Employee effectiveness/development consulting: Korn/Ferry uses industry specific data and expertise to help XYZ employer determine how effective their staff is and determines what will improve performance. Think, “The Bob’s” from the movie Office Space.
Do you know what the “investor friendly” link is? I’ll tell you!
These services have cost Korn/Ferry $0 in overhead! The only real overhead Korn/Ferry has are its employees and buildings, which provides much needed flexibility to maneuver through recessions. Despite the uptick in unemployment the company has remained profitable through each of the past five years.
Korn/Ferry has the best talent when it comes to finding the best talent and a prestigious brand name; they’re well positioned to exploit this bull.
Dice Holdings (NYSE:DHX)
vs.
Linkedin Corporation (NYSE:LNKD)
Everybody loves LinkedIn, including me. I even wrote a post explaining how enthusiastic I was over the companies 90% (yoy) rise in recruiting revenues. To be sure, with surging recruiting revenues and plenty of ways to monetize “recruiting revenue” more effectively, LinkedIn is a huge skilled labor play.
But that enthusiasm comes with a price, the company sports a forward P/E of 79.31.
A far cheaper, yet just as bullish play is Dice Holdings (NYSE:DHX). This little known company is truly a recruiter’s best friend, as its products (specialized career websites, career fairs, etc.) make the “impossible hire,” possible.
Dice has found niches inside of niches and exploited them with strong brand recognition amongst hiring authorities. For instance, Dice owns a job board (like Monster.com, etc.) called Rigzone that only has candidates who are Petroleum Engineers on it.
How hard is it to recruit Petroleum Engineers? They currently have an unemployment rate of less than 1%. Yet through Rigzone and its Oil & Gas career fairs (which cost 2-5k for recruiters to attend), Dice delivers.
Yet despite surging EPS (20% yoy) and a fat return on equity (19%) the stock stays largely range bound; it surges on earnings beats and then retreats to the $9/share range.
With strong respective positions in online/social recruiting, you could buy Dice or LinkedIn. Or, buy both and hope that LinkedIn buys Dice as well.
7% unemployment=a skilled labor shortage. Yeah…I said it
It’s funny how investors always want to follow the “smart money,” yet they still plan to beat the market.
Say this much, if the skilled labor “Super Bull” comes to fruition I’ll definitely be one of the first to the party.
Will you?
The article Obama, and the Skilled Labor Super Bull originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Adem Tahiri,
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