With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Industries included in the sector are advertising, diversified outsourcing services, and financial data services.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Business Services

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-165-Manpower Group

As the world's third-largest staffing firm, the company provides services through its four primary brands: Manpower, Experis, Right Management, and ManpowerGroup Solutions.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-158-Manpower-Group

The global staffing agency offers workplace solutions and HR services via its businesses in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2019 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

World's Most Admired Companies

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2018 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2017 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

Business insiders have spoken: Asked which companies they most admire, more than 4,100 executives, directors, and analysts chose these top 50 All-Stars.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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ManpowerGroup delivers workforce solutions globally. The company offers recruiting services for permanent, temporary, and contract positions across numerous industries as well as assessment, upskilling, reskilling, and career management services. Furthermore, it provides workforce consulting, training, and development. ManpowerGroup was founded in 1948.

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ManpowerGroup (MAN): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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ManpowerGroup

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Welcome to ManpowerGroup's First Quarter Earnings Results Conference Call. You will be put in listen only mode until the question and answer time begins. This call is being recorded. If you care to drop off now, please do so. I would now like to turn the call over to ManpowerGroup's Chair and CEO, Mr.

Welcome and thank you for joining us for our first quarter twenty twenty five conference call. Our Chief Financial Officer, Jack McGinnis is with me today. For your convenience, we've included our prepared remarks within the Investor Relations section of our website at manpargroup.com. I will start by going through some of the highlights of the quarter. Jack will go through the first quarter results and guidance for the second quarter of twenty twenty five.

I will then share some concluding thoughts before we start our Q and A session. Jack will now cover the safe harbor language.

Good morning, everyone. This conference call includes forward looking statements, including statements concerning economic and geopolitical uncertainty, which are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on management's current expectations or beliefs. Actual results might differ materially from those projected in the forward looking statements. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements.

Slide two of our earnings release presentation further identifies forward looking statements made in this call and factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially and information regarding reconciliation of non GAAP measures.

Thank you, Jack. This quarter, I spent time with many

of our clients and leadership teams across our key markets in Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific, as well as here in North America. Broadly, the consensus is the quarter has been of two halves. We began the year with a sense of optimism for economic growth in The US particularly, and a greater acknowledgement among EU policymakers that Europe needed to do more to remain competitive. The last several weeks have impacted the sense of confidence and the mood is significantly more uncertain and cautious as a result of recent trade policy announcements in The US, with ripple effects far beyond. At this stage, most of our clients are adopting a wait and see approach.

And it is difficult to provide any concrete assessment of how significantly this might affect demand from our customers in our major markets around the world. As always, we're staying very close to our clients during this time and taking an industry and country specific view as announced tariffs impact in different ways. We remain agile and are monitoring demand chases closely. At the same time, the benefits of a flexible workforce are highly visible during periods of increased uncertainty. And we know that those closest to their clients will win opportunities to deliver more flexible workforce solutions in a time of need.

Our message to our organization and leadership teams in our 75 plus countries and territories around the world is clear. Control what you can control, stay close to our clients and candidates, and build agility so we can act quickly to anticipate and respond to evolving client needs. There remain plenty of opportunities to win in the market and provide value to those we serve. And we are determined to be the partner of choice during unsettled times. Now, to our results.

In the first quarter, revenue was $4,100,000,000 down 5% year over year in constant currency. Our reported EBITDA for the quarter was $36,000,000 Adjusting for restructuring costs, EBITDA was $52,000,000 representing a decrease of 32% in constant currency year over year. Reported EBITDA margin was 0.9% and adjusted EBITDA margin was 1.3%. Earnings per diluted share was $0.12 on a reported basis, while earnings per diluted share was $0.44 on an adjusted basis. Adjusted earnings per share decreased 51% year over year in constant currency.

In the first quarter, we saw the continuation of a challenging environment in Europe and North America, while demand for our services in LatAm and APME remained good. Staffing margin was solid, reflecting business mix changes and ongoing disciplined pricing. However, permanent recruitment softened further, and we saw reduced outplacement volumes which impacted our margins. We took further cost actions to mitigate these trends, and we will continue to adjust as needed as the environment evolves. But we have seen a period of volatility relating to the tariff announcements and uncertainty is elevated right now.

Underlying economic indicators including labor markets continue to be relatively stable. Based on what we see today, we expect employers to continue to cautiously look at hiring select talent, particularly those with in demand skills that enable their businesses to transform. Indeed, as AI accelerates, we expect to see a greater focus on skills development as organizations seek to guide their workforce through a period of transition and prepare them to work alongside AI. This is supported by our most recent Experis CIO report, which found that more than half of the companies are planning on upskilling existing talent with AI skills, And one in three are hiring people with the ability to collaborate across functions to solve business challenges.

Thanks Jonas. US dollar reported revenues in the first quarter were impacted by foreign currency translation. And after adjusting for currency impacts came in above the high end of our constant currency guidance range. Although conditions remain challenging, our revenue trends demonstrate we continue to perform well in the market. Following various recent sale and franchise arrangements, our revenues from franchise offices are significant and are included within system wide revenues, which equaled $4,500,000,000 for the quarter.

Additional information on franchise offices can be found in our press release financials. Gross profit margin came in just below the low end of our guidance range driven by weaker permanent recruitment. As adjusted, EBITDA was $52,000,000 representing a 32% decrease in constant currency compared to the prior year period. As adjusted, EBITDA margin was 1.3% and came in just below the low end of our guidance range, representing 50 basis points of decline year over year. Foreign currency translation drove a 2.5% unfavorable impact to the U.

Dollar reported revenue trend from the constant currency decrease of 4.5%. Organic days adjusted constant currency revenue decreased 1% in the quarter, which was favorable to our guidance. Turning to the EPS bridge, reported net earnings per share was $0.12 Adjusted EPS was $0.44 and came in $03 below our guidance range. Walking from our guidance midpoint of $0.52 our results included a lower operational performance of $09 a foreign currency impact that was $04 favorable to our guide and interest and other expenses, was $03 unfavorable. Higher tax charges from a France law change imposed for a one year period for twenty twenty five and updated country earnings mix for the current environment represented $06 and restructuring costs represented $0.26 resulting in the reported EPS of $0.12 Next, let's review our revenue by business line.

Year over year on an organic constant currency basis, the Manpower brand declined 2% in the quarter, the Experis brand declined by 5%, and the Talent Solutions brand declined by 2%. Within Talent Solutions, our RPO business experienced a slight year over year revenue decrease. Our MSP business recorded a strong double digit revenue increase compared to the prior year, while Right Management experienced a year over year revenue decline in the quarter as outplacing activity continued to slow. Looking at our gross profit margin in detail, our gross margin came in at 17.1% for the quarter. Staffing margin contributed 10 basis point reduction due to mix shifts and lower bench utilization in select countries, while pricing remained stable.

Permanent recruitment was weaker than expected and contributed 10 basis point GP margin reduction as permanent hiring activity in the first quarter decreased year over year. Right management career transition within talent solutions contributed 10 basis point reduction as outplacement activity decreased in the quarter. Other items resulted in a 10 basis point margin decrease. Moving on to our gross profit by business line. During the quarter, the Manpower brand comprised 59% of gross profit.

Our experienced professional business comprised 24 and talent solutions comprised 17%. During the quarter, our consolidated gross profit decreased by 6% on an organic constant currency basis year over year, representing a sequential step down from the 4% decline in the fourth quarter. Our Manpower brand reported an organic gross profit decrease of 2% in constant currency year over year, a slight improvement from the 3% decrease in the fourth quarter. Gross profit in our Experis brand decreased 11% in organic constant currency year over year, flat from the 11% decrease in the fourth quarter. Gross profit in Talent Solutions decreased 5% in organic constant currency year over year, representing a step down from the fourth quarter increase of 7%.

MSP saw continued year over year gross profit growth in the first quarter, while RPO and Right Management gross profit declined due to the end of select client projects and lower outplacement volumes. Reported SG and A expense in the quarter was $670,000,000 SG and A as adjusted was down 4% year over year on a constant currency basis and down 3% on an organic constant currency basis. The year over year SG and A decreases largely consisted of reductions in operational costs of $18,000,000 Corporate costs continued to include our back office transformation spend and these programs are progressing well with expected medium and long term efficiencies. Dispositions represented a decrease of $8,000,000 and currency changes contributed to a $15,000,000 decrease. Adjusted SG and A expenses as a percentage of revenue represented 15.9% in constant currency in the first quarter.

Adjustments represented restructuring costs of $16,000,000 The Americas segment comprised 25% of consolidated revenue. Revenue in the quarter was $1,100,000,000 representing an increase of 5% year over year on a constant currency basis. OUP was $25,000,000 and OUP margin was 2.4%. The U. S.

Is the largest country in the Americas segment, comprising 65% of segment revenues. Revenue in The U. S. Was $689,000,000 during the quarter, representing a 2% days adjusted increase compared to the prior year. This represents an improvement from the 1% decline in the fourth quarter as Manpower and Talent Solutions had revenue growth, while the rate of decline improved in Experis.

OUP for our U. Business was $11,000,000 in the quarter. OUP margin was 1.6%. Within The U. S, the Manpower brand comprised 25% of gross profit during the quarter.

Revenue for the Manpower brand in The U. S. Increased 7% on a days adjusted basis during the quarter, which represented strong market performance and an improvement from the 2% increase in the fourth quarter. The Experis brand in The US comprised 42% of gross profit in the quarter. Within Experis in The US, IT skills comprised approximately 90% of revenues.

Experis US revenue decreased 2% on a days adjusted basis during the quarter, an improvement from the 6% decline in the fourth quarter. The improvement in the first quarter was driven by seasonal healthcare IT go live projects and the remaining business was relatively stable from the previous quarter. Talent Solutions in The US contributed 33% of gross profit and saw revenue increase of 3% in the quarter, a decrease from the 16% increase in the fourth quarter driven by RPO and Right Management. RPO experienced a modest revenue increase in The U. S.

During the quarter following the completion of higher volume seasonal projects in the previous quarter. The U. S. MSP business executed well during the quarter, posting strong double digit revenue increases, while outplacement activity within our Right Management business was down year over year as outplacement activity slowed. In the second quarter of twenty twenty five, we do not anticipate the seasonal Experis Healthcare IT projects to be significant, and we expect the overall US business to have a low single digit year over year revenue decline.

Southern Europe revenue comprised 45% of consolidated revenue in the quarter. Revenue in Southern Europe was 1,800,000,000.0 representing a 5% decrease in constant currency. As adjusted, OUP for our Southern Europe business was $54,000,000 in the quarter and OUP margin was 2.9. Restructuring charges of $3,000,000 primarily represented actions in Spain and Portugal. France revenue comprised 53% of Southern Europe segment in the quarter and decreased 8% on a days adjusted constant currency basis.

France has historically managed our Morocco business as a small component of their overall business. In line with regional management changes, beginning with this 2025 reporting cycle, we have reclassified Morocco to other Southern Europe and have restated prior periods to reflect like for like year over year variances. That said, we saw an improvement in the rate of revenue decline in France from January to March. In March, the largest month, revenue decreased 7.5%. As adjusted, OUP for our France business was $21,000,000 in the quarter.

Adjusted OUP margin was 2.2%. Activity to date in April is similar to the month of March, and we are estimating the second quarter trend to be similar to the month of March trend. Revenue in Italy equaled $398,000,000 in the first quarter, reflecting an increase of 5% on a day's adjusted constant currency basis. OUP equaled 25,000,000 and OUP margin was 6.2%. We estimate that Italy will have a similar constant currency revenue trend in the second quarter compared to the first quarter.

Our Northern Europe segment comprised 18% of consolidated revenue in the quarter. Revenue of $731,000,000 represented a 14% decline in constant currency. As adjusted, OUP equaled a $6,000,000 loss. The majority of the restructuring charges of $12,000,000 was recorded in The Nordics, Belgium and The UK. Our largest market in the Northern Europe segment is The UK, which represented 35 of segment revenues in the quarter.

During the quarter, UK revenues decreased 16% on a days adjusted constant currency basis. The UK market continues to be very challenging and we expect the rate of revenue decline to be similar in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. In Germany, revenues decreased 26% on a days adjusted constant currency basis in the quarter. Germany manufacturing trends have been weak driving further declines. In the second quarter, we are expecting a similar to slightly improved year over year revenue decline compared with the first quarter trend.

The Nordics continued to experience very difficult market conditions with revenues decreasing 16% in days adjusted constant currency in the quarter. Within The Nordics, Sweden is experiencing the largest declines based on a weak manufacturing environment and the adjustment to new temporary work term limits discussed in previous quarters. The Asia Pacific Middle East segment comprises 12% of total company revenue. In the quarter, revenues equaled $476,000,000 representing an increase of 7% in organic constant currency. OUP was $20,000,000 and OUP margin was 4.2%.

Our largest market in the APME segment is Japan, which represented 60% of segment revenues in the quarter. Revenue in Japan grew 9% on a days adjusted constant currency basis. We remain very pleased with the consistent performance of our Japan business and we expect continued strong revenue growth in the second quarter. I'll now turn to cash flow and balance sheet. In the first quarter, free cash flow represented an outflow of $167,000,000 compared to an inflow of $104,000,000 in the prior year.

Timing of payables impacted the level of outflow in the first quarter. Outflow of free cash flow in the first half of the year typically follows strong free cash flow in the second half. At quarter end, day sales outstanding decreased by about half a day to fifty four days. During the first quarter, capital expenditures represented 14,000,000 During the first quarter, we repurchased 433,000 shares of stock for $25,000,000 As of March 31, we have 2,200,000.0 shares remaining for repurchase under the share program approved in August of twenty twenty three. Our balance sheet ended the quarter with cash of $395,000,000 and total debt of 1,070,000,000.00 Net debt equaled $677,000,000 at quarter end.

Our debt ratios at year end reflect total gross debt to trailing twelve months adjusted EBITDA of 2.5 and total debt to total capitalization at 34%. Our debt and credit facility arrangements are displayed in the appendix of the presentation. Next, I'll review our outlook for the second quarter of twenty twenty five. Based on trends in the first quarter and April activity to date, our forecast is cautious and anticipates the second quarter will continue to be challenging in Europe and North America. It is important to note that our forecast reflects demand trends we are currently experiencing.

If tariff policy related matters have an additional significant dampening effect on demand for our services globally, this is not included in our guidance. With that said, we are forecasting earnings per share for the second quarter to be in the range of $0.65 to $0.75 As I mentioned earlier, the increased French income tax for the one year period of 2025 and the updated country mix effects have increased our global effective tax rate, which will have the impact of decreasing our second quarter EPS estimate by $4 from the beginning of the year tax rate guidance. The guidance range also includes a favorable foreign currency impact of $03 per share and our foreign currency translation rate estimates are disclosed at the bottom of the guidance slide. Our constant currency revenue guidance range is between a decrease of 37%. And at the midpoint is a 5% decrease.

Considering the impact of our dispositions and the slightly lower number of working days, our organic days adjusted constant currency revenue decrease represents 2% at the midpoint. EBITDA margin for the second quarter is projected to be down 60 basis points at the midpoint compared to the prior year. We estimate that the effective tax rate for the second quarter will be 46.5%, which represents the previously mentioned French tax charge for the one year period of 2025 and the overall mix effect of lower earnings from lower tax geographies in the current environment, including the impact of valuation allowances in certain markets, which will reverse in the future when those markets rebound. In addition, as usual, our guidance does not incorporate restructuring charges or additional share repurchases, And we estimate our weighted average shares to be 47,300,000.0. I will now turn it back to Jonas.

Thank you, Jack. We are confident in our strategic plan to diversify, digitize and innovate. In our next call, we will share more detail on the progress of our technology roadmap and how we're implementing AI and AgenTiK AI. We're preparing to showcase this at Viva Tech in Paris in May, '1 of the world's largest tech conferences. We'll be sharing how we're partnering with best in class platforms to build tailored solutions with candidate experience and data privacy front and center.

We know our approach to buy best in class and build to differentiate will stand us apart. And we are focused on ensuring we have a strong foundation of data and aligned global systems that enable us to scale, drive efficiencies and create even more value for our clients and candidates. Executing our diversification, digitization and innovation strategy at speed and scale requires process convergence across our global enterprise and continued discipline to manage costs at the center for the benefit of our brands and countries where business is done. In our last call, we shared that we had evolved our organizational structures to align our global brands, Manpower, Experis and Talent Solutions within the strengthened global commercial function to drive profitable revenue growth. In Q1, we continued this progress, expanding alignment of our global functions, advancing the centralization and standardization of finance, technology, marketing, people and culture, and legal across countries and regions.

This is already enabling us to better leverage subject matter expertise for greater global consistency and efficiency. Because we help our clients build workforces with the best specialist talent, we need to attract and retain the best people. And to that end, we're delighted to have been named a world's most ethical company for the sixteenth time. We know this accolade matters to our people and to our clients. It is one of the reasons talent and organizations choose ManpowerGroup and its family of brands, Manpower Experis and Talent Solutions.

In closing, we have been through uncertain times before and are confident in our ability to manage the business for short term performance and long term success. We are committed to being nimble and taking actions as needed, adjusting our cost base and adding resources to respond to demand opportunities. We continue to transform our business at pace, investing in technology, process and talent across our brands to serve our client needs globally, all while maintaining a strong local presence in every market we serve. Finally, I want to thank our dedicated teams around the world for supporting our clients who place their trust in us and for guiding millions of people eager to contribute their skills and talent to make organizations successful. I would now like to open the line to Q and A.

Thank you. Our first question comes from Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Good morning, Jonas. I definitely heard ManpowerGroup's second quarter guide does not include the prospective impact of pending tariffs. But I was trying to think about if there was a resolution of U. S. Tariffs that was considered kind of reasonable for trade between US and Europe.

But what kind of rebound might ManpowerGroup anticipate in that scenario?

Well, good morning, Andrew. Thank you. And that's a great question. As you could tell from our earnings release, the first quarter really progressed as we had anticipated with one exception. Actually revenues came in a bit stronger.

We saw good and positive revenue growth in The US, Italy, in Spain, and of course continued strong performance in LATAM and APME. But we had weakness in perm, most notably in France and in a couple of other European countries. And that's the GP that we were missing, really in terms of what we had planned to execute for the quarter. Now, of that perm hesitation or slowing, we believe came from continued caution by employers. And that's really what we're guiding to a continued trend of stability with, you know, operations continuing more or less with the trends that they have, but we know that there's a lot of caution.

Now, if you look at this from a uncertainty level, the cause of this uncertainty is a US trade policy that's been communicated across the world, which is not great in terms of our visibility. But the good news with that is as quickly as it came on, it can, when this gets removed, lead to a very quick change going the other way. And that coupled with the optimism that we talked about in our last earnings call around what Europe needs to do to become more competitive. And I think those conversations are continuing. You know, in our biggest market, France, last time we spoke, there was still budget uncertainty.

Today, we have a budget that's been approved by the legislature. We think that's positive. As you can tell, our U. S. Business is actually seeing growth in all of our in Talent Solutions and in Manpower for three consecutive quarters.

And we have a number of European countries that are big for us, Italy, for instance, that is moving forward with good growth and good profitability as well. So when a policy that's disrupted it gets to a good resolution in a reasonable way, there is a path to an actual quick turnaround in terms of employer confidence. Because in the end, it's all about employer confidence, what they think could happen and, you know, how they feel about the future when it comes to increasing their workforce.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning. Just a couple of things. Jonas, if I could follow-up on the comment on the permanent weakness that you're seeing. It sounds like most of it is just a freezing of hiring decisions, but I was just wondering if you're starting to see any signs of layoffs.

And I don't know if it's an early indicator or something as you've seen in prior cycles of what happens in that area typically.

I would say it follows, you know, our discussion in our prepared remarks. When employers adopt a wait and see approach, they become more cautious. And in the first phase of that caution, they pull back on their temporary staffing. As you can tell in many countries, you know, we have stabilized and in some we've actually seen an improvement, you know, when before we saw a more pronounced pullback. So what then happens is they move to their permanent hiring.

But I would provide this color though, that I think is an interesting element that we also talked about in our prepared remarks, which is that the pullback on the is primarily focused around lower skills. We are still seeing good demand on more specialized skills, more technical skills within manufacturing, in logistics, other parts of, you know, our client segments. And I think that distinction tells you that this notion of employers are uncertain, but they're holding on to their workforces. They are not letting go of workforces to any major degree. They're also not hiring to any major degree.

They are, however, when we are, when they need any workforce, they are coming to us, which you can see reflected in a number of our countries actually performing with better revenues than what we had anticipated when we gave our guidance for the first quarter. So it is a pretty traditional dynamic when employers get cautious later on, they will pull back on perm, but the distinction here is more specialized skills are still very important as companies are in full transformation mode in many areas of their businesses. And it's the skills that are easier to replace at a later point that we're seeing a little bit more weakness.

Okay, got it. That's helpful. And just one more, you know, you talked about how uncertainty is typically a benefit for kind of your services, but, you know, I think there's always that level, like when it gets too uncertain, which is probably what it is now, it isn't? And my question is more, when do you start deciding that you need to, you know, right size your cost base and workforce, you know, even more than perhaps what you've already done?

Well, it's something that we're looking at on an ongoing basis, and it very much depends on, you know, which country we're talking about, you know, what do we anticipate in terms of the demand, what are we seeing coming in terms of future pipeline. So it's a balance that we're managing each country on a continuous basis. As you've seen in our results in the first quarter, clearly we've taken some significant additional action in Northern Europe, because there is a clear dichotomy in Europe, but Southern Europe is performing much better. Northern Europe continues to struggle. A lot of that is tied to their economic outlook in terms of the country.

And we're seeing that reflected in our business, and then we take actions. But we try to do this in a balanced way, because we want to protect our ability to deliver great service to our clients and drive increased performance in terms of our market share. And I think our results this quarter illustrate that we're managing that quite well. The revenues came in higher, and I think that is a testament to competing well in the market across the world.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alexander Sinatra with Baird. Your line is open.

Hey, this is Mark Marcon. Got to dial in through Alex's line. Was a little snafu. Jonas, you started your presentation by mentioning that you had been to Europe recently and met with both your clients and your leadership teams. And I'm wondering if you could communicate to an even greater extent, what is the mindset of some of those clients?

Are they in disbelief with regards to the tariff policy? Is their expectation that it's going to, settle down and potentially go back to the way it was? Or are they in the early stages of trying to prepare for a new reality?

Good morning, Mark. Well, would say, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, first of all, no one is making any big moves right now. They are adopting a wait and see approach. If their business is progressing, we're seeing good staffing trends in those countries. If their business isn't, they're more cautious.

Overall, as I just mentioned, from the perm perspective, we're seeing a little bit more softening. But most of them anticipate that this is a negotiation tactic to change the trade dynamics, but that ultimately this will result in a settlement that is different than what was announced on April. So that is the belief in the vast majority of client conversations that we've had. Now, the uncertainty comes from each country is different. The application of this trade policy is different country by country, industry by industry.

And I think that is what's causing a greater degree of uncertainty. But there is a pretty uniform view that this is going to be part of a negotiated settlement. Most of them don't anticipate that it's going to be exactly the way it was before. They accept that there's going to be changes, but they believe that the changes, or they hope, I should say, that those changes are going to be manageable and different from what was announced on April. Now some of the regions, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, you know, I was in Latin America recently, that's a region that has seen relatively mild changes to tariff arrangements.

So they're clearly, they are not seeing this as that much of an obstacle and are feeling much better about the outlook. But overall, the sentiment is the sooner that this gets sorted, the better it is because there are opportunities and there is a belief that, you know, we can see good growth come back or accelerate if we just get past this policy hurdle.

Great. And then you took some actions in Northern Europe. Can you describe the savings that you may get from those recent actions and how we should think about it? And then secondly, can you also describe what the outlook is in terms of the French taxes for the balance of the year, how we should think about that? And is this a one year deal, or could it continue into '26 as well?

Mark, this is Jack. I'd be happy to talk to that. So, specifically on the restructuring charges, so you can see for the quarter overall, we took 15,800,000.0. As Jonas said, if you look at our Northern Europe slide, you can see that's where we've been experiencing the most pressure. That's where the majority of our actions are happening.

So at the top of the list would be the Nordics. About 5,000,000 of the total charge is the Nordics. Next would be, Belgium and The UK, about 2 and a half to $3,000,000 each. You can see in The UK, continue to see very difficult conditions there. And I'd say, lastly, The Netherlands continues to be, you know, a market we're focused on rightsizing as well based on current demand levels and a bit in Spain as well.

So the rest were relatively small. In terms of your point, Mark, on payback, generally, when we look at the majority of the actions, the majority of them are FTE related. So we see a pretty quick payback. And there are a small number of office optimization efforts there as well. But generally, our overall payback is about nine months.

So we will start to see that improvement coming through in Q2. And I should say also, you know, we did restructuring, of course, in the second half of twenty twenty four. And you see some of that coming through now, particularly in Northern Europe, where we took some very significant actions. We're taking more now, but we took, some good actions last year that are actually helping improve the sequential, profitability in that region. And we're very focused on getting Northern Europe back to break even and then profitability, which you can see through these actions.

So that's what I'd say about the restructuring activities. In terms of your question on the France tax rate, yes, is. It is enacted as a one year increase. So that is the legislation. As and you can see in our materials, we estimate that about a 5.3% increase in our, I should say 5.6% increase in our overall tax rate, that we guided at the beginning of the year.

And then you add the country mix update to that, which is about 3.2 on top of that. So that gets us to the new effective tax rate that I've guided to. In terms of France and whether or not, there will be any changes beyond this year, I would say, you know, everything we've seen from the administration is they're very, focused on the competitiveness of France. And and for that reason, we we believe at this point that this is a one year increase as as they enacted. And for them to increase it further, they would have to do that through new legislation and through a new budget, at the end of the year.

And at this stage, we just don't see any signs, that would indicate that that is a probability. So we do we are viewing this as it's been enacted in the law as a one year change. And as we go forward, as I mentioned previously, we would also expect some of the countries where we have valuation allowances to start to see significant tax benefits as we move forward and we rebound in those markets back to profitability. And you'll see the tax rate improve pretty significantly once that happens in the future.

Great. Thank you. And then one last one, just perm as a percentage of gross profit and, you know, what your expectations are as it relates to the second quarter for perm?

Yes. So perm as a percentage of GP in q one was 16.4%. Because q one is our lowest quarter of earnings and GP dollars, That's a bit inflated generally because the staffing base is a bit lower in q one. As we ended the year last year, we were at about 15 and a half percent. So I think that's that's a reasonable guideline as we go forward.

I think perm overall, to Jonas's point, that we talked about, that really was the key factor, in the earnings this quarter. As we ended the year last year, we actually saw the year over year perm trend really come in line with what was happening with staffing at that time. So perm was down about 3% organically, and we saw, you know, staffing, GP down around four or a little bit higher than that, but very closely aligned. And as we walked into the first quarter, we saw perm step down further year over year. So perm was down about 8% year over year in the first quarter.

And that really was what drove the lower. We had seen some good stabilization, but as Jonas said, the step down a bit further in the first quarter. So as we go forward, I think we're being cautious, as you heard me say in the guide. And I think our perm expectations for Q2 are pretty much aligned to what we just experienced in Q1.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research. Your line is open.

a bigger picture question. And I know temporary staffing fundamentals have been under stress for almost three years now. But have you seen any impact from other technology that might be impacting temporary staffing, whether it's LinkedIn or other apps? Or is there any pressure on the business from secondary competitors?

As we look out over the world, what's important to remember is, when we talk about difficulties for three years, we have two regions that have been progressing all during this time and growing revenues and improving their profitability in Asia Pac and LatAm. Europe's economy has been very challenged. PMI has been well below 50 for more than two years, coming up to three. And the biggest engine in Europe, Germany, has been in recession for two years. But as you look at the industry dynamics, really the country that sticks out is The US, because we've had good growth, solid employment, although both of those factors are cooling right now, yet as an industry, we have seen negative growth for those three years.

So the question then is, you know, why do we think these are, you know, this is the case. And a lot of that we think has to do with the post pandemic, you know, strong hiring, right after the pandemic, probably over hiring, employers realizing that finding skilled talent is difficult, and they've been holding on to their workforce. So this element of labor hoarding, we think has been a feature as to why our industry has been impacted in this way. And at this stage, we are seeing no signs that this has anything to do with a technological change or structural change. We think this is primarily due to, pandemic anomalies that are playing out and through.

We anticipate that they will normalize and the traditional dynamics in our industry will come back into play. If there were to be any indication of a technology change, I would look at certain roles, primarily in the technology sector, and specifically as it relates to programmers. And so software coding and programming, you can really see how AI has made that much more efficient. And you can see it also come through in the unemployment rate for software programmers here in The US, which is above 7% right now and we're at 4.2% unemployment for the country. So that would be the one area where we can clearly see that there is a structural change in demand in a specific role, where the application of technology is making those workers much more productive when they are augmented by Gen AI in particular.

And then just as a pull up, Jonas, and this, I realize this might be a difficult question, but you talked about France and maybe some certainty around when the budget was passed. Did you see as the budget was passed and the tax rate was increased, was the did the certainty result in less demand? And maybe that's difficult because all this tariff stuff is going on, but I'm wondering if that resulted in less demand and once the budget year is over, could that increase demand?

It definitely could. Think the current uncertainty around the trade policy, clearly now causes more hesitation on the part of employers. But just as we said at the top of the call, as quickly as this trade uncertainty came on and was really solidified on April, if it is negotiated and settled at a reasonable level, it could turn around the sentiment pretty quickly because, you know, companies feel that Europe is on the path of becoming more or wanting to take steps to become more competitive along the lines of the five pillars of the Draghi plan, which talks about productivity, better innovation and technology, adoption, reducing regulation, things like that, which would be good for business. You've also seen a surge in defense spending and announced willingness, especially in Germany, to finance for their part greater investments in that area, which from our perspective could be really good because we have a very strong position in aerospace and defense across all of our brands and especially exposure into Manpower, which is our biggest brand in Europe. So we think that could be very good.

So you're absolutely right. If the current overhang of the trade policy enactment gets resolved, things and sentiment could change pretty quickly.

I would just add to that Kartik. In France, we actually saw that play out that, uncertainty around the budget, impacted the month of January specifically. So January was down the most in the quarter. And as that budget, was passed and moved forward in February, we started to see demand improve. And, and it actually ended the quarter, at probably the best part of the average for the quarter overall.

And we take that guide into Q2. So we did see it play out to some degree in Q1, and we're now seeing trends that are more aligned with where we were early in the fourth quarter.

Thank you very much both of you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Josh Chan with UBS. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning Jonas and Jack. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess you mentioned that the perm weakness was primarily in France and a couple of European countries. Is there any insight that you can give as to why those countries are weaker in terms of perm? Because I would think that trade policy uncertainty would really impact the globe really, including even The US.

Yeah. I think as Jack just talked about, in France, there was a greater deal of uncertainty with the budget not having been passed. And once that started to improve, we saw some improvement in our trends in France. I also think it depends on the composition. You heard me talk earlier about how specialized skills that perm pipeline and sales are in revenues actually holding steady and stable.

But it's the lower skilled where companies are making specific decisions. So I wouldn't read too much into it in terms of the various countries, but rather say overall, there is stability with except with weakness in some countries and that we're being cautious looking into Q2, because we know hiring is highly dependent on employer confidence. And when the uncertainty is increasing, employers hold back a little bit more. And at this stage, that would impact perm to a greater degree than anything else. So I think that would be our take on the perm trends.

ManpowerGroup (MAN) Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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