end of 2019. This increase was due primarily to the unwinding of our debtor book, the deferral of around GBP 11 million in tax payments and a strong focus on cash collection. Total group headcount decreased by 1,004 in the year to close at 6,694. I will now take you through the financial review. In line with our strategy of investing in and protecting our platform, while gross profit was down 28% for the year, we chose to reduce our fee earner headcount at a slower rate, down 15%. We reduced our fee earner headcount initially by 531 in Q2. Most have only recently joined the group and therefore, had very limited experience, poor on performance reviews. During the second half, we chose to invest in the business, adding around 400 experienced fee earners. This additional headcount was primarily into our strategic areas in investment, in technology, health care and life sciences and technical disciplines and contracting as well as those areas which were more resilient. These investments meant that our fee earner headcount reduced sort of [ slightly too, down 247 ]. This fee earner headcount and gross profit chart shows the unprecedented scale of the decline in group gross profit in Q2 and the comparison to the global financial crisis in 2008. It also shows the recovery seen in the second half as well as headcount stabilizing. Quarterly gross profit, due to the pandemic, fell 42% from GBP 205.6 million in Q4 2019 to GBP 118.3 million in Q2 2020. As activity levels started to improve, this increased to GBP 143.5 million in Q3 and to GBP 165.5 million in Q4. The decline during the GFC was similar in magnitude but over a longer period, down 45% over the 4 quarters. Overall, the group's operating profit was GBP 17 million, a decline in constant currency of 90.1%. Our conversion rate decreased by 14.3 percentage points to 2.8%, the result of both the sharp decline in gross profit due to the pandemic and our strategy of investing in and protecting our platform. Conversion rates in the Americas and the U.K. were the most heavily impacted, with EMEA and Asia Pacific more resilient. Looking at each of our regions and starting with the largest, EMEA, where gross profit declined 24.4%. This region was the most resilient, and as such, it had the highest conversion rate in the group at 9.6%. In Asia Pacific, gross profit declined by 25.1%, and our conversion rate fell by 9 percentage points to 3.1%. In addition to the impact of COVID-19, trading conditions in Hong Kong were also impacted by social unrest. Trading conditions in the region improved as the year progressed, with growth in Mainland China and Japan of 15% and 26%, respectively, in December. In the Americas, gross profit declined 31.4%. And due to our strategy of protecting our platform in these 2 large high-potential markets in the region, our conversion rate fell 21.8 percentage points to minus 7.9%. The Americas was badly impacted by the pandemic with little government support availability in Latin America and also political uncertainty and social unrest in the U.S. Finally, the U.K. was impacted significantly by the pandemic as well as Brexit-related uncertainty. Gross profit reduced by 40%, which impacted our conversion rate by 25.6 percentage points to minus 12.8%. The tax charge for the year was GBP 21.3 million, down from GBP 40.8 million in 2019. This represented an effective tax rate of 136.9%, a significant increase from 28.3% in 2019. Given the sharp drop in profits, movements in the tax charge have had a disproportionate impact on the 2020 tax rate. The effective tax rate is higher than the U.K. rate of 19% due primarily to having generated profits from overseas countries, which had higher tax rates and also additional taxes on profits such as CVAE in France and U.S. state taxes, which collectively increased the tax rate in 2020 by 61.7%. Losses arose in the year, which we could not recognize due to the requirement to have profits against which to offset in the foreseeable future but as assets where it is not probable that there will be sufficient profits available to support their recovery. This increased the rates by 22.3%. Disallowable and other permanent differences, together with one-off adjustments in respect to prior periods, increased the rate by 33.9%. These factors add to the basic U.K. rate of 19% to give the total effective tax rate of 136.9%. We expect the tax rate to return to pre-COVID levels of around 27% to 28% in the medium term. The most significant item in our balance sheet was trade and other receivables, which decreased by GBP 115 million due primarily to the unwinding of our debtor book as a consequence of the lower trading activity due to the pandemic. This was a fairly even split between permanent and temporary recruitment debtors. As a consequence of this, the deferral of GBP 11 million of tax payments and a strong focus on cash collection, net cash increased from GBP 97.8 million to GBP 166 million. Overall, net assets decreased by GBP 8.5 million to GBP 315.9 million. This slide shows the key movements in our cash through the year. Our EBITDA inflow was GBP 84.3 million, a decrease of GBP 125.6 million from 2019 and due mainly to the lower profitability as a consequence of the pandemic. Working capital decreased by GBP 84.6 million while tax and net interest paid decreased from GBP 37.4 million in 2019 to GBP 31.6 million. Net capital expenditure was GBP 21.7 million, down from GBP 24.6 million in 2019 with spending on software broadly flat and related primarily to the continued rollout of Customer Connect, our new operating system. Staying on property, plant and equipment, decreased in the year with no significant office moves and a lower headcount. The lower share price in 2020 resulted in a decrease in cash receipts from employees exercising share options, adding just GBP 0.4 million to our net cash position. This was a decrease from the GBP 7.2 million we received in 2019. The group also purchased shares costing GBP 14.4 million into the Employee Benefit Trust to satisfy future committed obligations under our group share plans, up from GBP 10 million in 2019. Payments made in relation to lease liabilities were broadly flat and reduced cash by GBP 39.2 million. Due to the suspension of our dividend policy, no dividend payments were made during 2020 compared to GBP 83.5 million in 2019. The overall impact of these cash flows was to increase the group's net cash position by GBP 68.2 million to GBP 166 million at the end of the year. This slide demonstrates how following the unprecedented decline in the first half, our gross profit has improved progressively each quarter since Q2. Having been impacted only a few of the group's markets during Q1, mainly in Mainland China and Hong Kong, in Q2, we felt the full impact of the pandemic across all of the group's markets. Our gross profit declined 47.6%. This sharp and unprecedented drop in gross profit meant the group was loss-making in Q2, fully eliminating the GBP 14 million of operating profit we made in Q1. In April, we reacted swiftly to reduce our cost base, requesting voluntary 20% salary reductions for 450 of our senior management as well as moving a number of other employees onto 4-day working weeks. We used government support schemes where available as well as taking other actions such as on our candidate and client entertaining spend and travel to reduce our cost base. While we expected the cash dynamics of our business model would react as in previous downturns, we still moved swiftly to secure covenant holidays for our borrowing facilities and received approval for a GBP 300 million borrowing facility under the U.K. CCFF. As can be seen in this chart, during Q2, our cash balance had risen reassuringly to GBP 156 million, and our gross profit growth rate had started to recover from its low in April of minus 49%. Against this backdrop, we returned all our people to full pay and full-time working in July, topped up those on furlough to full salary and progressively returned them to the business. This increase in our cost base was broadly offset by continued improvement in our gross profit growth rate to minus 31.9% in Q3, and we remained broadly breakeven. In Q4, this trend continued. And with gross profit down 20.2%, we generated a profit of GBP 14.9 million. We ended 2020 in a profitable position with net cash of GBP 166 million. Given this pattern in our profitability and cash position during 2020, we remain comfortable that accessing furlough funds was the right thing to do and achieved its aim of ensuring we retain staff that we would not otherwise have done. However, with our current position of strong net cash and monthly profitability, we will repay the GBP 3.4 million of furlough income received in the U.K. Additionally, we anticipate the return to staff bonus payments in 2021, and we'll seek to restart our policy of shareholder returns as market conditions improve and visibility returns. I will now hand you over to Steve for a strategic review and a summary.

Thank you, Kelvin. I'll now take you through an update on our strategic progress. Our new operating system, Customer Connect, is a single-instance cloud-based front-office technology platform that ensures we drive growth and support innovation. The data-driven platform delivers a modern user experience, making it easy to engage with our customers at every opportunity to drive productivity. Customer Connect is based on the Salesforce platform, allowing us to fully integrate our CRM, digital and customer engagement programs, which have been tested and refined over the last 5 years. The scale of the technology manages high volumes and acts as a filter to drive quality. The integration gives our consultants full visibility of marketing activity and gives our management the detail on how this is being followed up. For our customers, we're improving their experience by managing their engagement across all touch points. This delivers personalized and relevant interactions, ensuring we're measuring our effectiveness for them. During the year, we successfully rolled out Customer Connect to around 1/3 of our fee earners while in lockdown, with further rollouts planned to cover the majority of the group in 2021. We have adopted several innovations across the group. One of our core areas of focus is the development of our data program and ensuring that it provides both operational and strategic advantage. Page Insights is a business intelligence tool that combines our internal data with global external data sources, such as government information and millions of online adverts, in an accessible format to present insight to our customers. Unique to PageGroup, it provides us with a competitive edge when engaging and delivering value-add services to our existing and new customers. Our clients want data and insights on recruitment trends to benchmark externally, understand competitive roles and identify future skills and experience evolving in their industries. The value of Page Insights extends to internal use, allowing us to incorporate fact-based analysis into our planning, identifying new market opportunities, resource allocation and reviewing revenue trends with individual customers across disciplines and sectors. During the year, we successfully rolled out Page Insights to around 60% of the group, with further rollouts planned to the remainder of the group in 2021 and 2022. To ensure we're best placed to take advantage of market opportunities as we recover, we've been hiring experienced fee earners, managers and directors from the competition. Although we've always hired some fee earners from competitors, during 2020, our recruitment drive was on a much larger scale. Following an unprecedented level of interest, this selective investment has enabled us to add around 400 experienced fee earners with an average tenure per fee earner of 4.1 years. These fee earners are already established in their recruitment career and have chosen to stay within the recruitment sector. Their previous knowledge and experience in the recruitment sector will result in a shorter time span for them to reach full productivity and adds value to our existing pool of fee earners. These hires have been largely focused in our targeted areas of investment, which have also proved more resilience in the pandemic, such as technology, health care and life sciences and contracting. During the year, we also made a senior appointment into our Page Outsourcing brand to drive our offering within RPO, MSP and project recruitment. We will continue to add further selective investments into areas and markets where we see the most potential for growth during 2021 and beyond. I'm delighted to announce 4 new appointments and several changes which I believe will strengthen the Executive Board as well as provide the right focus to ensure we achieve our vision over the coming years. Eamon Collins, previously Group Marketing Director, will move into the newly created Chief Customer Officer, or CCO, role. Consistent customer experience and relationships are key components for the success of any business. The newly created CCO role will take responsibility for improving the understanding of our customer base, how we should be adapting our approach to meet customer expectations and ultimately, driving increased value from our relationships with clients and candidates. The CCO role will retain responsibility for marketing and digital as a critical part of building customer-focused programs. To ensure we now have representation from all the group's regions on our Executive Board, the other 3 appointments are regional heads; Isabelle Bastide, Regional Managing Director for France, Spain and Portugal; Nick Kirk, Regional Managing Director for North America and the U.K.; and finally, Nicolas Béchu, Regional Managing Director for Northern and Central Europe, Italy and Turkey. Congratulations to all of them on this milestone in their careers at Page. These 3 new regional heads are in addition to our existing 2 regional heads, Patrick Hollard, Regional Managing Director for Latin America, Middle East and Africa; and Anthony Thompson, Regional Managing Director for Asia, who will now assume additional responsibility for Australia, covering all our Asia Pacific region. Oli Watson, our Chief Operating Officer, has a primary objective of driving long-term sustainable improvements to productivity, our costs and therefore, our conversion rate. His focus will be on leveraging technology, data, shared service resources and new recruiting models as well as ensuring the adoption of new innovations to enhance business performance. Finally, Gary James, our Chief People Officer, is working as a business partner to provide the information and insight through which strategic decisions can be made regarding the future shape and profitable growth of the organization. Gary will be leading the HR and talent teams to support all employees in realizing their potential through ongoing training and the creation of clear career paths. He will ensure that we maintain an inclusive and diverse culture where every individual feels engaged and recognized for the contribution that they make. We're making progress on diversity at all levels, now including the Executive Board. We believe that with this new Executive Board structure, we can move forward to achieve our vision to grow as a company to more than 10,000 people, GBP 1 billion of gross profit and GBP 250 million operating profit. 2020 has given us the opportunity to reflect on our approach to sustainability. This led us to broadening the meaning of sustainability in the group and looking more rigorously into each element of ESG. We've reflected on our hard work and achievements to date as well as looking forwards towards improving our delivery in the future. As evidenced by our cultural framework, to date, we've invested heavily in and performed particularly strongly in social sustainability. Therefore, looking first to the environmental element, we're now ready to roll out our initiatives from our larger markets to all our businesses globally. For the first time in 2020, we've offset our carbon emissions. Going forward, we aim to become carbon net zero through introducing a number of initiatives across the group, including moving from traditional electricity to renewable sources, reducing waste and, COVID aside, reducing business travel. We have set ourselves a target of achieving this in 5 years' time. We have joined the UN Global Compact. The UN Global Compact provides a framework for developing a more sustainable and responsible business. We're excited to be joining the largest corporate initiative in the world. And whilst this is an important step, it is the first in a series of initiatives to be implemented over the course of 2021. I look forward to updating you on these in the future. The 5 pillars of our culture and engagement framework aim to articulate our unique culture and values. These are supported and reinforced through various measures we put in place to monitor and report on our progress. Our purpose is to change lives for people through creating opportunity to reach potential. We're committed to providing professional success for our clients, candidates and staff, and this is underpinned by our values of making a difference, being passionate about what we do, valuing determination, working as a team while enjoying what we do. Career progression and talent development are an integral part of our approach, and we offer a clear and transparent career journey alongside the development and support needed to help our people reach their potential. The success of our diversity and inclusion agenda is demonstrated by the attainment of several awards, including The Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2020 and the Financial Times Diversity Leaders 2021 top 100. As a people business, we are focused on delivering a connected customer experience, one where our systems help us engage with clients and candidates with relevant information at the right time and in the right place to enable their recruitment journey. [Audio Gap] using various methods, including customer satisfaction surveys and the volume of repeat business. I will now finish with a summary and outlook. 2020 was an unprecedented and challenging year with all our markets impacted significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the group delivered gross profit of GBP 610.2 million in the year, a decline in constant currencies of 28.1%. Our operating profit for the year fell to GBP 17 million, a conversion rate of 2.8%. Our fee earner headcount fell by 882 in the year, a reduction of 14.6%. We have, however, continued to invest in our business model with approaching 400 experienced fee earners added to the group during the year. We've also continued to invest in our new operating system, Customer Connect, and innovations such as Page Insights. We ended the year with a strong balance sheet and net cash of GBP 166 million. During the year, we suspended our dividend policy due to the increased uncertainty caused by the pandemic. We will continue to monitor our cash position and the trading outlook in 2021, and we'll restart our dividend policy when forward visibility and financial stability return. Due to our strong cash position and profitable current trading, the group will repay the U.K. government the GBP 3.4 million of furlough income that it received during 2020. As we enter 2021, there remains a high degree of uncertainty in many of our markets, with COVID-19 still a significant global issue and a number of the group's markets still in lockdown. We remain confident in our strategy of maintaining our platform and continuing to invest selectively in headcount as well as continuing to roll out new technology and innovation. We're the clear leader in many of our markets with a highly experienced senior management team, which we believe positions us well to take advantage of opportunities to grow and improve our business. We have maintained our focus on our long-term vision for the group to drive progress towards our strategic goals. Now that concludes the formal presentation this morning. So be happy to take any questions that you may have.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Kate Fan of Credit Suisse.

This is Kate from Credit Suisse. I'm stepping in for Andy Grobler. So just 1 question from us. Can you quantify the savings from the 20% salary sacrifice, please?

Yes, that will come across to me. The 20% salary sacrifice, together with the other measures, dropped our cost base by roughly GBP 10 million a month. So our cost base coming into Q2, in sort of January, February, March was about GBP 50 million a month. That dropped down to about GBP 40 million for Q2. Within that, the salary sacrifice wasn't the biggest part of it. It was probably about GBP 1.5 million of the GBP 10 million savings with various different furlough schemes being a larger part, probably around GBP 3 million. The reduction in travel was about GBP 1 million. The reduction in clients and candidate entertaining was about GBP 1 million.

Our next question comes from Rory McKenzie of UBS.

Can you hear me?

Yes, now.

Great. Yes, I have 2 questions from me, please. Firstly, just following up on that point on the cost base. How should we think about it sequentially H2 into H1? You mentioned obviously that -- both points there, more broadly on kind of headcount and the plans to reinvest. When do you think you'll be back into headcount growth? And then secondly, I appreciate it's still very early in the year, and January and February are quite limited for you guys. But what's the sense of the current momentum across your markets as you look at the world today?

I can take the cost base one maybe again. We released down about 5% -- GBP 5 million on the cost base in Q4. So that's on the March cost base. So our cost base is running at around GBP 45 million and has opened up that way coming into 2021. We're down 15%, if you like, in terms of fee earner headcount, and that's not dissimilar in the operational side -- on the nonoperational side. I think we'll have to see how quickly things open up, how quickly productivity recovers, as to how quickly we want to put headcount back into the business. And it is going to be a balance this year of trying to ensure that we go for growth where it's available but also that we manage to get some conversion rate and profitability back into the business. So I suspect it would be probably later on in the year that we have to make that decision more aggressively. Albeit as you saw in the second half of last year, we did add 400 experienced hires into the business, into those areas that we're particularly looking to exploit. So the underlying cost base opened up at around GBP 45 million a month. I hope it goes up as we put headcount in later during the year. Steve?

Yes. I'd add to that. I mean the majority of people that left our business last year were very inexperienced consultants, often whom had actually never even made a fee in our business. So they just joined, and we really felt that we probably couldn't give them the level of support they'd need to perform well and talk to our customers, candidates and clients while working from home. The majority of those have left the business obviously and -- going into this year. So what we're seeing now is some attrition from those who perhaps have a little bit more experience in recruitment but found last year pretty challenging. It's a tough job at the best of times. But last year probably made it that much tougher for most people, and some have selectively chosen to get back out of the industry. However, I would expect to see our headcount stabilizing probably in the first quarter. And in 1 or 2 places where we're growing, which we've mentioned, I can see us already investing in new heads. So if anything, I would see a small climb in Q1, and then probably increases related to what trading we see in Q2, Q3 and Q4. In terms of the trading, I'm glad you asked that, Rory. Usually, you're the first. I doubt you'll be the last to ask us what our trading was over the first 2 months of the year. And we are very reluctant. It's my fifth -- 15th, I was working out prelims announcement, and I've never failed to be asked on what the trading is in the 2 smallest months of the year, January and February. So if I could just surmise per se. We're not going to give monthly trading updates, and we will be giving a quarterly trading up early in April. In the last 6 months of last year, we saw a steady improvement month-on-month when comparing our business to 2019. We haven't seen anything substantially different this year either. And we continue to compare our performance to 2019 because I realize that particularly as we enter March and April and so on, clearly comparing our numbers to 2020, I would hope we would go into growth. But I think more relevant to us internally is to measure our business against our most successful year, 2019.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Anvesh Agrawal of Morgan Stanley.

I just got 3 questions. First, you have given the quarterly profit growth bridge. And does the Q4 number of GBP 15 million of operating profit involve any furlough benefits? Or that's sort of a cleaner number? And then just on the tax rate, you've obviously written off some deferred tax losses. I just wanted to check whether they have all been charged to the tax line or there has been any adverse impact on the OpEx or therefore, your operating profit. And then finally, Kelvin, you've partially answered this, but given you have already added 400 free earners, at least at the start of the recovery, can we assume that whenever the growth comes back, the drop-through can be pretty material as you probably do not need to reinvest back as much as you probably would have done in any of the normal sort of recovery?

Let me -- I'll answer the first 2. And also the vast majority of all of the furloughs that we received was in Q2 last year. We progressively brought people back in Europe. Pretty much everybody was back by the end of Q2. In the U.K., they were progressively brought back. But I think the last time we had people on furlough in the U.K. would have been probably August last year. The same would be the case really in the U.S. I believe there's a very, very small amount of government assistance that we've got coming out of Hong Kong and Singapore that's likely to finish up in the next coming weeks. But for all intents and purposes, there was very, very little furlough income in the second half last year and immaterial amounts this year. On the tax line, the only distortion to any of our numbers outside of the tax line was a reduction of GBP 2 million in the transfer pricing provision, of which GBP 1 million sat within the trading operating profit. That's as a result of having to move provisions for penalties and fines out of the tax line, which happened a couple of years back. And so therefore, there was a credit of GBP 1 million that came through the operating profit line. Other than that, there was no differences and no changes. Steve, do you want to talk to the 400?

Sure. I mean you're absolutely right. We do not expect to have to invest as much as we have in previous recoveries because in previous downturns, such as the GFC, our headcount was lowered more aggressively than we did this time. We chose, this time, to stand by the majority of our experienced platform. So those that were producing full productivity before the pandemic are largely with us today, plus 400. So the people that we lost, on the whole, were very -- less-productive or even zero-productive people. And so we will be able to absorb a substantial amount of the recovery without having to invest significantly in headcount. That said, in 1 or 2 of our markets, as you saw, at the end of last year and going into this year, we have moved into significant growth in some markets, not many yet. Hopefully, things will continue to improve throughout the year. And in those, in some cases, we're up to productivity, and we're now performing at record levels. So Japan, for example, India finished in that way. So therefore, we will have to invest in some headcount in selective areas.

[Operator Instructions] We have no further -- we just received a question from Edward Donahue of One Investments.

Just on the last one. Just a couple, going back to the press statement. You talk about normally gain market share in downturns. Do you anticipate that this is a "normal situation" that you would actually be taking market share? And if so, where would you expect that to be? And then the other one was with regard to the comments with regard to pricing being relatively stable, even albeit some soft spots. What are you seeing with regard to discussions with clients going forward now with regard to pricing? And have any of those softer areas, as one now hopefully gets to an exit road map, have changed in discussion and tone with regard to pricing?

Yes. I'll take the pricing one. I mean yes, we did. And you don't expect it in difficult times. Clients obviously try to negotiate hard. But actually, due to the sharpness of the downturn, we didn't see a significant softening in our pricing last year. So you're talking about roughly 5% of the fee drop that we saw between -- across temp and perm. Look, I can only speak from past experiences of downturns. This is -- what we saw was not unusual. And equally, as we recover, it's not unusual as well that we will recover that -- those fee rates quite quickly. The majority of our business is spot-priced. So it's not like we are signing up to long-term deals where we're stuck with low fee rates or whatever, over a 1-, 5-, whatever-year period. Invariably, we get a job to fill. We negotiate fee rates, which, of course, negotiating in April last year would have probably been tough for some consultants. But going forward, as hopefully markets pick up, we'll gain that back. So I have no concern on the first question. Kelvin?

Yes. The only thing I would add to that question before I go on to the next one is that we did come into this very candidate-short across many, many markets. And that remains the case. It remains the case that a lot of candidates to date have felt uncomfortable changing jobs. And therefore, if you wanted to lever those candidates out of the jobs that they're comfortable in, you're going to have to pay a decent salary, and you're not going to haggle over the rates. So I think that also reflects Steve's point that we haven't really seen much downward pressure on pricing. Market share -- the market share question is always a difficult one to empirically evidence because the massively differentiated nature of recruitment. However, I think the answer is probably that all of the big players have done pretty well. I don't see us taking huge amounts of market share of the bigger players. But what's been evidenced, you can see it through liquidation reports and the like that a lot of the smaller suppliers, the boutiques and around what -- have gone back, let go of their people or have downsized dramatically. And therefore, actually, I think we've seen a market share gain in that area in terms of both picking up market share that they would previously have occupied. And certainly, we'd have seen a flight to quality, particularly around temps who are keen to ensure that, at the end of the day, once they finish work, they get paid. So I think that's probably more judgmental than quantitative. But yes, we expect to have picked up market share. And I would expect that, that will be in most of our markets, probably more so in the emerging markets, Latin America, Asia than it would be in maybe the U.K. But even within the U.K., we know from some of the experienced hires that we've made, what trouble some of the smaller businesses are in. And most of those people came from boutiques. So yes, I think when everything is sort of sorted out, we come out of the pandemic and things recover, I feel we'll be in a very healthy position across pretty much all of our markets.

Okay. And then if I can just ask you a little bit more color with regard to the statement with regard to -- out of the U.K. sort of, in a nutshell, greater clarity. What does that actually mean, I mean tangibly? Does that mean mandates that you had that maybe have sort of been suspended have now been reactivated? Are you seeing more candidate positive thinking and possible flexibility or mandate awards coming through? I'm just trying to understand. And also why particularly the U.K.? And are there any other sort of KPIs that you could point to other markets or other business lines that you're seeing a change in activity or amplitude?

Look as -- I'll try to answer that. I mean first of all, there are literally tens of thousands of competitors in the U.K. It's one of the most developed markets in the world. But that is echoed today, increasingly in other markets as well, Australia, large parts of Europe, the U.S. We have lots of competitors, many of which, and I'm talking about, again, thousands of competitors who are less than 10-people big. So it's very, very difficult to measure these businesses accurately and give you a sort of accurate measure of market shares and so on. But we have seen reported liquidations, particularly in the U.K. because there's a lot of data on this of liquidations of some of those businesses. And again, as Kelvin said, a lot of evidence talking to our -- the hires that we've made, that a lot of those businesses, which are often dependent on 1 or 2 very high billers, have lost those billers, in some cases to us, and it will be more and more difficult for them to operate going forward. What we're seeing is an increase in candidate and client confidence, both are important. In the U.K., partly to do with Brexit and finally, a decision being made there, which has been going on for 4 years. And also, clearly, an improvement in outlook as the vaccination program gets rolled out. And I think as a result, as I always say, it takes two to tango. We've got candidate confidence improving. So candidates -- our target market are people typically in their mid-20s, mid-30s, and they have -- they are quite judgmental, and they will be looking at the last 12 months and going how was it treated, how was I communicated with, did I like the way that my company reacted, am I pleased to be in this sector I'm in, et cetera, et cetera. And if they're not, they do something about it. And in the majority of our markets, we have full employment. So if they decide to do something about it and move jobs, they create a vacancy. Most vacancies, particularly after 4 years of Brexit indecision, frankly, most jobs are necessary jobs. So when somebody resigns, that creates a hole that has to be filled. And with increasing client confidence, that's exactly what's happening. And what we're finding is that the clients are coming to us. We seem to be in less competitive situations than we were before. And so we're winning a healthy level of business. So we're seeing a steady improvement. That's reflected in other markets to varying degree. Strangely, I mentioned India earlier. Clearly, it's -- we've read in the press how difficult the pandemic has been in India. And yet -- and we haven't been in our offices for 12 months, anywhere, in all 3 offices. And yet, we're seeing healthy and, again, comparing to 2019, which was a record year for our Indian business, we're seeing healthy year-on-year growth for 2019. So again, it's not easy to explain. It's not just about vaccination programs and case numbers and death numbers, unfortunately, going down or up. It sometimes is businesses are just having to get on with life. And likewise, candidates now are saying, okay, I wasn't going to look for a job in the middle of April last year. But yes, I've made the decision now, I'm going to do something about it. And so we're seeing gradual, as we stated in the last 6 months of last year, improvement month-on-month as we recover.

Okay. I'm sorry, while I got you, I'm going to keep asking. With regard, just -- this is the last one, actually. With regard to the U.S., where there has been -- in some ways, it seems slightly counterintuitive looking at the commentary from other companies as -- which would be potential customers. On the construction side, there's been quite a lot of friction through '20. I mean are you seeing any change in activity on the basis and maybe the political uncertainties being removed there going forward?

Yes, we've had battles with weather as well. I would add because it was somewhat strange in Houston to have weather we -- like we had. And so yes. There have been some challenges, as you say, politically. There's been some challenges with the pandemic and how that was handled or not. And we are now starting to see some evidence of that stabilizing. Construction is our biggest discipline in the U.S. We are seeing construction sites largely now open. And invariably, a lot of the sort of construction project where we work is very much about a project defined in time line, et cetera, et cetera. And so therefore, if the lights are back on, that construction site's open and they're going to build that hospital or whatever it is, then they need a project director now and quickly because the clock's ticking. So yes, we are starting to see recovery in that market.

We have no further questions on the phone line, so I'll hand back.

Thank you. Well, as there are no further questions, thank you all for joining us this morning. Our next update, which will be our first quarter 2021 trading update, will be on the 14th of April. Thank you, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.