HRmarketer.com publishes a monthly eNewsletter called HRintelligence that tracks data on the industry's top advertisers, who's receiving the most media coverage and the health of the industry. The current issue, which will be emailed to subscribers this week, upgraded the industry's health from Good to Great. While only members of HRmarketer.com with access rights to the HRintelligence database can see the really cool stuff, the monthly eNewsletter is free and you can subscribe to it by visiting any of the sites above.
The "Great" health rating HRmarketer.com researchers assigned to the human capital industry in May is an unscientific measure of the human capital industry's health based on the aggregate number of advertising placements across the major HR trade publications, new investment money flowing into the space, IPOs, M&As, closures, etc. It also factors in earnings announcements from the major publicly held pure-play HR and other HR service providers.
Although every sector in HR performed quite well, the most encouraging news comes from recruitment and staffing and payroll processing firms. Here is a summary of Q1 2005 earnings news from publicly held HR companies:
- TALX (Nasdaq:TALX) recently raised profit and revenue guidance for the fourth quarter and full year. The company's shares went up 29% on the news.
- Paychex (NASDAQ:PAYX) declared a regular quarterly dividend as did The Corporate Executive Board (NASDAQ:EXBD). Only a handful of pure-play HR suppliers are publicly traded and few of these actually pay a dividend so we think this is great news.
- Monster Worldwide (Nasdaq-MNST) announced that first-quarter earnings rose 66 percent year-over-year.
- ADP (NYSE:ADP) announced a 12.7% rise in quarterly profit, as demand increased across the payroll processor's businesses, and issued an upbeat outlook for the year.
- Watson Wyatt (NYSE:WW) also announced positive earnings for the first quarter.
- Administaff (NYSE: ASF) posted first-quarter results that topped Wall Street forecasts.
- Kronos (Nasdaq: KRON) posted higher earnings but lowered their 3rd quarter forecast.
- Ultimate Software (Nasdaq:ULTI) posted a profit for Q1.
Not all news was great.
- Ceridian (NYSE:CEN) said fourth-quarter profit fell short of analysts' forecasts, hurt by one-time charges, the sale of some assets and an accounting change.
- Workstream (WSTM:Nasdaq) shares fell after the company posted third-quarter results that were well below Wall Street expectations.
- Hewitt Associates (NYSE:HEW) shares fell to a 52-week-low after the company said its second-quarter results missed a recently lowered internal forecast, due to the loss of a client, higher costs and other items.
If you do not subscribe to the HRintelligence eNewsletter, be sure to visit HRmarketer.com and sign-up for free (on the left sidebar of the site). If you are a HR service provider, check out HRmarketer.com membership - you will not be disappointed. In fact, 9 of the 11 publicly held HR firms from the above list enjoy the benefits of HRmarketer membership.