Adecco SA, the world’s largest provider of temporary workers, reported first-quarter revenue that beat analysts’ estimates as accelerating European economic growth prompted companies to hire.
Sales rose 5 percent to 5.33 billion euros (US$6.06 billion) from 5.08 billion euros a year earlier, Glattbrugg, Switzerland-based Adecco said in a statement yesterday.
That beat the 5.28 billion-euro average of six analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Earnings before interest, taxes and amortization (EBITA) fell 4 percent to 228 million euros. Revenue from France, Adecco’s biggest market, rose 7 percent to 1.1 billion euros.
“France is slowly recovering,” chief executive officer Alain Dehaze, who took over the role in September last year, said on Bloomberg TV. “It’s not an explosive recovery, it’s a continuous recovery.”
Adecco is a bellwether for the global economy, as companies use recruitment services to bring in temporary staff when business prospects are rising.
A renewed drop in consumer prices in April overshadowed the eurozone’s fastest economic growth in a year and prompted warnings from the European Central Bank about its effect on wages.
As unemployment declined in March to the lowest since 2011, the European Commission told the 19-nation bloc’s largest economies to reduce debt and modernize labor markets.
The company completed its acquisition of Penna Consulting PLC, announced in March in an attempt to expand in the UK market. First-quarter revenue from the UK and Ireland, which make up Adecco’s third-largest market, were unchanged at 545 million euros. The acquisition came as the UK debates the merits of being part of the EU ahead of a June 23 referendum.
Adecco has fallen 10 percent this year in Zurich trading, slightly beating the benchmark Swiss Market Index, which has declined 11 percent in the period. Earlier this year, the stock was at its cheapest since 2008 relative to the main Swiss equity gauge. It is now trading 11.3 times its estimated earnings as the gap has been narrowing.
First-quarter net income fell 10 percent, to 144 million euros. Adecco reiterated its target for EBITA margin of an average of 4.5 percent to 5 percent through 2020, after cutting it at the start of this year. In the first three months, it narrowed to 4.3 percent of revenue from 4.6 percent.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)