Hello, and welcome to the Randstad Q3 2026 results conference call and audio webcast. For the first part of the call, participants will be in listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press pound key five on your telephone keypad. Please note that you are limited to one question and one follow-up question per round. I will now hand over to Sander van 't Noordende, the CEO. Mr. van 't Noordende, please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Lynn, for that kind introduction, and good morning, everybody. I am here with Jorge and our investor relations team to share our Q3 2026 results. Let me start by saying that I am extremely proud of our team's continued execution as we are seeing greater impact from our Partner for Talent strategy. Our overall revenue growth continued to improve at 3.9% for the quarter, and together with our delivery excellence and strong cost control, this has resulted in a solid performance with revenues of EUR 6.1 billion, an EBITA of EUR 211 million, improving 10% year-on-year and representing a 3.5% margin. We are well-positioned to capture growth going forward. In the U.S., our operational segment is growing 19% with strong momentum. We see continued broad-based growth in Southern Europe, where we will see some more improvements in key Northern European markets.
Finally, we see further stabilization in our digital, professional, and perm businesses. Volume trends have improved through the quarter, and we have seen some more progress in early October. With our focus on delivery excellence to capture profitable growth, we are confident to show further progress as we enter 2027. The good news on the next slide is that we are seeing a growing impact of our Partner for Talent strategy, with 75% of our business now in growth. This is visible in our growth through specialization focus. We are winning in the marketplace and gaining share. Blue-chip clients in tech, e-commerce, and aeronautics are choosing to partner with us to address talent scarcity and workforce strategy. Our logistics and automotive clients are leaning on us for the structural flexibility they need to navigate seasonality and macro uncertainty. To accelerate growth, we are modernizing our talent service models to be more differentiated.
In a sector where digital adoption is traditionally low, deploying our digital marketplaces and AI agents at scale is our number one priority, and we are working on some very exciting stuff with already 1.5 million meaningful AI conversations with talent across our four specializations. First, our talent outreach and validation agent, Rani, in Randstad Operational is now live in seven of our top 10 markets. Matching is faster, time to hire is reduced significantly, and fill rates are up. All of this with 97% talent satisfaction. In digital and professional, our always-on Torc digital marketplace is expanding into engineering and creative marketing in the U.S. Within digital, automated matching drives down recruiting costs, and average time to fill has been cut in half, from 26 days down to just 12.
In enterprise, our client teams use a conversational interface with five collaborating agents to plan, match, advertise, and deliver insights, reducing time to offer to provide quality talent at a higher speed. As we actively execute a fundamental AI pivot across our business, we are moving away from the traditional event-based recruiting model to a model that is platform-centric, in which talent is proactively matched with the roles they truly want. Our philosophy here is platform plus AI, plus community, plus best team, and we think this will revolutionize our industry. In Q3, we facilitated 2.3 million self-scheduled shifts in our digital marketplaces, up double digits sequentially, and our performance in the U.S. shows that it works. Adoption continues to go up because it benefits everyone. Talent gets effortless shift selection and fast pay, while clients gain higher fill rates, demand control, as well as automated compliance.
As a result, we are putting more people to work and are structurally increasing our productivity, with 6% more talent this year per FTE than last year. While technology is, of course, very important, our people are, of course, leading the way. Over the past 12 months, Jesus, our COO, and our sales teams have worked very hard to revamp our sales approach, and it is paying off. Through the One Randstad approach, we are adding exciting new logos, growing our share of wallet, and expanding international clients across borders. As a result, we have generated EUR 1.7 billion year to date in net new client wins. In summary, we are running a more differentiated, more agile, and more productive business, which puts us in a strong position to capture demand and drive further growth in the coming period. Jorge, over to you.
Thank you, Sander, and good morning, everyone. Overall, a good quarter. We are seeing trends improving throughout the quarter, and we combine this with a clear step-up in profitability. Flexibility adds value. As churn, mobility, and incremental demand returns to labor markets and definitely to previously stuck labor markets, we continue to see familiar seasonal and cyclical trends in our markets. We increased by over 19,000 talent working in Q3 sequentially, compared to last year's increase of 10,000 employees. Furthermore, we see that recovery is actually broadening, signaling a further cyclical pickup as our operational business continues to gain speed. The model we are building works. Our commercial activity and focus on growth segments are paying off, and we are capturing the incremental demand without adding net new capacity.
We are delivering more profit this year and as a direct result of the scalability we have embedded into our operating model alongside the structural reduction we have been doing in our indirect costs. We are on our way. Taking a step back, this strong operational discipline gives me confidence in our ability to not only grow profit versus 2025, but to mark 2026 as an inflection year with both growth and strong conversion now on the way up. Let us now move and double-click into the regional performance on page eight, starting with North America. In North America, penetration rates are starting to improve again. Growth is broadening to all specializations, and we see now the clear financial benefits of our strategy. Sander mentioned it, U.S. Operational is now growing 19%, running at full steam, and again, clearly ahead of the markets.
The digital marketplace, in combination with delivery excellence, allows us to capture demand with much less incremental capacity. We saw as well a strong sequential step-up in professional, back to growth at +3%, with good growth in engineering and perm. The demand for digital talent is also improving, and year-over-year, our digital specialization is now flat. Enterprise also improved, is up 4%, driven primarily by MSP and strong wins in career mobility and outplacement. Overall, North American EBITA margin was 5.3%, up 70 basis points year-over-year and marking a significant step-up. Now let's turn the page to major European markets on slide nine. Here, we also see further momentum improving in most of our major European markets. In the Netherlands, we see improving trends in industrial and logistics clients, good growth in healthcare, and other professional markets also normalizing.
The market has gained its footing following the implementation of the CLA this year. The organic revenue was up 3%, and EBITA margin came in at 4%, down year-over-year, but sequentially improving as the organization is adapting well to structurally improve its profitability. In Germany, we saw again real volume improvement in industrial, automotive, and e-commerce clients, and we are driving strong productivity and profitability gains year-over-year with EBITA margins now at 3.7%. Belgium saw trends largely unchanged versus the previous quarter, but nevertheless, adaptability is strong, delivering a similar EBITA margin year-over-year. In France, revenues were down 3%, slightly lower sequentially, while still nevertheless facing 3% tougher comparables. Overall profitability came in at 3.9%. Large clients are clearly leading the pack with strong growth in in-house, automotive, aerospace being offset by declines in perm, steel, and healthcare.
Volume growth returned already in September, and we are ramping up for an extensive logistics season while we will start to analyze the healthcare price cap regulations earlier implemented at the end of last year. Italy saw, again, a good step-up in operational growth as meaningful clients and e-commerce and logistics continued to ramp up. Profitability was 5.4%, up 30 basis points year-over-year. Iberia had another strong quarter, up 8%, again led by Spain, +9%, where we just celebrated the launch of our marketplace in October. EBITA margin for the region was 5.9%, up 10 basis points year-over-year. Let's now move to the international markets on slide 10. Here, we also see a step-up in growth. In Europe, we saw the U.K. growth improving significantly, especially among large clients who we are increasingly serving through our digital marketplace.
Switzerland was up 3%, and the Nordics started annualizing declines, while Poland is in decline driven by client attrition early in the year. Underlying good growth is picking up. In LATAM, we saw double-digit growth with strong momentum once more in Brazil. In Asia -Pacific, Japan also stepped up its growth to +8%. Australia and New Zealand is now back to growth at 3%, driven by early cyclical blue collar. Overall, the EBITA margin for APAC came at 4.1%. That concludes the performance of our key geographies, and let me now walk you through our combined financial performance on slide 12. Starting from our top line, we delivered 3.9% growth with good progression throughout the quarter. Operational grew 6%, fueled by automotive, logistics, and skilled trades. Professional also saw sequential momentum, returning to growth in the U.S. alongside an improvement in Europe.
Digital also reflects improving U.S. trends, while enterprise benefited from globally 4% RPO growth and a strong career mobility performance. More about margin and OpEx later, but for now, gross profit is also up 1% year-over-year while we continue to reduce OpEx year-over-year. As a result, the quarter's EBITA margin was up to 3.5%, and our underlying EBITA was EUR 211 million, up EUR 20 million year-over-year, or 20 basis points, and EUR 29 million up sequentially from Q4. Integration costs and one-offs amounted to EUR 15 million, related mostly to the environment in Belgium, Germany, and France, as we adjust the organization to the new talent service models and the future. In net finance costs, just the regular interest payment, and the effective tax rate for the first nine months was 32%.
We expect for 2026 an ETR towards the higher end of the 30%-32% range as our profit mix is broadening. This all leads to an adjusted net income of EUR 133 million for the quarter. With that, let's continue and look at our gross margin bridge on slide 13. Gross margin was down 60 basis points versus 70 basis points in Q2, and 80 basis points in Q1. Let us double-click. Temp margin is down 50 basis points year-over-year, reflecting the cyclical environment. As growth steps up, we see continued outperformance of large clients within key growing markets such as the U.S., Italy, Spain, and even some smaller ones with 30 basis points mix impacts. Furthermore, in our specific case, the CLA change in the Netherlands has a 15 - 20 basis points dilution on group level year-on-year.
Within our perm business, we see good further growth in the U.S., while Northern European markets are still stabilizing. Contribution was still down this quarter, -10 basis points. In HRS, as RPO growth is also 4%, was in line with group growth. That brings me to the OpEx bridge on slide 14, and remember, this one is sequential. Turning to our operating expenses, costs were down EUR 13 million sequentially, reflecting seasonality and coming in at EUR 878 million, down organically year-over-year. More importantly, our FTE base remains stable sequentially, 3% down, with our talent service models and digital solutions empowering talent and allowing our teams to do more. This continues to free up capacity to reallocate towards sales. In addition, we continue to work on lowering our indirect costs. Personally, the importance here is that the changes of the past three years are proving to be structural.
We have emerged with scalability in our cost to serve and with a leaner company. This supports us going forward. As a result, our last four quarters ICR/recovery is now above 100%, actually 108%, showing our ability to drive meaningful operational leverage as growth returns. This ability to convert is the benchmark we want to raise. With that in mind, let's move on to slide 15, which contains our cash flow and balance sheet remarks. First, on the balance sheet, our underlying free cash flow for the quarter was EUR 250 million, reflecting seasonality and solid cash conversion. DSO came in at 57.4 days, down 0.2 days sequentially. Net debt decreased EUR 73 million year-over-year, and our leverage ratio year-over-year decreased to 1.5x. We are currently awaiting standard regulatory approvals to finalize our partnership agreement with LTM for our technology and consulting services.
We expect the transaction to close by the end of the year or early next year. That brings me now to the outlook slide on slide 16. Let's talk first about growth momentum. September was the strongest month in the quarter three. Looking ahead, volume trends in the first weeks of October are improving further as we see our logistics clients ramping up significantly for the holiday season. We also face, remember, a slightly easier comparison base of approximately 100 basis points. In this context, our gross margin in Q4 is expected to be broadly stable sequentially. We anticipate only a slight increase in operating expenses sequentially due to the simple reversal of Q3 seasonality. To summarize, growth is stepping up practically in all our markets and specializations. Labor markets are all in all normalizing and flexibility adds value.
Our strategy to capture this growth is delivering, and we continue to build the future of Randstad. We actively position ourselves to where growth is, gain market share, and continue to allocate sales capacity to it. We are being more specialized and differentiated through our focus and promises. We are progressively empowering talent, clients, and our own teams to work smarter. Digitalization and AI and more efficient talent service models will only accelerate. As a result, we deliver and aim to continue to see this growth coming in at an increasingly higher operational leverage than before. That concludes our prepared remarks, and we look forward to taking your questions. Operator?
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now ready to take your questions. If you wish to ask a question, please press pound key five on your telephone keypad. We kindly remind you that you're limited to one question per round and a follow-up. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press pound key six on your telephone keypad. Our first question is from Andy Grobler from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Can I just start with France, please? You've noted some improvement through the quarter, but the backdrop has got a bit more challenging there from a social political perspective. Are you seeing any of that come through? What are your clients telling you about the outlook for France through Q4 and into early 2027? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Andy. Great question. I was hoping your first question would be about the U.S., but we will take it on France, of course.
That is my second.
Oh, that is your second. Okay. On France, obviously, the country has its challenges. You only have to open the newspaper to see that. From our perspective, we have seen, as Jorge already said, an uptick in September. So we may be a bit of an exception here. We have had some good client wins in e-commerce and logistics, so that bodes well, I would say. And the other slightly specific thing for Randstad is our healthcare business. And you may remember that a year ago, there was some legislation that had a bit of a negative impact on our business. So that is going to be behind us in the coming quarters. So that should help as well. So we are quite optimistic.
Thank you. Moving on to the U.S., very strong growth, particularly in the Randstad Operational side, helped by the digital markets. Can you just, because there's quite a bit of noise in there in terms of other segments as well, just talk through the operational leverage you're seeing in the digital markets, and particularly in the operations side—
So.
—is that coming through?
It's quite phenomenal, because the digital marketplace works such, if a client puts in 100 extra orders for next week, the demand gets filled almost by itself, provided that we have enough talent on the marketplace. That's sort of an ongoing process, and typically that's not an issue. So we get additional revenue at relatively low marginal cost. I was just reviewing some numbers this morning. Our employees working per FTE in the United States is over 20% up compared to last year. So there you got your productivity improvement.
Yeah. Excellent. Thank you very much.
Next question.
Our next question is from Suhasini Varanasi, Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to get a sense on the gross margins, please. It feels like we are still seeing the sequential deterioration in temp gross margin, and I know it's down to mix, but just want to understand at what point does it stabilize and what should be the normalized gross margin going into 2027? Thank you.
Hey, Suhasini. Thank you. In terms of gross, I'll primarily say nothing odd, to be honest, on our gross margin this quarter. We did have, obviously, a step up in temp and then obviously weight in the mix with perm, so there is an impact there. We see, let's say, the annualization starting to happen, and especially if we will take, let's say, the specific context of Randstad. Remember, we're quite large in the Netherlands. It's one of the most important markets we have. Clear market leader. That is bringing us, in particular this year, 15 - 20 basis points down in terms of gross margin. Well, on the other hand, that starts annualizing, or that will annualize as we go into Q1. So overall, I think quite logical and continuation of stable trends in gross margin, and getting ready for the next part.
Got, understand. Okay, these trends that you saw in the third quarter, sequentially stable is something that we can extrapolate over the coming quarters. That is the best way to read it.
Yeah. Eventually, as I just mentioned, the CLA specific, given our size here in the market impact that it has of the Netherlands, we will start annualizing and continue therefore to narrow year-over-year the gap. Yeah.
Got it. Thank you very much.
Our next question is from Simon Lechipre from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First of all, a follow-up on gross margin. You keep mentioning the geographic mix effect being the drag, but I think most of your countries are now growing. North America is growing, I think at digits. When should we see this geographic mix not being dilutive anymore? What really do you need, basically, to see this trend evening?
Yeah. Simon, thank you. Good question. To be honest, if you hear what I said, I didn't mention geographical mix. I basically mentioned we have our temp business growing even faster, let's say, than the delta we had expected for. Perm is actually growing, by the way, in the United States, and things are starting to also change in many ways. What I think you see, let's say in the margin throughout the year, of course, we have a very large client-driven demand. You can see that in our conversion. We're now basically, yeah, it's where our delivery centers, our talent centers, and our digital marketplace enable us to really grow and convert this extra gross profit into EBITA. That is basically a very healthy growth.
But the large clients clearly continue to outgrow, still growing 16%, the top 50 versus, let's say, the single digit of the rest of the group, has an impact. Not so much the geography part anymore. I would also say, yeah, obviously operational, we just talked about the U.S. 19%, but the overall operational specialization growing again 6% ahead of the group. That means, yeah, there is still a skew towards operational business and large margin, let's say, gross margin business versus the professionals part. Overall, I think it's just the normal cyclical components and mix more than anything else. Again, in our specific case, I think, and perhaps that tints the overall margin, the impact of the Netherlands, but again, we are annualizing that as we enter into 2027.
Okay. Thank you. A quick follow-up on looking at your SG&A, your outlook suggests costs will now increase on a year-on-year basis following a long period of cost-cutting. Can you reconcile this with your comments on productivity gains and efficiencies from digital platform and AI? What does this suggest for SG&A next year? Thank you.
Yeah. Q3 to Q4, if anything, what we will see is a reversal of, let's say, the normal treatment of holidays throughout the year. So clearly, our underlying cost will be flat. Again, the other flip side of having a large client-led demand driven, what that means, Simon, is as well, that as I just said, a lot of that demand can be perfectly captured throughout our delivery centers, our talent centers, and our digital marketplace. So from an underlying cost-based perspective, we are quite confident that it will be flat. Speaking obviously for the continuous increase of conversions that we've been showing throughout the year. So the extra revenue that we are generating, we clearly convert. That's the tone as we get into ourselves into 2027.
We don't guide for the year, but clearly, yeah, we are entering the year in a different way, Simon, than we entered this year, or we are exiting, let's say, 2026 in a different way. We are already busy making sure that, yeah, we enter Q1 in a healthy way as possible to continue to make big steps towards a big step up in profitability.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Simon van Oppen from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. I want to follow up a bit on the Netherlands and the CLA impact. It seemed that your operational business was up slightly and your professional business outperforming. As we go into next year, give us a bit more sense of where the market is heading from an operational and professional standpoint, as well as the gross margin development throughout next year in the Netherlands from the CLA impact specifically.
Very good. Sander, should I start and then—
Yeah, no, go ahead.
—contribute. I think the way. Look, to understand this, Simon, thank you. Good question. The Netherlands, a few things are happening. One is we clearly see a step up. Germany, obviously, is a big market, and we see a little, a small revival on industrial pockets. We start seeing the same around in the Netherlands. Clearly from an operational perspective, after, let's say, the new equilibrium of the reset that the new legislation has had in the market this year, we now see basically that we have found our foot, the market has found our feet, and we are basically stepping up already sequentially in the Netherlands. Professional, clearly, our Zorgwerk, our healthcare zorgverzekering specialization has done a fantastic job.
Yeah, obviously comparables will get tougher, but overall, we are quite comfortable that we found our feet in the Netherlands. As we enter into the next year, we believe in a stronger year now already for 2027.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Marc Zwartsenburg from ING. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, gentlemen, and congrats on the quarter. Maybe a bit of a follow-up question on North America. Do you believe that the growth that you've seen, quite an acceleration of growth, and also in operational leverage, do you believe there's still more acceleration and more operational leverage expected for Q4 into next year? My first question.
I think, Marc, I'll start, and then if Sander wants to contribute and give more color. I think what we now should see in North America, and I was pleased to see the development also in perm, we should see digital and professional now to also start improving. We see early signs of that. We just mentioned professional back to growth, primarily led by engineering. Digital now flat. Perm in growth in our business overall, both in operational and professional. So we see the beginning of it. So, so far, no yet signs of running out of steam, let's say.
Yeah, no, I would add, I think that where we are today has all signs of the typical cycle, Marc, and you've been around longer than I do, so I don't have to explain it to you. But typically operational, that's where it starts moving then into professional digital enterprise. Our RPO business is growing, so that's a signal I would say. And then typically it starts in North America, and then it translates to the rest of the world. And we see that happening to a certain extent as well. So, yeah, I would say if the cycle develops as it normally does, that would be a helpful thing.
And maybe if you look to corporate staff by geography on your appendices, for instance, North America is down significantly. That's because of the digital platform, I assume, because you're growing the business already. Should we expect similar sort of changes in those markets where you're now rolling out digital platform like Belgium, like currently Spain? Is that what we should see over the coming quarters into next year?
No, we are always managing supply and demand, as you know, obviously. A couple of movements in our functional headcount. We are increasingly moving roles to our GCC in India, so you will see a shift there. We will gradually continue to improve, and it has been, I think we said 6% more employees working per FTE. So we will continue to work on that. Obviously, North America with the digital model and the higher demand is obviously something that stands out today. We will work in that direction as well here in Europe and other markets. So under Jesus' leadership, he is our COO, we keep grinding, we keep at it.
Okay. That is very good. Well, congrats again.
Yeah.
Have a good day.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Thanks, Marc.
Our next question is from Virginia Montorsi from BofA. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I guess we've gone through all the relevant financial ones. I just wanted to ask, mainly in relation to what we've just discussed about Randstad Digital. Do you still find that there's question that you get over the business model where we are, that either surprise you or you feel like there's some topic that has been misunderstood or anything like whenever we discuss, obviously, AI and the AI transition, we often get a very nuanced debate. Do you get today any sort of questions that surprise you, or do you feel like the broader picture is now well understood going into the second half of the year next year?
Yeah, I would say the broader picture is well understood, but also it's an evolving picture, Virginia. Of course, we started off with the digital marketplace platform, if you will. Now we're adding AI at scale, with agents reaching out to talent, with agents helping onboard talent, with agents doing interviews. That is continuing to evolve. That's the newest part of the model. Yeah, we get, I would not say surprising questions, but people are, our investors definitely are very interested in how does this new model work. Sometimes they're also surprised because what they hear in the marketplace is that the classic recruiter model on steroids with AI is actually leading to very bad experiences, because talent can now use AI to apply to hundreds of jobs. They then get hundreds of responses or not from AI.
It's just a big flurry of activity that basically benefits no one. We are turning the thing upside down. If we, in our Torc platform, if we have a request from a client coming in, the platform starts looking in our community and finds people who are, as we call them, a best match. Those people get a message, "You are a best match." They respond, and then based on that, we look who are the best candidates. Maybe they do an assessment or an interview, and then finally, there's just one person looking at it to present the shortlist to the client. That's a very different model than I have to respond to thousands of jobs, and I get thousands of answers or not, or I'm being ghosted. No, we call you. We have a job for you.
You see it makes sense for you, and that is how you get into the process. We keep you posted on where the process is at any given point in time, and that's a much different experience. That's the future. The future is platform, plus AI, plus community, plus best team in Randstad, of course.
Thank you very much. That's very helpful.
Sure.
Thank you, Virginia.
Our next question is from Konrad Zomer from ABN AMRO. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, gentlemen. Two questions, one on North America and one on Europe. I will do North America first. A very strong EBITA margin improvement of 70 basis points year-on-year. Can you maybe break that down for us between operating leverage and business mix changes or sector changes?
Yeah.
My question on Europe, I was particularly impressed by the pickup in growth in Germany. I was just wondering in terms of wage inflation, can you maybe comment on your key markets like the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, what you see in terms of wage inflation and how that could possibly support future growth? Thank you.
Yeah, I was actually looking at that, Konrad, on the wage inflation. I don't think there's a lot happening on that front. It's been in the zone of 2% or 3%. It's actually been coming down over the last year or two. So there's nothing spectacular on the wage inflation side at this point in time.
Yeah. So on the U.S., Konrad, let me give you a little bit more color. So what we see is, if you look at our different businesses and just the most important relevant ones. Clearly, it's taken time. So we've been fine-tuning our model, basically understanding exactly roles and responsibilities and how to best, let's say, roll this out in the United States. But now, if we look at this quarter, basically when we now see the fruition of everything we've been doing, we're looking at approximately, let's say, EUR 10 million more EBITA this quarter of our operational business, clearly converting. Sander mentioned it, close to 100% incremental conversion. So hardly, again, large client led, so that means our digital marketplace, our delivery centers are basically right in the middle of where they can excel.
So a lot of that has converted into profit. Then the remaining approximately EUR 5 million, I told you earlier, we are doing specifically well as well with our career mobility and outplacement teams. In general, no more drag from Randstad Digital or professional. I think overall, a good number sets us up for the future. But again, it will be great to see now also professional Randstad Digital contributing even more.
Okay, thanks. Maybe just one follow-up. You mentioned 2026 as a transition year.
Yeah.
Within this year, it seems that Q3 might be a transition quarter. Are we now getting to a point where your OpEx is no longer coming down sequentially, but is likely to pick up because you benefit from opportunities?
Yeah, look, Q3 has been a transition quarter. We have growth. I think a lot of the things that were tinting our gross profit are also kind of now normalizing, so that is a good profit growth, gross profit growth. Therefore, I have told you before, countries that are in growth are in gross profit growth. That gross profit growth is actually converting close to 100%. Countries that are not in growth are basically, we are adjusting heavily to make sure that we are on a good basis. All of that comes together this quarter. Looking ahead, we continue to basically, a lot of the things we have been doing on indirect costs are not done yet, so we have programs to continue to reduce it, especially if we want to make 2027 a strong year, we need to enter the year well.
We want to enter the year well already in Q1. You know it is traditionally the lowest seasonal quarter. Yes, we will be working on basically reducing OpEx as we enter into Q1. You can think of, we are still doing programs in accommodation. We have mentioned before, our IT costs started plateauing. There is a lot of other things we are doing also in our indirect support costs, and I mentioned a little bit our GCCs in India and other locations. I am quite confident that we are going to enter the year with our OpEx well under control.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Konrad.
Our last question is from James Clark from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just one, please. In terms of where we are in the recovery cycle, and you've talked a little bit about this earlier. If you look at the U.S. as a guide, operational is clearly outstanding at the moment, professional is now growing. In Europe more broadly, operational is growing nicely, but professional lagging. Are there any markets you'd call out there as seeing the green shoots in professional that you would suggest that the recovery is more broadly also happening in Europe in a way that you would expect? Or are there any markets that are lagging on underlying trends if you exclude some of the legislative and regulatory hits that you've experienced?
Well, James, I would say we used the word green shoots before, so I'm not going to do that again. No. We do see very encouraging pockets of activity, let me put it like that. For instance, in France, our delivery center and team for the aeronautics industry is doing a phenomenal job, and they are hitting it out of the park, so to speak. Is that a green shoot? Let's say, I don't want to use that term, but it's a very good job. And we see that in various places. In Spain, we have a business around skilled trades doing a phenomenal job, growing the team from zero to over 100 people over the last couple of years. So we have, let's say, pockets where the specialization focus clearly works. I think it's probably too early to call a broader recovery in the professional market in Europe. We're not yet there.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Cheers.
We have one more question from Maarten Verbeek from the IDEA!. Please go ahead.
Good morning, it's Maarten Verbeek of the IDEA!. You mentioned in this quarter you did 2.3 million shifts. Just to get a feel, in the markets in which you operate actively with this, what's the market share? What's the contribution? What do you target to achieve in a year's time or two years' time?
Yeah. The margin obviously depends on the market that we operate in, Maarten. That's one. The good thing is we are now at roughly 17%-18% of our business in the digital marketplaces, and we will continue to drive that up in combination, increasingly, I would say, with the AI agents to drive up productivity even further. I just mentioned our EW per FTE in the United States is up year -over -year by more than 20%, and that gives a bit of an impression of the art of the possible. Also, in our most digital model in healthcare here in the Netherlands, the productivity is significantly 2x to 3x higher than in our average operational business.
Further, it's obviously very encouraging to see that more and more countries are, and parts of business are on the digital marketplace. Spain went live, Jorge told us. India went live, and our Torc marketplace that was focused on digital is now also operational in professional. We keep plowing, if you will. We keep working in that direction to get more and more of our business in the digital marketplace. The U.K., last but not least, is a success story of this year where almost all of our operational business is now on the digital marketplace. We keep at it.
Thank you.
Thank you. With that, I would now like to turn over the call back to Mr. van 't Noordende for any closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Lynn. I would like to say a big, big thank you again this quarter to our over 600,000 employees working and also people for a brilliant job this quarter. Very well done. We appreciate it a lot, and we go on to the next one. Thanks a lot.