Good evening. Welcome to the Robert Walters Q4 Trading Update conference call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to David Bower, the CFO. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Robert Walters fourth quarter 2024 trading update. I'm David Bower, Chief Financial Officer, and joining me this morning is Toby Fowlston, Chief Executive. Hope you've all seen the short session published earlier this morning. Before we move to Q&A, I'll just make a few remarks around performance at the group level before Toby focuses on trading across our regions. As I've already stated, all net fee income percentage movements are in constant currency terms. Quarter four group net fee income of around GBP 25 million was down 14% year-on-year in the fourth quarter, reflective of the challenging market conditions seen throughout 2024. Our temp levels in October and November were broadly stable versus the third quarter, albeit quarter four fees were slightly weaker than we'd expected.
Looking at our service lines, Specialist Recruitment fee income of around GBP 62 million was down by 14% year-on-year, with perm down by 18%, and contract and interim offerings slightly more resilient and down 10%. In Recruitment Outsourcing, net fee income of around GBP 13 million was down by 14%. Turning now to group headcount and productivity, we closed the year with total headcount of 3,294, a 5% reduction on the third quarter closing figure. Within this, there was a 7% reduction in fee earners, where we continue to be highly selective in replacing natural attrition, and a 2% reduction in non-fee earners. Looked at year-on-year, fee earners and non-fee earners were down 17% and 18% respectively. Perm placements per perm fee earner, a key driver of our model, was down slightly compared to the third quarter and the prior year.
As a reminder, we continue to believe our fee earner headcount is broadly appropriate for the current market conditions, and we will prioritize maintaining a strong fee earner average tenure, leaving us well positioned for when market conditions improve. Indicative of the value being delivered to clients, fee rates remained strong, helping to drive the growth in net fee income per fee earner, which is up 2% year-on-year in constant currency terms. We closed the period with net cash of GBP 53 million, with our strong balance sheet enabling us to continue to take the right actions for our clients, candidates, our people, and our wider stakeholders. I'll hand over to Toby to take us through the trading in our regional segments.
Thanks, Toby. Good morning, everyone. Let's first turn to look at our Specialist Recruitment business.
All net fee income percentage movements continue to be in constant currency terms, and at a segmental level just related here to our Specialist Recruitment business. The same for our Asia-Pacific business. Net fee income was down 11% year-on-year, broadly consistent with the third quarter. In Northeast Asia, Japan was down 5%, having seen a slower end to the quarter, while South Korea saw some modest growth. Southeast Asia was down 12%, with a good performance in Malaysia, more than offset by other markets. In Australia and New Zealand, while conditions in public sector hiring in particular in New Zealand remained very challenging, we did see signs of stabilization in Australia, which was flat year-on-year. In Greater China, down 15%, there was a more resilient performance in Mainland China and Taiwan, but was outweighed by softer conditions in Hong Kong.
Turning to look at Europe, net fee income was down 17%, a drop down from the third quarter performance. France and Spain remained challenging, while Belgium down 17% was against a record prior year quarter. There was, of course, increased political uncertainty in Germany during the quarter, which had an impact on sentiment, with fees there down 21%. However, the December exit rate in Germany was better. The Netherlands was the most resilient of our larger European markets, with fees down 10%. Turning to the UK, net fee income was down 23%, broadly in line with the third quarter pacing. There was modest growth in London. However, this was more than offset by tougher conditions in the regions, and with many employers now reevaluating their hiring plans, obviously in light of the UK Budget in October.
In our Rest of the World segment, net fee income was down 16%, a drop off from the third quarter pacing. While we continue to see a resilient performance from our largest market of the Middle East, conditions remained more challenging than our other markets. Turning to our Recruitment Outsourcing business, as David mentioned a moment ago, fees were down 14%, consistent with the third quarter pacing. Fees were down 12% in our largest outsourcing region in the U.K. and down 9% in Asia-Pacific, with a weaker performance in the Rest of the World segment. So, in conclusion then, with the exception of one or two pockets of relative resilience, the fourth quarter was a challenging one, consistent with the first three quarters of the year, and there are as yet few signs of a clear improvement in client and candidate confidence levels.
Fee income was slightly weaker than expected, which, in addition to further actions taken on the cost base, mean that we now expect a broadly break-even position at the profit before tax level for the full year. Notwithstanding the market backdrop, however, we continue to focus on our strategic initiatives to strengthen the business. Fee earner productivity is stable, and we are focused on realizing further improvements across our markets. We are taking action to drive efficiencies in our front and back office teams, as well as optimizing our office network. And these initiatives give us the conviction on driving a high conversion rate from pre-pandemic levels in the medium term as market conditions improve. And with that, we'd be happy to take your questions.
Thank you. If I could just remind people to ask a question, it's star one. So if you'd like to ask a question to the management team, it is star one on your telephone keypad. We'll take our first question from Tom Callan from Investec. And the question from him is, firstly, on the cost saving point, could you remind us as to how the group is currently set up in terms of use of shared service centers and how that links back to the strategy laid out at the CMD?
Thanks, Tom. Yeah, so we do have a number of shared service centers across the group at the moment, providing services across multiple markets from there. I would also be fair to say we've got a number of activities sitting in local markets, but equally we operate from the shared service centers. So, as I said in the Capital Markets Day, one of our key actions regarding efficiency and productivity of our back office is to harmonize the processes where possible and to consolidate into our service centers. So we have some service centers up and running, but they have far more capacity and, as I say, there's plenty of activity that currently happens in some markets that could equally be done from shared services. So we're looking to roll those out further over the coming months.
Tom's second question. On Australia, clearly encouraging to see signs of stabilization there. Could you provide a bit more color as to the underlying market dynamics there and how, if at all, they have improved versus, say, this time last year?
Yeah, thanks, Tom. So, I mean, firstly, in terms of the labor demand in the wider Australian market, i.e., job postings, it does seem to have had a few months of stabilization through October and November, perhaps versus other larger hiring markets, UK, France, Germany, for example, which have continued to reduce slightly over the same timeframe. I think looking secondly at our own performance, we did see a more stable picture from quarter three into quarter four this year and into last year. The team obviously has been working very hard through the various actions to improve the funnel and diversification as well over all stages, and we're starting to obviously see that come through now.
That's perfect. Thank you. Just a reminder, if people would like to ask a question, please press star one, and I'll hand over to Caroline to manage the rest of the Q&A.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line Sanjay Vidyarthi from Panmure. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Morning, Toby Fowlston. David, just a question on cash, please. Could you just remind us of what the seasonal swings are in terms of cash balances and also any impact that you've seen from the contract temp side in terms of working capital unwind in Q4 and how we should think about that going into FY25? Thanks.
Yeah, in terms of seasonal swings, we would normally expect through the first half of the year to see our cash balance reduce off the back of effectively payment of the year-end bonuses, off the final dividend in sort of April, May time. And then as a position, the second half wages traditionally sort of build the cash balance back up through the second half. So really our sort of capital policy around GBP 50 million of cash is a year-end target, giving us the cash at the end of the year and ready therefore for the decline through the first half in the cash balance to receive the normal seasonality. In terms of working capital, it's been broadly steady.
We have had, as you can imagine, the sort of counter-typical release of working capital through the year that helps support that cash balance as the trading result has come off of it.
Okay, that's great. Thanks very much.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line Steve Woolf from Deutsche Bank. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Morning all. Just a quick couple from me. Just if you can flag any particular areas of weakness you're seeing within Europe, is it more centered on the perm side? Is it centered on any particular job roles and any sorts of the extension rate of the time to hire, whether it's pushed out from seven weeks to 10? And then secondly, in fee rates, whether any of that has been pressure on that or whether it is still the skill shortages which are keeping those levels high. It is just that it's the conversion from interviews into job acceptance that has been the key problem. Thanks.
Thanks, Steve. So, Sandy, I'll touch on your first part. I'll leave Dave to talk on fee rates. I think generally in Europe anyway, as David mentioned, perm impacted on 18%, temp 10%, so temp certainly has been a little bit more resilient. I think it is stronger for us in Europe. We have a very strong interim business, so that has served us well, and that is a key focus area for us this year in terms of continued growth in that interim section. Across Europe, job roles, we are very strong in the accountancy sector. That is a fairly significant portion of our income. That's an area that's holding up very well. I think in terms of specific countries, on the upside, I'd say Netherlands has continued to be resilient.
I think some of our challenges, I'll probably call out Spain, that performance hasn't been where we would like that to be, and it is a market where we've recently changed the leadership, so we believe that will drive a better performance there. Germany, obviously well documented, we're not big in Germany, but we do still see opportunity there.
And anything beyond? Sorry, go on. Sorry, David. Keep going.
It's all good, carry on.
No, it's just any particular roles beyond the accounting side that were maybe of sort of interest from your numbers you'd see.
Yeah, I mean, where we're seeing opportunity is definitely accountancy, specifically transformation type roles. Technology has been a challenge. Probably the exception there is cyber, where we've seen opportunity in growth. And obviously, the other sector that has remained resilient, not just in Europe but across the group actually, is in legal. And I mean, it partly plays into, particularly if you look at the U.K. with what's happened in terms of the Employment Rights Bill and what's coming forward, anything with sort of regulatory compliance skills within that legal sector has been in demand, and we've continued to see healthy wage growth there and demand from our clients.
Perfect. Thanks on that one. And then David, sorry, I interrupted on the time to hire.
Yeah, of course. Yeah, time to hire. It's still taking longer than it has historically. It's got a lot longer than it was earlier on in the year, so we're not seeing that as a worsening issue. And I think you also mentioned about fee rates, and fee rates are holding up, are still holding up very well. As you saw in the announcement, we've increased our net fee income for fee earner by 2% in consequence. So fee rates are still holding up.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. We don't have no further questions. I'll hand it back over to your host for closing remarks.
Thank you very much, everybody, and thanks for taking the time to speak with us this morning. That's it from us. Thank you.
Thanks for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.