Welcome, everybody, for our first glance at the full year 2024. I want to do a brief introduction, presenting some slides, and then we can use a Q&A session. I do estimate in about half an hour, up to three quarters of an hour, we should be done. So let's start. We have on the—this is slide moving? Not really. Anyhow. I need some help by Jörg.
Yeah.
One slide back, so the surprising person on that slide in a minute. I just wanted to start. I know most of you do know Amadeus FiRe, staffing and training company, but on this slide, what is quite relevant, I do think, for 2024, is that we are doing our business in Germany, most B2B business in staffing, some business to government, also in training and B2C, but because of the situation in Germany, I do think it's quite relevant to point that out, that we are a pure German play. If you switch to the next slide, I invited this very popular person in Germany to present our latest GDP development. For us, it's relevant, although in staffing, the tightness of the labor market became the most relevant driver over the last one and a half decades.
What we see here is that we are now in an almost four-year situation of stagnation in Germany, three years of a recession in a row. Last year, we saw a small decline again in the German GDP. So overall, what we found as an environment in Germany was quite a cloudy climate and a negative sentiment throughout corporations and throughout all management levels and throughout our clients. And what probably is especially in the second half year of 2024, even a little worse, is that the climate or the outlook for the upcoming year turned more and more negative, influencing the way corporations today changed behavior. We're very aware of expenditures, and a lot of decisions were not taken.
The climate index actually is on the lowest level since the financial crisis in Germany, since 2009, despite a little dip throughout the most relevant Corona months in the beginning of the crisis. But we have an environment which we haven't seen now for 15 years in Germany. One other remark on the labor market: unemployment rate is increasing. This is relevant in terms of the staffing sector, but also for our training business. Here, it's more good news in our funded training, which is a countercyclical business. So at least in that niche of our business, we have a more positive development in the market and a more positive outlook compared to the overall economy. Jörg? One broader picture in the beginning of Amadeus FiRe business.
Although we saw tough conditions in 2024, it is still a long story of growth and of high level of profitability in a very robust business segment of staffing and training. Double-digit results throughout all the years, including 2024. Although, and this is what we published yesterday, in 2024, with an operating EBITDA margin of a little below 13%, we saw the lowest margin for quite some time for our Amadeus FiRe business. Nevertheless, having that double-digit 13% in our markets, still a margin where a lot of other companies are looking for, even in good times, to achieve double-digit results here. But we saw the most difficult environment in staffing for quite some time. So diving deeper into the results. First, let's have a glance at the fourth quarter. Here, the environment we found was less favorable than we anticipated and still anticipated beginning of fourth quarter.
So the development was quite negative at the end of the year. So our level of demand in staffing and also the conversion of our business, in the end, impacted the result of that quarter. And the drop in profit from EUR 15.9 to EUR 9.1 preliminary EBITDA of the fourth quarter was mainly driven by the impact in the staffing industry. It's a 10% decline in sales overall and a 13% dip in gross profit. So some pressure on that fourth quarter that we saw here in Germany. One other remark, sorry, still on the fourth quarter, is that especially in the staffing services, in the permanent placement and the temporary staffing, we really saw a low level of business in November and December. So in permanent placement, the level of revenues was basically flatlined throughout the years, January till October, very stable level of business.
We saw there not an increase, which we expected in the beginning of the year, throughout the year, but it kept a certain level above EUR six million per month in permanent placement, and that dropped in November and December significantly and unexpectedly, so here, nine months, sorry, full year figures. The revenue year on year quite stable, 1% down, and given the gross profit margin declining by less than one percentage point, 80 basis points, we have a 2.8% decline here. In the end, the most significant impact, what we saw that year, was on our operating results, which declined 21.2%. What I said in the beginning, a little below 13% at a level of 12.7%. Overall, looking at both segments in our training segment, we met our expectations, and we were able, in the end, to stabilize our business, having that successful development in training.
What we saw throughout the whole year, the uncertainty among customers and clients we saw in the staffing business, that resulted in a lower level of demand and in a lower level of conversion of requests in placements. What about conversion? What does it mean? I do think this is also relevant. It is about taking the decision. The demand we find in the market, it's at a lower level, but it is still, well, giving our organization enough level of requests to work at full capacity. A lot of decisions are not taken, canceled. A lot of matching processes are ongoing until the perfect candidate is found, sometimes never. When it's found, the negotiations about the employment contract start, giving more pressure to candidates. Also, candidates need more secure situation. The willingness to change jobs is decreasing in the end.
So in the end, it is overproportionately hitting our profit line because the ability to adopt the SG&A costs for sales organization and staffing is not corresponding to the decline in net fees, what we saw because of lower performance. There were a lot of cost measurements taken. The number of sales consultants decreased throughout the year. At the end of the year, it was between 8% and 9% less sales consultants than end of the year 2023. But we kept the overall structure of our sales organization in staffing because it is in the end a question of performance. And we tried to manage a lot at the low-performing end. But the solution is not here to decrease the sales organization significantly because that would, in the end, directly impact net fees back again.
This you can also find later on in our investor relations part on our homepage. This gives you an indication about the split in services. One remark here, what you can see is that in the meantime, the Amadeus FiRe group is based on two businesses. Almost 40% of revenues in the meantime is training. And in the end, in 2024, that stabilized our business. That guaranteed still a stable level of revenues and a high level and high level of profitability for the overall group. So that development for us is quite positive over the last years that we expanded that part of our business to that level now. And we will continue, actually. So this is on the current business. The view, if you move to the next slide, please.
The complete outlook for next year, I have to apologize, but that will be published with the annual report on the 26th of March that year. We saw a tough year in 2024, and I think it's not a secret that it will be also a challenging year, 2025, at least now in the beginning. All indicators are still at a low level, and we have no turnaround in Germany so far, well, there is an election, and we will see the development throughout the year, and that will, in the end, be reflected in our outlook given. The value drivers you see here for our business, this for me is a very important remark, is they are still intact. We saw, following that long period of stagnation, that the cycle is back again, impacting staffing at that level of pessimistic view on the current environment of our corporate clients.
Nevertheless, the tightness in the market, the high entry barriers, etc., and the shortage of qualifications, we still find. Also, increasing unemployment rate and the necessity to qualify unemployed people, which all stakeholders are of the same opinion, also within the political parties, left wing, center, right wing, there is no discourse here in Germany that this is something good to do. So we do see that we, in the upcoming years, will have a significant change in skills and qualifications requested in the labor market, driven by technology on top. And that corporates need to invest in their recruiting, and they need to invest in their training. And this is something we will be part of the game and participate from. So having our unique portfolio, I do think we are well prepared.
Nevertheless, I would like to have a little bit more favorable environment to do our B2B service business in Germany. The strategic pillars for Amadeus FiRe remained the same. We are a company gaining from our high level of reputation we have by delivering quality and speed in all our services, and in the end, our view is to be the best marketplace to find everything about headquarter skills, so administrative roles, commercial roles, and IT roles, no matter if you want to train your employees or if you want to hire the qualifications. We are a professional partner for our candidates, for our participants, and also for our clients on a, well, lifelong basis in terms of a professional life, and we are very successful in developing ourselves in an organic growth path.
But on top, it remains our main target to do also additional and M&A activities here in our training segment to further improve our positioning to be that marketplace to go to for staffing and training. Well, this would be my introductory speech. And now I would actually like to answer your questions.
Thank you so much for your presentation. So we will now move over to our Q&A session. And for a dynamic conversation, we appreciate it if you would ask your questions in person by our audio line. To do so, please click on the virtual raise your hand button. And if you have dialed in by phone, you can use the key combination star key 9 to enter the queue, followed by pressing star key 6 to unmute yourself.
If you're not able to speak freely today, you can also submit your questions in our chat box, and we will read them out for you. For all three options, we would ask you to provide us with your real name and your institution. We already received the first virtual hand. I can see it's Mr. Robert. You should be able to speak now.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I hope you can hear me. I would have the following, Robert. The first one would be on your comments regarding the start to the year. I guess you have already insight regarding January. Obviously, the unemployment went up in January, but maybe you could also share what you see with regard to client demand for personnel services. The second question would be on training and education.
What is the current spending behavior of the public sector given the growing unemployment? Is it increasing the employment agency trying to get more unemployed into the vocational training courses? And then it sounded a bit like you are looking for takeovers again, more concrete in training education. Is this correct? And how shall we think of possible steps in which direction might they go? Where do you see white spots right now? And could you speak about the possible size of a takeover? Yeah, that's basically it for the start. Thank you.
Okay, thanks, Andreas. Well, first question, start of the year. Unchanged in terms of the low level of business we saw in fourth quarter last year. So there is no change. I can tell you about looking at the cross-reads also through our competitive landscape.
We saw quite similar news like we did today by some other players, and also, if I do some industry talks, you do not feel real positive momentum all around, even if you talk to some of our competitors. So a low level starting that year in spending in vocational training or public-funded trainings, positive environment, unchanged, no acceleration so far, which is quite normal having the election end of that month. So before that, it's quite normal that you have a, well, let's say, a normal or a cautious spending behavior. Currently, it's not cautious, but normal, and not an accelerating situation because the stakeholders here do wait for the new government to give guidance. But that should be the case, well, in the few upcoming months, and in our M&A environment, yes, training, as you said, and as I tried to point out.
Within the training, we have a very strong position here in the B2G market. We do focus currently on potential transactions in the B2B market, maybe B2C. What I was talking about regarding the marketplace to be for corporates and for professionals to find everything around certain skills, the skills we are focusing on, our niche of our business, here we have to do some steps. A couple of things we will definitely do ourselves here to develop our business. Nevertheless, the priority here is also to find some targets. If and when, as you know, in a pipeline like that, there might be some targets coming through in the upcoming months or quarters. In the end, it needs to focus . Thank you.
Thank you so much for your questions, Mr. Wolf. We will now move on with the questions from Klaus Schilling. Mr. Schilling, you should be able to speak now.
Yeah, I think it's better now, is it? Better. Okay, great. Well, sorry for me being not the biggest technical nerd on earth at this moment. But Robert, thanks for giving us this brief rundown. If I may, I would add a couple of questions from the ones which Andreas already raised. And that is what you pushed out as a press release this morning. You mentioned that certain elements of economic weakness in our country have finally arrived, and you were pointing out office and IT services.
When knowing that your portfolio is very, very broad-based and you don't have any certain heavyweights in terms of industrial or client relevance, would you be able to say that there are certain elements where you were fearing that they might deteriorate and it finally happened, or are there specific sectors where you really were caught by surprise?
No specific sectors. It is the, well, the general behavior throughout the landscape of our clients regarding decision-making, regarding cost awareness, regarding, well, securing resources for future growth. In the end, you still have to bear in mind that we are not out of business. Our business is at a lower level so we still find demand, and then there is hiring ongoing out there but the question of converting requests in placement in the end is the key challenge, also to find the requests.
But this is achievable being an outgoing sales organization, but the conversion is the issue. There is no sector which took us by surprise. And also the dependency of Amadeus FiRe on specific sectors is actually not existing as we are operating in the headquarters, no matter which sector it is.
If I may add this one. So it's still the question, yes or no, but not price, because your profitability resilience was, again, very impressive.
Right.
Okay. Thanks, Robert.
Thank you so much, Mr. Schilling. So by now, we have no further participants in the queue. We therefore turn over to our chat box. And then we have some questions from Miguel Puhl. So the first one, can you already comment on the free cash flow generation in 2024?
Yes and no. Not concrete, but no surprises in Q4. So good converting business.
Okay, thank you so much.
Then another question to the training segment. How do you see the training segment going forward, considering the strong downturn in the second half of 2024? Will it recover from the low level of the second half?
I would put it more that way, that we had an excellent first half and a normalized second half. But as I mentioned, I do think, and I'm sure that in both our segments, we have mid- to long-term very good opportunities for organic growth, participating in market growth in training, and also somewhere in permanent placement, and also taking market shares. So here, I'm actually quite positive in our outlook that we can further develop the business in both segments and definitely in training.
All right. Thank you so much. So also, could you comment on the IT investments made in 2024 and still needed in expected 2025?
Do you intend to keep sales employees and IT investments at an unchanged high pace for expected 2025?
Well, as I said, the final outlook for 2025, we will publish in March. So nevertheless, regarding our IT investments and the technology we need for our future business, in 2024, we increased our expenditure here by around 5 million EUR. We have implemented a lot of change, and there are also a lot of transformation projects still ongoing. So as Amadeus FiRe is operating a new IT environment now, and the old system is not replaced because some applications are also depending on the old infrastructure. We have this run cost and the new layer. And that means that we will have some additional investments even in 2025 to do.
All right. Thank you so much. So in the meantime, Andreas Wolf has a follow-up question.
So, Andreas, you should be able to speak.
Thank you. One follow-up, if I may, Robert. It's again on this statement regarding the fact that the economic impacts have finally arrived at the office and IT space. You mentioned that there are still enough requests in the market for the specific job roles. But do you also feel that companies are kind of shrinking their infrastructure, their backbone, or is it basically the fact that it's more difficult to convert the candidates or the requests from the candidate side as they feel more insecure in the current environment?
Yeah, Andreas, as we wrote in the publication, it's both. We see a decrease in demand, clearly. And historically, that environment we are in would have been quite severe for permanent placement. Having the scarcity of qualifications and the tightness of the labor market, we see an impact on our business.
But the labor market is still holding against, meaning there is still demand, and there is demand for qualified personnel, but it is clearly a lower level. There are some indicators in Germany showing the level of job postings, for example. They came down now for quite some time. There's an index called BA-X also indicating a lower level of demand. This is clearly the case. But it's not that you don't find any requests in the market anymore. This is what I meant.
Okay, got it. Thank you.
Thank you so much. So for the question from Markus Herrmann from LBBW, training revenues in Q4 were only flat year over year and 7.5% below the quarterly run rate of the first nine months. What is the reason for that?
What we already stated in third quarter, that we have had an impact on our B2G business by terms and conditions change in the search engine we saw here, which is one of the most or the best-performing channels in vocational training or in funded training, and here, by introducing a cap of a maximum offering you can present, that was impacting mainly Comcave business, having a very broad product portfolio and a large level of locations throughout Germany, and this is, well, something which was introduced in May or June and was affecting the second half year of the business.
All right. Thank you so much, but the question from Martin:
There's seasonality in that. But that would take some time, so maybe the next question.
Okay. Will the dividend policy stay as it is?
To distribute 67% of the consolidated net profit, when will you announce the dividend for 2024? Thank you.
In your report and invitation to the AGM, etc., there will be a clear statement. We have, and you wrote it in your question, it's a dividend policy. Talking about allocation, we would like to invest in our training business. Following that, we have our dividend policy in place, which normally lasts for some years if there's no relevant change in terms of, what I said, allocation in transaction. In third place, we also monitor opportunities of buybacks, also depending on the first and the second way of allocating capital. This is the picture. If there will be the question, do I necessarily see the need to keep the EUR 5 payout last year? No, I don't.
Currently, the policy is in place, and I cannot guarantee that it will not be changed, but it's a policy.
All right. For the question from Felix Wandlmayer , could you please provide additional details on the headquarters of the whole organization and Temps headquarters? And maybe you can give us an outlook and your plans for full year 2025.
I fully understand that question. And I gave one headcount figure regarding the sales organization. The overall figures we will publish with the annual report.
All right. Then I have Bojan Soldevia. If these low levels of demand in staffing continue throughout the year, what levels of profitability could you achieve? What levers do you have to protect profitability and not damage the business for the long term?
Understandable question, but you cannot flatly answer it or just accumulate Q4 figures and evaluate an idea for 2025 from that. We are in a market environment which is, well, negative first. And second, we are in a situation of corporate behavior and pessimistic view, which I haven't seen in the past, and that will not last forever. So do we anticipate a complete different picture in 2025? No, it will be more a cautious planning. But can we develop from the level we have in Q4? And are there opportunities in our staffing and our training business? Yes, there are opportunities. The thing is, what you ask, is it somehow limited to bring down the staffing organization without damaging our, well, future opportunities? Yes, from my point of view, there is. And having a 13% margin business, why would I close down all offices?
So this is something at the current level, still at the current level, we do not plan to do.
All right. Thank you so much. So just to give you an update, but now we have five questions left. So on the capital allocation, do you foresee the capacity for share buybacks in addition to dividends and M&A?
What I said. One depends on the other. So the expectation should not be that we use frequently all three levels of capital allocation. So there's a dependency, and we will, well, then decide on top of the dividend policy and on the M&A pipeline. Is there an opportunity for buybacks or not?
Okay. So Cornelis Kirk want to know if you can comment on how does the layoff of 8%-9% of sales organization go together with the long-term plan to expand the sales force?
Quite well.
What I said is that we did not structurally change our staffing organization. Currently, we are managing very closely the low-performing end, first and second, we evaluate which team or which branch office is successful, and on every single fluctuation we have or every single lever, we closely evaluate whether this position will be filled or we leave it vacant till the market is improving and the rest of the team can focus more on their own performance and not on onboarding a new employee. You have a certain turnover in a sales organization, and this currently we use, and please bear in mind that by the end of 2023 or in 2023, we came from a peak situation in our sales organization, which we grew very fast the two years before, so structurally, the organization is in place.
All right. So then a question on your share price valuation versus M&A targets. Do the potential targets you see for B2B or B2C training targets trade at a lower multiple than Amadeus FiRe's share price? That means cheaper than six times EV EBITDA or nine times EV EBIT.
This question I cannot answer. But for us, our own valuation is a significant guidance. And the rest very much depends on the situation we will find with that specific target. But for us, it's a very important indicator what is Amadeus FiRe's valuation. All right. Then we have another question for the share buyback. Could you consider a tender offer to buyback instead of a buyback over the stock market? What would be your criteria to choose either of those? I like very much the way we did it the first time, and that was a tender.
A buyback via the market or over the stock market, given our liquidity, takes a long time to collect a decent number of shares. No decision on that, but the probability if there's a buyback that will be a tender is very high.
All right. For now, we have one question left from Joscha Nortroft. Will you implement short-term cost-cutting measures and reduce staff?
We did. Not severely, but straightforward. Nevertheless, careful. This we will continue. There is no spending done currently where we do not reflect, is it pushing our business or can we do some savings?
All right. Before we come back to Andreas Wolf in the queue, just let me shortly remind you that it's still possible to ask questions if you may have. Andreas, you can speak now.
Thank you.
One quick follow-up, Robert, on the reduction in sales staff. Was it basically a voluntary attrition or was Q4 also impacted by severance payments? And on training education, you mentioned the cap on the KURSNET. How shall we think of this segment going forward? Is EUR 40 million, as I got it in my spreadsheet right now in Q4, the new run rate, or have you taken already measures which are leading to new leads for course requests, which should give us hope for higher growth in 2025? Thank you.
Well, let's start with the second one. Yeah, we started measures. And well, the terms and conditions are as they are. But that does not mean that you cannot optimize that channel also and a lot of other measures.
So in the end, that is something which the larger players were affected, not only Comcave, but also a couple of others. And we will find our way to gain market shares. Yeah, let's leave it like that. There's a lot of change in the training environment. There's a lot of technological change, digitalization, etc., where you can really participate from. It's not done in a quarter. But are there opportunities to position yourself stronger and stronger in these training markets? Yes, it is possible. And there are a lot of ways to do that. And your first question, well, we use fluctuation, basically. Nevertheless, also there were some decisions taken. So you have to have some payments for levers, but this is not on a significant level.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
So this question concludes our call for today as we did not receive any further questions in the meantime. So thank you, everyone, for joining and your shown interest in Amadeus FiRe. So we hope you still trust the company due to challenging economic environment in the time. So Mr. von Wülfing, a big thank you also to you for your time and for the presentation today. So from my side, I wish you all a lovely remaining day. And Mr. von Wülfing, maybe you would like to say some final remarks for today.
Some final remarks. Thanks for being interested in our company. Thanks for, well, trusting in our model, although we are crossing stormy waters. But the performance in a better environment will pick up. Nevertheless, we still a little bit have to ride the storm.