Eezy Plc's Interim Report 1-3/2023: Profitability improved in first quarter
EEZY PLC -- INTERIM REPORT -- 9 MAY 2023 AT 8:00
Eezy Plc's Interim Report 1–3/2023: Profitability improved in first quarter
January–March 2023
- Revenue was EUR 52.8 million (EUR 50.9 million in January–March 2022).
- Revenue grew by 4%.
- EBITDA was EUR 3.4 million (2.5).
- EBIT was EUR 1.3 million (0.5) and was 2.5% of revenue (1.0%).
- Earnings per share was EUR 0.02 (0.00).
Outlook for 2023
Eezy expects revenue to be approx. EUR 250 million and EBIT-% to grow in 2023.
Key figures (IFRS)
| EUR million, unless otherwise specified | 1–3/2023 | 1–3/2022 | 1–12/2022 |
| Revenue | 52.8 | 50.9 | 247.6 |
| EBITDA | 3.4 | 2.5 | 18.2 |
| EBITDA, % | 6.5% | 4.9% | 7.4% |
| EBIT | 1.3 | 0.5 | 10.0 |
| EBIT, % | 2.5% | 1.0% | 4.0% |
| EPS, undiluted, EUR | 0.02 | 0.00 | 0.29 |
| EPS, diluted, EUR | 0.02 | 0.00 | 0.28 |
| Net debt / EBITDA | 3.0 x | 2.8 x | 2.9 x |
| Chain-wide revenue | 73.8 | 77.0 | 351.6 |
Interim CEO Pasi Papunen:
Profitability improvements in first quarter
“Our most important theme for 2023 is profitability improvement, and we have succeeded in that in the first quarter. EBIT and profitability of the traditionally smallest quarter improved compared to the first quarter of 2022. EBIT was 1.3 million euro (0.5) and was 2.5% of revenue (1.0). This is the highest first quarter EBIT in Eezy’s four-year history.
In the first quarter revenue grew moderately by 4% to 52.8 million euro. Revenue of staffing services, our largest business, grew to 45.4 million euro, +2% compared to first quarter in 2022. In staffing services we experienced strong demand especially in the horeca sector, while the workforce demands in industry and construction sector decreased along the weakened economy, decreasing our revenue. In the Professional services business demand is strong especially in the public sector employment services as well as in the organizational culture research and development services. The revenue of professional services grew to 7.4 million euro in the first quarter (+18%). Strong demand shows that the Finnish companies want to develop their employees and leadership skills also in weaker economic conditions.
Our revenue grew to 1.3 million euro in the first quarter. The first quarter is typically the smallest quarter in our business, so we are happy for this development. The profit improvement stems from the good performance of our regional teams, successful targeting of sales and marketing efforts, and the determined efficiency improvement actions started last fall. We have renewed our pricing and have focused on decreasing sick-leave costs together with our customers. We have adjusted our own organization and cost structure to the weaker economy and refined our processes to be more efficient. Efficiency in sales and marketing work is evidenced by the record high number of applicants for Eezy services and a significantly growth in customer contacts.
Strategy implementation continues
Good result in the first quarter encourages us to continue implementing our strategy as planned. In the short term, we focus on reaching the sales goals for the summer and fall season and on ensuring positive profitability development. In the longer term, we will work for refining the processes and operating models of our winning organization, for developing the skills of our people, and for strengthening our unique Eezy culture. We want to ensure that everybody in our society can find work according to his/her life situation and skills – we help young people to enter working life e.g. via summer job campaigns. Our profitably growing public sector employment services helps people with difficulties to enter the working life. We offer Light entrepreneurship services for those who want to easily and safely try being entrepreneur and turning their skills to income. We serve our customers more closely than ever through our nation-wide regional network, near the customers. In our professional services business we help our customers to improve the productivity, competitive advantage and employee commitment by surveying the employee and customer experience, by developing the leadership skills and culture, and by helping them in demanding recruitment.
In staffing services many processes have still been manual and work-intensive making the scalability and profitable growth more difficult. To tackle this challenge, we have during the last year strongly invested into developing digital services. We will gradually introduce a new ERP with AI features, which will automate, speed up and simplify the matching of customers and staffed employees. Additionally, the system will improve the efficiency of our whole business process, both from recruitment to salary payment, as well as from order to delivery and invoicing.
In these economically uncertain times, our wide customer base, customer sector portfolio and diversified service offering mitigate the risks from the economic conditions, while the importance of flexible workforce and the commitment of permanent employees for our customers grows. Thanks to the actions above and our professional personnel we can trust that the good performance in the first quarter continues."
Result publication event:
A Finnish-language briefing for analysts and media will be held on 9 May 2023 at 13.00 Finnish time as a webcast at https://eezy.videosync.fi/2023-q1-tulos
The briefing will be hosted by Interim CEO Pasi Papunen and CFO Hannu Nyman. During the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. The presentation material will be available at the company website at https://eezy.fi/en/financials/reports-and-presentations/ before the conference. A recording of the audiocast will be available at the same website later.
Attachment: Interim Report January–March 2023 in PDF format
Further information:
Eezy Plc
Pasi Papunen
Interim CEO
[email protected]
tel. +358 (0)40 501 3128
Hannu Nyman
CFO
[email protected]
tel. +358 (0)50 306 9913
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