Saturday, September 1, 2012

Manpower and the sinking ship

It has been a while since I've talked about Manpower. Their recent earnings were not much to talk about.

Their earnings released July of this year had them come out with earnings of .51 vs. .87 compared to the three months from the prior year.

Net earnings came in at $41 million versus $72.7 million from the prior year.

Even as the one time charges were not accounted for earnings came in at .76 a share.

Although, the EPS in the next quarter is expected to be up from the 2nd quarter Manpower remains a sinking ship.

With the advent of Linkedin, and more nimble middle market producers Manpower continues to face pricing and competitive challenges. A quick look at their Australian operations makes you wonder if they would be better served to make additional staff redundant. The level of production specifically from some of the "producers" has been sub par compared to some other firms.

So even as MAN finds itself having to slash as economies in Europe, Manpower's largest market faces continued headwinds and decline, where will Manpower find itself in the next number of years.

If stories hold true that a construction and a decline in pricing for commodity prices then MAN will face even more challenges especially if industrial production doesn't pick up. For a company with the size of its workforce to only generate $41million in net earnings is a slap in the face of shareholders.

Manpower needs to continue to reorganize and look at the hard facts internally and make cuts when they are warranted and make cuts to staff that continue to under perform the mean.

Please do your own research on MAN as I'm just providing my opinion. I've tracked MAN a number of years and have continued to sour on management's ability to make sound and newsworthy decisions.

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