Empresaria Group Regulatory News (EMR)

23 January 2019

Empresaria Group plc ("Empresaria" or the "Group")

Trading Update and Notice of Results

Profit growth in line with market expectations

Investments in Group resources made to drive value

Empresaria (AIM: EMR), the international specialist staffing group, today announces a trading update for the financial year ended 31 December 2018, ahead of announcing its final results on Wednesday 13 March 2019.

The Board is pleased to advise that the Group has delivered profit in line with current market expectations for the financial year ended 31 December 2018. The Group is expected to deliver a 4% increase in both net fee income and adjusted profit before tax against the prior year. This profit represents another historic high level for the Group. Due to the mix of profit across brands with different non-controlling interests, diluted adjusted earnings per share is now expected to be slightly lower than the prior year.

There was a growth in profit over the prior year in three of our four regions, the UK, Asia Pacific and Americas, with notably strong performances from IMS (Offshore Recruitment Services), Alternattiva (outsourcing, perm and temporary business in Chile), LMA (professional services), ConSol Partners (IT) and Rishworth (Aviation). This helped offset the expected weaker results from Headway (technical & industrial) and Skillhouse (IT) due to the previously highlighted changes to temporary worker legislation in Germany and Japan. With these legislation changes now in place, our businesses in these countries are now focused on rebuilding their temporary worker levels during 2019.

In July 2018 we finalised our investment in Grupo Solimano, a provider of outsourced and temporary staffing services in Peru. We are pleased with its performance since joining the Group, which has been in line with our expectations.

Spencer Wreford, Chief Executive Officer of Empresaria, said:

"This result again demonstrates the benefit of Empresaria's diversified business model, delivering another year of profitable growth, despite regulatory challenges in two of our key markets. We are focused on delivering organic growth and in line with this we are pleased to have launched a new brand, 4ward Talent, at the end of last year to focus on the volume IT sector as well as new office openings this month in Brisbane, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand for Become recruitment in the creative, digital and marketing sectors.

"We are investing approximately £0.5m in 2019 to strengthen our central management team, including the appointment of Rhona Driggs as Chief Operating Officer in November 2018. This will enable us to increase the support to our brands in the key areas of business development, technology, training and marketing to drive incremental value as part of our strategy to build leading brands in niche sectors. We have a clear vision to be a leading, international, specialist staffing Group, and are confident we have a plan in place to deliver on this."

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Notes for editors:

· Empresaria Group plc is an international specialist staffing group with 20 brands operating in 21 countries across the globe including the UK, Germany, Japan, India, UAE, Indonesia, Chile, Australia, Thailand, Singapore, Finland, USA, New Zealand, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Peru.

· Empresaria offers temporary/contract and permanent staffing solutions as well as Offshore Recruitment Services in seven key sectors: Technical & Industrial, Aviation services, IT & Design, Professional services, Healthcare, Executive search and Retail.

· Empresaria applies a multi brand, management equity philosophy and business model, with group company management teams holding significant equity in their own business.

· Empresaria is listed on AIM under ticker EMR. For more information: empresaria.com