It's 10:16. We'll try to be prompt. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to PageGroup's 2019 full year results presentation. I'm Steve Ingham, Chief Executive Officer. I have with me Kelvin Stagg, our CFO. I will shortly present the headline numbers before handing over to Kelvin for the financial review. I'll conclude today's presentation with a summary and outlook. Although I will not read it through, I'd just like to make reference to the legal formalities that are covered in the cautionary statement in the appendix to this presentation, which will also be available on our website following the presentation. The group delivered a record gross profit of GBP 855.5 million, growth in both constant currencies and reported rates of 5%. 19 of our 36 countries delivered record years.
These results were achieved despite a tough comparator of 15.9% and a continued deterioration in trading conditions as the year progressed in a number of our markets, including France, our biggest, Greater China, and the U.K. Our large high-potential markets delivered a growth of 9% collectively, with four of our five markets, Germany, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the U.S., all delivering record gross profits. In mainland China, trade tariff uncertainty impacted confidence and our business in Hong Kong was disrupted by social unrest. Excluding Greater China, our other four large high-potential markets delivered collective growth of 16%. Our operating profit for the year was GBP 146.7 million, up from GBP 142.5 million in 2018. This represented growth of 2.2% in constant currencies. Our conversion rate was 17.1%, a slight reduction from the 17.5% in the prior year.
This was due to the challenging conditions seen across a number of our markets, many of which are normally amongst the highest conversion rates in the group. Earnings per share decreased by 0.9% to GBP 0.322 per share. We ended the year in a strong financial position, with net cash of GBP 97.8 million, broadly in line with the end of 2018. This was after returning GBP 83.5 million to shareholders during the year. Today, we're proposing a final dividend of GBP 0.094 per share, an increase of 4.4% on 2018. Together with the interim and special dividends, this gives a total for 2019 of GBP 0.2643 per share. I'll now hand you over to Kelvin for a financial review.
Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone. Overall, the group's operating profit increased by GBP 4.2 million in the year, with growth in constant currency of 2.2%. The conversion rate decreased by 0.4 percentage points to 17.1% due to tough trading conditions in a number of our markets where our conversion rates are the highest. Looking at each of our regions and starting with the largest, EMEIA, gross profit grew 7%. Despite an improvement in Fee Earner productivity of 3%, conversion was broadly flat on 2018 at 21.6% with the uncertain macroeconomic and political climate impacting confidence. In Asia Pacific, gross profit declined by 0.3% and Fee Earner productivity fell by 3%. Our conversion rate also fell by 4.5 percentage points to 12.1%.
This was impacted by our continued investments in the two large high-potential markets, as well as investments in new offices in Bangalore and Canberra, the Nikkei market in Japan, and new disciplines in Page Personnel Australia. It was also impacted by tougher trading conditions as a result of the trade tariff uncertainty in mainland China, which also affected other markets such as Singapore, as well as the social unrest in Hong Kong. In the Americas, our fastest-growing region, where we grew gross profit by 13.8% and Fee Earner Productivity improved by 3%, our conversion rate was broadly flat. Improvements in growth and productivity in most markets were offset by our continued investment in both the U.S. and Latin America, two of our large high-potential markets.
Our conversion rate in the region was also impacted by the tougher trading conditions in the New York financial services market and social unrest in Chile. Finally, in the U.K., gross profit declined by 2.4%, with Brexit-related uncertainty impacting market sentiment. Despite these challenging conditions, our operating profit conversion rate increased from 9.7%-1 2.8%. While some of the improvement in profitability was through tight control of our cost base, partly as a result of a reduction in headcount, our Customer First initiative that was implemented in 2018 also led to an increase in our conversion rate during the year. Customer First restructured the business, moving from operating on a discipline to a regional basis to more closely align ourselves with our customers. This had the effect of increasing productivity by 2%, increasing repeat business, and reducing travel and the size of the U.K. management team.
In 2019, our headcount decreased by 1% to 7,698. Our Fee Earner headcount decreased by 89, or 1.5%, in response to the increasingly tough market conditions seen as the year progressed. Our Operational Support Staff increased by 15 to support our strategic transformation programs, and this resulted in a Fee Earner to Operational Support Staff ratio of 78:22. As the graph on this slide demonstrates, we've made good progress in recent years on improving this ratio. Clearly, when all or most of our markets are growing and adding Fee Earners, the ratio is geared to improve as we benefit from economies of scale and through our investments in shared service center hubs and systems. In 2019, the ratio fell back slightly in response to the mix of tougher trading conditions and an increase in Operational Support Staff necessary to deliver our strategic programs.
Many of these increases were temporary in nature and started to fall away towards the end of the year as several of our programs finished, particularly the global finance system. We continue to work towards our Page Vision target Fee Earner to Operational Support staff ratio of 80:20. As you would expect in a people business, employment costs are by far the largest element of our cost base, representing 77% of the total. This percentage has remained broadly the same for a number of years. Our employee costs include wages, bonuses, share-based long-term incentives, and training and relocation expenses. Annual inflation-linked pay rises and profit-related bonuses drove the increase in our employment costs up 5.9% in constant currency. Other costs have increased by 5.4% compared to 2018, and the majority of these costs relate to property and business technology.
We focus on managing these costs through having a variable IT cost base and a flexible short-term lease portfolio. The tax charge for the year increased to GBP 40.8 million from GBP 38.6 million in 2018, which resulted in an increase in the group's effective tax rate to 28.3% from 27.1% in 2018, due primarily to the changes to CICE in France. The effective tax rate is higher than the U.K. rate of 19%, due primarily to the impact of higher tax rates in overseas countries, and to a lesser extent, disallowable expenditure. There are some countries in which the tax rate is lower than the U.K., their impact is small. In 2020, we expect the group's effective tax rate to remain around 28%. Intangible assets increased by GBP 5.7 million compared to 2018, due mainly to capital expenditure on our Customer Connect operating system.
Net trade and other receivables have increased by GBP 18.7 million, driven by increased trading activity, particularly in temp and contracting. Under the new accounting standard, IFRS 16, right of use assets of GBP 120.2 million and lease liabilities of GBP 128.6 million have been recognized on the balance sheet, which I will explain in more detail on the next slide. After returning GBP 83.5 million to shareholders by way of ordinary and special dividends over the last 12 months, net cash was GBP 97.8 million. Overall, net assets have increased from GBP 318.6 million- GBP 324.4 million. Under the new accounting standard, IFRS 16, leases that were previously classified as operating leases are now required to be recognized as right of use assets on the balance sheet with a corresponding lease liability. The lease expense previously recorded on a straight line basis is now replaced by depreciation and an interest charge.
We've applied the modified retrospective method of adoption, where the standard is applied retrospectively with an adjustment to reserves on transition. The adoption of IFRS 16 on the 1st of January resulted in a reduction in opening reserves of GBP 1.5 million. At the transition, right of use assets of GBP 126.2 million and lease liabilities of GBP 134.5 million were recognized on the balance sheet. Under IFRS 16, the straight line rental expense of GBP 38.5 million has been replaced with a depreciation charge in respect of the right to use assets of GBP 36.6 million. This has resulted in an increase to EBITDA of GBP 38.5 million and an increase to EBIT of GBP 1.9 million. An interest charge in respect to the lease liabilities of GBP 2 million has also been recognized, resulting in a decrease in profit before tax of GBP 0.1 million. This slide shows the key movements in our cash through the year.
Our EBITDA inflow was GBP 210 million, an increase of GBP 40.5 million from 2018. The majority of which related to IFRS 16. Working capital increased by GBP 15.9 million, while tax and net interest paid decreased from GBP 41.2 in 2018 to GBP 37.4 in 2019. Net capital expenditure was GBP 24.6 million, in line with 2018. The spending mainly due to office fit-out expenditure, our global finance system, and our new Customer Connect operating system. In 2019, employees exercised GBP 1.7 million share options, adding GBP 7.2 million to our net cash position. This was a decrease from the GBP 26.9 million received in 2018, which had been driven by the high share price. The group also purchased shares costing GBP 10 million into the employee benefit trust to hedge our liabilities under group share plans, down slightly from GBP 11.6 in 2018. Payments made in relation to lease liabilities reduced cash by GBP 38.2.
The largest outflow of cash totaling GBP 83.5 million related to dividends. I'll explain this further on the next slide. The overall impact of these cash flows was to increase the group's net cash position by GBP 0.1 million to GBP 97.8 million at the end of the year. With current net cash of around GBP 97.8 million, today the group announced the final ordinary dividend of GBP 0.094 per share, an increase of 4.4%. This will be paid on the 19th of June to shareholders on the register as at the 22nd of May. When combined with the interim dividend of GBP 0.043 per share, this gives a total ordinary dividend for the year of GBP 0.137, an increase of 4.6% over 2018. This remains consistent with our policy of growing the ordinary dividend in a measured and sustainable way through the economic cycle.
Together with a special dividend of GBP 0.1273 per share paid last October, total dividends for 2019 were GBP 0.2643 per share. This was our fifth consecutive year of paying special dividends in line with our policy of returning excess cash to shareholders. Over that period, we have returned over GBP 380 million in ordinary and special dividends. I will now hand you back to Steve.
Thank you, Kelvin. Before continuing with the summary and outlook, if you'll indulge me, I would like to give you a brief update on two areas of strategic investment which we believe will help the long-term growth of our business. Two areas we see as critical and that differentiates us from our competitors are investments into our culture and sustainable business model and our technology platform. Culture is central to our business strategy. We encourage a culture of inclusion where all our employees feel valued, heard, trusted, respected, and can bring their whole selves to work. This makes us progressive and resilient business, which is fit for the future. Since 2012, our journey has been about moving beyond the business case, showcasing and communicating the value and impact of diversity and inclusion to our employees, our customers, and our stakeholders.
We have moved from an initial focus on diversity and inclusion to inclusion, engagement, belonging, and purpose. Our focus is on long-term sustainability, aligning our purpose, values, strategy, and culture. Having seen the impact of our initiatives through the years, we're more conscious today that culture needs to be intentional. We've acknowledged the evident link between culture engagement and critically, performance. Last year, we brought all our activities together holistically under what we call our culture and engagement framework. The purpose of the framework is to demonstrate our culture and how it centers around the voice of our people and our customers. It also includes measures of success to help us drive continuous improvement and where appropriate, meaningful change. With these measures of success, we've made invaluable progress.
For example, since 2012, we've increased the number of female Managers from 41%- 51%, and the number of female Directors from 26%- 40%. Our gender pay gap has also decreased 5% from last year. We'll tell you more about our continuous listening strategy, the next step in the evolution of our culture and development at an investor event later this year. Moving on to technology, just under two years ago, we introduced you to our connected customer experience, illustrating how we look to acquire, engage, and nurture all of our customers using a suite of technology and digital partnerships. We've built up our expertise on the technologies that form this platform over the last five years, working with partners from within recruitment, but critically also leveraging our infrastructure and investment capability to bring the best innovation and technology into recruitment.
It involves a constant program to test, learn, optimize, and evolve how we engage with our customers, and then to deliver this at scale to our businesses worldwide. We believe this gives us a competitive advantage in all our markets. In 2019, the program delivered significant results. Efficiently acquiring customers is the fuel that powers our business. Our digital program drove 55 million visits to our websites worldwide, 9% up on 2018, leading to 14 million applications. Through technologies such as Salesforce and Thunderhead, we automatically further engage those customers through 20 million targeted and relevant marketing emails with engagement rates that are three times the industry benchmark. We see technology as an enabler, doing more of the heavy lifting, leaving our people to concentrate on building better relationships with our customers.
Page's purpose is to change lives for people. The roles that we fill are often critical to the growth of a business or in the career path of the candidates. Both very good reasons for us to ensure that human is at the heart of what we do, understanding beyond the black and white of a CV. We see the seamless transition between technology tools and human contact as essential, and that is why we've integrated these tools into our new operating system, Customer Connect. Customer Connect is a critical component in achieving our Page Vision. The new operating system will replace PRS, our current operating system, driving improvements in both productivity and customer centricity. The integration of both our sales and marketing platforms will increase marketing personalization and improve the quality of consultant interactions, enabling stronger client and customer relationships.
Implementation of the new system has begun with the successful launch of a pilot in the Middle East and Africa towards the end of last year and will continue throughout this year. This summary skims the surface of how we see technology and digital enabling our future. We'll also tell you more about the impact of our Customer Connect program at the investor event later this year. In summary, overall, the group delivered a record gross profit with growth of 5% in constant currencies. The Americas, our fastest-growing region, and 19 individual countries delivered record years. Our operating profit was GBP 146.7 million, representing growth of 2.2% in constant currencies. Our conversion rate decreased from 17.5% in 2018 to 17.1%, due primarily to the tough market conditions seen across a number of our markets, many of which are normally amongst those with the highest conversion rates.
In 2019, our head count decreased by 1% to 7,698. Our Fee Earner head count decreased by 89, or 1.5%, in response to the challenging trading conditions. Underpinning our confidence and investments is our strong net cash position. We closed the year with cash of GBP 97.8 million after dividend payments totaling GBP 83.5 million. Today, we proposed a final dividend of GBP 0.094 per share, an increase of 4.4% from 2018. The slowing growth that we saw in the second half of 2019, caused by a number of macroeconomic challenges, have continued in the first two months of this year. In addition, we've seen the emergence of COVID-19 in Greater China. This, combined with the existing challenges, led the group gross profit to decline by 3% in these first two months. In our market-leading Greater China business, where COVID-19 first emerged, we have around 550 people across nine offices.
We reacted swiftly in challenging circumstances, recognizing that the health and safety of our employees, candidates, and clients was our top priority. With consultants continuing to work via home access, we were able to maintain contact with both candidates and clients. After periods of office closure in some cities, we had over 90% of our consultants back in our offices at the end of February. Business was transacted using a range of technologies, and while there was almost no face-to-face contact in the first two months, we were still able to deliver gross profit at circa 65% compared to 2019. Looking forward in Greater China, many of our clients have not been able to return to work with the same speed, and therefore we expect a significant impact in March, one of our largest months of the year, and potentially beyond.
With COVID-19 now impacting other markets around the world, it's too early to estimate the impact on the group's operations. We'll continue to monitor the situation closely and will of course provide updates as necessary. Looking forward, it is possible that foreign exchange headwinds will persist or possibly increase. If 2019 results were restated at current exchange rates, this would reduce group gross profit by around GBP 15 million, and operating profit by around GBP 3 million. In addition, current rates also remain substantially below pre-Brexit levels. We continue to have a flexible and highly diversified business model that enables us to react quickly to changes in market conditions. We're clear market leaders in many of our markets with a highly experienced senior management team, which we believe positions us to take advantage of all opportunities in 2020.
We'll continue to focus on driving profitable growth while progressing our strategic investments towards our vision of 10,000 headcount, GBP 1 billion of gross profit, and GBP 200 million-GBP 250 million of operating profit. That ends the presentation. I will now be happy to take any questions you may have. Apparently you're gonna need a mic. It's all of 6 ft, but
Thank you. [Hans Paus at Capita]. Two questions from my side. Of course, it's very difficult to give any further indication on COVID-19, but could you give maybe some feeling or have you already seen something in your KPIs, let's say, over the last two, three weeks, outside China, maybe especially with, say, maybe vacancies coming in, do you see already anything on that? Could you give some feeling? My second question is on the Customer First initiative. Could you give maybe some feeling or maybe some examples what you have been doing, how that drives, then, your conversion ratio in the U.K.? Do you have plans, let's say, to do more also in other countries? You could give maybe some feeling what the impact could be.
Sure. Well, on both, I mean, the COVID-19 one is a very difficult one. Just what we've seen in the last few weeks, what's basically happened is that the face-to-face element, and I mean face-to-face in the same room rather than face-to-face through Skype or WeChat or whatever, has changed obviously. We're doing a lot of using technologies to drive activity. In fact, we're still picking up a high-l evel of jobs, and we're still actually managing to get a high level of first interviews.
The problem is a lot of our work is at a senior level, and a lot of our work requires, in the belief of the clients anyway, and some candidates, that they have to be face-to-face in the same room to actually get offered a job. Sadly, the one important KPI that I suspect will be impacted at the end of March, we're not really seeing it yet, apart from in China and maybe Singapore, is that the final transaction, the final interview is not happening, and therefore won't convert to as much revenue. Lower level jobs, Page Personnel, and even the low-level jobs in Michael Page, and technical jobs, as we've seen in China, that can still happen. We've had COVID-19 for two months in China.
Honestly, I didn't know what to expect in February, because with offices closed and consultants not in offices and presumably clients and candidates unavailable, I thought gross profit could be even more difficult. Actually, what we found was that clients were working from home, and they were at home, I guess probably bored, frustrated, and so on, and actually were quite happy to take calls from us. Ironically, it was actually easier to get hold of many clients because they were at home and bored and on the end of a mobile phone than it was when they were in meetings, walking factories, flying somewhere, and so on. Actually, we were able to maintain a high level of client contact.
Of course, they were happy to interview the candidates we were sending them, because why not do a Skype or a WeChat or whatever and actually face-to-face interview somebody when you're sat at home because you've not got that much else to do? We found we were getting a high strike rate of first interviews and a good conversion rate to propose second interviews. The frustration is with non-technical jobs, those second interviews are being postponed until people are able to be face-to-face again. In China, they seem to have gripped the situation quite quickly. We were allowed to go back to our offices. It varied from city to city. Ironically, in Guangzhou, for example, which was the second-most impacted city with cases, we were allowed to go back to the office 100%, and we are 100% back in the office.
We are starting to transact face-to-face in the same room. However, in Shenzhen, the third most impacted, and Beijing, that wasn't impacted as much as that at all, we're only allowed a 50/50 scenario. 50% of our consultants can be in at one time. The other 50% are working from home. All of our people have home access, which was a challenge for our technology, an interesting challenge, but they managed to achieve it. Because normally, whilst we have quite a lot of people working flexibly and working from home, we don't normally expect 100% of our consultants in a market to be at home. We were able to achieve that.
Even with the youngest, most inexperienced consultants, because, and we've talked about it in the past, we've created a digital learning program, we were able to actually continue the intense training of those consultants at home digitally. Even for them, who might have been the least productive by being at home without clear management and guidance, they were still actually able to achieve quite a lot. That is going to vary from culture to culture, the importance of that face-to-face interview, and that's where I become vague because as the virus rolls out and impacts different countries in different ways to different degrees, and equally, the cultures are different about the importance of a face-to-face interview, it's just too early and impossible to say. It is quite remarkable what we can transact without using the face-to-face interview.
I guess the question is, does it change structurally forever? I don't think so. I think actually, people will still prefer to go back to face-to-face. We were picking up jobs in China, and I could name the clients, but I won't just in case the wrong people are listening in. We were picking up jobs, engineering jobs and so forth. Those companies need those engineers in their factories, and they can't afford to wait till everything's over and everyone's back to work to be able to start interviewing processes and then making offers. They interviewed and made offers, and we billed the client all in February, and progress was still being made. I imagine other countries will do that. There'll be underlying business still happening wherever. Customer First.
Way back when I was rolling out new disciplines in the U.K., we found that because the most important discipline we did, the only discipline we did, was finance and accounting, it was very difficult to establish other disciplines unless we gave it a particular focus. We would have a managing director, me, launching the second discipline, marketing, and then the third, sales, fourth, et cetera. We rolled out all the disciplines that we now do, which as you know, is more than 60% of the business. We would have a dedicated management team to each of those disciplines to make sure it happened. Otherwise, consultants, the best ones, always seemed to migrate their way back to finance, which was where the profits were being generated back in the day.
We left it that way, which meant that the management structure in the U.K., say for one discipline like engineering, would be responsible for all the engineering consultants that were dotted around the country in different cities. We were spread thin in terms of a management team. It also meant that a client that might be recruiting engineers, lawyers, marketing people, would actually have a senior point of contact, multiple, all the different managing directors for each discipline. It wasn't efficient, it wasn't effective, and it didn't help our customer relationships. We changed that. That's what's driven productivity and our conversion rate in the U.K. However, in many other countries, we didn't do it that way because actually the size of those countries didn't allow it in the first place.
It's easy, as we all know, to drive between Leeds and Manchester on a decent day without floods or snow or whatever, but you can drive between those offices and frankly do them all in a week. You can't do that in Australia. You can't do that in France. They're too far apart. Actually, we've always had that regional management structure, so we have people running individual offices. Rather than having lots of bosses turning up to Düsseldorf to manage one element of the business, one discipline, we always had regional management. In terms of rolling it out, we can't because it's already rolled out. We have a different boss in Melbourne to a different boss in Sydney. We're already getting that benefit, and it was that benefit that we saw in those countries that we realized we needed too.
Often because the U.K. is the most mature market, we've learned the lessons here and then we export them. In this case, we actually imported that back and realized that was the best way of structuring the business. In what has been a marginally negative market now for some time in the U.K., to improve productivity is quite remarkable, and it's had a really refreshing impact. I'm pleased we did it.
Morning, Steve Woolf from Numis. Just two from me. Firstly, in terms of can you talk a little bit about the fee rate pressure you might have experienced in those countries which were sort of deteriorating a little bit in the second half, thinking maybe the U.K. and France in particular, and how that's trended in the early part of this year? Secondly, your head count plans coming into the year. I appreciate obviously China is completely up for grabs now and there's a lot of uncertainty, just what were your initial thoughts on where you might end up given the changes made at the back end of last year? Thanks.
Well, look, on fee rates, first of all, actually last year, we had a drive to improve our productivity, and clearly there's many things that impact productivity. One of them is fee rates. We were absolutely keen not to let our fee rates slide, and they haven't. Of course, if the trading environment is really, really tough, sometimes clients will try and beat us up and get a better deal. You'd expect that. You often have to remember that if the market's that tough, they're probably also not giving us as much volume. If they're not giving us as much volume, then we've got an argument as to why we shouldn't reduce our fees.
To be honest, one of the reasons that we do sometimes reduce our fees is actually that our younger, less experienced consultants are probably the most flexible to reducing fees when pressured by a client. We had a lot of activity and a lot of focus last year to make sure that didn't happen. Authority for those consultants, they wouldn't have the authority to be flexible on fees without referring it to senior management, et cetera. As a result, our fees didn't actually slip at all. There'll be the odd exception somewhere, but they are overall stable at the moment across the business. In fact, in one or two markets where we were growing, or where we had a record year, they actually went up a bit. The most significant thing, I think, when you talk about fees, which is important, is the mix.
Which geographies are doing well and which ones are getting bigger as a proportion. The U.K. was 97% of the business when I started, and the U.K. is somewhere in the middle of the pack, 19%, 20% typically. Actually, the bigger the proportion that we have a business in Asia or North America or Germany, actually our average fee rate will go up because their fee rates are significantly higher than the U.K. The lowest fee rates we have worldwide are Portugal, Spain, Australia. Clearly there's a mix issue here, and that's historically always been the same, it's not probably going to change when I look back over the last 35 years. There is a mix impact.
The other thing I'd probably add to that is we are seeing candidate short markets pretty much everywhere. In terms of pure supply and demand, while candidates remain short, while they're difficult to find, fee rates will hang pretty robust. Regardless of the sort of slowdowns that we've seen, particularly in senior white collar recruitment, there is a shortage of candidates in pretty much every market around the world.
On headcount plans, if we remain negative, then we'll let our weakest consultants resign and leave. Typically, when a market gets tougher, and I've said this many times, recruitment gets to be a pretty challenging job, as you can imagine. Trying to pick up clients that are actually hiring and not firing is difficult. It's fine if you're experienced, you're resilient, you've got a network, you know who to phone, you're happy to pick the phone up and talk to those people, then you'll get business and transact in whatever environment. A receding market quickly exposes those that are weaker, and those that are weaker typically make a decision that perhaps recruitment's not for them. They've probably only been briefly in recruitment as an industry, and they leave, and our headcount will come down.
We're certainly not planning to be absolutely clear with any issue that relates, doesn't matter whether it is a virus or social unrest or strikes, or all of the different uncertainties or issues or challenges we've had. We certainly do not change our strategy to fit that issue and go, okay, fine, look, China's been impacted. That changes our strategy. China, for example, is a high potential market for us. We're market leader there. We expect to continue to invest. We're investing right now, and we will continue to into the future and expect to have a far bigger business in China, irrespective of the challenges we've had in the last few months and probably going forward.
No plans to cut or change the structure apart from letting the headcount come down if we remain in negative growth, and that will be just the weaker, less productive consultants leaving.
As you're aware, our staff turnover tends to be somewhere between 30% and 40%. It's currently somewhere towards the middle of that. We're still hiring in all territories. If we don't, our headcount will go way too low too quickly. It's just a matter of how many we hire, and are we hiring more than are leaving.
Hi, good morning. This is Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Just three interconnected questions really. First, can you just remind us what is your cost base in China? The second is, if you can tell us what sort of cost saving you expect in FY 2020, net of the cost dropping out. Finally, in an environment where growth likely to remain negative and continue to drift down, how sort of you think about the drop-through rates or what's your internal assessment on that? Thank you.
What's the last one?
Drop-through rates.
Hey, drop-through.
Well, I'll cover the first one while Kelvin gathers his thoughts. Roughly speaking, our cost base in China is about GBP 4 million a month. That is headcount and the nine offices. Clearly, if we are doing 60%, 65% of the GP, which we were in the first two months of the year, it is a very profitable business, particularly Hong Kong, as you would expect. You can see the impact there. It is significant. It is 8% of the group. It is the third largest market. In terms of cost savings?
In terms of cost savings, the biggest element of cost is people. As I said earlier in the presentation, 77% of our cost base is people related. Where we need to, we will use some of that natural attrition to lower the cost base for the more junior consultants as they leave. It doesn't follow that if you take 10% of the consultants out, the cost goes down by 10 because it's the more junior ones. Certainly, as Steve said earlier, in places like China, we've spent 10 years building a management team, and the most important thing for us is to carry that management team and secure them through.
We will be looking, as I'm sure all companies are in this environment, at areas such as staff welfare, such as travel, and some of those, particularly travel, are coming towards us in terms of the ability to reduce the cost in those areas. Those two items combined are about GBP 20 million a year. To the extent that we can make some meaningful inroads into those, that will certainly be another avenue we'll go after. We won't, however, cut our spending on strategic programs. Our Customer Connect system, we will continue to invest in that and roll it through, and maybe take some advantage of markets being a bit slower to run that through. At this point, I'm not going to flag any definite cost savings, but there are a number of avenues, and we certainly will be looking at the cost base.
Yeah. I'll just highlight the last one because Kelvin mentioned it earlier. A number of those transformational projects have come to an end. He talked about GFS, which is the global finance system that we've introduced with one software and so on. We've hired people to get that over the line and to implement it. It's now rolled out everywhere. Clearly, some of those were hired temporarily to finish the program. They will fall away, and we will see some efficiency of those programs as well. There'll be cost savings as well, we expect, in the operational support function. There's a number of areas that we can go after. We're comfortable. As Kelvin said there, we're spending roughly GBP 20 million on staff welfare and travel, about half and half.
That's GBP 1 million a month on travel, and it's fairly obvious there's less of that going on at the moment. You can see some obvious savings.
Last question was on drop-through rates? Drop-through rates, we don't normally look at drop-through rates, to be honest. We tend to look at conversion. In terms of additional gross profit, largely where it comes out of productivity improvements, which is what we've seen in a number of places, we will pay bonuses of the order of about 25%-30%. It depends entirely which market it is and which one of our brands, and therefore, the rest should drop through. It tends to get carried up into the headcount attrition rates, and therefore, the amount of rehiring and productivity per consultant. I think it will be a pressure this year to be able to hold our conversion at the 17% level if things carry on as challenging as they are. We will look to cost savings, as you mentioned earlier, to try and secure that.
Hi, it's Andy Grobler from Credit Suisse. Just two from me, if I may. One backward-looking, one forward. From a regulatory perspective, we've got stuff going on in the Netherlands, in the U.K., IR35, and in France. How do you see that panning out? Other stuff may get in the way of that being meaningful, but how do you see that? Then through last year, if you look at a couple of your more mature markets, let's say the U.K. and Australia, did you see any difference from a client perspective between the large and the smaller clients in terms of demand for your services? Has there been a shift either through 2019 or over the last two, three years?
Yeah. Just in terms of regulatory and IR35, specifically the U.K., it is challenging. It's actually most challenging educating our clients because there's a lot of confusion when they make a regulatory change like this, where clients, and many of our clients, and we've said this before, a good 80% of our clients in the U.K. are SMEs. They won't have 1,000 contractors. They might have two. They could be operating under IR35. For them to understand it and what to do, whether to increase what they pay that contractor so the contractor ends up with the same net, whether the contractor wants to continue under some program of IR35 and set up a different company or framework for them to be able to operate in that way, or whether the client wants to turn them perm, and be done with it's confusing.
We've spent a lot of time educating our clients and candidates to understand the benefits, the risks, et cetera. So far, it hasn't impacted the business. If a client turns a contract to perm, we get a full fee. That's a benefit to the business, short-term anyway. What we've managed to do is balance basically this change by educating clients and so on. That's worked fine. In France specifically, really the impact is what, Sri? Are you referring to CICE?
No.
No, Netherlands, the same sort of arrangement I think is being pushed through in the Netherlands. I think generally what I seem to have seen in this is that the bigger clients are not willing to take the risk going forward. The bigger the client, the more of them are insisting that it's PAYE or you don't stay anymore. We're seeing some smaller clients that are still struggling to hold onto people, and we're actually seeing a number of contractors, particularly in the IT space, forming sort of cooperatives to try and get around the substitution requirement. Generally, I think in terms of any sort of early trend on it, the bigger the client, the more that they're just saying, "It's PAYE or we'll find another contractor.
In terms of the trend now, we continue in both, you mentioned Australia and the U.K., we continue to focus on SMEs. Where we're mature, and obviously, Australia was our third country that we operate in, so we've been there for nearly 40 years, we are focused on SMEs largely because larger companies are capable of attracting candidates and also have the resources, the resourcing functions to do a lot of their own interviewing and shortlisting and so on. There's not been a trend change in that.
There was probably 12, 10 years ago. Anything that was that big that was going to go to an RPO or was going to go to an in-house recruitment did it 10 years ago, not in the last two. Pardon me.
Morning, it's Paul Checketts from Barclays Capital. I've got two, please. The first, Kelvin, can you just lay out where you think CapEx is likely to land this year now? Secondly, going back to China, do you think because you recognize the gross profit when the candidate accepts the role, is there a risk that actually the corporate could pull that job because the situation has worsened since January? Thanks.
Yeah, on CapEx. CapEx this year I expect will probably be around GBP 20 million. We were a bit higher last year at GBP 24 million, and the year before, actually. The year before last year, 2018, we had unusually, quite a lot of very big offices that were all fit out in the same year. We also had the global finance system running alongside it, and it was broadly GBP 14 million on fit out and GBP 10 million on software. Last year, actually, the fit outs were a more normal level. They were about GBP 9 million. We actually had two system implementations running at the same time with the end of the global finance system and the start of Customer Connect. As we go forward into 2020, I expect Customer Connect will be GBP 11 million, GBP 12 million, and actually our fit outs will be GBP 8 million or GBP 9 million, and so it will come down to about GBP 20 million.
In terms of clients or candidates, of course, changing their mind because of what's happened, it was a question we asked ourselves at the beginning of the year. Would people change their mind? We've seen it very limited cases, where people have gone, "Actually, I'm not going to move jobs." It's actually as much about the candidate rather than the client pulling the job, just the candidate thinking, "Do you know what? I don't want to work in that city," or whatever. Very limited evidence of it happening. Like I said before, we have had actually probably more direct dialogue with our candidates and clients than we did before because they're stuck at home in many cases in a relatively small apartment, and they're quite happy to talk. As a result, we've been all over what we've already recognized in terms of revenue.
Now, we don't recognize all of our revenue that way in China, actually. In every market, we don't necessarily. Particularly senior work, large fees and so on, we often recognize them when they start. There is no risk anyway, but we are particularly close. If a consultant places one to two people a month, it's not difficult to stay in touch with one to two clients and one to two candidates to make sure that the revenue recognized happens, because it's horrible seeing it reverse out. We've had a lot of different dialogue. In some cases, candidates have started even when they've not been able to come out of their apartment. They've been sent induction notes, induction briefings, et cetera, so that when they eventually are able to go back to work, which they can now, they're already starting to operate.
In some cases, candidates have offered to delay their start date so that it's not costing the clients anything, so that it doesn't give the clients an incentive to say, "Well, let's not bother. I don't want to be paying for something that's not happening because you're still at home." We've actually worked very hard to make sure that doesn't happen, and we've had one or two cases, but very limited, and no reason why it should suddenly start because we're largely back at work.