The international specialist staffing group’s unaudited results for the half year ended 30 June 2017, released this morning, reveal group revenue over the period of £56.8m, down from £59.3m, although net fee income did rise 5% to £9.4m on the previous year.

While permanent NFI rose 22% to £4.3m, contract NFI fell 5% to £5.1m year-on-year.

The period also saw the group complete the acquisition of Argyll Scott in June. And while the group reports the purchase has had little impact on its bottom line within these sets of results, it anticipates the acquisition will help it scale its position within Asia-Pacific, increase economies of scale and achieve synergies through consolidating facilities and diversify customer revenue concentration within the group and increase its proportion of NFI from outside the UK to greater than 50%.

Further afield, while US NFI was flat at £7.4m, the group’s Asia-Pacific operations posted a 32% increase in NFI to £1.9m.

Commenting on the group’s performance, CEO Ian Temple said: "In common with our peer group, trading conditions in a number of our UK markets have been challenging during the period. However, the organic growth since the start of the year in our UK contract book together with the opportunities for both revenue growth and cost synergies created by the acquisition of Argyll Scott places the group in a position to return to sustainable long-term profit growth.”

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