Robert Walters plc (RWA) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good day and welcome to the Robert Walters 2024 Full Year Results webcast and conference call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Toby Falston, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead. Good morning everyone and welcome to the Robert Walters 2024 Full Year Results presentation webcast. I'm Toby Falston, Chief Executive and joining me today is David Bauer, Chief Financial Officer. In terms of our agenda today, I'll shortly hand over to David to take you through an operational and financial review and the early progress we've seen on the five building blocks we're focused on to drive a higher margin business in the medium term. I'll then return to give you an update on what we are seeing in the changing world of work and the confidence we have in our growth drivers. As usual, we'll need plenty of time to then open up the Q&A. So as we begin, here are my key messages for today. Firstly, though 2024 brought a second year of very challenging conditions in global hiring markets, we began to execute our strategic plan against this tough backdrop, and we have seen some good early progress. We are managing our geographic portfolio with increased discipline, and we repositioned the business to be well placed for the rapidly changing world of work. Secondly, we remain sharply focused on costs. In 2024, we took actions to ensure our cost base is appropriate for the current end markets. In addition, we also began to realise structural cost savings in line with our disciplined entrepreneurialism strategy, with over £4 million of saving already secured. This stands us in good stead for 2025, where our outlook is that an improvement in end markets is unlikely to be seen before the latter part of the year. And thirdly, we continue to have high levels of convict...