Larry Robbins Sees Even More Upside Potential In ManpowerGroup Inc. (MAN)

This month ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN) finalized two acquisition deals geared towards increasing the company’s presence in both the European and Australian markets. This follows the extremely encouraging results that came out of France, the UK, Italy, and Spain in terms of top line contributions during the first quarter. The company acquired the German firm 7A Group for $152.59 million, increasing its market share in the engineering and IT fields, as well as the Australian and Singapore arm of the firm Greythorn for an undisclosed sum. Greythorn specializes in technology and finance when it comes to delivering its professional and recruitment services.

Despite foreign exchange swings eating away $0.17 from ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN)’s EPS for the first quarter, the company’s EPS of $0.83 beat the analyst estimates by $0.04. Revenues of $4.54 billion were also $70 million higher than expectations and marked the seventh consecutive quarter of revenue growth. Moreover, the cost management efforts led to an expansion of the company’s operating profit margin by 10 basis points to 2.7% on a year-over-year basis. Although there was a slowdown in the high-margin career transition business during the quarter, it was more than compensated by strong performance in the Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and TAPFIN-Managed Services Provider (MSP) businesses.

The company operates four business lines, namely Manpower, Experis, Manpower Group Solutions, and Right Management. Manpower contributed more than 65% of the profits in the last fiscal year. As far as ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN)’s geographical footprint is concerned, Europe contributed about 65% of revenues to the company’s operating profit, while The Americas delivered 21%.

Disclosure: None