Hello, and welcome to the analyst call on Randstad's third quarter 2022 results. My name is Jess, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only. However, there will be the opportunity to ask questions.
This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question at any time. If at any point you require assistance, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand over to your host, Sander van 't Noordende, CEO, to begin today's call. Thank you.
Thanks, Jess, and good morning, everyone. I'm here with Henry Bisera Grubesic and from Investor Relations, and I'm pleased to share our Q3 results with you. In the third quarter, we saw a combination of solid demand and talent scarcity. At the same time, we've seen client activity moderate slightly in some markets, reflecting the challenges that our clients faced in the current macro environment.
The good news, though, is that we are increasingly becoming a strategic partner to our clients, providing agile and flexible services to help them meet the demands of an increasingly talent-led world of work. Having said that, we have delivered another strong set of results, capturing profitable growth in in-house, professionals, perm and RPO in all geographies. Revenue growth for the quarter was 6.8%.
Our in-house business grew by 15%, professionals by 12%, perm by 23%, and RPO by 55%. Gross profit grew by 11% and we delivered an excellent gross margin of 21% in the quarter. This was driven by pricing discipline as well as the changing business mix with around 21% of gross profit generated by perm and RPO combined.
EBITDA came in at EUR 336 million for the quarter with a solid profitability of 4.8%. During the quarter, we completed the acquisition of the Finite Group, which broadens our technology proposition in Australia and New Zealand. I would like to give a warm welcome to the Finite team. Looking ahead to Q4, we are extremely vigilant about the elevated level of macroeconomic uncertainty we see in our markets.
However, we are confident in our ability to navigate the current environment and remain laser-focused on delivering for our talent and clients. I would now like to spend a few words on our vision at Randstad and our announcement on leadership changes in September.
Since joining Randstad, I spent a lot of time listening and learning from our clients, our talent, Randstad colleagues and shareholders of course. What is very clear is that the world of work is changing significantly even. COVID has accelerated this. As I've said before, it's being shaped by three key trends. First, talent scarcity has put talent firmly in the lead. Second, talent is now strategic for our clients, and they're looking for more support with their talent agenda. Third, our industry is digitizing at speed.
We are in the middle of a profound shift in how we work and the relationship between employer and employee is no longer the same. The pandemic has changed the social contract workers have with employers and expectations are for companies to provide more than a job and a paycheck. Talent wants employers to focus on meaningful work, opportunities to grow, flexibility and belonging.
Employers need to embrace this new social contract and prioritize the talent experience to ensure that they are well-placed to recruit and of course, keep the talent they need. They're looking for a trusted partner to help them navigate the working life cycle and embrace the changes required to succeed in this new world of work. For us at Randstad, this means we will put talent even more squarely at the heart of everything we do.
We have to become a talent destination so that we can be an integral partner in executing our client's talent agenda. As we look ahead, I'm convinced that there are three key aspects that will drive our future success. First, specialization is key. Clients want to talk to someone who knows about their business, and talent wants to talk to someone in their own field of specialization. In a dynamic world of work, where there are shortages across both skilled and unskilled cohorts, having a deep understanding of what our clients and talent are looking for will be critical for our future success. Second is equity. We want to be known as a company that people can trust and that gives people from all backgrounds fair opportunities. This means ensuring that our own behaviors and policies continue to meet the highest standards.
It also means we are actively looking for and developing diverse talent. We are committed to work with all pools of talent across all experiences and backgrounds so that we can serve our clients in the best possible way. Creating a wider and more diverse talent pool is a business imperative in a talent scarce world. Third is, of course, digital.
Talent and clients are expecting we are engaging with them through digital channels and delivering them through seamless processes, leveraging data. We will step up our efforts to do that at scale. To align more closely with these market dynamics, we announced changes to our executive leadership team in September. As you have seen, we have appointed Marc-Étienne Julien to Chief Talent Officer, and his role will be to make Randstad the partner of choice for global talent, enhancing relevance and effectiveness, of course, leveraging digitization.
Jesus Echevarria will be our Chief Client Delivery Officer, looking after our client offerings to ensure that our full range of services is delivered consistently throughout Randstad's global operations. Again, leveraging digital technologies. To be close to our clients, we will have six P&L leaders who will work with Chris Heutink, who will take the role of COO to drive the performance of the business, ensuring that all talent and clients enjoy a consistent and exceptional experience wherever they are in the world.
Finally, Myriam Beatove, our new CHRO, who joins us from Cargill, will focus on making Randstad an even greater place to work. Martin de Weerdt, our new CIO, who joins us from Accenture, will work on unifying our IT systems while accelerating our progress in digital and make better use of our data at scale.
By focusing on these areas, I firmly believe Randstad will increasingly be the partner of choice for both talent and clients. We will set a new standard within the industry. The direction of travel for this new leadership team is absolutely clear.
It's all about talent and about closely partnering with our clients, be they large enterprises or SMEs. Specialization, equity, and digital will be cornerstones in our approach. As ever, we will keep updating you as we continue on our journey. Let me now hand over to Henry to present the results in more detail.
Thank you, Sander. Good morning, everybody. I'm 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. North America delivered another strong quarter with growth of 6% year-over-year. Perm continued to perform strongly, especially in the IT professionals space.
The U.S. staffing and in-house grew 4% year-over-year, with the staffing business being broadly stable and in-house growing strongly, benefiting from high client retention and new wins in the marketplace. Solid demand and talent scarcity continues to be a factor in this market.
Our inside engines help driving fill rate improvements and apply utilization. It goes without saying that we ensure our pricing appropriately reflects the extra effort involved. Our U.S. professionals continued their strong performance with 8% growth year-over-year, performing especially well in sectors like technology and financial services.
Canada grew 9% in quarter three, in a pretty similar landscape as compared to the US. In Canada, our perm and IT professionals business continued to perform strongly, mainly as a result of our focused investments and accelerated activity-based field steering.
The North American EBITDA margin showed up strongly, with 6.5%, up 70 basis points compared to last year, providing an excellent return on our targeted and well-executed investments made into the more attractive parts of the market.
France continues its market outperformance with organic revenue up 9% year-over-year. Staffing and in-house business held up well, with growth of 5%. In particular, the in-house activities grew strongly in the third quarter, mainly driven by growth in automotive, agri-food, and industrial sectors. Our professionals business delivered very strong growth of 22% year-over-year, driven by healthcare, finance, and engineering.
In addition, our perm business also performed strongly, up 12% year-over-year. We ended the quarter with a solid EBITDA margin at 4.9%. Moving on now to slide 8. The Netherlands delivered another solid quarter. Revenues were stable year-over-year, despite the expected declining revenue from COVID-related activities that affected staffing in particular. On the other hand, our in-house concept performed well, mainly driven by growth in automotive, food, and logistics sectors. The Dutch perm business continued to perform very well, up 53%, benefiting from strong client demand and our ability to find talent in an increasingly talent-scarce market. Our professionals business continued its strong performance, up 15% year-over-year, as utilization rates continued to improve. The Netherlands EBITDA margin came in strongly at 5.7%, well above the group average. Now turning to Germany, which also performed very well.
Revenue was up 5% year-over-year. Perm continued to hold up strongly, up 41%. Professionals continued on their growth path and delivered a 6% growth year-over-year. Germany is on its path to structurally improve its profitability, focusing on value-based pricing and cost management. Its EBITDA margin for the quarter came in at 4.1%, a notable improvement sequentially and year-over-year. Moving on to slide 9 to talk about Italy and Belgium.
Italy revenue grew by a strong competitive 9% year-over-year, and it delivered excellent profitability, continuing to clearly benefit from targeted and also well-executed investments. Growth continued to be broad-based. Perm continued to grow up 29% year-over-year. Italy ended the quarter with a strong EBITDA margin at 6.5%, a 60 basis points increase year-over-year. Belgium delivered a resilient performance in the quarter with stable revenue year-over-year.
The staffing activities were broadly stable, and in-house performed well. Good demand and talent scarcity continues to be a factor also in this market. Throughout the quarter, our business continued to be confronted with unprecedented levels of talent scarcity. EBITDA margin came in at 5.1%. Now on to Spain, which also delivered another strong quarter, a great performance with revenue up 8% year-over-year.
Perm, in-house, professionals, and RPO business continued to perform very well in the quarter. Portugal is doing well with 10% growth in the quarter. EBITDA margin for Iberia came in strongly at 5.8%. The rest of Europe also contributed to a solid quarter with 6% growth year-over-year and improving profitability. In particular, in-house and professional concepts grew steadily in the third quarter.
The UK reported overall growth of 3%, but also Nordics with 12% growth and Switzerland with 5% did very well in the quarter. Poland showed some gradual sequential improvement in its revenue trend and ended the quarter with a decline of 1%. Overall, we ended the quarter with a solid EBITDA margin of 3.9%, 10 basis points below last year, sequentially quarter-over-quarter up 30 basis points.
That already brings me to the rest of the world on page eleven, which also continues to do very well with 9% profitable growth year-over-year. Japan showed a strong performance, growing 9%, performing well across professionals in IT and engineering and also in perm. Australia and New Zealand also delivered strong growth, up 12% year-over-year.
This quarter, we also finalized our acquisition of the Finite Group, which specializes in technology recruitment, IT consulting, and a broad array of IT and digital professional services. This acquisition will further strengthen our position as the market leader within the IT sector in Australia and New Zealand and will be a strong addition to our current service offering. India grew by 18%, continuing its successful journey, adding more and more recurring profitable business to its portfolio.
Happy Diwali to my Indian colleagues. LATAM also continues to do well. Argentina and Brazil stayed in a very good momentum, using the RPO engine to drive an even more profitable mix. EBITDA margin for this part of the portfolio was 5.1% in quarter three.
Yet again, a very significant contribution to our overall results, demonstrating the power of a broad-based, diversified set of businesses adding to the success of Randstad. Our global business has reported a strong 17% year-over-year growth on the back of a continued solid demand and talent scarcity. Main driver here is certainly our very strong Randstad Sourceright business growing 21%, reflecting a solid demand in RPO.
As San also mentioned, we are increasingly becoming the partner of choice, a strategic partner to our clients, providing agile and flexible services to help them meet the demands of a talent-led world of work. Monster continues to play its part as a very important talent sourcing engine within Randstad. Revenue was down 4% year-over-year.
However, its overall contribution to the group with regards to talent sourcing makes it a very valuable part of the Randstad family. That concludes the performance of our key geographies, and I'm now excited to walk you through our group's financial performance on page 13. Here we go. Our headline for quarter three rightfully calls out our strong performance with market-leading growth and continued margin expansion.
Revenue growth came in at 7% year-over-year, surpassing the EUR 7 billion mark for the first time in Randstad history. The staffing concept held up steadily, while in-house and professionals delivered strong growth with 15% and 12% respectively. Perm and RPO year-over-year growth rates were still very solid with 23% and 55%. Overall, the growth and profitability was delivered strongly across geographies, concepts, type of clients and industry segments.
Surely a portfolio diversification which gave us an edge in this quarter and will serve us well going forward. Gross margin reflected strongly at 21%, 110 basis points improvement year-over-year. Definitely bolstered by our strong perm and RPO growth, but also supported by our ability to price appropriately for our increasingly differentiated services. Perm and RPO jointly represents about 21% of group gross profit. Operational expenditure decreased by EUR 31 million organically sequentially, representing a continuation of our very focused and disciplined investment approach. EBITDA for the quarter came in at a record EUR 336 million with a 4.8% EBITDA margin. Integration one-off accounts for EUR 30 million costs this quarter, mainly reflecting some minor fine-tuning of operational structures across some geographies and integration costs from our recent acquisitions.
Lastly on that page, the underlying effective tax rate amounted to 25.6% for the first nine months. 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. Gross margin showed up at 21% for the quarter with a further improvement of 110 basis points year-over-year.
Also delivered broad base across concepts, geographies, and customer groups, demonstrating our ability to price appropriately for our increasingly differentiated services in an unprecedented inflationary context. Of course, also benefiting from continued strong growth in perm and RPO. Our temp margin increased by 10 basis points. Perm margin contributed forty basis points and HR solutions, including RPO, added 60 basis points gross margin increase year-over-year.
We cannot emphasize enough how much focus we put on our ability to price appropriately. Structural talent scarcity and unprecedented inflation is adding complexity not seen before in our market. The ability to navigate that complexity utilizing bespoke market insights across geographies, concepts and client groups deliver significant value for our talents and clients, which in turn shows up positively in our P&L. That gets me to our OpEx bridge on page 15.
OpEx came in at EUR 1,145 million, EUR 31 million lower sequentially, excluding Forex and M&A. OpEx as percent of revenue was down 50 basis points sequentially, mainly as a result of personal expenses decreasing by 3% in the third quarter. The average headcount number has decreased throughout the quarter, and hence the September exit rate for FTEs was below the Q3 average.
Of the net 1,220 FTEs added in quarter three, more than 50% of consultants can be attributed to high margin RPO growth alone, while the remainder was added surgically based on clear ROI expectations and applying stringent field steering principles. As mentioned earlier, excellence in field steering and conversion is a non-negotiable operating principle at Randstad.
Given the uniqueness of the current market environment, it goes without saying that we are staying extremely close to our customers and volume development. Discipline cost management, flexibility of the cost base, and the ability to act fast to new developments comes at a premium. With that in mind, let's now move on to our cash flow and balance sheet on page 16. Our free cash flow for the quarter came in at EUR 257 million.
This is a function of an improved EBITDA, offset by working capital movements and timing of tax payments. On the last nine-month basis, we've generated free cash flow of EUR 445 million, which is EUR 66 million higher year-over-year. Our DSO was 52.5, slightly up year-over-year on the last four quarters moving base. Our ROIC, return on invested capital, continues to show up strongly with 18.6%, up from 16.1% last year, reflecting the improvement over the last twelve months EBITDA and moderate increments of capital investment. Our balance sheet remains to be very strong, showing a EUR 74 million net debt position and a leverage ratio of 0.1, excluding IFRS 16. As scheduled and announced, at the beginning of October, we paid a special dividend of EUR 2.81 per share, totaling about EUR 510 million.
This will be visible in the cash flow of the next quarter. Finally, in the third quarter, we had a net cash outflow of EUR 168 million, which is related to the acquisition of the Finite Group. That already brings me to my last chart, the outlook on slide 17. Let me first start with the activity momentum. In quarter three, the total number of employees placed on a temporary basis was around 1% lower year-over-year, with the month-on-month trend remaining stable throughout the quarter.
In early October, the total number of employees working was marginally lower year-over-year. Although we remain vigilant to the elevated level of macroeconomic uncertainty we see in our markets, we are confident we can respond quickly and effectively due to our operational agility and our diverse portfolio. This brings me to our quarter four outlook.
We expect quarter four 2022 gross margin and OpEx both to be broadly in line sequentially. There will be an adverse 1.2 working day impact in quarter four. As I've mentioned earlier, we have a disciplined cost management approach and have already taken cost actions in parts of the business where customer activity is moderating. We can adapt quickly to changes in activities, as we have most recently shown during COVID. We have a highly experienced leadership team in place to demonstrate it multiple times they can navigate quickly.
We have a balanced, highly diversified business model and portfolio on concepts and geographies, and we have a strong balance sheet. That said, we use our data to navigate risk and opportunities, and at all times we stay very close to our clients and talent so that we can respond quickly to their needs.
That is how we operate, and that is what we do. Well, that concludes our prepared remarks. We are now looking forward to taking your questions. Back to you, Jess.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally as you will be advised when to ask your question. We kindly ask that you please limit yourself to two questions per person. Once your questions have been answered, you may then rejoin the queue for a follow-up. The first question comes from the line of Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Just a couple for me, please. The softening in October that you mentioned, is there any color that you can provide by country or by vertical, please? Secondly, appreciate you've given the outlook on SG&A going into Q4. Given how the number of FTEs in early October is down year-over-year, can you give us some color on how you are going to think about the SG&A in case there is a sharper slowdown than you expect? What's the impact of wage inflation on your own cost base? Thank you.
Shall I take the first one, Henry?
Yeah.
On the softening in October and more broadly in Q3, remember softening -1%. In my language, that's also flattish. Let's not. Let's use the right words. The interesting thing there is that if we look at Q3, there were no real peaks and troughs, meaning the volume development was more or less stable across all industries and countries, with the exception of automotive, which had a significant growth in Q3. It's something across the board.
Right. Let me talk about the SG&A piece. I mean, I think we've demonstrated in quarter three that we really look at our portfolio we support where it makes sense. I've used the word surgically and very stringent fee steering. That's really the name of the game. We stay very close to our clients and our opportunities and we add costs where we see a super clear return for it in the short term. Where we are in doubt, we take things out. That's how we operate. Therefore, I mean, our guidance broadly in line with is sort of that exactly.
We look at it every week at our data sets and our field steering and then we act accordingly. Should something more dramatic happen, which we're not speculating on, we have the ability to act also more. If things are sort of keeping flattish, we also find our way. Most important to take out of quarter three yet again is our ability to price. We really make a big deal out of it. We work extremely hard on it. We're using data to support our cases, and I think it's very clear now that it works.
Thank you. Just wanted to clarify. Was there any impact of wage inflation on your own cost base in Q3?
Yeah. When I look at the data, it suggests that because we've quite some renewal of workforce, that we are to a large part mitigating wage inflation in our own workforce. Of course, this will not hold water for many years to come, but we also made a big case out of it historically, but also in that case that actually our pricing in the market is stronger than what we are in a way going through with our own cost base.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Hans Pluijgers from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, all. First question on the U.S. If you look at some market data, I saw some, let's say, some slowdown through the quarter and especially towards the end of the quarter going into October. I hear what you're saying that across the board, you say the picture is relatively stable. But give maybe some additional flavor on the US, what you see there and maybe also by industry.
Then more conceptual question on the dividend policy. You indicate that you're also becoming slightly more cautious, but more in general, let's say, you still have a very low leverage ratio, so, yeah, very strong balance sheet. But how do you look, let's say, going forward? Of course, you indicated that in principle, you plan to leverage up to one times.
Let's say if the market becomes, let's say, a little bit more unclear, let's say more difficult, how do you see that leveraging up and therefore, let's say, distributing additional cash? Yeah, more conceptual. How do you look at? Could you be more cautious in case of a more difficult market, which gives maybe some feeling on that?
Yeah. Maybe a few words on the U.S., from my side. If you look, automotive in the U.S., I already called it out in general, but also definitely a strong industry in the U.S. The other ones that were strong was public health and education and all the other industries. I would also say business and IT services, but that's our professionals business. You know, our U.S. technologies business, strong performance. The other ones, I would say, your financial services, transport and distribution, manufacturing in the low single digits. That gives some industry color, Hans. The U.S. team, I mean, you've seen the numbers.
They've done a phenomenal job in growing the business, in bringing the profitability, in serving their clients and talents. I said I live in the U.S. myself, so I see it from close up. It's quite phenomenal what the team is pulling off there.
Yeah. With regards to dividend, it's actually not for me at least, not the season to talk about dividends. We put kind of all hands on deck to deliver a strong quarter four, as strong as we possibly can, and then we will look at that. In general, I just want to reiterate that we have an enormous capacity to drive value through organic growth. We also, I think, earned the right to do very good M&A, just to kind of support our organic growth. As you've probably seen now with Finite or the Cell acquisition we did. Yeah, let us talk more about dividend once we've delivered the year.
Okay. Thanks.
The next question comes from the line of Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. I got two as well. First, just going back to the beginning of the presentation you are trying to unify your IT system across the organization and leverage data. I was wondering, where are you in that journey? I mean, how much of your IT systems are unified, and are you looking for more investments going forward and the potential savings you can generate? If you can comment on that observation, please.
Yeah, very good question. Oh, sorry. You had another one, Anvesh? I was so excited to talk about this.
Maybe you want to answer that, then I can go on the second one. That's okay.
No. Anvesh, where are we in the journey? It's early days. I told you we have Martin, our new CEO. He just came on board. He is looking at the lay of the land, but the direction of travel is we cannot build a digital business on a fragmented systems landscape. That's the direction of travel. Obviously, every investment we will do in that space and in other spaces, you know, there will be a solid and clear business cases. Of course, this is also something that cannot be done overnight, but it's the direction of travel. We'll keep you posted on the developments there. It's very early days, I would say.
I mean, just to be clear on that, we're not looking for any incremental SG&A immediately because of that we need to think about?
No, not at this point in time.
All right. Just picking on the gross margin. Obviously, temp margins are up 10 basis points year-on-year. When you look at things like the mix is better, the pricing is better, which would tell that the underlying margin on the industrial temp side is probably weakening year-on-year. Is that a fair assumption?
Yeah. Look, I'm not speculating too much on what it is. We see a bit of mix. We saw big in-house growth in there, which is impacting gross margin, as you know. Also had a working day impact in there. Overall, I must say I'm very pleased with the temp margin, as it stands because that's kind of a big part of where pricing is manifested itself. Overall good.
Okay, fine. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Sylvia Barker from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, good morning. Two questions as well. First on employee cost versus employees. Can you just help us? I know that you've talked about field steering for many years, but obviously the number of employees are up sequentially by 3%. A lot of that seems to still have gone into RPOs. Can you just help us understand which higher paid positions have gone, you know, have reduced?
So I know that this is public, that you have had some U.S. tech clients and their RPO contracts, for example. So has that have an impact, a positive impact, I guess, on the employee cost reduction? It would just be helpful to get a bit more color on that movement of kind of employees up, but costs down.
On volume versus price. If I look at your staffing business, your staffing employees are down 1%, the staffing revenue is up 1%, in-house is up almost 20%. First of all, could you maybe comment on kind of staffing employee movements within in-house versus kind of on-site staffing? And then just on the price mix benefit, could you comment on how much you might be seeing in terms of wage inflation? Because the overall figures would suggest that that's maybe kind of running at mid to high single digits at the moment. I don't know how much of that might be mix.
Right. Let me first talk about kind of the cost mix we have in there. I think it's really fair to say that not just in quarter three, but over the last many quarters, I think we've seen that we are capable of exchanging kind of higher cost jobs with kind of lower cost jobs because just driven by mix where we grow, but also some of the finance strategies we have in there from where we serve our business. There's definitely a very big mix impact in there. I don't want to take it more apart. I think we're already very kind of very explicit in how we are reporting on FTEs by regions, et cetera.
I don't want to go further into detail, but I'm not surprised what I'm seeing. Let me put it like that. It's not just a quarter three thing. Do you want to take the second question? Do you want to take one of that? There was the movement. Can you just run the second question again, Sylvia?
Yeah, sure. If I look at your staffing employee numbers, they're down 1%. I guess that includes in-house as well. Maybe if you can just comment on in-house versus on-site, first of all. If I look at the number of employees versus the revenue development, it would suggest that your pricing for kind of in-house and staffing together or price plus mix is running up maybe high single digits. Just to understand kind of how much of that is wage inflation.
Yeah.
How much of that mix.
Yeah. No clear. No, thank you. I think I wouldn't really make a difference between in-house and normal staffing concept. I think what we talk about with very explicit 1% negative volume across quarter three. Flat and now we see it a touch low in the first two weeks of October. That is pretty much broad-based across concepts, staffing and the likes. You've seen that we reported 7% revenue growth with a minus 1% volume. Actually, it's predominantly price and mix driven. I would say predominantly price driven and mix plays a role, but I want to take that apart. Sylvia.
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
Other than to say maybe the in-house clients and the enterprise clients have shown to be very resilient. You know, it's a great model. We are very close to the client. We're part of the ecosystem. We are there day in, day out. It works very well.
Okay.
As we saw through COVID.
The price within the price point is maybe a little bit better.
Actually, we price as a golden rule. We price for our services wherever we operate. I've mentioned that before. We actually measure that. It's not kind of an anecdotal thing. We have a very strong data set where we continuously looking at pricing for more than 300 sales in our biggest market to convince ourselves to give evidence of how well pricing works.
Okay. Thanks very much for the color.
Thank you, Sylvia.
The next question comes from the line of Konrad Zomer from ABN AMRO ODDO. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everybody. I'd like to ask two questions as well, please. The first one, your incremental conversion ratio was 23%, down from 28% in Q2 and 30% in Q1, which is not a surprise given that your headcount was up 15% year-on-year organically, and the productivity per employee was down 4%. Where do you see this trend going? And can you remind us of your going-concern four-quarter rolling average target, please? Secondly, on your outlook, it may be just me, but I just wanted to clarify the wording you used for October compared with the wording you used for Q3.
I just wanted to check, is that basically the same development in the number of employees when you say marginally lower and when you report minus 1% for Q3? 1% to me is also marginally lower. So does that mean the same thing or are you comparing it to something else? Thank you.
Konrad, let me start by the last one. Marginally lower means in the same zone as -1%, so it's more or less the same. Take that out of the way.
Okay.
Yeah. Let me talk about ICR. Please allow me, Konrad, to take a step back. Our investment strategy over the last two to three years, you really have to look at it, delivered 1,000% excellent results. Despite COVID, our business has become much bigger, about 20% bigger in GP growth. We're much stronger, we're more diversified. We're close to 50% of our GP outside of Europe.
Of course, we are much more profitable in absolute but also in margin terms. Overall, I think we've done a very good job. The investment in the last couple of quarters largely reflects the accelerated growth of our RPO business, professionals and firm.
You've also seen we've taken cost measures in those parts where client activity is marginally lower already. It's really the way we've developed the portfolio, the impact our fee businesses have on that businesses are really. I wouldn't say make the ICR discussion obsolete, but we need to be also surgically look into where ICR discussions in line with history really makes sense, which is predominantly in the staffing part of it. Last word I want to say, please also take into account that when you have largely price-driven top line NGP, then that comes more or less as a standard conversion. To drive higher ICR conversion is relatively tough to achieve. Maybe long-winded answer for your question.
I will not give an outlook as you know. I want you to really take from that the confidence we have in our way to navigate the business, the levers we have in there, the sharpness of taking costs out where we see client activity moderating, and that's driving good results.
Okay. That's a lot to digest. I will think about it more carefully afterwards. Thank you.
Pleasure.
The next question comes from the line of Marc Zwartsenburg from ING. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everybody, and thank you for taking my questions. A bit of a follow-up on previous questions. First of all, on the price mix or let's say the price increase, which you see in the revenue line kicking in versus the volume line. Would you expect that the tailwind from the positive price mix will further accelerate in the coming quarters now that the new CLAs on with higher wage increases and also increases in minimum wages start to kick in? Would you expect more support from the price mix effect in the coming quarters? That's my first question.
Yeah. Thanks, Marc. I don't know. I'm not speculating on that one. What I know is that we will price in and with very careful taking into account what the input costs are, more or less. If inflation would run higher, we would price higher and the other way around. In a way, we are also there. We are not even scenario planning it because we're running with the confidence that whatever comes, we price for it. We price for margin, and we price when we see that the efforts required to find talent is increasing dramatically, so the time to fill. We also price for that. I think the numbers speak for themselves.
I mean, we have very, very strong gross margin showing up. EBITDA is looking good against the backdrop of -1% volume. I think it's not more complicated than that.
Okay. No, that's clear. Then maybe another one, a bit on the outlook, but also a bit feeling the water. The trend through the quarter was stable. We see October, as Sander also indicated, still marginally down year-on-year. I can imagine that some sectors, and we've discussed a few in the U.S., are maybe stronger than others.
Yeah.
Particularly consumer-driven sectors like e-commerce or what have you, which are quite heavy from a logistical part and heavy temp users. Do you see some weakening trends there? 'Cause it's trickling down a bit that we can't deny that. But do you see some sectors getting a bit more worrying than others, and that also reflects a bit in your statement that on the exit rate in September in terms of your own FTEs, that you're already taking some cost measures there. Is that a fair assumption, or can you give a bit more color on which sectors are definitely showing some deceleration?
Look, also there, I mean, maybe, Sander, you'd like to also chime in, but it's really also broad-based. There's nothing I would like to take out. With the positive exception of automotive, which is actually based on weaker comparables, I guess, that really showing up strongly in our data set.
Automotive is really going well. The rest is holding on. I mean, you all expected it. Logistics is really having a hard time holding on strongly. It's going well. But then that is at a sort of a company level, hundred thousand feet. Where it really works is you need to go into Bavaria, what's going on there.
Then it's where that we have agility to go from customer to customer and be close to our clients and navigate our resources where we can still do business and do it. Overall, really, Marc, across the board, the same picture, more or less.
Yeah. That is remarkably strong still. Maybe it's a bit of COVID catching up a bit more, still order books being executed and the scarcity reflected there. Do you see from your clients anything like that their order books are getting a bit short or that the hire times are getting shorter? Anything like that?
Well, we at our level don't see that, let's say client by client, but the backlogs of the manufacturing companies are reducing somewhat. It's just the statistics that are out there. Let's say that hasn't reached us yet in terms of lower volumes. I guess we all need to keep an eye on the order volumes and the backlogs that are out there, and that's what we are doing. That's what we're gonna deal with accordingly.
No, that's clear. Thank you very much, and congrats for the quarter.
Thanks.
Thanks, Marc.
The next question comes from the line of Simona Sarli from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for taking my question. Just a little bit more color on Q4. Could you please comment on how we should think in terms of organic growth for Q4, considering also the tough comps compared to last year with EUR 480 million higher sequentially? Also, if you could remind us, how much was the COVID-related revenues in Q3 versus Q4? Lastly, in 2021, you benefited strongly from wage inflation. Would you say that there was a significant step change in Q4 versus Q3 of last year? Thank you.
Right. So first of all, quarter four, I'm afraid, don't be grumpy, we are not making any further remarks. It has served us well that we just talk about what we've factually seen in the first two weeks of the new quarter. We need to keep it that way. On COVID, honestly, I'd like to put it firmly to bed. I said last quarter that it has now reached such a small number that actually is not material anymore. I sincerely hope it stays that way. Please allow me not to give you any more detail on that one. Also, wage inflation, I'm afraid, I will not make any further remarks.
I think we as a business, it's not just because we don't want to talk about it. We are being served extremely well to look at our data, to take it in, and make and then play out our scenarios we have. That is what we do. If there's high inflation, we will price for it.
There is no other way of doing that. It's a golden rule. The rest is all about field steering. Are we putting our people, our very valued consultants in those places where we get the best possible returns? That has served us well, and that's what we also do with quarter four. The way we're not even looking at so much about last year.
Last year is water under the bridge. Now we're in quarter four.
Thank you. Just to clarify, like on COVID-related work, I was referring to last year. If you could remind how much it was the contribution in Q3 and how much it was in Q4, if possible.
No, I will not give you that split, I'm afraid.
Okay. Thank you.
Because it's really not material for our business.
Okay, thanks.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad.
Sounds like there are no more questions, Jess. I would say thank you all for joining the call today. Before we wrap up the call, we'd like to thank all the 700,000 Randstad talents and employees for all the hard work for our clients during the quarter.
Hear, hear.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you so much.
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