Acquisitions give Workforce results a boost

WORKFORCE Holdings shares soared more than 6 percent on the JSE yesterday after the company reported an increase in revenue for the six months ended in June.

Revenue rose 32 percent to R1.12 billion, compared with R905 million last year, due to two major acquisitions.

Workforce acquired Prisma Training Solutions in October for about R65m, and the Quyn group of companies in February for R77m.

The staffing and recruitment firm said 19 percentage points of this increase was attributable towards organic growth, while the remainder was due to the two acquisitions.

Workforce chief executive and executive director Phillip Froom said the organic growth was mainly attributable to the staffing and recruitment business that had been able to build on momentum gained towards the end of the 2015 financial year.

“This growth is driven by a broad-based improvement in turnover across all regions and especially buoyed by the group’s continued involvement in energy and telecommunication-related infrastructure projects,” Froom said.

“The training, financial and lifestyle, employee health management and process outsourcing segments all made positive contributions and contributed to growth in earnings.”

Workforce is a holding company with subsidiaries in the business of staff outsourcing, recruitment and specialist staffing, training and consulting, employee health management, process outsourcing and financial and lifestyle products.

The company made a smaller acquisition, Gcubed, towards the end of the reporting period, but Workforce said this did not have a material impact on the results.

Headline earnings per share increased by 45 percent to 17.7c, and earnings per share increased by 48 percent to 18c.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) increased 69.6 percent to R65.9m compared with R38.9m last year, resulting in Ebitda to sales of 5.5 percent from 4.3 percent.

Workforce shares rose 12.5 percent to close at R1.80 yesterday. – ANA