Hays (LON: HAS), the global recruitment company, reported a statutory pre-tax loss of £54.5m for the year to 30 June, though underlying profit beat both its own guidance and analyst forecasts, extending a rally that has already seen the shares roughly double since April.
Hays shares were down 3.36% at 69.05p in early trading on Thursday, pulling back from Wednesday’s pre-results close of 71.45p, after the group posted its FY26 results this morning. The stock had earlier touched an intraday high of 70.65p and a low of 67.50p, and remains close to its 52-week high of 71.7p and roughly double its 52-week low of 28.68p set in April.
The statutory loss stemmed from £89.6m of exceptional charges: £45.1m of operational restructuring and £26.6m of property rationalisation. Strip those out, and pre-exceptional operating profit rose 3% like-for-like to £48.6m, ahead of the group’s own guidance and above the £45.3m analyst consensus, according to analyst consensus cited in market reports. Pre-exceptional profit before tax rose 4% like-for-like to £35.1m.
Group net fees, the recruitment revenue Hays retains after paying temporary workers, fell 8% to £905.5m as permanent placement fees dropped 12% and temp and contracting fees fell 5%. Germany, Hays’ largest market, saw net fees fall 9% and operating profit drop 24% to £41.2m, while UK & Ireland net fees fell 10% to £174m even as the division swung back to a £4m pre-exceptional operating profit from a £5.8m loss a year earlier. The improvement came entirely from cost discipline rather than any recovery in hiring demand.
New chief executive Mark Dearnley used the results to launch a “Momentum” strategy targeting more than 50% growth in net-fee productivity over the medium term and roughly £50m of additional annual cost savings in the 2027 financial year, on top of around £50m of annualised savings already booked this year. The board held the final dividend at 0.29p, taking the full-year payout to 0.44p, covered 2.8 times by pre-exceptional earnings.
Hays ended the year with net cash of £20.1m and cash conversion of 189%. Current trading in July and August was described as in line with expectations and unchanged from the fourth quarter, leaving the pace of any recovery in permanent recruitment as the key swing factor for the shares from here.