Quess reports drop in annual profits, but rise in employee headcount

BENGALURU: Fairfax group-controlled business service provider Quess Corp on Wednesday reported revenues of Rs 8527 crore for the financial year ended March, recording a growth of 38% over the previous year. In the quarter that ended March, the company earned Rs 2295 crore in revenues registering a 21% growth.

While the profit after tax (PAT) for the whole year has dropped 17% to Rs 257 crore, the same for the March quarter, however, remained flat at Rs 76 crore.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company, in a press release, attributed the drop in full year EBITDA margin to operating losses at jobs site Monster.

Amid sedate sentiments on the jobs front across the country, Quess said its employee headcount has increased by 22% to 3,18,000 as at the end of March. The company reported net addition of 56,300 in employee headcount for the full financial year.

Quess chairman & managing director Ajit Isaac said: “We had yet another strong quarter this year, sequentially our EBITDA grew by 11% and our PAT grew by 16%. This was supported by a healthy 29 bps margin expansion QoQ. Our Core businesses – General Staffing, Facility Management and CLM business had a strong year and delivered healthy growth in both topline as well as profitability. One key highlight for the year has been the consistent improvement in our cash flow conversion rates where we started the year at 31% and exited at 59% and we believe we would be able to continue this momentum in the next year. Our efforts towards the turnaround of Monster is on course and we believe we will be able to demonstrate targeted results in the coming quarters.”