HRnetGroup

[dreamybear]

In HRnetGroup's latest quarter, Professional Recruitment forms 67% of gross profit and 52% of gross profit comes from SG.
(ref links in Post #16 results presentation slides)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Singapore job-seekers face weaker hiring prospects in Q4: Survey
Published Sep 10, 2019, 5:00 am SGT

Job seekers should expect a tighter labour market in the last three months of this year, as hiring prospects are down from both the current quarter as well as a year ago, based on survey results from a recruitment firm......

ManpowerGroup Singapore country manager Linda Teo said that business confidence here has been dampened by global and regional trade conflicts, as well as warnings of a possible recession.

"Anticipating that business will be affected by the economic downturn, companies are limiting their hiring activity. Some companies are also turning to upskilling their employees instead of hiring new staff," she said.....

Mr Kurt Wee, president of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, said smaller firms tend to be quite lean, and thus less elastic in hiring and firing than larger firms.

"But the general sentiment among all businesses is poor, and if the negative situation persists in the next one to two quarters, I wouldn't be surprised if SMEs start retrenching," he said.....

The eight Asia Pacific economies surveyed by ManpowerGroup still have positive hiring outlooks for the final quarter of this year, with the strongest anticipated by Japanese employers (+26 per cent) and the weakest reported in both Singapore and China (+4 per cent).

Read more : https://www.straitstimes.com/business/we...-q4-survey

[dreamybear]

There are also blue-collar workers that don't use or can't afford smartphones at all. A nifty "broadcast yourself" feature in Findjobs allows children to quickly help their parents indicate what jobs they are looking for and what experience they have.

Ivan said: "I went to many places - shopping malls, the MRT, washrooms. Whenever I see cleaners in the washroom, I ask them 'Auntie, Uncle, you looking for job?' "

"Everywhere I go, even hawker centres, I will approach these aunties and uncles as I'm a recruiter with customers that have hundreds of cleaner positions available and I couldn't depend on online."

He added that a mobile app means the job postings are always there, and the job seeker can be exposed to more job vacancies.

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/life-cu...pokemon-go
...

Competition through new technology in the low-skilled employment market has emerged. If Grab can connect drivers with commuters, then a case can also be made for an online broker to connect employers and jobseekers. Of course, whether such apps can gain market share will depend on how successful it is in convincing both employers and jobseekers, to first come on board, and then perform an even better job, compared to the traditional agent, in satisfying their respective needs.

As you predicted earlier, more online brokers are jumping into the recruitment fray. It's a low barrier to entry bizness but I think the threat from bigger brokers in the likes of Uber may be more serious as they already have troves of data, they are established, their apps are familiar to people already, and thus likely to get up to speed faster. However, the online brokers will likely focus mainly on the "more straight fwd" jobs that require easy evaluation rather than the higher end(requiring complicated skills) jobs as the latter needs more complicated evaluations. Even then, there is a concurrent trend towards AI / automation which may reduce the no. of straight fwd / labour intensive / automatable jobs moving fwd. "disruption within disruption" ? I wld be curious to observe the impact of all these to Hrnet.

In the moblie app world, I think there cld be a convergence to a super/ mega app* (which companies like Singtel, Grab, Uber seem good candidates to come out with one.) which may take mkt share away from the recruitment industry's incumbents.

*https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2018/07/11/grab-wants-to-build-tencentlike-superapp/

----------------------------------

"RIDE-HAILING firm Uber Technologies Inc said it launched an app called Uber Works to connect temporary workers looking to work shifts with businesses trying to plug gaps in their rosters.

The app, made available only in Chicago for now, will show workers the available shifts in a certain area and help businesses that struggle to staff up during peak demand, and with missed shifts and high turnover, Uber said in a blog https: ubr.to/2n5ka15....."

Read mpre : https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/technol...businesses

[karlmarx]

The ultimate goal for the large mobile apps is to dominate the market of 'everyday app usage over everything.' They want everything you do in your everyday-life to be done on their app. They won't only be making money from each of your transaction, but will also collect massive data which will provide them with the market intelligence to provide even more services. Wechat is probably the most successful to date, largely thanks to barriers which restrict foreign apps.

What Wechat is doing is not new.

As far back as the 80s, Nintendo plotted to use their dominance in the video game console market to offer numerous everyday-life services that is now ubiquitous online; lottery betting, stock trading, banking, ticket booking, etc. All they had to do was pop their telephone line into their Nintendo console. This business was only mildly successful in their home market, and didn't even manage to get off the ground in their US market.

Over the past few year, development in the ex-China online software industry has been interesting.

The beauty of online software is that the ease with which apps are able to transcend physical and political boundaries, allowing it to overcome the entrenched/old players of a market; many of which protected by not only local regulations/traditions, but also their political clout.

After some of the 'niche apps' have entrenched their markets -- such as FB/IG for social media, and Uber/Grab for private transportation -- some of them are growing into other markets. It is tough because they not only have to defend the market of their 'niche,' but also invade new markets. And so there has been lots of burning of cash to grow scale of operations and customer base.

Yet, the free market of online software also means that a lot of these apps that are in use now will eventually be compelled by market forces to leave/merge. Particularly when there is so much cash burn. With no end of cash burn in sight -- since the competition for market share is still on-going -- investor may soon lose their appetite for further funding. The WeWork debacle may signal that we are closer to the end of the cash burn, as PE funds begin to reconsider the appropriate valuations of tech companies.

===

Apps that are able to build holistic profiles of individuals will be those most equipped with providing employment services. Investors who are wondering whether the business of traditional employment agencies will be disrupted, should keep an eye superapps like Wechat. In any case, the headhunting business should be more resilient, compared to brokering low-skilled employment, owing to the lengthy negotiations that is to be expected in the former.

[dzwm87]

Longer-term, I think there is still a role to play for recruiters. Unlike property agents (which I think is very ripe for disruption) who extract value, recruiters add value in solving frictional unemployment. Logically, the last mile has always been expensive and platforms like LinkedIn doesn't want to that. With AI, job-matching can be easily "gamed" - e.g. matching keywords, desired resume template, how do you evaluate attitude? It's a hassle and will first be a steep learning curve. HR departments want as minimum headache as possible so switching cost can be quite substantial.

For HRnetGroup specifically, they have been in the overseas market for at least a decade but have yet to replicate something as valuable as Recruit Express. I wonder why. Singapore has been stagnant and I do suspect Grab/GoJek/Deliveroo/foodpanda had some impact on the temp staffing scene since they are hiring directly. They are expanding into the Western market, buying up stake in different listed companies. They pitch a turnaround event for Staffline but from an investor's perspective, if Staffline Group has a better proposition, why not just buy Staffline directly? I believe their acquisition cost is still higher than prevailing market price.

[dreamybear]

As we come to the close of the year, Staffline's share price of 87p is still languishing at 52 wk low. HRnet bought a chunk of staffline at the price of 180p.
https://links.sgx.com/FileOpen/SGX%20ann...eID=572773

Interestingly, I chanced upon a UK based forum ( https://uk.advfn.com/stock-market/london...t?page=324 ) which looks similar to our local sharejunction, in case any other buddy is interested. It is something I have been hoping to find(to get a feel of the ground) since I have a portion of investments in UK based companies. Some forumers seem to be hoping for S'pore HRnetGrp to "bail" them out(of Staffline) !  

Note : since uk.advfn.com is something I just chanced across, I am not sure abt the credibility/quality of the discussion.

[karlmarx]

There's something wrong when you are the largest shareholder -- just slightly under 30% -- but cannot get board representation. Obviously, Staffline's BOD wants to remain fully in charge, even though they own only a tiny fraction of the company. And HRnet is not welcome. Now HRnet is stuck with what is increasingly looking like a lemon. It does not seem that any good will come out of this anytime soon, for either party.

"We initially were going to take a board seat, and they announced that we were going to. But after, there were some discussions about how they wanted to restrict our voting rights. We couldn't agree with that. When I went up to London in November, we had negotiations with the lawyers but we couldn't come to an agreement," Ms Sim said.

The staffline acquisition is symptomatic of HRnet's free wheeling ways. I read CEO Sim's explanation of her successful picks in Japanese HR stocks, and I wonder if I could have been reading a post on an investment forum/blog. 

The journalist who wrote this story certainly gives me the idea that Sim is more CEO of a fund manager, than a recruitment company.

Such value creation could include income from opportunistic investments. Last year, HRnetGroup recorded a S$6.1 million investment gain partly from holdings in Japanese HR-related stocks. "Our Japanese business was doing well because everyone was gearing up for the Olympics," she explained. "So that's when we thought that this is a good time to be invested in Japanese HR stocks; those that we know personally, and we know that they are well-run and clearly have growth plans in mind.

When your cash registers are full, and you don't return more of them to your shareholders, you get all sorts of weird ideas on how to spend the money.

And when the wage credit subsidies expire next year, and are not replaced with increasing revenues, or more government subsidies, a large part of what looks like recurring profit will disappear.

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/compani...-headwinds

[holymage]

I have been causally following HRnetGroup for quite some time.

The statement about investments from Adeline Sim is indeed misleading. She is trying too hard to impress investors and partners. Unfortunately, it will backfire on investors unfamiliar with the company.
The Japanese HR company mentioned is Technopro. HRnetGroup and Technopro has invested in each other since 2017. It is meant to be a strategic investment, not a speculative investment. Till date, I don't think either party has divested their shares in the other company.

In addition, HRnetGroup has tons of cash when they IPO. If I didn't recall wrongly, their market cap was 30-35% cash when they IPO. HRnetGroup was a privately-held family run business for over 20 years, with some shares attributed to employees and partners. What they desire is business growth/expansion and for strategic reasons they IPO. Return cash to shareholders is not their main consideration.
Their growth ambition can be seen from the various investments they made and startups they created. But whether they will be successful overseas remains a question mark. A question that is not easy to solve.

Regarding wage credit subsidies, I have given it some thought before. A substantial portion of their income is indeed from wage credit subsidies. The way I think of it is this: if I am a third-party hiring company, I know the government has given subsidies to contractors' direct hiring company, would I not ask for my share of the subsides, if not 100% of the subsidies? Afterall, I am the hiring company and HRnetGroup is just the middleman.
My guess is, the third-party hiring company will either negotiate a lower fee from HRnetGroup or a cut of the subsidies. If that is the case, when the subsidies expires, the impact may not be as great as we imagine.
Time will tell, or this question can be posed to management.

[karlmarx]

I have been causally following HRnetGroup for quite some time.

The statement about investments from Adeline Sim is indeed misleading. She is trying too hard to impress investors and partners. Unfortunately, it will backfire on investors unfamiliar with the company.
The Japanese HR company mentioned is Technopro. HRnetGroup and Technopro has invested in each other since 2017. It is meant to be a strategic investment, not a speculative investment. Till date, I don't think either party has divested their shares in the other company.

In addition, HRnetGroup has tons of cash when they IPO. If I didn't recall wrongly, their market cap was 30-35% cash when they IPO. HRnetGroup was a privately-held family run business for over 20 years, with some shares attributed to employees and partners. What they desire is business growth/expansion and for strategic reasons they IPO. Return cash to shareholders is not their main consideration.
Their growth ambition can be seen from the various investments they made and startups they created. But whether they will be successful overseas remains a question mark. A question that is not easy to solve.

Regarding wage credit subsidies, I have given it some thought before. A substantial portion of their income is indeed from wage credit subsidies. The way I think of it is this: if I am a third-party hiring company, I know the government has given subsidies to contractors' direct hiring company, would I not ask for my share of the subsides, if not 100% of the subsidies? Afterall, I am the hiring company and HRnetGroup is just the middleman.
My guess is, the third-party hiring company will either negotiate a lower fee from HRnetGroup or a cut of the subsidies. If that is the case, when the subsidies expires, the impact may not be as great as we imagine.
Time will tell, or this question can be posed to management.

I don't think it is realistic for a company to truly expect steady/profitable growth through acquisition of a company which is significantly large in relation to its own size. To put it in a different manner, don't swallow more than you can chew.

I think HRnet has done very well to have grown to its present size. Now that the baton has been passed to CEO Sim, it appears that she may have taken it upon herself to deliver the next stage of growth. Obviously, things haven't turned out so well (yet). And so the market may have revalued the company since it is looking less like a 'growth stock.'

As for the wage credit subsidies, I think that is a good point you brought up. I have no idea, but I do suspect that it is shared between the employer and HRnet. It'll be prudent to discount some of it from profit projections, but probably best to get an answer from management, if possible.

[dreamybear]

I happened to come across HRnet's company announcements and thought the company is rather aggressive in having bought back abt 1 million shares yesterday and today, amounting to abt $0.5 million each day.

https://links.sgx.com/1.0.0/corporate-an...f14401fccd

https://links.sgx.com/1.0.0/corporate-an...66a7ed97f8

With respect to the daily liquidity, I think this has been a great help in supporting its share price.

[holymage]

If I didn't recall wrongly, HRnetGroup buys back shares and issues the Treasury shares to its employees under GROW scheme.