Operator: Hello, and welcome to the Randstad Q3 2026 results conference call and audio webcast. For the first part of the call, participants will be in listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. Please note that you are limited to one question and one follow-up question per round. I will now hand over to Sander van 't Noordende, the CEO. Mr. Van 't Noordende, please go ahead.
Sander van 't Noordende: Thank you very much, Lynn, for that kind introduction, and good morning, everybody. I am here with Jorge and our investor relations team to share our Q3 2026 results. Let me start by saying that I am extremely proud of our team's continued execution as we are seeing greater impact from our Partner for Talent strategy. Our overall revenue growth continued to improve at 3.9% for the quarter. Together with our delivery excellence and strong cost control, this has resulted in a solid performance with revenues of EUR 6.1 billion, an EBITDA of EUR 211 million, improving 10% year on year and representing a 3.5% margin. We are well-positioned to capture growth going forward. In the US, our operational segment is growing 19% with strong momentum. We see continued broad-based growth in Southern Europe, while we will see some more improvements in key Northern European markets.
Sander van 't Noordende: Finally, we see further stabilization in our digital, professional, and PERM businesses. Volume trends have improved through the quarter, and we have seen some more progress in early October. With our focus on delivery excellence to capture profitable growth, we are confident to show further progress as we enter 2027. The good news on the next slide is that we are seeing a growing impact of our Partner for Talent strategy, with 75% of our business now in growth. This is visible in our growth through specialization focus. We are winning in the marketplace and gaining share. Blue-chip clients in tech, e-commerce, and aeronautics are choosing to partner with us to address talent scarcity and workforce strategy. Our logistics and automotive clients are leaning on us for the structural flexibility they need to navigate seasonality and macro uncertainty. To accelerate growth, we are modernizing our talent service models to be more differentiated.
Sander van 't Noordende: In a sector where digital adoption is traditionally low, deploying our digital marketplaces and AI agents at scale is our number 1 priority, and we are working on some very exciting stuff with already 1.5 million meaningful AI conversations with talent across our four specializations. First, our talent outreach and validation agent, Rani, in Randstad Operational is now live in 7 of our top 10 markets. Matching is faster, time to hire is reduced significantly, and fill rates are up. All of this with 97% talent satisfaction. In digital and professional, our always-on Torc digital marketplace is expanding into engineering and creative marketing in the US. Within digital, automated matching drives down recruiting costs, and average time to fill has been cut in half from 26 days down to just 12.
Sander van 't Noordende: In enterprise, our client teams use a conversational interface with five collaborating agents to plan, match, advertise, and deliver insights, reducing time to offer to provide quality talent at a higher speed. As we actively execute a fundamental AI pivot across our business, we are moving away from the traditional event-based recruiting model to a model that is platform-centric, in which talent is proactively matched with the roles they truly want. Our philosophy here is platform plus AI plus community plus best team, and we think this will revolutionize our industry. In Q3, we facilitated 2.3 million self-scheduled shifts in our digital marketplaces, up double digits sequentially, and our performance in the US shows that it works. Adoption continues to go up because it benefits everyone. Talent gets effortless shift selection and fast pay, while clients gain higher fill rates, demand control, as well as automated compliance.
Sander van 't Noordende: As a result, we are putting more people to work and are structurally increasing our productivity with 6% more talent this year per FTE than last year. While technology is, of course, very important, our people are, of course, leading the way. Over the past 12 months, Jesús, our COO, and our sales teams have worked very hard to revamp our sales approach, and it is paying off. Through the One Randstad approach, we are adding exciting new logos, growing our share of wallet, and expanding international clients across borders. As a result, we have generated EUR 1.7 million year to date in net new client wins. In summary, we are running a more differentiated, more agile, and more productive business, which puts us in a strong position to capture demand and drive further growth in the coming period. George, over to you.
Jorge Vazquez: Thank you, Sander, and good morning, everyone. Overall, a good quarter. We are seeing trends improving throughout the quarter, and we combine this with a clear step up in profitability. Flexibility adds value. As churn, mobility, and incremental demand returns to labor markets and definitely to previously stuck labor markets, we continue to see familiar seasonal and cyclical trends in our markets. We increased by over 19,000 talent working in Q3 sequentially, compared to last year's increase of 10,000 employees. Furthermore, we see that recovery is actually broadening, signaling a further cyclical pickup as our operational business continues to gain speed. The model we are building works.
Jorge Vazquez: Our commercial activity and focus on growth segments are paying off, and we are capturing the incremental demand without adding net new capacity. We are delivering more profit this year and as a direct result of the scalability we have embedded into our operating model, alongside the structural reduction we have been doing in our indirect costs. We are on our way. Taking a step back, this strong operational discipline gives me confidence in our ability to not only grow profit versus 2025, but to mark 2026 as an inflection year with both growth and strong conversion now on the way up. Let us now move and double-click into the regional performance on page 8, starting with North America. In North America, penetration rates are starting to improve again. Growth is broadening to all specializations, and we see now the clear financial benefits of our strategy.
Jorge Vazquez: Sander mentioned it, US Operational is now growing 19%, running at full steam, again, clearly ahead of the markets. Remember, the digital marketplace, in combination with delivery excellence, allows us to capture demand with much less incremental capacity. We saw a strong sequential step-up in professional, back to growth at +3% with good growth in engineering and PERM. The demand for digital talent is also improving, year over year, our digital specialization is now flat. Enterprise also improved, is up 4%, driven primarily by MSP and strong wins in career mobility and outplacements. Overall, North American EBITDA margin was 5.3%, up 70 basis points year over year and marking a significant step-up. Now let's turn the page to major European markets on slide 9. Here, we also see further momentum improving in most of our major European markets.
Jorge Vazquez: In the Netherlands, we see improving trends in industrial and logistics clients, good growth in healthcare, and other professional markets also normalizing. The market has gained its footing following the implementation of the CLA this year. The organic revenue was up 3% and EBITDA margin came in at 4%, down year over year, but sequentially improving as the organization is adapting well to structurally improve its profitability. In Germany, we saw again real volume improvement in industrial, automotive, and e-commerce clients, and we are driving strong productivity and profitability gains year over year with EBITDA margins now at 3.7%. Belgium saw trends largely unchanged versus the previous quarter, but nevertheless, adaptability is strong, delivering a similar EBITDA margin year over year. In France, revenues were down 3%, slightly lower sequentially, while still nevertheless facing 3% tougher comparables. Overall profitability came in at 3.9%.
Jorge Vazquez: Large clients are clearly leading the pack with strong growth in in-house, automotive, aerospace being offset by declines in PERM, steel, and healthcare. Volume growth returned already in September, and we are ramping up for a peak logistics season while we will start to annualize the healthcare price cap regulations earlier implemented at the end of last year. Italy saw again a good step-up in operational growth as meaningful clients and e-commerce and logistics continued to ramp up. Profitability was 5.4%, up 30 basis points year over year. Iberia had another strong quarter, up 8%, again led by Spain, +9%, where we just celebrated the launch of our marketplace in October. EBITDA margin for the region was 5.9%, up 10 basis points year over year. Let's now move to the international markets on slide 10. Here, we also see a step-up in growth.
Jorge Vazquez: In Europe, we saw the UK growth improving significantly, especially among large clients who we are increasingly serving through our digital marketplace. Switzerland was up 3%, and the Nordics started annualizing declines while Poland is in decline driven by client attrition early in the year. Underlying good growth is picking up. In LATAM, we saw double-digit growth with strong momentum once more in Brazil. In Asia Pacific, Japan also stepped up its growth to +8%. Australia and New Zealand is now back to growth at 3%, driven by early cyclical blue collar. Overall, the EBITDA margin for APAC came at 4.1%. That concludes the performance of our key geographies, and let me now walk you through our combined financial performance on slide 12. Starting from our top line, we delivered 3.9% growth with good progression throughout the quarter.
Jorge Vazquez: Operational grew 6%, fueled by automotive, logistics, and skilled trades. Professional also saw sequential momentum returning to growth in the US alongside an improvement in Europe. Digital also reflects improving US trends while enterprise benefited from globally 4% RPO growth and a strong career mobility performance. More about margin and OpEx later, but for now, gross profit is also up 1% year-over-year while we continue to reduce OpEx year-over-year. As a result, the quarter's EBITDA margin was up to 3.5% and our underlying EBITDA was EUR 211 million, up EUR 20 million year-over-year or 20 basis points and EUR 29 million up sequentially from Q4. Integration costs and one-offs amounted to EUR 50 million, related mostly to the environment in Belgium, Germany, and France, as we adjust the organization to the new talent service models and the future.
Jorge Vazquez: In net finance costs, just the regular interest payment and the effective tax rate for the first nine months was 32%. We expect for 2026 an ETR towards the higher end of the 30% to 32% range as our profit mix is broadening. This all leads to an adjusted net income of EUR 133 million for the quarter. With that, let's continue and look at our gross margin bridge on slide 13. Gross margin was down 60 basis points versus 70 basis points in Q2, and 80 in Q1. Let us double-click. Temp margin is down 50 basis points year-over-year, reflecting the cyclical environment. As growth steps up, we see continued outperformance of large clients within key growth markets such as the US, Italy, Spain, and even some smaller ones with 30 basis points mix impact.
Jorge Vazquez: Furthermore, in our specific case, the CLA change in the Netherlands has a 15 to 20 basis points dilution on group level year-on-year. Within our PERM business, we see good further growth in the US, while Northern European markets are still stabilizing. Contribution was still down this quarter, -10 basis points. In HRS, RPO growth is also 4%, was in line with group growth. That brings me to the OpEx bridge on slide 14, and remember, this one is sequential. Turning to our operating expenses, costs were down EUR 13 million sequentially, reflecting seasonality and coming in at EUR 878 million, down organically year-over-year. More importantly, our FTE base remains stable sequentially, 3% down, with our talent service models and digital solutions empowering talent and allowing our teams to do more. This continues to free up capacity to reallocate towards sales.
Jorge Vazquez: In addition, we continue to work on lowering our indirect costs. Personally, the importance here is that the changes of the past three years are proving to be structural. We have emerged with scalability in our cost to serve and with a leaner company. This supports us going forward. As a result, our last four quarters ICR is now above 100%, actually 108%, showing our ability to drive meaningful operational leverage as growth returns. This ability to convert is the benchmark we want to raise. With that in mind, let's move on to slide 15, which contains our cash flow and balance sheet remarks. First, on the balance sheet, our underlying free cash flow for the quarter was EUR 250 million, reflecting seasonality and solid cash conversion. DSO came in at 57.4 days, down 0.2 days sequentially.
Jorge Vazquez: Net debt decreased EUR 73 million year-over-year, and our leverage ratio year-over-year decreased to 1.5. We are currently awaiting standard regulatory approvals to finalize our partnership agreement with LTM for our technology and consulting services. We expect the transaction to close by the end of the year or early next year. That brings me now to the outlook slide on slide 16. Let's talk first about growth momentum. September was the strongest month in Q3. Looking ahead, volume trends in the first weeks of October are improving further as we see our logistics clients ramping up significantly for the holiday season. We also face, remember, a slightly easier comparison base of approximately 100 basis points. in this context, our gross margin in Q4 is expected to be broadly stable sequentially.
Jorge Vazquez: We anticipate only a slight increase in operating expenses sequentially due to the simple reversal of Q3 seasonality. To summarize, growth is stepping up practically in all our markets and specializations. Labor markets are all in all normalizing and flexibility adds value. Our strategy to capture this growth is delivering, and we continue to build the future of Randstad. We actively position ourselves to where growth is, gain market share, and continue to allocate sales capacity to it. We are being more specialized and differentiated through our focus and promises. We are progressively empowering talent, clients, and our own teams to work smarter. Digitalization and AI and more efficient talent service models will only accelerate. As a result, we deliver and aim to continue to see this growth coming in at an increasingly higher operational leverage than before.
Jorge Vazquez: That concludes our prepared remarks, and we look forward to taking your questions. Operator?
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, we are now ready to take your questions. If you wish to ask a question, please press pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. We kindly remind you that you're limited to one question per round and a follow-up. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. Our first question is from Andy Grobler from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Andy Grobler: Hi. Good morning. Can I just start with France, please? You have noted some improvements through the quarter, but the backdrop has got a bit more challenging there from a social and political perspective. Are you seeing any of that come through? What are your clients telling you about the outlook for France through Q4 and into early 2027? Thank you.
Jorge Vazquez: Yeah. Thank you, Andy. Great question. I was hoping your first question would be about the US, but we will take it on France, of course.
Andy Grobler: That is my second.
Sander van 't Noordende: Oh, that is your second. Okay. No, on France, obviously the country has its challenges. You only have to open the newspaper to see that. From our perspective, we have seen, as Jorge already said, an uptick in September. So we may be a bit of an exception here. We have had some good client wins in e-commerce and logistics. So that bodes well, I would say. The other slightly specific thing for Randstad is our healthcare business. You may remember that a year ago, there was some legislation that had a bit of a negative impact on our business. So that is going to be behind us in the coming quarters. So that should help as well. So we are quite optimistic.
Andy Grobler: Thank you. Moving on to the US, very strong growth, particularly in the operational side, helped by the digital markets. Can you just, because there is quite a bit of noise in there in terms of other segments as well, just talk through the operational leverage you are seeing in the digital markets, and particularly in the operations side, is that coming through?
Sander van 't Noordende: It is quite phenomenal, because the digital marketplace works such, if a client puts in 100 extra orders for next week, the demand gets filled almost by itself, provided that we have enough talent on the marketplace. That is sort of an ongoing process, and typically that is not an issue. So we get additional revenue at relatively low marginal cost. I was just reviewing some numbers this morning. Our employees working for FTE in the United States is over 20% up compared to last year. So there you got your productivity improvement.
Andy Grobler: Excellent. Thank you very much.
Jorge Vazquez: Next question?
Sander van 't Noordende: Yep.
Operator: Our next question is from Suhasini Varanasi, Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Suhasini Varshini: Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to get a sense on the gross margins, please. It feels like we are still seeing the sequential deterioration in temp gross margin, and I know it's down to mix, but just wanted to understand at what point does it stabilize, and what should be the normalized gross margin going into 2027? Thank you.
Jorge Vazquez: Hi, Suhasini. Thank you. In terms of gross, I'll primarily say nothing new, to be honest, on our gross margin this quarter. We did have, obviously, a step up in temp and then obviously weighs in the mix with PERM so there is an impact there. We see, let's say, the annualization starting to happen, and especially if we would take, let's say, the specific context of Randstad. Remember, we're quite large in the Netherlands. It's one of the most important markets we have. Clear market leader. That is bringing us, in particular this year, 15 to 20 basis points down in terms of gross margin. Well, on the other hand, that starts annualizing or that will annualize as we go into Q1. So overall, I think quite logical and continuation of stable trends in gross margin and, getting ready for the next part.
Suhasini Varshini: Got, understand. Okay, so these trends that you saw in Q3, sequentially stable is something that we can extrapolate over the coming quarters? Best way to read it.
Jorge Vazquez: Yeah. Eventually, as I just mentioned, the CLA specific, even our size here in the market impact that it has of the Netherlands, we will start annualizing and continue therefore to narrow year-over-year the gap. Yeah.
Suhasini Varshini: Got it. Thank you very much.
Operator: Our next question is from Simon LeChipre from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Simon Lechipre: Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First of all, a follow-up on gross margin. You keep mentioning the geographic mix effect being the drive, but I think most of your countries are now growing. North America is growing, I think, in digits. So, when should we see this geographic mix not being dilutive anymore? What really do you need, basically to see this trend easing?
Jorge Vazquez: Yeah. Simon, thank you. Good question. To be honest, if you hear what I said, I did not mention geographical mix. I basically mentioned we have our temp business growing even faster, let's say, than the delta we had expected for. PERM is actually growing, by the way, in the United States, and so things are starting to also change in many ways. What I think you see, let's say, in the margin throughout the year, of course, we have a very large client-driven demand. You can see that in our conversion. We are now basically, it is where our delivery centers, our talent centers, and our digital marketplace enable us to really grow and convert this extra gross profit into EBITDA. So, that is basically a very healthy growth.
Jorge Vazquez: But the large clients clearly continue to outgrow, still growing 16%, the top 50 versus, let's say, the single digits on the rest of the group, has an impact. So not so much the geography part anymore. I would also say, obviously, Randstad Operational, we just talked about the US 19%, but the overall Randstad Operational specialization growing again 6% ahead of the group. It means, yeah, there is still a skew towards Randstad Operational business and large margin, let's say, gross margin business versus the professionals part. So overall, I think it is just the normal cyclical components and mix more than anything else. Again, in our specific case, I think, and perhaps that tints the overall margin, the impact of the Netherlands. But again, we are annualizing that as we enter into 2027.
Simon Lechipre: Okay. Thank you. A quick follow-up on looking at your SG&A, your outlook suggests costs will now increase on a year-on-year basis following a long period of cost-cutting. Can you reconcile this with your comments on productivity gains and efficiencies from digital platform and AI? What does this suggest for SG&A next year? Thank you.
Jorge Vazquez: Yeah. Obviously, Q3 to Q4, if anything, what we will see is a reversal of, let's say, the normal treatment of holidays throughout the year. So clearly our underlying cost will be flat. Again, the other flip side of having a large client-led demand driven, what that means, Simon, is as well, that as I just said, a lot of that demand can be perfectly captured throughout our delivery centers, our talent centers, and our digital marketplace. So from an underlying cost base perspective, we are quite confident that it will be flat. Speaking obviously for the continuous increase of conversions that we have been showing throughout the year. So the extra revenue that we are generating, we clearly convert. That is the tone as we get into ourselves into 2027.
Jorge Vazquez: We do not guide for the year, but clearly, we are entering the year in a different way, Simon, than we entered this year, or we are exiting, let us say 2026 in a different way. We are already busy making sure that we enter Q1 in a healthy way as possible to continue to make big steps towards a big step up in profitability.
Simon Lechipre: Thank you.
Jorge Vazquez: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question is from Simon van Oppen from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Simon van Oppen: Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. I want to follow up a bit on the Netherlands and the CLA impact. It seemed that your operational business was up slightly and your professional business outperforming. Can you, as we go into next year, give us a bit more sense of where the market is heading from an operational and professional standpoint, as well as the gross margins development throughout next year in the Netherlands from the CLA impact specifically.
Jorge Vazquez: Very good. Sander, should I start and then-
Sander van 't Noordende: Yeah, no, go ahead.
Jorge Vazquez: contribute? I think the way- Look, to understand this, Simon, thank you. Good question. The Netherlands, a few things are happening. One is we clearly see a step-up. Germany obviously is a big market, and we see a little small revival on industrial pockets. We start seeing the same around, so in the Netherlands. Clearly from an operational perspective, after, let's say, the new equilibrium of the reset that the new legislation has had in the market this year, we now see basically that we have found our foot, the market has found our feet, and we are basically stepping up already sequentially in the Netherlands. Professional, clearly, our Zorgwerk, our healthcare Zorgwerk specialization has done a fantastic job.
Jorge Vazquez: Yeah, obviously comparables will get tougher, but overall, we are quite comfortable that we found on our feet in the Netherlands, and as we enter into the next year, yeah, we believe in a stronger year now already for 2027.
Simon van Oppen: Okay. Thank you very much.
Operator: The next question is from Marc Zwartsenburg of ING. Please go ahead.
Marc Zwartsenburg: Yeah, good morning, gentlemen, and congrats on the quarter. Maybe a bit of a follow-up question on North America. Do you believe that the growth that you have seen, quite an acceleration of growth, and also in operational leverage, do you believe there is still more acceleration and more operational leverage expected for Q4 and into next year? My first question.
Jorge Vazquez: I think, Marc, I'll start, and then if Sander wants to contribute and give more color. I think what we now should see in North America, and I was pleased to see the development also in PERM. We should see Randstad Digital and professional now to also start improving. We see early signs of that. We just mentioned professional back to growth, primarily led by engineering. Randstad Digital now flat. PERM in growth in our business overall, both in Randstad Operational and professional. So we see the beginning of it. So, so far, no yet signs of running out of steam, let's say.
Sander van 't Noordende: Yeah, no, I would add, I think where we are today has all signs of the typical cycle, Marc, and you've been around longer than I do, so I don't have to explain it to you. But typically Randstad Operational, that's where it starts moving then into professional Randstad Digital enterprise. Our RPO business is growing, so that's a signal I would say. And then typically it starts in North America, and then it translates to the rest of the world. So, and we see that happening to a certain extent as well. So, yeah, I would say, if the cycle develops as it normally does, that would be a helpful thing.
Marc Zwartsenburg: And maybe if you look to corporate staff by geography on your appendices, for instance, North America is down significantly. That's because of the Randstad Digital platform, I assume, because you're growing the business already. Should we expect similar sort of changes in those markets where you're now rolling out Randstad Digital platform like Belgium, like currently Spain? Is that what we should see over the coming quarters into next year?
Sander van 't Noordende: No, we're always managing supply and demand, as you know, obviously. A couple of movements in our functional headcount. We are increasingly moving roles to our GCC in India, so you'll see a shift there. We will gradually continue to improve, and it's been, I think we said 6% more employees working per FTE. So we'll continue to work on that. Obviously, North America with the Randstad Digital model and the higher demand is obviously something that stands out today. We'll work in that direction as well here in Europe and other markets. So under Jesús' leadership, he is our COO, we keep grinding, we keep at it.
Marc Zwartsenburg: Well, congrats again.
Sander van 't Noordende: Yeah.
Marc Zwartsenburg: Have a good day.
Sander van 't Noordende: Thanks.
Jorge Vazquez: Thanks.
Sander van 't Noordende: Thanks, Marc.
Operator: Our next question is from Virginia Montessori from BofA. Please go ahead.
Virginia Montorsi: Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I guess we've gone through all the relevant financial ones, so I just wanted to ask, mainly in relation to what we've just discussed about Randstad Digital, do you still find that there's question that you get over the business model of where we are that either surprise you or you feel like there's some topic that has been misunderstood or anything like whenever we discuss, obviously, AI and the AI transition, we often get a very nuanced debate. Do you get today any sort of questions that surprise you, or do you feel like the broader picture is now well understood going into the H2 of the year, next year?
Sander van 't Noordende: Yeah, I would say the broader picture is well understood, but also it's an evolving picture, Virginia. Of course, we started off with the digital marketplace platform, if you will. Now we're adding AI at scale, with agents reaching out to talent, with agents helping onboard talent, with agents doing interviews. So that is continuing to evolve. So that's the newest part of the model. Yeah, we get, let's say we don't, I would not say surprising questions, but people are, our investors definitely are very interested in how does this new model work. And sometimes they're also surprised because what they hear in the marketplace is that the classic recruiter model on steroids with AI is actually leading to very bad experiences. Because talent can now use AI to apply to hundreds of jobs. They then get hundreds of responses or not from AI.
Sander van 't Noordende: It's just a big flurry of activity that basically benefits no one. So we are turning the thing upside down. If we, in our Torc platform, if we have a request from a client coming in, the platform starts looking in our community and finds people who are, as we call them, a best match. So those people get a message, "You are a best match." They respond, and then based on that, we look who are the best candidates. Maybe they do an assessment or an interview, and then finally, there's just one person looking at it to present the shortlist to the client. And that's a very different model than I have to respond to thousands of jobs and I get thousands of answers or not, or I'm being ghosted. No.
Sander van 't Noordende: We call you, we have a job for you see it makes sense for you, and that is how you get into the process. And we keep you posted on where the process is at any given point in time, and that's a much different experience. And that's the future. The future is platform plus AI plus community plus best team in Randstad, of course.
Virginia Montorsi: Thank you very much. That is very helpful.
Sander van 't Noordende: Sure.
Jorge Vazquez: Thank you, Virginia.
Operator: Our next question is from Konrad Zomer from ABN AMRO. Please go ahead.
Konrad Zomer: Hi, good morning, gentlemen. Two questions, one on North America and one on Europe. I will do North America first. A very strong EBITDA margin improvement of 70 basis points year-on-year. Can you maybe break that down for us between operating leverage and business mix changes or sector changes? My question on Europe, I was particularly impressed by the pickup in growth in Germany. I was just wondering in terms of wage inflation, can you maybe comment on your key markets like the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, what you see in terms of wage inflation and how that could possibly support future growth? Thank you.
Sander van 't Noordende: Yeah, I was actually looking at that comment on the wage inflation. I don't think there's a lot happening on that front. It's been in the zone of 2% or 3%. It's actually been coming down over the last year or two. So there's nothing spectacular on the wage inflation side at this point in time.
Jorge Vazquez: Yeah. On the US, Konrad Zomer, let me give you a little bit more color. So what we see is if you look at our different businesses and just like the most important relevant ones, clearly, it's taken time. So we've been fine-tuning our model, basically understanding exactly roles and responsibilities on how to best, let's say, roll this out in the United States. But now, if we look at this quarter, basically when we now see the fruition of everything we've been doing, we're looking at it approximately, let's say, EUR 10 million more EBITDA this quarter of our operational business, clearly converting. Sander van 't Noordende mentioned it, close to 100% incremental conversion. So hardly, again, large client led. So that means our digital marketplace, our delivery centers are basically right in the middle of where they can excel. So a lot of that has converted into profit.
Jorge Vazquez: The remaining approximately EUR 5 million, I told you earlier, we're doing specifically well as well with our career mobility and outplacement teams. In general, no more drag from digital or professional. So I think overall, a good number sets us up for the future. But again, it will be great to see now also professional digital contributing even more.
Konrad Zomer: Okay, thanks. Maybe just one follow-up. You mentioned
Jorge Vazquez: Yeah
Konrad Zomer: 2026 as a transition year.
Jorge Vazquez: Yeah.
Konrad Zomer: Within this year, it seems that Q3 might be a transition quarter. Are we now getting to a point where your OpEx is no longer coming down sequentially, but is likely to pick up because you benefit from opportunities?
Jorge Vazquez: Yeah, look, Q3 has been a transition quarter. We have growth. I think a lot of the things that were tinting our gross profit are also kind of now normalizing. So we also have good profit growth or good gross profit growth. Therefore, I told you before, countries that are earning growth are in gross profit growth. That gross profit growth is actually converting close to 100%. Countries that are not in growth are basically, we are adjusting heavily to make sure that we are on a good basis. So all of that comes together this quarter. Looking ahead, we continue to basically, a lot of the things we've been doing on indirect costs are not done yet. So we have programs to continue to reduce it, especially if we want to make 2027 a strong year, we need to enter the year well.
Jorge Vazquez: We want to enter the year well already in Q1. You know it's traditionally the lowest seasonal quarter. So yes, we'll be working on basically reducing OpEx as we enter into Q1. You can think of, we're still doing programs in accommodation. We've mentioned before, our IT costs started plateauing. There's a lot of other things we're doing also in our indirect support costs. Sander van 't Noordende mentioned a little bit our GCCs in India and other locations. So I'm quite confident that we're going to enter the year with our OpEx well under control.
Konrad Zomer: Thank you very much.
Jorge Vazquez: Thank you, Konrad.
Operator: Our last question is from James Clark from Barclays. Please go ahead.
James Clark: Good morning. Just one, please. In terms of where we are in the recovery cycle, you talked a little bit about this earlier. If you look at the US as a guide, Randstad Operational is clearly outstanding at the moment, professionals now growing. In Europe more broadly, Randstad Operational is growing nicely, but professional lagging. Are there any markets you would call out there as seeing the green shoots in professional that you would suggest that the recovery is more broadly also happening in Europe in a way that you would expect? Or are there any markets that are lagging on underlying trends if you exclude some of the legislative and regulatory hits that you have experienced?
Sander van 't Noordende: Well, James, I would say we used the word green shoots before, so I am not going to do that again. No. We do see very encouraging pockets of activity. Let me put it like that. For instance, in France, our delivery center and team for the aeronautics industry is doing a phenomenal job, and they are hitting it out of the park, so to speak. Is that a green shoot? Let us say, I do not want to use that term, but it is a very good job. We see that in various places. In Spain, we have a business around skilled trade doing a phenomenal job, growing the team from zero to over 100 people over the last couple of years. So we have, let us say, pockets where the specialization focus clearly works.
Sander van 't Noordende: I think it is probably too early to call, let us say, a broader recovery in the professional market in Europe. We are not yet there.
James Clark: Okay. Thank you very much.
Sander van 't Noordende: Cheers.
Operator: We have one more question from Maarten Verbeek from the IDEA!. Please go ahead.
Maarten Verbeek: Good morning, it's Maarten Verbeek of the IDEA!. You mentioned, in this quarter you did 2.3 million shifts. Just to get a feel, in the markets in which you operate actively with this, what's the market share? What's the contribution? What do you target to achieve in a year's time or 2 years' time?
Sander van 't Noordende: Yeah. The margin obviously depends on the market that we operate in, Maarten. That's one. The good thing is we are now at roughly 17% to 18% of our business in the digital marketplaces, and we will continue to drive that up in combination, increasingly, I would say, with the AI agents to drive up productivity even further. I just mentioned our EW per FTE in the United States is up year over year by more than 20%, and that gives a bit of an impression of the art of the possible. Also, in our most digital model in healthcare here in the Netherlands.
Sander van 't Noordende: The productivity is significantly 2 to 3x higher than in our average operational business. Further, it's obviously very encouraging to see that more and more countries and parts of business are on the digital marketplace. Spain went live, Jorge told us. India went live, and our Torc marketplace that does focus on digital is now also operational and professional. So we keep plowing, if you will. We keep working in that direction to get more and more of our business in the digital marketplace. The UK, last but not least, is a success story of this year where almost all of our operational business is now on the digital marketplace. So we keep at it.
Maarten Verbeek: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. With that, I would now like to hand over the call back to Lynn for any closing remarks.
Sander van 't Noordende: Yeah. Thank you very much, Lynn, and I would like to say a big thank you again this quarter to our over 600,000 employees working and lots of people for a brilliant job this quarter. Very well done. We appreciate it a lot, and we go on to the next one. Thanks a lot.
