Robert Walters plc (RWA) Q3 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to Robert Walters Q3 Trading Update call. If you would like to ask a question during today's call, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the call over to David Bower, CFO of Robert Walters. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning everyone and thanks for joining our Q3 2025 Trading Update. I'm David Bower, Chief Financial Officer. And here with me is Toby Falston, Chief Executive. To begin, I'll make a few remarks regarding performance at the group level before Toby touches on trading in our service line and the wider market backdrop. As ever, we'll then be happy to take any questions you may have. As I've stated, all net fee income percentage movements are in constant currency terms. Looking first at group trading during the third quarter. Net fee income was down 12% year-on-year, a slight sequential improvement compared to the second quarter, and with fees in September down 9% year-on-year. As Toby will touch on in more detail in a few moments, the overall group results continue to represent a blend of quite marked differences in performance across our geographic portfolio. In particular, we saw a noticeably better year-on-year performance in Asia Pacific, our largest regional segment by net fee income, and an improvement in the UK, whilst Northern Europe remained challenging. Furthermore, it's worth highlighting a slight contrast between our two largest service lines. In specialist recruitment, fees were down 10% year-on-year, a sequential improvement on the second quarter and indeed the first half. Meanwhile, fees declined 22% in recruitment outsourcing. While this was a sequential slowdown from the first half, it reflects the non-renewal of certain client contracts which feeds from continuing clients bein...