Hello, and welcome to the Randstad First- Quarter Results 2022. My name is Josh, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Sander van 't Noordende, CEO, and Henry Schirmer, CFO, to begin. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Josh, for that introduction. Good morning, everybody. I'm here with Henry and, of course, with Bisera and Akshay from Investor Relations. It's great to be here as Randstad CEO and share our Q1 results with you. We've had a strong start to the year, continuing the momentum from last year, with group revenue up 15%, EBITDA of EUR 286 million, and gross margin of 20.5%, up 130 basis points on the same period last year. Our market leading growth was broad-based across geographies and segments. We saw record high perm and RPO activity levels while staffing revenue continued its strong momentum. Our strong margin performance reflects the positive contribution from both value-based pricing and the mix of services we have provided to our clients.
However, the job market remains tight, which means Randstad is able to embed its position as a strategic talent partner for more and more clients. This is driven by our digital investments and access to data, all of which have given us strong capabilities to anticipate the needs of our clients across geographies and industries. It's a very dynamic and therefore exciting market for Randstad. These days we see three important trends in the world of work. Let's start with our clients. Clients want more value, more solutions, and ultimately for us to be an even better team. Second, as I say, the world's becoming talent-led. With ever-increasing scarcity, the diversity of Randstad and our talent remains a priority for our clients. Talent is now the number one issue on every CEO's list, and personalized engagement will be the name of the game.
Third, the world's going digital. This is all about digital engagement, leveraging data and AI, and of course, about seamless business processes. The expectations of our talents and clients are high, and they transcend industry boundaries. I would like to highlight that we continue to see strong demand across geographies from clients and talent alike. We believe that our broad range of services, global footprint, and continued investment in their digital capabilities position us to benefit from the structural drivers underpinning the labor market. While we are in an unprecedented macro environment, we have an over 60-year track record of successfully adapting to volatility. Our diverse portfolio, strong and experienced management teams, and operational flexibility position us very well to respond quickly and effectively to changing market conditions. I'm delighted to have joined this formidable company whose culture and values strongly correlate with my own.
I joined Randstad because I could see it's a company that puts people at the heart of everything it does. A great example of this culture in action has been our response to the terrible war in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis it has created in the region. We are committed to support Ukrainian refugees to find work in their host countries and have mobilized colleagues throughout the region to provide guidance and advice. I'm very proud of the work we are doing here, and I hope we can help many thousands of people through such a difficult period. Of course, our thoughts remain with those affected. Randstad is about helping people to make progress, and that's what I am passionate about. I'm humbled, honored, and excited to be your CEO.
First of all, I'm humbled to step into the shoes of our founder, Frits Goldschmeding. Second, I'm honored to lead such a great team, a team that has given me the warmest possible welcome over the past couple of months. I'm absolutely excited as I see so many opportunities to do an even better job for our clients and talent. I think we have a great future ahead of us, and I will continue to listen and learn in the coming period. Before I pass on to Henry, I want to take the opportunity to thank him for getting me up to speed and across the business so quickly. I already feel we're working closely as a team and I look forward to the future. Over to you, Henry.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Sander. Yeah, good morning, everybody. Of course, very excited to report back on yet another strong set of numbers. However, let me start with walking you through the performance of our key regions first. Let me start with North America, which delivered strong growth of 13% year-over-year. Perm almost doubled in revenue as it continued to reach record levels, especially in the IT professionals space. Our U.S. staffing and in-house grew 9% year-over-year with the staffing business performing well across all sectors. Talent scarcity is definitely a factor in the market, but we are fully utilizing our inside engines to identify the right talent by making sure that our pricing appropriately reflects the extra effort involved.
Our U.S. professionals continued their strong run with 16% growth year-over-year, performing especially well in our science, tech, engineering and math business. We are also progressing well with our Cella integration and also enjoying double-digit growth in the quarter. Canada grew 28% in quarter one in a pretty similar landscape as compared to the U.S. In Canada, our perm and in-house business continues to perform strongly, mainly as a result of our focused investments in accelerated activity-based field steering. The North American EBITDA margin showed up very strongly with 6.3%, up 250 basis points compared to last year. Moving on to France, which continues its market outperformance with organic revenue up 12% year-over-year. We saw good momentum throughout the quarter, despite higher COVID-related sickness and supply chain disruptions.
In addition, perm continues to perform well, up 13% year-over-year, mainly driven by our professionals business. Our French staffing and in-house business was up 11% as we saw strong demand across logistics and manufacturing in particular. The French professionals business continued to perform strongly up 16%, mainly driven by our healthcare business. In addition, Ausy delivered a strong profitability as it improved its utilization despite high sickness rates. We ended the quarter with a strong EBITDA margin at 5.3%, up 50 basis points year-over-year, balancing top and bottom line very well. A final note on France. Last week, we announced our intention to acquire Side, a specialist in online recruitment, offering digital staffing solutions to over 2,000 customers with 300,000 active candidates, primarily in the logistics, trade, and service sectors.
Let me move on to slide 8. The Netherlands also yet again delivered another strong performance in quarter 1. Revenues were up 13% year-over-year. All of our 3 flagship brands contributed to another great quarter. Perm business performed very well, up 55%, reflecting a very strong client demand and a favorable pricing climate. Staffing and in-house grew 15%, mainly in transport and distribution and new client additions in in-house. Our professionals business continued its strong performance up 8% year-over-year as utilization rates continued to improve. In the Netherlands, EBITDA margin came in strongly at 6.5%, up 10 basis points. However, we apply caution if we project those high margins into the future. Moving on to Germany on the right side of the page.
In Germany, revenue was up 12% year-over-year, so the picture was a bit mixed here. We made good progress in January and February, where growth was broad-based despite high COVID-related sickness rates and talent shortages. However, due to the war in Ukraine, Germany faced supply chain issues, specifically in the automotive industry, which of course impacted us in quite significant numbers. However, we remain cautious, cautiously optimistic that the remainder of the year will see the automotive industry recover, and with it, also our employees working in this sector. Overall, our staffing and in-house business was still up 12%. EBITDA margin for the quarter came in at 1.3%, a gradual improvement compared to last year, but still below our ambition for the country. Moving on to slide 9 to talk about Italy and Belgium.
Clearly, yet another highlight in the quarter with Italy seeing yet another excellent quarter with strong growth of 26% year-over-year and a very solid profitability. Growth continued to be broad-based. Now our perm business also continues to grow at record levels. As you probably know, Italy was a country with relatively low penetration rates, around 1.8% at the end of 2017. However, over the years, that has continued to increase, leading to a much larger and profitable Italian market with the penetration rate now standing at about 2.2% in 2022. Italy ended the quarter with an exceptionally strong EBITDA margin at 7.5%, driven by value-based pricing, more than covering some constraints stemming from COVID-related sickness rates, but also benefiting from a one-off provision release.
Belgium delivered a robust performance in the quarter with revenue up 12% year-over-year. Staffing and in-house grew by 13%, where in particular in-house saw higher demand with existing clients. In addition, we are very happy to report back that our integration of the Hudson acquisition is going very well indeed. Profitability further increased by 40 basis points year-over-year to 4.8%. Moving on to slide 10. Another highlight in the quarter is coming from Spain, also delivering another very strong quarter with revenue up 23% year-over-year. Portugal is further improving and holding its own in the quarter. With regards to the labor reform law in Spain, quarter 1 was not impacted at all.
It goes without saying that we are staying very close to the changes, and if anything, we see more opportunity than risk. The Spanish team performed very well despite higher COVID-related sickness rates and ongoing strikes in the transportation sector since February. Perm, professional, and RPO business also performed exceptionally well, with perm revenues almost doubling. We also further strengthened our portfolio in Spain by joining forces with Avanzo, an online training and development company which reinforces our position in corporate solutions for learning, reskilling, and platforms. The quarter ended with a strong EBITDA margin of 4.8%, up 40 basis points as of last year, driven by an improved business mix and stable pricing.
The rest of Europe contributed to a strong quarter with 14% growth year-over-year. The U.K. benefited from a strong firm business and reported overall growth of 19%, but also Nordics with 19% growth and Switzerland with 16% had a very strong showing in the quarter. Poland revenues were down 3% year-over-year, primarily reflecting supply chain constraints in the automotive sector. Overall, we ended the quarter with a solid EBITDA margin of 2.7%, up 80 basis points year-over-year. I would also like to take this moment to express our gratitude to all our colleagues who are doing a tremendous job in doing their utmost, going really above and beyond in providing support to Ukrainian refugees while running their local operations at the same time. Especially thanks to our Polish team. Very well done.
What you're all doing is kind of beyond words and so incredibly important. That brings me to the rest of the world on page 11, which also continues to do very well with 15% profitable growth year-over-year. Japan showed a strong performance, growing 13%, performing well across professionals and in-house. Australia and New Zealand also delivered strong growth, up 23% year-over-year. India grew 14%, continuing its successful journey, adding more and more recurring profitable businesses portfolio. Really well done. LatAm continues to contribute with strong profitable growth, and Argentina and Brazil motoring on in double digits using the RPO engine to drive an even more profitable mix. Our Mexican business is very small and declining, primarily due to the legislation change, and we are currently repositioning these activities into in-house and outsourcing.
EBITDA margin for this part of the portfolio was 5.3% in quarter 1. Yet again, a very significant contribution to our overall result, demonstrating the power of a broad-based, diversified set of businesses adding to the success of Randstad. Last, but certainly not least, also our global business added to the success of the quarter, reporting 30% growth year-over-year. Main driver here is certainly our very strong Randstad Sourceright business, with 40% accretive profitable revenue growth in the quarter. Within that, RPO more than doubled in size to EUR 98 million. Given the mechanics of the P&L, a very significant part of sequential FTE and OpEx growth can be attributed to this business, which is accretive to the overall EBITDA margin, but comes at a significantly lower ICR. Monster continued to grow.
9% growth in the quarter, also benefiting from additional marketing investments, fueling our talent engine with additional traffic. We see encouraging returns on our marketing and IT investments, and we will continue to fine-tune this talent engine as an integral part of our talent sourcing strategy. That concludes the performance of our key geographies. I believe the numbers are speaking for itself and without exception, yet again, all parts of the portfolio contributing to market leading top and bottom line. Hence, I'm now even more excited to walk you through our group's financial performance on page 13. Right. As you have seen, the strong top and bottom line momentum continues. Revenue growth in quarter one came in at 15% year-over-year. As just mentioned, top line growth and margin progression is observed across all geographies and concepts.
Our firm business grew 63% in the quarter, and our RPO business topped the ranking table with 125% growth. Like in quarter four, we did experience some disruption triggered by ongoing COVID challenges and also had to navigate some very selective supply chain challenges, mainly in Poland and Germany, due to the war in Ukraine. Obviously, we did our best not to let it impact our business in a material way, and we'll watch it closely in the months to come. Showing up competitively in the marketplace is part of who we are, and hence, we take note that we continue to gain market share in significant parts of our portfolio. This is especially noteworthy as also reported gross margin showed up strongly, 20.5%, a 130 basis points improvement year-over-year, and 10 basis points up sequentially.
Definitely bolstered by our strong firm and RPO growth, but also supported by our ability to price appropriately for our increasingly differentiated services. As mentioned already during the last call, we are steering our OpEx line guided by three main objectives. Firstly, to fully support ongoing profitable growth momentum. Secondly, to secure appropriate firepower to digitally transform our business. Thirdly, safeguarding economies of scale showing up strongly in our bottom line. I think it's fair to state that we delivered on all three objectives yet again in quarter one. EBITDA came in at EUR 286 million at 4.3% EBITDA margin, up 60 basis points year-over-year, representing a Q1 organic incremental conversion ratio of 30%, fully in line with guidance and also covering for a strongly growing EBITDA accretive RPO business with a significantly lower ICR profile.
Integration and one-offs came in at EUR 6 million costs this quarter, and this mainly reflects some minor fine-tuning of operational structures across some geographies and integration costs from our recent acquisitions. Lastly on that page, reported effective tax rate amounted to 25.8% for the first quarter. For full year 2022, we expect ETR to be between 24% and 26%. With that, let's turn the page and look at our gross margin bridge on page 14. Here we go. Our reported gross margin came in at 20.5%, which is 130 basis points improvement year-over-year. As you can see in the graph, the temp margin had a 10 basis points positive impact despite COVID related productivity issues.
The middle blue bar reflects the margin effect of a strongly growing perm business, 60 basis points improvement year-over-year, and our perm business continued to do very well and increased by 63% year-over-year. The next bar on the right, our business reported under HR solutions improved our overall gross margin by 60 basis points year-over-year. Here, our excellent growth momentum and RPO plays a key role. Last but not least, Monster added some growth in quarter one as well to continue to fuel our talent platform with increasing talent acquisition investments. That brings me directly to the OpEx bridge on page 15. The organic OpEx came in at EUR 1,074 million, EUR 17 million higher sequentially, excluding Forex and M&A, mainly to fully support and benefit from an ongoing strong demand, but also reflecting significantly accelerated RPO growth at attractive EBITDA margins.
Of the net, 1,100 FTEs added in quarter one, a significant number of consultants have been hired to support the strong RPO and perm growth. As mentioned earlier, excellence in conversion is a non-negotiable operating principle at Randstad and requires us sailing as close to the wind as possible for the best outcome in terms of growth and profitability. With that in mind, let's now move on to cash flow and balance sheet, page 15. Free cash flow for the quarter also came in strongly at EUR 133 million, and it's purely a function of significantly improved EBITDA and a very tightly managed operating working capital. DSO was up 0.2 days sequentially at 51.8 on the last four quarters moving base, however, improved by 0.8 days year-over-year. Our ROIC trend continues to significantly improve.
We are now at 21.6%, up from 12.9% last year, reflecting the improvement over our last twelve months EBITDA. Neutralizing the favorable effect of declared dividend in the calculation, our ROIC would still be at a very solid 18%. Our balance sheet remains to be very strong, showing a EUR 240 million net cash position, and a leverage ratio of -0.2, excluding IFRS 16 accounting. As scheduled and announced at the beginning of April, we paid the regular dividend of €2.19 per share, totaling about EUR 400 million. This is not yet reflected in the quarter one net cash position, but of course, it will affect our net cash position in the second quarter. That brings me to my last chart, the conclusion and outlook on slide 17.
As you've seen, the volume momentum sustains throughout the first quarter and is broad-based across our portfolio. The development of volumes in April indicates a positive continuation of the current trend, and we do observe that the client and talent confidence remains very strong. Of course, we are carefully monitoring the macroeconomic situation and continue to stay very close to our clients and talent needs. We believe in the resiliency of our portfolio and the agility of our very experienced leadership group and all our employees around the world. Steering the business over longer periods of time towards an ICR of 40%-60% has served us very well in the past and continues to be a relevant steering principle into the future.
However, the inclusion of very dynamic, profit accretive concepts in our overall P&L will at times lead us to steering for lower overall incremental conversion rates without sacrificing our passion for productivity and value creation. The current growth momentum and composition of our portfolio is leading us to steer the business in quarter 2 towards an ICR between 25%-30%. That kind of conversion is setting us up well to continue our journey to convert dynamic market-leading top-line growth into accretive profitability and cash flow. Quarter 2, 2022 gross margin and operating expenses are both expected to be broadly in line sequentially. Lastly, I would like to mention that there will be an adverse 0.1 working day impact in quarter 2. Well, that concludes our prepared remarks. We are now looking forward to taking your questions. Back to you, Josh.
Thank you very much. If you would like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad now, please. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally and then you will be introduced into the call. That is star one on your telephone keypads now, please. Our first question comes through on the line of Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. I got three questions. First, on Netherlands. I mean, obviously the COVID revenue is gonna go away from Q2 on what it looks like. Can you quantify that, how big the impact we see? And then on the margins, why are you cautious compared to what you have done in Q1 when we look at the outlook? Second, on Italy, you sort of mentioned the penetration rates that have moved up. Is it fair to say that the structural improvement is now lapped up, and or you expect the penetration to improve further? And how big was the provision release? Finally, just on the exit rate, I mean, Germany obviously it looks like weakened in second half of March, but overall your volumes were still improving.
Which regions have accelerated in March and April?
Good morning, Anvesh. Thanks for your questions. Let me start off with the Netherlands. It's somewhere in the order of EUR 70 million in quarter one, the COVID-related work, which is pretty stable across the quarters. Frankly, we all hope for that to disappear as quickly as we possibly can. Why are we cautious with the margin? We see very high productivity rates continuing in the Netherlands. Just kind of our experience tells us that at a certain point in time, we probably can't sustain that at that high level. I wish to be surprised, but that is why we are mentioning that.
Penetration rate in Italy, we are very, very bullish in Italy as a country going forward, so therefore do not see any reason why the penetration rate should not be sustained at that level. It's very hard to say whether it should go up further because we see globally sort of 2% penetration rates. I would be cautious there. The thing underlying, we're reporting 7.5% EBITDA margin in Italy is probably close to 6.6 underlying. As far as Germany is concerned, yeah, actually, we saw very, very strong growth in automotive in January and February, and then we got a bit of a hit in March.
There are some signs to be positive that there's one certain part which was missing, but that is kind of the alternative sourcing is being arranged. We are cautiously optimistic that actually those volumes will come back to our business, but it's also not very material, to be perfectly honest.
My question is more like if Germany was declining in March and overall for the group, the trends in April indicate that the positive momentum has continued. What is the offset? I mean, which regions have accelerated in March, April or improved in March, April?
Yeah. Look, we're not talking about April. We stick to our guidance here, not speculating in April. We only talk about volume for the first two weeks. We saw that continuing, being a positive volume. I think we've been in our release, we've really very detailed. I mean, you saw Italy really motoring on Spain very, very strong. You look at the numbers, there's hardly anything not growing double digits, so it's very broad-based. Thankfully, it's easier to compensate than what we see in Germany. Germany is still growing 12%, also very, very strong.
Yeah. Maybe one comment about automotive in Germany. Yes, they have had their challenges, but they're also dealing with those challenges, meaning they're looking to produce locally, which then, in fact, turns into an opportunity for us. Because the backlogs of cars to be produced in the German automotive industry are still very high. So it's not like the world's falling apart, eh? It's more like we have a blip as an automotive industry and how we're dealing with that.
Okay. Thank you for that.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from a line of Paul Sullivan from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, everyone. Just following on from that, I don't know if you can give us a bit more color on by vertical. I mean, you talked about auto and I guess it's only a small part of your business, but general manufacturing across Europe and logistics in particular. Any sort of comments on trends there as you went through March and into April? Then looking further ahead, I mean, should we assume that the old playbook in terms of recovery ratios apply in the event of a more severe downturn? Then finally from me, Sander, I know it's early days, but any initial thoughts on how you will sort of put your mark onto Randstad's strategy and make any changes if any at all? Thank you.
Shall I be leading off with the first two? Hi, good morning, Paul. Thanks for your question. Yeah, by vertical, also they are really broad-based. I mean, you know that manufacturing is our largest block growing double digits. Transport and distribution, same, where in that category we've also our e-commerce in there. Maybe one thing to pick out, public health education, over 20% growth. Also automotive, still 14% growth overall in the numbers. It's pretty balanced across all end markets, as I must say. That is what makes us really strong. All geographies, all concepts, all customer groups in a way are performing pretty balanced, very strongly.
Yeah. On the third question, Paul, thank you for asking that. I was expecting it, of course. Let me maybe first say what I found. Let me give you a couple of first impressions from Randstad. Obviously, I've been talking to many shareholders, other stakeholders, many clients, primarily talents and leaders here at Randstad, people at Randstad. You know what I found? First of all, people, we have great people across the board in Randstad. We're a very strong team. People are all very passionate on doing what they are doing, making the matches, passionate to do the right thing. Very much oriented on client service. Clients are generally very happy, which is really important. They tell me we deliver what we promise.
In a services industry and where I come from, you know, I always say delivery is the best marketing. If you do what you promise, there will be more business. Then I would say last but not least, we have a strong culture and values, to know, to serve, to trust, balancing all interests, striving for perfection. I mean, they are ingrained in Randstad and not just in some places, but in all places. I would say that's really critical because at the end of the day, you know, the team is all we have, and the values are what differentiate us in the marketplace. Having such strong values really helps us.
The other thing I would say is we have lots of opportunities, almost too many opportunities to think of. At clients, our share of wallet at clients is definitely has room for improvement at all our clients. There's opportunity everywhere. We can do more of what we already do. In all talent segments, there are opportunities, blue collar, white collar, professionals, IT. You've seen the strong quarter with perm and RPO. Our solutions business is very strong. There are other adjacent markets that we can look at. Henry was just talking about Italy in terms of penetration rate. We're only scratching the surface in many of our markets.
Our market share in many of our markets is still, you know, still offers opportunity to grow more. There's opportunity to innovate engagement with our clients and our talents, and of course, to innovate delivery. I'd say it's a bit early to talk about new strategies because I'm still in listening mode, but I can see three very important things that we need to address over the coming period, and they are fairly straightforward. Again, I said I talked a lot to clients. They are demanding ever more value. They want us to take a more strategic approach. They want to have broader partnerships, end-to-end services. Definitely many clients talk about diversity and the diversity of the candidates and the teams we bring, and our clients are looking to innovate.
How can we innovate the end-to-end process at a more strategic level with them? Second, the world will be talent led. This is a long-term trend. This is not something because the market happens to be tight today. This is about lifelong learning and how can we build a long relationship with our talents. It's of course about meaningful, and I say seamless engagement, and it's about making sure the talents get what they are looking for. I don't want to go in too much detail, but in short, talents are looking for purpose. Do I like what the company is doing that I'm working for? Belonging, do I feel at home at this company? Flexibility, do I have the flexibility to pick my hours and location of work?
Third, the big trend, of course, I already mentioned it, is digitization. Digitization is about engagement with our clients and talents. It's about seamless business processes, and it's about data and AI. Those are the three things that we are looking at to address in our activities going forward. Stay tuned, I'd say.
Paul, I also owe you an answer to your second question, whether the old playbook is still valid. I think you're onto something. I mean, the ICR 40, 50 has been really born in a general staffing environment. Now we're adding so many valuable concepts where it's really worthwhile looking at the conversion of each of those concepts. They're getting so material in our P&L that makes this really play a big role. Also there, stay tuned. Really take it that I quoted in my remarks, our passion for conversion, our passion for profitability is could not be higher.
We make sure that whatever business we develop, that it really we have a good drop-through rate in our EBITDA and conversion to cash flow. That makes this is important to understand.
That's great. Thank you both very much.
Thanks.
Thank you very much. The next question comes from Marc Zwartsenburg from ING. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, gentlemen. I first want to come back to the ICR. Henry, you just mentioned that 40-50 was more general staffing related and now still having a high conversion is a key focus. I'm more looking to the conversion ratio as a guidance for second quarter. Is it more a matter of temporary that the mix because of the investments and speed of RPO and in-house currently still offsetting maybe the more later cycle like perm and professionals, that it's temporary lower also because the investments may be still weighing in there. With that, we should gradually see after, say, 1 or 2 more of these quarters an acceleration back to indeed the more forward 40-50%.
Am I just hearing you say maybe it might be structurally a bit lower? Can you give me a bit of a feel for how you look at that?
Yeah, Marc, I mean, by now you know me well. As CFO, you never find me really 100% satisfied with profitability. I mean, that's my job description. I think we're currently really doing an excellent job to balance top line growth and profitability. With the current growth momentum of the parts of the business and the composition of our portfolio, the guidance of 25%-30% creates a lot of value for our shareholders. At least there's enough room to also drive forward our transformation and making the business future fit. No, there's not much more to add.
Definitely we drive productivity to higher levels than we've ever seen before, rather than down.
If you're then looking to that guidance for second quarter and comparing it to Q1, you still have the top line, you still have the gross margin. Looking at OpEx, you might be, yeah, because visibility might be a bit lower, maybe the top line trend may be slowing a bit on the back of what's going on in the world. Wouldn't it then be more logical to have maybe at least a number like in Q1? What's your thinking about the OpEx impact there?
No, I don't think there's anything more to add, Mark. I think you know we are prudent operators, but I think it's very fair guidance we're giving you.
Maybe on the exit rates, I'm not sure if you mentioned them, 'cause I think someone alluded to it, but I didn't have the number. Can you give us a bit? 'Cause that will have an impact also on what the April volume trend, 'cause it's in line with what we saw in Q1. Obviously that has been some phasing from January to March. Could you give us a bit of a feel for where we start the quarter off, roughly?
Yeah. I think the best guidance you can get is that we have continuous good volume observation in the first two weeks of April. Of course, I mean, you need to plug it into the spreadsheet with comparables of quarter two last year, where we had a very strong quarter. Underlying actually the trends we see, the demands we see from clients and the numbers of matches we're making is continue to be strong. It's not very valuable to give you exit rates in the context we're operating.
Maybe a final one. Do you see any indications that the assignment periods are shortening, that maybe your visibility is getting less? 'Cause you sound quite confident when you say, well, both on the client and the talent side, there's a lot of confidence still. Is that also reflected then in seeing no difference there in terms of assignment periods, et cetera?
Yeah. No, Marc Zwartsenburg, as I said, I talk to a lot of clients and they show no sign of slowing down. Rather the opposite. They tell me we need to digitize our business. We need to deal with the supply chain challenges. We need to invest in our new factories and in other parts of our business. So I mean, the client confidence is very high. If you look at the talent confidence, you know, we have just done the Workmonitor. 75% of people is on the lookout, sort of on or has an open eye to new opportunities.
Especially if you look at some of the younger people, one-third of the younger folks in the workplace are looking for new opportunities. Talent is definitely seeing this as an opportunity to make a move, to change career track, to get a promotion, to do something more in line with their purpose. To go to a company where they feel better belonging, or where they can work more flexibly, or all of the above. You know, talent is looking at this as an opportunity to get closer to what it is that they want to do.
They're more easily persuaded to move jobs now post-COVID a bit maybe.
If not proactively on the lookout.
Yeah. All right. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Marc.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Konrad Zomer from ODDO. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. If you look at the additions in corporate staff then it shows that just over half of the addition in the quarter was in global business. I think that if you look back a few quarters that the percentage of staff in global businesses is going up. Can you share with us what impact that is likely to have on the future growth and EBITDA margin of the group? Because I can imagine that scale is probably more important here than in some of your let's say traditional businesses. I was just wondering if it could have a reducing impact on the overall margins.
Yeah, no. Hi, hi Konrad. Thanks for your question. Yeah. Well observed. We have 1,100 extra people sequentially. More than half is in our global business, mainly driven by RPO, which is definitely a very margin accretive business for us. We're very, very happy with it and very keen to further grow. It's a sticky business. We have an agile cost base in there. We find that a very, very attractive growing business.
Yeah. Maybe to add to that, Konrad, corporate staff may be a little bit misleading. I mean, these are people, recruiters that work for clients. We have major contracts, generally 3-5 years, with big tech companies who wants us to hire thousands of people for them. I mean, this is absolutely exciting. You know, clients contract, they need more people, then we need more people to do the work. That's as simple as it gets.
The fact that it's decretive on a group margin basis, that is, acceptable given the scalability of this business.
No, it's not.
Okay.
No. Sorry. That's not the case. It's accretive.
Oh, it's accretive. Okay. Sorry. I misheard that. Sorry.
Yeah. No, no. It's absolutely accretive.
We are in business, eh?
Yeah. No. We're driving EBITDA margins up with it.
Right. Okay. Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Hans Pluijgers from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, all. First, a few questions on France. Still again, a good development, a slight acceleration. Could you maybe a little bit talk us through the quarter, what you saw there through the quarter and acceleration in trend? How do you believe, let's say, you behaved compared to competitors? Still a good gain in market share or do you see, let's say, competitors becoming somewhat more active there? Secondly, on you indicated in the U.S. that you saw that candidate shortage really started to kick in, having an impact. How do you see that reflected? Do you see, let's say, more in the assignment periods becoming shorter or time to hire or wage inflation pick up? Could you maybe give some feeling on that?
Then last, my question in general on wage inflation, how do you see it develop? From, let's say, the total increase in organic sales, which part was driven by wage inflation? In general, what do you see, let's say, the trend in price? In previous quarters, you gave some indication that the price was intended to be stable. How do you see that in Q1? There's no remark on that in the press release, or at least I missed it.
We'll go, Hans. Thanks for the question. Let me start off with France. We're very proud of our French team. They're doing very well in the market overall, also competitively. There's no reason for us to believe that it should abate. Really driving productivity up, which of course I have a big interest in, we all have. But it's also very balanced. Also, by the way, they also had a bit of an automotive impact. We didn't mention it because it was probably slightly lower than in what we've mentioned in Germany. In that context, they're doing very well. As far as U.S. is concerned, a super strong quarter. Not just the quarter, they're really on a roll.
They have taken all the early investments we've made and really turning that into a very, very attractive top and bottom line. You've seen the EBITDA margin coming through 6.3%. Also there, we're very proud of that performance. As far as wage inflation is concerned, yeah, I mean, I'd like to kind of stick to our statements that we see what you see. Of course, we have a little more data underlying, but U.S. is probably much closer to the market, and we see it more pronounced with Europe lagging because probably more unionized structures. Most important for us is we do successfully price for wage inflation. It comes in two buckets.
One is really just inflation part of it, but also we are successfully applying our value-based pricing tools where we price for scarcity. If it takes a little bit longer to find the talent, we also get a good fee for it. Hope that somehow is answering your question.
Well, maybe some follow-up on the U.S. I'll specifically refer to the candidate shortage remark you made. How do you see it reflected in your numbers? Could you give maybe some feeling on that? Is time to hire increasing or is the average assignment period becoming shorter? And on wage inflation, I hear what you're saying, but maybe you can give some feeling on that compared to the previous quarter. Is wage now a bigger part of your revenue growth compared to previous quarters, or is there not really material change in that in the total composition of the-
No, I don't.
wage and volume?
Yeah. No, look, I don't think we see material change sequentially in the wage inflation. It's pretty stable. We really need to be a little careful. We read a lot of high inflation numbers, which of course comes from energy prices and food prices, et cetera. We see dramatically lower numbers in wage inflation in general. How does labor scarcity come to the fore? It might sound strange, but it's why we exist. I mean, most of the people we're not bringing from an unemployed position into a job. Most of the transactions we are involved in is actually for people going kind of with internal mobility or external mobility.
There's a lot of reskilling efforts going on, and we are just in the mix and being a good partner for our clients there. The time to fill might increase a little bit in some pockets of our business, but that is well compensated by an appropriate fee we're charging for it. Overall, we are actually pleased with the current development because it makes our services hotter than they've probably been for a very long time. Okay, thanks.
Our next question comes from the line of Oscar Val Mas from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, Sander and Henry. I have two questions. The first one is going back to RPO and Sourceright. You talked about the EUR 80 million run rate in Q1. Could you just remind us how big that was in 2019? Then also to clarify, so it's accretive on EBIT margins. Could you comment on the ICR for RPO? That's the first question. The second question is, again, going back to the U.S., you talked about employee shortages. Could you just comment on the difference between professionals and the more light industrial, kind of the temp staffing. If you look at the numbers, it seems like temp staffing has also improved in Q1. Could you comment if you've seen an improvement in the, I guess, employee scarcity side in, on the industrial side in the U.S.? Thank you.
On RPO, I cannot tell you what 2019 was. We have Bisera and Akshay actually will be reaching out to you. We have very strong growth, 115%. I rather not giving you an ICR on that number, but I like to really reiterate that it's EBITDA accretive business for us. It's with good conversion, and it's also probably fair to say with an increasing size, we're getting more appetite to finding even more synergies in it. Overall, very happy with it. U.S., the scarcity, I think, my U.S. colleagues will probably have kind of an even more differentiated look at it, but we see actually scarcity across the board.
Of course, everything which starts with technology has been very, very rare and continues to do, but also now in many, many other jobs in blue collar, we see exactly the same. I think it plays into our cards because we have really, really good insights into where to find talent, how to attract them, and we find it not very, very hard to kind of find talent and matching them to jobs. No, maybe to add to that, Henry, our U.S. technologies business was growing in the mid-teens as well in Q1. That doesn't suggest any challenge or doesn't suggest challenges to find the right talent. Let me put it like that.
Great. Thank you both.
Cheers.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from a line of Thomas Truckle from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much, both. Thomas Truckle here of Jefferies, standing in for Kean Marden. I just had two questions, if I may. Obviously, earlier you commented on the impact on Germany from supply chain disruption, particularly around the automotive sector. I was wondering if you could perhaps comment on what you've been hearing, perhaps from some of your clients in those areas as to how their automotive outlook appears from here, whether there's continued supply chain disruption or if they're feeling more optimistic based on order backlogs or otherwise. My second question relates to that, but more broadly, based on the Russia-Ukraine situation, have you seen any other impact on Eastern European geographies, or is it largely centered around Germany? Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, Thomas. Thanks for the questions. Yeah, in German automotive, just to bring it back a little bit to our exposure of automotive in general. For the total group, we have a range of 5%-10%, but it's probably on the lower end of it. So it's not very, very big and growing with about 14% in there. German automotive is still at 19%, and we've seen strong growth in quarter one. It's only that the growth could have been even stronger. We have, of course, a very, very close link to the industry. We've seen that there was one particular part missing, which is the cable trees, where apparently 80% of the world's supply comes from Ukraine.
They are now all kind of scrambling to create new sources of supply, which, from what I've heard, is quite positive. We've seen some of our clients starting rehiring already. Take it with a pinch of salt. Don't want you to kind of take that as a clear victory over it. It's definitely. It feels like we've seen the low point already. I hope that was helpful, Thomas.
Yes. Thank you.
Thanks.
Okay, we have no further questions on the line. Just as a reminder, it is star one, if you would like to ask a question.
I would say if there are no further questions, let's say a big thank you to the full Randstad team across the globe for doing a great job this quarter and wrap up the call. Thank you very much. See you next time. Thank you so much, everybody.
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