As planned, recruitment firm, SThree, will close FY12 (to 25th Nov) significantly less dependent on its legacy (though still core) activities as a UK-based IT staff agency (ITSA). Today, SThree gets some two-thirds of group gross profit from its overseas operations and almost half (46%) from non-ICT recruitment. And that transformation has primarily been the achievement of outgoing CEO, Russell Clements, who will now hand over the reins to his deputy, Gary Elden, on 1st Jan, a few months earlier than originally announced (see Changing of the guard at SThree).
SThree finished FY12 with gross profit up 8% yoy at £205m, in line with expectations. All growth came from its overseas operations (up 13%); UK gross profit was essentially flat. ICT recruitment gross profit fell by 2% yoy, in stark contrast to the 23% uplift in its non-ICT activities. In other words, without this diversification of geographic market and recruitment disciplines, the SThree story today would have been quite, quite different - as likely would its share performance, which is almost 40% higher ytd.
We’ll have more detail when SThree publishes the ‘full monty’ FY results at the end of January.